Herodotus was branded the Father of Lies by his own contemporaries, a title that would haunt his legacy for centuries before being reclaimed as the Father of History. Born around 485 BC in the Dorian city of Halicarnassus, now Bodrum, Turkey, he lived under Persian rule as a subject of the Achaemenid Empire. His family was influential, with his father named Lyxes and his mother Dryo, and he was the brother of Theodorus. He was also related to Panyassis, an epic poet who participated in a failed uprising against the local tyrant Lygdamis. Herodotus himself claimed to be a native of Halicarnassus, yet modern scholars suggest he was at least partially Hellenized Carian in origin, given the Carian names of his relatives. The city was an outward-looking, international-minded port within the Persian Empire, which facilitated his early travels and research. He wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect, despite being born in a Dorian settlement, a choice that may have been influenced by his family's exile to the island of Samos, where he learned the dialect as a boy. The Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, claims that Herodotus later returned home to lead the revolt that overthrew the despot, but recent inscriptions suggest that Ionic Greek was used in Halicarnassus in some official documents, casting doubt on the veracity of that romantic account. Herodotus's work was not merely a historical record but a cultural, ethnographical, and geographical tapestry that formed an essential part of the narrative, providing readers with a wellspring of additional information. His inclusion of legends and fanciful accounts led to criticism from contemporaries like Thucydides, who accused him of making up stories for entertainment. Herodotus retorted that he reported what he could see and what he was told, and a sizable portion of the Histories has since been confirmed by modern historians and archaeologists. His work remains the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact, a testament to his enduring influence on the field of history.
Wanderer of Empires
Herodotus's life was defined by movement, from his childhood exile to Samos to his eventual migration to Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He traveled extensively, visiting Egypt in association with Athenians, probably sometime after 454 BC, and then Tyre and down the Euphrates to Babylon. His eyewitness accounts indicate that he was an active participant in the political and cultural exchanges of the 5th century BC. He found himself unpopular in Halicarnassus and, around 447 BC, migrated to Periclean Athens, a city whose people and democratic institutions he openly admired. Athens was also the place where he came to know the local topography and leading citizens such as the Alcmaeonids, a clan whose history is featured frequently in his writing. According to Plutarch, Herodotus was granted a financial reward by the Athenian assembly in recognition of his work, a sum of 10 talents. In 443 BC or shortly afterwards, he migrated to Thurii, in modern Calabria, as part of an Athenian-sponsored colony. Aristotle refers to a version of the Histories written by Herodotus of Thurium, and some passages in the Histories have been interpreted as proof that he wrote about Magna Graecia from personal experience there. According to Ptolemaeus Chennus, a late source summarized in the Library of Photius, Plesirrhous the Thessalian, the hymnographer, was the eromenos of Herodotus and his heir. This account has also led some historians to assume Herodotus died childless. Intimate knowledge of some events in the first years of the Peloponnesian War suggests that he returned to Athens, in which case it is possible that he died there during an outbreak of the plague. It is also possible he died in Macedonia instead, after obtaining the patronage of the court there, or else he died back in Thurii. There is nothing in the Histories that can be dated to later than 430 BC with any certainty, and it is generally assumed that he died not long afterwards, possibly before his sixtieth year. His travels were not merely for personal gain but were driven by a desire to understand the world around him, a quest that would define his life and work.
Herodotus would have made his researches known to the larger world through oral recitations to a public crowd, a practice that was conventional in his day for authors to publish their works by reciting them at popular festivals. According to Lucian, Herodotus took his finished work straight from Anatolia to the Olympic Games and read the entire Histories to the assembled spectators in one sitting, receiving rapturous applause at the end of it. According to a very different account by an ancient grammarian, Herodotus refused to begin reading his work at the festival of Olympia until some clouds offered him a bit of shade, by which time the assembly had dispersed. Hence the proverbial expression Herodotus and his shade to describe someone who misses an opportunity through delay. Herodotus's recitation at Olympia was a favourite theme among ancient writers, and there is another interesting variation on the story to be found in the Suda: that of Photius and Tzetzes, in which a young Thucydides happened to be in the assembly with his father, and burst into tears during the recital. Herodotus observed prophetically to the boy's father: Your son's soul yearns for knowledge. Eventually, Thucydides and Herodotus became close enough for both to be interred in Thucydides's tomb in Athens, such at least was the opinion of Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides. According to the Suda, he was buried in Macedonian Pella and in the agora in Thurii. The intellectual matrix of the 5th century comprised many oral performances in which philosophers would dramatically recite such detachable pieces of their work. The idea was to criticize previous arguments on a topic and emphatically and enthusiastically insert their own in order to win over the audience. Herodotus's work was not merely a written text but a living, breathing performance that engaged with his audience in a dynamic and interactive way. His ability to weave together history, geography, and culture into a cohesive narrative was a testament to his skill as an orator and storyteller. The oral tradition was not just a means of dissemination but a way of engaging with the world, a way of making history come alive for his audience. Herodotus's work was a product of his time, a reflection of the oral culture that dominated the 5th century BC, and a testament to his ability to adapt to the changing landscape of the ancient world.
The Predecessors and Critics
Herodotus's place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic of Augustan Rome, listed seven predecessors of Herodotus, describing their works as simple unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including popular legends, sometimes melodramatic and naïve, often charming, all traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus himself. Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain, but according to the ancient account, these predecessors included Dionysius of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, Hellanicus of Lesbos, Xanthus of Lydia and, the best attested of them all, Hecataeus of Miletus. Of these, only fragments of Hecataeus's works survived, and the authenticity of these is debatable, but they provide a glimpse into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories. It is on account of the many strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics have branded him The Father of Lies. Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement. In fact, one modern scholar has wondered whether Herodotus left his home in Greek Anatolia, migrating westwards to Athens and beyond, because his own countrymen had ridiculed his work, a circumstance possibly hinted at in an epitaph said to have been dedicated to Herodotus at one of his three supposed resting places, Thuria. Yet it was in Athens where his most formidable contemporary critics could be found. In 425 BC, which is about the time that Herodotus is thought by many scholars to have died, the Athenian comic dramatist Aristophanes created The Acharnians, in which he blames the Peloponnesian War on the abduction of some prostitutes, a mocking reference to Herodotus, who reported the Persians' account of their wars with Greece, beginning with the rapes of the mythical heroines Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen. Similarly, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a story-teller. Thucydides, who had been trained in rhetoric, became the model for subsequent prose-writers as an author who seeks to appear firmly in control of his material, whereas with his frequent digressions Herodotus appeared to minimize or possibly disguise his authorial control. Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view: focused on the context of the polis or city-state. The interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilization was a recent memory. Though Herodotus is generally considered a reliable source of ancient history, many present-day historians believe that his accounts are at least partially inaccurate, attributing the observed inconsistencies in the Histories to exaggeration.
The Invention of History
Herodotus announced the purpose and scope of his work at the beginning of his Histories, setting the stage for a new kind of historical writing. His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has been debated. The Histories primarily cover the lives of prominent kings and famous battles such as Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. His work deviates from the main topics to provide a cultural, ethnographical, geographical, and historiographical background that forms an essential part of the narrative and provides readers with a wellspring of additional information. Herodotus's work was not merely a record of events but a comprehensive exploration of the world around him, a way of understanding the past and the present. He was a pioneer in the field of history, a man who saw the world as a complex and interconnected web of cultures, peoples, and events. His work was a testament to his curiosity and his desire to understand the world around him, a quest that would define his life and work. Herodotus's Histories was a groundbreaking work that set the stage for future historians, a work that would be studied and debated for centuries to come. His work was a reflection of his time, a product of the oral culture that dominated the 5th century BC, and a testament to his ability to adapt to the changing landscape of the ancient world. Herodotus's work was not merely a historical record but a cultural, ethnographical, and geographical tapestry that formed an essential part of the narrative, providing readers with a wellspring of additional information. His inclusion of legends and fanciful accounts led to criticism from contemporaries like Thucydides, who accused him of making up stories for entertainment. Herodotus retorted that he reported what he could see and what he was told, and a sizable portion of the Histories has since been confirmed by modern historians and archaeologists. His work remains the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact, a testament to his enduring influence on the field of history.