Herodotus of
Halicarnassus (
Greek ???d?t?? ????a???sse?? Heródotos Halikarnasseús) was a
Greek historian who lived in the 5th century&_160;BC (
c.&_160;484&_160;BC – c.&_160;425&_160;BC) and is regarded as the "Father of
History" in Western culture. He was the first historian known 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
?st???a?, a
word that passed into Latin and took on its modern meaning of
history) into the origins of the
Greco-Persian Wars which occurred in 490 and 480-479&_160;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 were not completely accurate, he claimed that he was reporting only what had been told to him.
Much of what is known of Herodotus's life is gathered from his own work. Additional details have been garnered from the Suda, an 11th-century encyclopaedia of Byzantium, which likely took its information from traditional accounts. It holds that he was born in Halicarnassus (Bodrum in present-day Turkey), 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 the land of his birth, Herodotus took part in the ousting of Lygdamis. The traditional biography includes some time spent in Athens, where he is said to have given public readings from his oeuvre and befriended the dramatist Sophocles. It also has Herodotus joining and founding the Athenian colony of Thurii in southern Italy in 443&_160;BC.
There are several pieces of gossip about Herodotus. According to Ptolemaeus Chennus, a late source who has been accused of fiction, as summarized in the Library of Photius, an eleventh-century Byzantine cleric, "Plesirrhous the Thessalian, the hymnographer, was the eromenos of Herodotus and one of his heirs.[2]. This account has also led some historians to assume Herodotus died childless.[3] Henry Rawlinson, in the nineteenth century, argued that, although such anecdotes were from an "authority of the least trustworthy kind", it might well be true that Herodotus was childless and Plesirrhous published his work after his death; no one would find it worth the trouble to invent such stories.[4]
Herodotus' death and burial are placed either at Thurii or at Pella, in Macedon, between 425 and 420&_160;BC. It is suspected he was buried at Thurii as he typically referred to himself as "Herodotus of Thurii." [5] How much of this information is accurate is not known. It was common practice in antiquity for the biographies of poets to be pieced together from inferences drawn from their works. Something similar may have happened in Herodotus' case. His casting as a tyrannicide may simply reflect the pro-freedom attitude that he expresses in the Histories, whereas 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 fates may have been retrospectively imposed on Herodotus by later writers.[citation needed]
