Herodotus

Herodotus wrote the first work of history in the Western tradition and is called both its father and, since antiquity, the father of lies. Born at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor around 484 BC, then under Persian rule, he was of mixed Greek and Carian descent and was exiled after opposing the local tyrant. He travelled extensively — Egypt as far as Elephantine, Tyre, Babylon, the Black Sea coast, Scythia and southern Italy — and his method was to ask people what they knew, record it, and frequently report several incompatible versions while saying which he found credible. The Histories, in nine books, set out to explain why the Greeks and Persians went to war. The narrative runs from the Lydian king Croesus through the growth of the Persian empire to the invasions of Darius and Xerxes, ending with the Greek victories at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale. Its structure is digressive by design. He interrupts the war for extended accounts of Egyptian religion, Scythian burial customs, Babylonian marriage markets and Indian gold-digging ants, because he took the whole known world to be his subject and because he wanted the deeds of both Greeks and barbarians preserved. He is a recorder rather than a critic, and some of what he transmits is fantasy. Much of the rest has been confirmed — his account of Egyptian mummification, of the Scythians and of the circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenicians is broadly borne out. Thucydides, a generation later, wrote in explicit reaction against him. He died around 425 BC.

• Lived: 484 BCE – 425 BCE
• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: writer