Herodotus: The Persian Wars

The Histories, written by Herodotus of Halicarnassus in the 5th century BCE, is a collection of stories, tall-tales and straight up lies all woven together. Herodotus is known as “The Father of History,” and even though much of the information found in his writing is false, it is still one of the earliest works of non-fiction. In English we assume that “history” will be, for the most part factual, and that historians verify the claims made in their work. However the ancient Greek word for “history,” historia, originally meant “inquiry/investigation,” and The Histories is precisely that, an inquiry. Herodotus seems to have traveled throughout the Mediterranean, from Asia Minor to the Peloponnese, maybe even to Egypt, asking locals to tell him about any particular events that seemed noteworthy. Apparently, Herodotus recorded the exciting, disgusting, and fantastic stories at the expense of some of the more mundane (but most likely more accurate) renditions of the events.

Because of this, we read about a king who tricks a herdsman into eating his
adopted son’s flesh for dinner, then after the meal asking him: Do you know
“what animal it was whose flesh [you have] eaten?” as a servant handed him a
“doggy-bag” with the herdsman’s son’s head, hands, and feet inside (Book I, 119).


Readers are also informed about the different customs of various peoples at the time. For instance, we learn that: “After a burial the Scythians go through a process of cleaning themselves; they wash their heads with soap, and their bodies in a vapor-bath” (Book IV, 73). But is no ordinary steam-room, as Herodotus explains: “On a framework of three sticks, meeting at the top, they (the Scythians) stretch pieces of woolen cloth, taking care to get the joins as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent they put a dish with red-hot stones in it. Now, hemp grows in Scythia, a plant resembling flax, but much coarser and taller. It grows wild as well as under cultivation, and the Thracians make clothes from it very like linen ones… They take some hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw the seed on to the hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapor unsurpassed by any vapor-bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure. This is their substitute for an ordinary bath in water, which they never use” (Book IV, 74 -75).

Hmm… fascinating.

However, the main purpose of The Histories is to record the events about and leading up to the Persian Wars which had just ended at the time Herodotus went about his writing.

I have used the Aubrey de Selincourt translation for my quotations.

Here is a sort documentary about the Battle of Salamis, which is arguably the most important battle in the history of Western Civilization. It was there that the Greek forces defeated the Persians, and reclaimed Europe for it's rightful owners. -