Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c.484-425 BC) has been considered since Cicero the “Father of History.” His Histories, written in part to investigate the causes of the 5th-century wars between Persians and Greeks, was perhaps the first written narrative in the West to employ more or less critical methods of historiographic research and inquiry to compile a work whose aim (if not always result) was an objective account of historical and cultural phenomena. Besides providing an account of the wars, Herodotus also composed detailed though often outlandish ethnographic and cultural passages the southern and eastern neighbors of the Greeks. His style borrows both from Homer, the standard for narrative in the classical Greek tradition, and from the Pre-Socratic philosophers, whose quest for fact and αἴτιος (cause) is clearly recognizable in the Histories.
Joshua Anthony, student at Notre Dame, Indiana
The Histories
Histories 1.30-32 | Solon at the Court of Croesus 1 – the story of Tellos
Contributed by Joshua Anthony
Histories 1.30-32 | Solon at the Court of Croesus 2 – Cleobis and Biton
Contributed by Joshua Anthony
Histories 6.126-9 | Hippocleides dances away his marriage
Contributed by Tom Holland