Herodotus

484-420 (or earlier) B.C.

Greek Historian

Hailed as the "Father of History," Herodotus wrote the first known prose history in Western literature. Writing at a time when history was still a dubious mix of myth and verse, he gathered information on the geography and people of the eastern Mediterranean and Persia as background for his detailed account of the war between Greece and Persia from 499 to 479 B.C. His interest in the people and culture in his account is also recognized as an early foray into anthropology.

Though Herodotus is one of the most famous ancient writers, little is known of his life. He was born in Halicarnassus, a Greek city on the west coast of Asia Minor, now Turkey. He reports seeing the defeated Persian fleet arrive in the harbor at Halicarnassus when he was five years old. This occurred in 479 B.C., so it seems evident that he was born in 484. This event may have led to his interest in the war between the Greeks and Persians.

His education was probably good, though he never mentions it. His family was well known in the city and prosperous. Though he was Greek, some of his relatives may have been Persian, which also may have fueled his curiosity about the huge Persian empire. As a young man, he was involved in an attempt to overthrow a local leader and was exiled to the island of Samos for several years.

Herodotus had no known occupation, but he traveled extensively. He may have worked for a trader, or was a trader himself. He knew about boats and modes of travel as well as lands as far as Mesopotamia, the Black Sea, Egypt and North Africa. When not traveling, he lived in Athens, and in 443 emigrated to Thurii, a Greek colony in southern Italy. During this time he wrote his master work, History of the Greco-Persian Wars. He read parts of his History aloud from unwieldyand expensive scrolls to paying audiences. At the time, this was a customary method of presenting literature to the public.

Herodotus. (The Granger Collection, Ltd. Reproduced with permission.)

He returned to Athens around 430, near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, and died shortly afterward, perhaps of the same plague that struck down the powerful Greek leader, Pericles. The date of Herodotus's death is obscure, but occurred sometime between 430 and 420 B.C.

Herodotus's great achievement in his History involved his focusing on a single historical event—the war between the Greeks and Persians—providing a historical context and explanation for the conflict, and documenting it in prose writing. He investigated the reasons for animosity between these peoples and described the great deeds of the Greeks and Persians alike. Though he often recorded the stories he gathered without comment or judgment, he was also uncritical and often exaggerated in his writing. However, writing long before formal techniques for gathering and evaluating history had been established, he had no guidelines or no written records to emulate, and was further hindered by the lack of accurate maps with which to work.

His History remains an indispensable source of information about the ancient Mediterranean world and western Asia in the fifth century B.C.. Written only 50 years after the end of the Greco-Persian Wars, it is a major and generally reliable reference about this important conflict. Because his work is readable, full of fascinating stories and anecdotes as well as historically significant facts, it was circulated, copied, and recopied through the centuries. He was successful in conveying the idea that the Greeks fought for their independence and the rule of law. His assertion that their victory over the Persians saved Western democracy and prevented the spread of Eastern despotism and decadent living in the Western world was long undisputed.