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Herodotus (c.480-c.425 B.C.) |
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Ancient Greek historian, often called the father of history,
and less frequently, of lies. Herodotus wrote his famous Historiē
(means "inquiry" or "research") in the Ionic dialect. Much of his
material Herodotus collected firsthand. The anecdotal
and entertaining account of the conflict between the Greeks and the
Persians, between freedom and despotism, consists of nine books. Since
its early formulation, the idea of the "conflict of civilizations" has
been a part
of European political and historical discourse. "If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's country." (The Histories, translated and with an introduction by Aubrey de Selincourt, Penguin Books, 1954, p. 194) Little is know of Herodotus' early life. He was born in
Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey), a costal city with both Greek
and Carian inhabitants, at that time under Persian rule. Later the city
became
famous for the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World. Herodotus' father Lyxes came of a distinguished
local family. His mother was named Dryo (or Rhoio), and he had a
brother named Theodorus. The writer Panyassis, praised as second only
to Homer, was an older members
of the family. Some sources report that Herodotus left his
native city for Samos, and returned after the tyrant of Halicarnassus,
Lygdamis, was expelled. As a part of his Greek upbringing, Herodotus considered his own culture superior to all others. At the same time he expressed openness and tolerance for other beliefs and cultures. He wrote that the names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt. Moreover, the mythological hero Heracles was of foreign origin. Herodotus described that the Egyptians have "black skins and woolly hair (not that that amounts to much, as other nations have the same)." (Ibid., p. 134) In the book V he told that they ruled part of Greece at the beginning of the Heroic Age. Basically, Herodotus argued that the Greek culture had African roots. Because of his views on the origin of Greel customs and religion and sympathetic treatments of non-Greek peoples, the influential biographer Plutarch (c.45-120 A.D.) labelled Herodotus as a "barbarian-lover" (philobarbaros) in a treatise entitled On the Malice of Herodotus. In his flat-earth geography Herodotus set the Greeks in the centre; Ister in the north was balanced by the Nile in the south. The Earth surface was arranged around the Mediterranean. Beyond the know world lay the surrounding "Ocean". When he visited Naucratis, a trading centre on the Nile delta, he was told about Phoinicians, who had 150 years ago circumnavigated the continent of Africa; they had sun on their right hand as they sailed along the coast. The whole tale was so strange that Herodotus refused to believe it. Herodotus knew Egypt well; the country impressed him deeply. On his long journeys Herodotus went through the straits into Euxine (Black Sea), reached the Ister (Danube) and travelled northward across the steppes along the valley of the Don. He also travelled around the Persian empire, visiting Susa and Babylon. For a time he lived in Athens. There he became a friend of Pericles (460–429 B.C.), the most prominent statesman of the polis (usually translated as "city-state"). While in Egypt, Herodotus saw the pyramids, and travelled up the Nile as far as Aswan. Herodotus stated that the height of the Great Pyramid was equal to the base: "To build the pyramid itself took twenty years; it is square at the base, its height (800 feet) equal to the lenght of each side; it is of polished stone blocks beautifully fitted, none of the blocks being less than thirty feet long. . . . The pyramid of Chephren lies close to the great pyramid of Cheops; it is forty feet lower than the latter, but otherwise of the same dimensions; its lower course is of the coloured stone of Ethiopia." (Ibid., pp. 146-147) Aristophanes (c.450-c.388 B.C.) possibly made fun of Herodotus in the comedy Birds, where he wrote: "I measured it myself" – describing the measurements of the pyramids, Herodotus said: "I measured both of them myself". (Ibid., p. 152) Oddly, Herodotus did not mention the Great Sphinx of Giza; later Greek writers made reference to it. When Napoleon went to Egypt in 1798, the Sphinx was buried in the sand only up to its neck. Dominique-Vivant Denon, one of the scholars who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt and who wrote the book Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte (1802), valued Herodotus highly. Perhaps tired of the harships of travel in those days, Herodotus settled in Athens, where he lectured and read parts of his work. Lucian relates that he recited his history to the assembled spectators at the Olympic festivals. Later in life Herodotus joined the newly founded pan-Hellenic settlement Thurii, in southeastern Italy. According to the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia Suda, he was buried in the agora there. Some sources claim that he died at Pella, or his tomb was in Athens. Near the end of his life, Herodotus witnessed the outbreak of war between Athens and Sparta in 432 B.C., but his book concludes with the fall of the Persian stronghold of Sestos (Gallipoli peninsula). It is disputed where exactly he composed the Histories. Its division into nine books was probably made after his death. The conflict between the East and the West he traced and which culminated in the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, Platace, and Mycale, were already a generation past. Herodotus himself was still a young child at the time of the second Persian invasion, but in his adulthood he must have heard stories told by the soldiers. Thucydides (c.460/455-c.400 B.C.), his near-contemporary, brought into history writing scholastic impartiality and excluded all supernatural explanations from his methodological arsenal. The third great prose historian of the era, Xenophon, was born some years before the death Herodotus. Most probably he was familiar with the Histories. His Hellenica, a continuation of Thucydides' history of the Greeks, mixed Thucydidean vivid style with Herodotean episodes. Xenophon himself participated in the military operation he described in Anabasis. The first translation of Histories into Latin was made in the fifteenth century, on the initiative of Pope Nicholas V. The Roman writer, philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) gave Herodotus the title "Father of History" in On the Laws, a dialogue, saying that "for in history the standard by which everything is judged is the truth, while in poetry it is generally the pleasure one gives; however, in the works of Herodotus, the Father of History, and in those of Theopompus, one finds innumerable fabulous tales." (On the Laws, translated by Clinton W. Keyes, Aquila Press, 2022, p. 4) Herodotus' fabrications and factual errors annoyed Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who expressed his irritation in the Generation of Animals. At one point Aristotle noted that Herodotus made a mistake in his statement that "the semen of Ethiopians is black, as though everything about a person with a black skin were bound to be black," and added mockingly "as he [Herodotus] could see for himself." (Generation of Animals, translated by A L. Peck, London: William Heinemann, MCMXLIII, p. 163) The outraged Plutarch, otherwise a peaceable vegetarian, renamed the "Father of History" the "Father of Lies". The Russian mathematician Anatoly T. Fomenko claimed that the History refers to mediaveal events of the XI-XVI century A.D. – thus Herodotus was a Renaissance scholar. "Then, later chronologists have erraneously dated his lifetime and his work many centuries backwards. The original oeuvre of Herodotus must have been cautiously edited from the viewpoint of the recently introduced Scaligerian history." (History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2, Delamere Publishing, 2005, p. 232) In his books Fomenko has tried to demonstrate by empirico-statistical methods that the official version of the chronology of ancient history is a deliberate forgery. For further reading: The Life of Herodotus Drawn out from His Book ... by Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1845); The Geography of Herodotus. Developed, Explained, and Illustrated from Modern Researches and Discoveries. With Maps and Plans, by James Talboys Wheeler (1854); Herodotus by George C. Swayne (1870); A Lexicon to Herodotus by J. Powell (1938); Herodotus, Father of History by John Linton Myres (1953); The World of Herodotus by A. de Sélincourt (1962); The Ancient Historians by M. Grant (1970); Herodotus on Tyrants and Despots by K.H. Waters (1971); Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay by C.W. Fornara (1971); The Interrelation of Speech and Action in the Histories of Herodotus by Paavo Hohti (1976); Herodotus and Greek History by John Hart (1982); Herodotus and His Sources by Detlev Fehling (1988); Herodotus, Explorer of the Past: Three Essays by J.A.S. Evans (1991); Herodotus-Historian or Liar? by E. M. Yamauchi, et al. (1996); Herodotus by James Romm (1998); The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus, edited by Carolyn Dewald and John Marincola (2006): Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski (2007); Herodotus and Sima Qian: The First Great Historians of Greece and China: A Brief History with Documents by Thomas R. Martin (2009); Thucydides and Herodotus, edited by Edith Foster, Donald Lateiner ( 2011); Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus, edited by Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker (2012); Herodotus, edited by Rosaria Vignolo Munson (2013); Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus, edited by Thomas Figueira and Carmen Soares (2020); Herodotus: historiankirjoituksen isä ja hänen maailmansa by Christa Steinby (2021); Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature: Criticism, Imitation, Reception by N. Bryant Kirkland (2022) - Suomennokset: Herodotos, Historiateos 1-2, suom. Edvard Rein, 1964. Editions:
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