Lighthouse Books for Translation and Publishing: History of Herodotus (ePub)

Herodotus, (born 484 bce?, Halicarnassus, Asia Minor [now Bodrum, Turkey]?-died c. 430-420), Greek author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world, the History of the Greco-Persian Wars.

Scholars believe that Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus, a Greek city in southwest Asia Minor that was then under Persian rule. The precise dates of his birth and death are alike uncertain. He is thought to have resided in Athens and to have met Sophocles and then to have left for Thurii, a new colony in southern Italy sponsored by Athens. The latest event alluded to in his History belongs to 430, but how soon after or where he died is not known. There is good reason to believe that he was in Athens, or at least in central Greece, during the early years of the Peloponnesian War, from 431, and that his work was published and known there before 425.

Herodotus was a wide traveler. His longer wandering covered a large part of the Persian Empire: he went to Egypt, at least as far south as Elephantine (Aswan), and he also visited Libya, Syria, Babylonia, Susa in Elam, Lydia, and Phrygia. He journeyed up the Hellespont (now Dardanelles) to Byzantium, went to Thrace and Macedonia, and traveled northward to beyond the Danube and to Scythia eastward along the northern shores of the Black Sea as far as the Don River and some way inland. These travels would have taken many years.

Structure and scope of the History

Herodotus's subject in his History is the wars between Greece and Persia (499-479 bce) and their preliminaries. As it has survived, the History is divided into nine books (the division is not the author's): Books I-V describe the background to the Greco-Persian Wars; Books VI-IX contain the history of the wars, culminating in an account of the Persian king Xerxes' invasion of Greece (Book VII) and the great Greek victories at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale in 480-479 bce. There are two parts in the History, one being the systematic narrative of the war of 480-479 with its preliminaries from 499 onward (including the Ionian revolt and the Battle of Marathon in Book VI), the other being the story of the growth and organization of the Persian Empire and a description of its geography, social structure, and history.