BOOK ONE

Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by

Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces
of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the
fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by
both Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered is, in par-
ticular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks.

[i] According to learned Persians, it was the Phoenicians who

caused the conflict. Originally, these people came to our sea from
the Red Sea, as it is known. No sooner had they settled in the land
they still inhabit than they turned to overseas travel. They used
to take Egyptian and Assyrian goods to various places, including
Argos, which was at that time the most important state, in all
respects, in the country which is now called Greece. Once, then,
the Phoenicians came to Argos and began to dispose of their cargo.
Five or six days after they had arrived, when they had sold almost
everything, a number of women came down to the shore, includ-
ing the king's daughter, whose name (as the Greeks agree too) was
lo, the daughter of Inachus. These women were standing around
the stern of the ship, buying any items which particularly caught
their fancy, when the Phoenicians gave the word and suddenly
charged at them. Most of the women got away, but lo and some
others were captured. The Phoenicians took them on to their ship
and sailed away for Egypt.
[2.] According to the Persians, that is how lo came to Egypt (the
Greek version is different), and that was the original crime. Later,
some Greeks landed at Tyre in Phoenicia and abducted the king's
daughter, Europa. The Persian sources are not in a position to name
these Greeks, but they were presumably Cretans. So far the scores
were even, but then, according to the Persians, the Greeks were
responsible for a second crime. They sailed in a longship to Aea
in Colchis, to the Phasis River, and once they had completed the
4 THE H I S T O R I E S

business that had brought them there, they abducted the king's
daughter Medea. The king of Colchis sent a herald to Greece to
ask for compensation for the abduction and to demand his daugh-
ter back, but the Greeks replied, 'You have never compensated us
for your abduction of the Argive princess lo, so we will not make
amends to you either.'
[3] A generation later, the Persians say, Alexander the son of
Priam heard about this and decided to steal himself a wife from
Greece. He was absolutely certain that he would get away with it,
without incurring any penalty, since the earlier thefts had gone
unpunished—and that is how he came to abduct Helen. The
Greeks' initial reaction, it is said, was to send men to demand
Helen's return and to ask for compensation for her abduction.
Faced with these demands, however, the others brought up the
abduction of Medea and said, 'Do you really expect compensation
from others, when you paid none and did not return Medea when
you were asked to?'
[4] Now, so far it had only been a matter of abducting women
from one another, but the Greeks were basically responsible for
the next step, the Persians say, since they took the initiative and
launched a military strike against Asia before the Asians did against
Europe. Although the Persians regard the abduction of women as
a criminal act, they also claim that it is stupid to get worked up
about it and to seek revenge for the women once they have been
abducted; the sensible course, they say, is to pay no attention to it,
because it is obvious that the women must have been willing par-
ticipants in their own abduction, or else it could never have hap-
pened. The Persians claim that whereas they, on the Asian side, did
not count the abduction of their women as at all important,
the Greeks raised a mighty army because of a woman from
Lacedaemon, and then invaded Asia and destroyed Priam and his
forces. Ever since then, the Persians have regarded the Greeks as
their enemies. They think of Asia and the non-Greek peoples living
there as their own, but regard Europe and the Greeks as separate
from themselves.
[5] That is the Persian account; they date the origin of their hos-
tility towards Greece from the fall of Ilium. However, where the
lo incident is concerned, the Phoenicians do not agree with the
Persians. The Phoenicians say that they did not have to resort to
kidnapping to take her to Egypt. According to them, she slept with
 BOOK ONE 5

the ship's captain in Argos, and when she discovered that she was
pregnant, she could not face her parents, and therefore sailed away
willingly with the Phoenicians, to avoid being found out.
So this is what the Persians and Phoenicians say. I am not going
to come down in favour of this or that account of events, but I will
talk about the man who, to my certain knowledge, first undertook
criminal acts of aggression against the Greeks. I will show who it
was who did this, and then proceed with the rest of the account.
I will cover minor and major human settlements equally, because
most of those which were important in the past have diminished
in significance by now, and those which were great in my own time
were small in times past. I will mention both equally because
I know that human happiness never remains long in the same
place.
[6] Croesus was Lydian by birth. He was the son of Alyattes and
ruled over all the various peoples who live west of the River Halys,
which flows from the south (between where the Syrians and the
Paphlagonians live) and in the north issues into the sea which is
known as the Euxine Sea. Croesus was the first non-Greek we know
of to have subjected Greeks to the payment of tribute, though he
made alliances with some of them. The ones he made his tributaries
were the lonians, Aeolians, and Asian Dorians, while he allied
himself with the Lacedaemonians. Before Croesus' reign, all Greeks
were free; the Cimmerian expedition which reached Ionia before
Croesus' time was a raiding party, intent on pillage, and not a con-
quest of the communities there.
[7] Here is how the kingdom passed from the Heraclidae, who
had been the Lydian royal family, to Croesus' family, who were
called the Mermnadae. There was a man, Candaules by name
(although the Greeks call him Myrsilus), who was the ruler of
Sardis and a descendant of Alcaeus the son of Heracles; the
Heraclid dynasty in Sardis started with Agron (who was the son
of Ninus, grandson of Belus and great-grandson of Alcaeus) and
ended with Candaules (who was the son of Myrsus). Before Agron,
this region had been ruled by descendants of Lydus the son of
Atys—the one who is the reason for the whole population being
called 'Lydian', when they had previously been known as Maeans.
The Heraclidae, whose ancestors were Heracles and a slave girl
belonging to lardanus, gained the kingdom of Lydia, which they
had been entrusted by Lydus' descendants, thanks to an oracle. The