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Herodotus

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Bust of Herodotus at Naples
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Bust of Herodotus at Naples

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος, Herodotos) was an Ionic traveller and storyteller who lived in the 5th century BC (484 BC-ca. 425 BC). He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories, a collection of 'inquiries' (or 'ἱστορια', a word which passed into Latin and took on its modern connotation of 'history') about the different places and peoples he encountered during his wide ranging travels around the Mediterranean littoral and into Mesopotamia. He took as the unifying theme for this work the conflict between the ancient Greeks and the Persians or 'Medes'.

Contents

Opinions

Herodotus' invention has earned him the twin titles "The Father of History" and "The Father of Lies". As these epithets would seem to imply, there has long been a debate -- at least from the time of Cicero's 'On the Laws' (I,5) -- concerning the veracity of his tales, and, more importantly, concerning the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications. Indeed, every manner of argument has surfaced on this subject, from a devious and consciously-fictionalizing Herodotus to a gullible Herodotus whose 'sources saw him coming a long way off'.

Herodotus' Works Under Question

There are many cases in which Herodotus, either uncertain of the accuracy or truth of an event, or unimpressed by the lacklustre 'facts' presented to him, reports the several most prominent historical accounts on a given subject and then opines as to which he believes is most accurate. Though The Histories were often criticized in antiquity for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism, (for example, Lucian of Samosata attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae historiae and denied him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed) this methodology has been seen in a more positive light by many modern historians and philosophers, especially those searching for an example of relatively objective historical writing. Of course, given the sensitivity of the issue, the very founding of the discipline of history, this has not become a consensus view; attacks have been made by several scholars in modern times, a few even arguing that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and completely fabricated sources.

Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century about the (now submerged) ancient city of Heraklion, as well as the so-called 'Naucratis stela', all lend substantial credence to Herodotus' previously unsupported claim that Heraklion was founded under the Egyptian New Kingdom. [link]. Due to this recent increase in respect for his accuracy, Herodotus is now recognized as a pioneer not only in history, but in ethnography and anthropology as well.

Contribution

Herodotus has, in effect, passed on to us a large amount of the information concerning the world that was current in his own day: he reports that the annual flooding of the Nile was said to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and comments that he cannot understand how there can be snow in the hottest part of the world. Of course, we know this to be true; if it were not for Herodotus' method of comparing competing theories, we might never have discovered that such knowledge existed in ancient Greece. He also passes on reports from Phoenician sailors that, while circumnavigating Africa, they 'saw the sun on the right side while sailing westwards'. Thanks to this brief mention, almost an afterthought, modern scholars have been able to establish that Africa was indeed circumnavigated by ancient seafarers.

Published between 430 BC and 424 BC, The Histories were divided by later editors into nine books, named after the nine Muses. As it progresses, it become apparent that Herodotus is fulfilling his opening desire -- to 'prevent the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and to put on record what causes first brought them into conflict.' The first six books deal with the growth of the Persian Empire. They begin with an account of the first Asian monarch to conquer Greek city-states and exact tribute, Croesus of Lydia. Croesus lost his kingdom to Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, who was himself eventually killed while attempting to conquer the Massagetae, a nomadic, pastoral tribe of steppe barbarians. The second book forms a lengthy digression concerning the history of Egypt. The sixth book ends with the defeat of the Persians in 490 BC at the Battle of Marathon, which was the first setback to their imperial progress. The last three books of The Histories describe the attempt of the Persian king Xerxes ten years later to avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon and absorb Greece into the Persian Empire. The Histories end with the year 479 BC, when the Persian invaders were wiped out at the Battle of Plataea and the frontier of the Persian Empire receded to the Aegean coastline of Asia Minor.

It is possible to see the theme of Persian power and its various excesses running like a 'red thread' throughout the narrative. Even the strange and fantastic tales that are liberally sprinkled throughout the text are based on this momentum. At every stage, a Persian monarch crosses a body of water or other liminal space and suffers the consequences: Cyrus attacks the Massagetae on the eastern bank of a river, and ends up decapitated; Cambyses attacks the Ethiopians to the south of Egypt, across the desert, and goes mad; Darius attacks the Scythians to the north and is flung back across the Danube; Xerxes hubristically lashes and then bridges the Hellespont, and his forces are crushed by the Greeks. Thus, though he strays, and sometimes strays rather far, off of this main course, he always returns to the task at hand -- answering the question, how and why did the Greeks and Persians enter into the greatest conflict then known, and what was the outcome?

Herodotus' life

As for Herodotus' life, most of what is known is gleaned from his own work. We know that he was exiled from Halicarnassus after his involvement in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the ruling dynasty, and that he then withdrew to the island of Samos. He seems never to have returned to Halicarnassus, though in his Histories he appears to be proud of his native city and its queen, Artemisia. It must have been during his exile that he undertook the journeys he describes in The Histories. These journeys took him to Egypt as far south as the first cataract of the Nile, to Babylon, to the Ukraine, and to Italy and Sicily. Herodotus mentions an interview with an informant in Sparta, and almost certainly he lived for a period in Athens. In Athens, he tapped the oral traditions of the prominent families, in particular the Alkmaeonidai, to which Pericles belonged (on his maternal side). But the Athenians did not accept foreigners as citizens, and, when Athens sponsored the colony of Thurii in the instep of Italy in 444 BC, Herodotus became a colonist. Whether or not he died there is uncertain.

At some point he became a logios – that is, a reciter of prose logoi or stories – and his subject matter often encompassed battles, other historical incidents, and the marvels of foreign lands. He made tours of the Greek cities and the major religious and athletic festivals, where he offered performances and expected payment. In 431 BC, the Peloponnesian War broke out between Athens and Sparta. It may have been that conflict, which divided the Greek world, that inspired him to collect his stories into a continuous narrative – The Histories – centering as they do on the theme of Persia's imperial progress, which only a united Athens and Sparta had managed to resist.

Further reading

See also

External links

Online translations

An [earlier version] of this article by James Allan Evans was posted at Nupedia.

 

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