The Histories
Herodotus invented history as a discipline.
Read this if you…
- interested in Basically First History book EVER written
- like long digressions on Egyptian cats, mummies, and weird foreign customs (book 2, just read this one)
- care more about history of history than the history itself, hard to know how much of this is actually true
- are okay with incredibly boring material
Skip this if you…
- you're a normal person
- want rigor, good evidence
Why It Matters
Herodotus invented history as a discipline. The word "history" comes from his Greek word for "inquiry." He traveled the known world to dig into the Persian Wars, and along the way wrote down the customs, stories, and beliefs of dozens of cultures. He is called the Father of History, and despite the occasional tall tale, the title is earned.
The 
Take
Just very cool to see first attempt at history/nonfiction. I specifically loved his description of the Egyptians, the difference between their men and women, the cats, and the mummies
Where to go next
- The Iliad by Homer. The Histories built on it. - Herodotus treats the *Iliad* as both blueprint and witness — his great catalogues of nations echo Homer's Catalogue of Ships, his battle for Leonidas's body the battle for Patroclus's - He even puts Homer on the stand, quoting the *Iliad* to deny that Helen ever reached Troy - Read the epic first and you see the historian inventing his craft by arguing with the poet who came before him
- The Odyssey by Homer. The Histories built on it. - The *Histories* runs on Homer — Herodotus fuses the *Odyssey*'s travel-narrative with the *Iliad*'s warfare into a new thing: inquiry as voyage - His ethnographic digressions, the long detours into Egypt and Scythia, are Odyssean wandering turned into method - Read the *Odyssey* first and you'll hear why antiquity called him 'most Homeric' — he names Homer, echoes him, and even cites the poem as evidence in his Helen-in-Egypt argument
- Theogony/Works and Days by Hesiod. The Histories built on it. - *The Histories* names Hesiod by name and credits his *Theogony*, with Homer, for fixing the Greek gods' names, functions, and forms (2.53) - It's the most famous attribution in Greek religious history — Herodotus treating Hesiod as the source of his culture's whole divine framework - Read the *Theogony* and you're reading the document Herodotus is pointing back to
- History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. The Histories shaped it. - Herodotus invented the genre; Thucydides took it over - The *Histories* end with the siege of Sestos in 479 BCE — and Thucydides opens his Pentecontaetia (Book 1) right there, bridging the fifty years from where Herodotus stopped to the war's outbreak in 431 - Read it first and you watch the project Thucydides would inherit, sharpen, and turn against its own founder
- Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch. The Histories shaped it. - The Persian-War *Lives* run on Herodotus — Plutarch mined the *Histories* for Themistocles and Aristides, trimming and reshaping as he went - But he didn't trust his source: he named Herodotus in those *Lives* and then wrote an entire pamphlet, *On the Malice of Herodotus*, to pick the *Histories* apart - The relationship is half debt, half feud — Plutarch can't write the wars without him and can't forgive him either
- The Acharnians by Aristophanes. The Histories shaped it. - Within a handful of years, Herodotus's grand opening was famous enough for Aristophanes to parody it on the Athenian stage - The *Histories* begins by tracing the Greek-Persian war to a chain of abducted women — Io, Europa, Medea, Helen - In *The Acharnians*, Dikaiopolis swaps in stolen prostitutes — Simaetha, two of Aspasia's girls — to make the Peloponnesian War's causes look just as petty
Depicted in Art
Themistocles directs the Greek fleet from a foreground trireme while Persian ships founder in a churning sea below the cliffs of Salamis.
Wilhelm von Kaulbach, 1868
Bearded, balding portrait herm of Herodotus in marble, gazing slightly to one side; Roman copy of a 4th-century BC Greek original.
200
Leonidas sits centrally on a rock, sword on his lap, surrounded by Spartan warriors arming themselves and preparing to die in the mountain pass.
Jacques-Louis David, 1814
Veiled Babylonian women are lined up on a bench while an auctioneer presents the most beautiful to seated bidders in a colonnaded chamber.
Edwin Long, 1875
Right panel: the corrupt judge Sisamnes is bound to a table and flayed alive by four executioners while officials watch impassively.
Gerard David, 1498
Schematic map of the inhabited world as Herodotus understood it — Europe, Asia and Libya ringed by Ocean, with the Nile, Caspian and Indus marked.
Recommended Editions
Tom Holland
Penguin Classics · 2013
Holland is a working historian who can write, and his Herodotus moves. The digressions about Lydia and Egypt and crocodile-grooming land as gossip instead of homework, which is how Herodotus told them.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Go, stranger, and tell the Spartans that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”
“These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory.”