Herodotus, later famous as a Greek historian to the point of becoming known as the 'father of history', was born in Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey) in about 484 BC. Halicarnassus was at this time an ancient Greek colonial town subject to Persian overlordship.
As a son of a prominent family Herodotus received a good education sufficient to allow him to eventually gain an extensive familiarity with the literature of ancient Greece.
He seems to have travelled very extensively in the Greek and Persian worlds into which he had been born. When he was in his early thirties (circa 457 BC) some political difficulties between Herodotus' wider family and the rulers of Halicarnassus contributed to his living in exile for several years. During these times his initial destination seems to have been the the island of Samos but thereafter Herodotus traveled widely throughout virtually the entire ancient Middle East visiting Asia Minor, Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece.
Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος Ἁλικαρνᾱσσεύς Hēródotos Halikarnāsseús) was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC (c. 484 BC–c. 425 BC) and is regarded as the " in Western culture. He was the first historian to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative.[1] He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories, a record of his "inquiries" (or ἱστορίαι, a word that passed into Latin and took on its modern connotation of history) into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which occurred in 490 and 480-479 BC—especially since he includes a narrative account of that period, which would otherwise be poorly documented, and many long digressions concerning the various places and peoples he encountered during wide-ranging travels around the lands of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Although some of his stories are not completely accurate, he states that he is only reporting what has been told him, and here displays an honesty lacking in many historians.
Biography
Much of what is known of Herodotus's life has been gathered from his own work. Additional details have been garnered from the Suda, an 11th-century encyclopaedia of the Byzantium. It seems likely that the Suda took its information from traditional accounts. It holds that he was born in Halicarnassus, the son of Lyxes and Dryo, and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also related to Panyassis, an epic poet of the time. According to this account, after being exiled from Halicarnassus by the tyrant Lygdamis, Herodotus went to live on Samos. Later returning to Halicarnassus, Herodotus took part in the removal of Lygdamis from the city. The traditional biography includes some time spent in Athens, and has Herodotus joining a Hellenic colony named Thurii in Southern Italy. His death and burial are placed either at Thurii or at Pella, in Macedon.
How much of this is correct we do not know. It was common practice in antiquity for the biographies of poets to be drawn from inferences collated from their works. Something similar may have happened in Herodotus's case. His casting as a tyrannicide may simply reflect the pro-freedom attitude that he expresses in the Histories, while the stays at Samos and Athens may have been invented to explain the pro-Samian and pro-Athenian bias that has often been thought to pervade his work. His exile from Halicarnassus may also be fictional: later historians, such as Thucydides and Xenophon, underwent periods of exile, and their fate may have been later retrospectively imposed on Herodotus by later writers.
Herodotus as historian
"Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances."
Herodotus provides much information concerning the nature of the world and the status of the sciences during his lifetime. He was arguably our first historian, and certainly the first to travel methodically around the known world in a bid to write more accurately, although this still involved second- and third-hand accounts relating to his primary subject, the Persian wars.
He reports, for example, that the annual flooding of the Nile was said to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and comments that he cannot understand how there can be snow in Africa, the hottest part of the known world, offering an elaborate explanation based on the way desert winds affect the passage of the Sun over this part of the world (2:18ff). He also passes on dismissive reports from Phoenician sailors that, while circumnavigating Africa, they "saw the sun on the right side while sailing westwards". Owing to this brief mention, which is put in almost as an afterthought, it has been argued that Africa was indeed circumnavigated by ancient seafarers, for this is precisely where the sun ought to have been.
Herodotus is one of the sources on Croesus and his fabulous treasures of gold and silver, and many stories about his riches.
Written between 431 and 425 BC, The Histories were divided by later editors into nine books, named after the nine Muses (the "Muse of History", Clio, represented the first book). His accounts of India are among the oldest records of Indian civilzation by an outsider.
Herodotus died in 425 BC.
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