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Herodotus

Herodotus has provided a lot of information concerning the nature of the world and the status of the sciences during his lifetime. He was arguably the first historian, and certainly the first to methodically travel around the known world in order to write with more accuracy, although this still involved second and third hand accounts relating to his primary subject: the Persian wars.

For example, he reports 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 that 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'. Thanks to this brief mention, which is almost 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.)

Written between 431 BC 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). [ citation needed ]

As the work progresses, it becomes apparent that Herodotus is fulfilling his opening desire—to 'prevent the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due mead of glory; and to put on record what causes first brought them into conflict.' Indeed, it is only from this perspective that his opening discussion of ancient wife-stealing is comprehensible: he is attempting to discover who first made the 'west' and the 'east' mutual antagonists, and myth is the only source he can delve into for information on the subject. [ citation needed ]

The first six books deal broadly with the growth of the Persian Empire. The tale begins with an account of the first 'western' monarch to enter into conflict with an 'eastern' people—Croesus of Lydia attacked the Greek city-states of Ionia, and then (misinterpreting a cryptic oracle), also attacked the Persians. (As occurs many times throughout The Histories to those who disregard good advice, Croesus soon lost his kingdom, and nearly his life). Croesus was defeated by Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, and Lydia became a Persian province.

The second book forms a lengthy digression concerning the history of Egypt, which Cyrus' successor, Cambyses, annexed to the Empire. The following four books deal with the further growth of the Empire under Darius, the Ionian Revolt, and the burning of Sardis (an act participated in by Athens and at least one other Greek polis). The sixth book describes the very first Persian incursion into Greece, an attack upon those who aided the Ionians and a quest for retribution following the attack upon Sardis, which ended with the defeat of the Persians in 490 BC at the battle of Marathon, near Athens.

The last three books describe the attempt of the Persian king Xerxes to avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon and to finally absorb Greece into the Empire. The Histories end in the year 479 BC, with the Persian invaders having suffered both a crushing naval defeat at Salamis, and near annihilation of their ground forces at Plataea. The Persian Empire thus receded to the Aegean coastline of Asia Minor, still threatening but much chastened.

It is possible to see the dialectic theme of Persian power and its various excesses running like a 'red thread' throughout the narrative—cause and effect, hubris and fate, vengeance and violence. [ citation needed ] Even the strange and fantastic tales that are liberally sprinkled throughout the text find their source in this momentum. At every stage, a Persian monarch crosses a body of water or other liminal space and suffers the consequences: Cyrus attacks the Massagetae on the eastern bank of a river, and ends up decapitated; Cambyses attacks the Ethiopians to the south of Egypt, across the desert, and goes mad; Darius attacks the Scythians to the north and is flung back across the Danube; Xerxes lashes and then bridges the Hellespont, and his forces are crushed by the Greeks. Thus, though he strays (and sometimes strays rather far) off of this main course, he always returns to the task at hand—answering the question, how and why did the Greeks and Persians enter into the greatest conflict then known, and what were the consequences? [ citation needed ]

Herodotus' invention has earned him the twin titles The Father of History and The Father of Lies [1]. As these epithets would seem to imply, there has long been a debate—at least from the time of Cicero's 'On the Laws' (Book 1, paragraph 5)—concerning the veracity of his tales, and, more importantly, concerning the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications. Indeed, every manner of argument has surfaced on this subject, from a devious and consciously-fictionalizing Herodotus to a gullible Herodotus whose sources 'saw him coming a long way off'. [ citation needed ] Herodotus was, however, by his day's standards, reasonably accurate in his accounts, respectful of evidence, and a master of narrative. [ citation needed ] It is unfair, in other words, to condemn him for relating tales of giant man-eating ants, if such stories were told to him. Indeed, recent research focusing on Herodotus' report about "gold-digging, giant ants" has gone a long way towards rehabilitating Herodotus' reputation as a scientific historian - see the "Criticisms of Herodotus" section below. Like myths and legends in general, they need not have been true to have been meaningful stories.

There are many cases in which Herodotus was not sure of the truth of a certain event or unimpressed by the dull 'facts' he received, reported the several most famous accounts of a given subject or process and then wrote what he believed was the most probable. Though The Histories were often criticized in olden times for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism (for example, Claudius Aelianus attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae Historiae and went as far as to deny him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed), this methodology has been seen in a more positive light by many modern historians and philosophers, especially those searching for an example of relatively objective historical writing. Of course, given the sensitivity of the issue, the very founding of the discipline of history, this has not become a consensus view; attacks have been made by several scholars in modern times, a few even arguing that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and invented his sources. [ citation needed ]

Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century have greatly helped to restore Herodotus' reputation. The archaeological study of the now submerged ancient Egyptian city of Heraklion and the recovery of the so-called 'Naucratis stela' give extensive credibility to Herodotus' previously unsupported claim that Heraklion was founded under the Egyptian New Kingdom. Because of this recent increase in respect for his accuracy, as well as the quality and content of his observations, Herodotus is now recognized as a pioneer not only in history, but in ethnography and also anthropology.

One of the most interesting discoveries yet made concerning Herodotus' honesty is that of Michel Peissel, a French ethnologist, who claims to have discovered that in an isolated region of the Dansar Plateau, in the Himalayas region between India and Pakistan, there live marmots (a species of burrowing squirrel) who tend to throw up gold dust whenever they dig their burrows. According to Peissel, he interviewed the Minaro tribal people who live in the Dansar Plateau, and they confirmed for him that they have, for generations, been collecting the gold dust that the marmots expose in their diggings. Even more tantalizing, in his book, "The Ants' Gold", Peissel offers the theory that Herodotus became confused because the old Persian word for "marmot" is quite similar to that for "mountain ant". Herodotus, who probably did not know any Persian, may have unwittingly been the victim of a simple misunderstanding of translation. The suggestion that he completely made up the tale may continue to be thrown into doubt as more research is conducted. This theory, of course, fails to take into consideration Herodotus' own followup at 3.105 ff, wherein these "marmots" are said to chase and devour full-grown camels, however this could be an example of a tale told to keep others from seeking this relatively easy to access source of "gold dust" .