WEBVTT

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Giant gold-digging ants,

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a furious king who orders
the sea to be whipped 300 times,

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and a dolphin that saves
a famous poet from drowning.

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These are just some of the stories
from The Histories by Herodotus,

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an Ancient Greek writer from
the 5th century BCE.

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Not all the events in the text 
may have happened

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exactly as Herodotus reported them,

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but this work revolutionized
the way the past was recorded.

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Before Herodotus, the past was documented
as a list of events

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with little or no attempt to explain
their causes

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beyond accepting things
as the will of the gods.

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Herodotus wanted a deeper,
more rational understanding,

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so he took a new approach:

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looking at events from both sides
to understand the reasons for them.

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Though he was Greek, Herodotus's
hometown of Halicarnassus

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was part of the Persian Empire.

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He grew up during a series of wars
between the powerful Persians

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and the smaller Greeks,

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and decided to find out all he could
about the subject.

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In Herodotus's telling, the Persian Wars
began in 499 BCE,

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when the Athenians assisted a rebellion
by Greeks living under Persian rule.

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In 490, the Persian King, Darius,
sent his army to take revenge on Athens.

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But at the Battle of Marathon,
the Athenians won an unexpected victory.

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Ten years later, the Persians returned,
planning to conquer the whole of Greece

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under the leadership 
of Darius's son, Xerxes.

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According to Herodotus,
when Xerxes arrived,

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his million man army was initially
opposed by a Greek force

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led by 300 Spartans at the mountain pass
of Thermopylae.

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At great cost to the Persians,

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the Spartans and their king, Leonidas,
were killed.

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This heroic defeat has been an inspiration
to underdogs ever since.

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A few weeks later, the Greek navy
tricked the Persian fleet

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into fighting in a narrow sea channel
near Athens.

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The Persians were defeated and Xerxes
fled, never to return.

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To explain how these wars broke out
and why the Greeks triumphed,

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Herodotus collected stories
from all around the Mediterranean.

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He recorded the achievements of both
Greeks and non-Greeks

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before they were lost
to the passage of time.

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The Histories opens 
with the famous sentence:

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"Herodotus, of Halicarnassus, 
here displays his inquiries."

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By framing the book as an “inquiry,”

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Herodotus allowed it to contain 
many different stories,

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some serious, others less so.

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He recorded the internal debates
of the Persian court

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but also tales of Egyptian flying snakes

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and practical advice 
on how to catch a crocodile.

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The Greek word for this method
of research is "autopsy,"

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meaning "seeing for oneself."

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Herodotus was the first writer
to examine the past

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by combining the different kinds
of evidence he collected:

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opsis, or eyewitness accounts,

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akoe, or hearsay,

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and ta legomena, or tradition.

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He then used gnome, or reason,

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to reach conclusions 
about what actually happened.

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Many of the book's early readers
were actually listeners.

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The Histories was originally written
in 28 sections,

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each of which took about 
four hours to read aloud.

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As the Greeks increased in influence
and power,

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Herodotus's writing and the idea of history
spread across the Mediterranean.

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As the first proper historian,
Herodotus wasn't perfect.

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On occasions, he favored
the Greeks over the Persians

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and was too quick to believe
some of the stories that he heard,

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which made for inaccuracies.

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However, modern evidence 
has actually explained

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some of his apparently extreme claims.

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For instance, there's a species 
of marmot in the Himalayas

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that spreads gold dust while digging.

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The ancient Persian word for marmot
is quite close to the word for ant,

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so Herodotus may have just fallen prey
to a translation error.

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All in all, for someone who was writing
in an entirely new style,

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Herodotus did remarkably well.

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History, right down to the present day, 
has always suffered from the partiality

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and mistakes of historians.

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Herodotus’s method 
and creativity earned him the title

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that the Roman author Cicero 
gave him several hundred years later:

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"The Father of History."