Overview

The Greek historian Herodotus is known as the "Father of History" because he wrote the first historical work in prose in western literature. His book History explains the events leading up to the Greek and Persian wars of the fifth century B.C. Although he was writing long after the war, Herodotus talked to those who lived through it. He traveled the known world to learn the geography of the Persian Empire and to understand the way of life and political interactions of the people who lived there. Herodotus was one of the first to describe the geography, the culture, and the society of these areas.

Background

Herodotus was born about 485 B.C. in Halicarnassus, a Greek city on the west coast of Asia Minor, across the Aegean Sea from mainland Greece. Halicarnassus was a colony on the fringe of the...