Herodotus (/hrdts/; Ancient Greek: Hrdotos [hrdotos]) was a Greek historian

who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) and lived in the fifth century
BC (c. 484425 BC). Widely referred to as "The Father of History" (first conferred by Cicero), he
was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically and critically, and then to
arrange them into a historiographic narrative.[1] The Historieshis masterpiece and the only
work he is known to have producedis a record of his "inquiry" (or histora, a word that
passed into Latin and acquired its modern meaning of "history"), being an investigation of the
origins of the Greco-Persian Wars and including a wealth of geographical and ethnographical
information. Although some of his stories were fanciful and others possibly inaccurate, he claimed
he was reporting only what had been told to him. Little is known of his personal history.

Herodotus announced the size and scope of his work at the beginning of his Researches or
Histories:
,
, , ,
, , ' .[2]
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, his Researches are set down to preserve the memory of the past by
putting on record the astonishing achievements of both the Greeks and the Barbarians; and more
particularly, to show how they came into conflict.[3]
His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has
been debated. His 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.
However, 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 naive, often charmingall traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus
himself.[4] Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain. 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 work survive (and the authenticity of these is debatable)[5] yet they
allow us glimpses into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories, as in
the introduction to Hecataeus's work, Genealogies:
Fragment from the Histories VIII on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2099, early 2nd century AD
Hecataeus the Milesian speaks thus: I write these things as they seem true to me; for the stories
told by the Greeks are various and in my opinion absurd.[6]
This points forward to the 'folksy' yet 'international' outlook typical of Herodotus. Yet, one modern
scholar has described the work of Hecataeus as "a curious false start to history"[7] because,
despite its critical spirit, it failed to liberate history from myth. Herodotus mentions Hecataeus in
his Histories, on one occasion mocking him for his naive genealogy and, on another occasion,
quoting Athenian complaints against his handling of their national history.[8] It is possible that
Herodotus borrowed much material from Hecataeus, as stated by Porphyry in a quote recorded
by Eusebius.[9] In particular, it is possible that he copied descriptions of the crocodile,
hippopotamus and phoenix from Hecataeus's 'Circumnavigation of the Known World'
(Periegesis/Periodos ges), even mis-representing the source as 'Heliopolitans' (Histories 2.73).
[10] But unlike Herodotus, Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory,
nor did he include the oral traditions of Greek history within the larger framework of oriental
history.[11] There is no proof that Herodotus derived the ambitious scope of his own work, with its
grand theme of civilizations in conflict, from any predecessor, despite much scholarly speculation
about this in modern times.[7][12] Herodotus claims to be better informed than his predecessors,
relying on empirical observation to correct their excessive schematism. For example, he argues

for continental asymmetry as opposed to the older theory of a perfectly circular earth with Europe
and Asia/Africa equal in size (Hist. 4.36 and 4.42). Yet, he retains idealising tendencies, as in his
symmetrical notions of the Danube and Nile.[13]
His debt to previous authors of prose 'histories' might be questionable but there is no doubt that
he owed much to the example and inspiration of poets and story-tellers. For example, Athenian
tragic poets provided him with a world-view of a balance between conflicting forces, upset by the
hubris of kings, and they provided his narrative with a model of episodic structure. His familiarity
with Athenian tragedy is demonstrated in a number of passages echoing Aeschylus's Persae,
including the epigrammatic observation that the defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis caused the
defeat of the land army (Hist. 8.68 ~ Persae 728). The debt may have been repaid by Sophocles
because there appear to be echoes of The Histories in his plays, especially a passage in
Antigone that resembles Herodotus's account of the death of Intaphernes (Histories 3.119 ~
Antigone 904-20)[14]this however is one of the most contentious issues in modern scholarship.
[15]
Homer was another inspirational source.[16]
Just as Homer drew extensively on a tradition of oral poetry, sung by wandering minstrels, so
Herodotus appears to have drawn on an Ionian tradition of story-telling, collecting and interpreting
the oral histories he chanced upon in his travels. These oral histories often contained folk-tale
motifs and demonstrated a moral, yet they also contained substantial facts relating to geography,
anthropology and history, all compiled by Herodotus in an entertaining style and format.[17] It is
on account of the many strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics in early
modern times branded him 'The Father of Lies'.[18][19] Even his own contemporaries found
reason to scoff at his achievement. In fact one modern scholar[20] has wondered if Herodotus left
his home in Asiatic Greece, 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 Thuria (one of his three supposed resting places):
Herodotus the son of Sphynx
Lies; in Ionic history without peer;
A Dorian born, who fled from Slander's brand
And made in Thuria his new native land.[21]
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 prostitutesa 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.[22][23] Similarly, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed
Herodotus as a 'logos-writer' or story-teller.[24] 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 Herodotus with his frequent digressions appeared to minimize (or
possibly disguise) his auctorial control.[25] Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic
more in keeping with the Greek lifestylethe polis or city-statewhereas the interplay of
civilizations was more relevant to Asiatic Greeks (such as Herodotus himself), for whom life under
foreign rule was a recent memory.[24]
Before the Persian crisis history had been represented among the Greeks only by local or family
traditions. The Wars of Liberation had given to Herodotus the first genuinely historical inspiration
felt by a Greek. These wars showed him that there was a corporate life, higher than that of the
city, of which the story might be told; and they offered to him as a subject the drama of the
collision between East and West. With him, the spirit of history was born into Greece; and his
work, called after the nine Muses, was indeed the first utterance of Clio.