Herodotus, 'the father of history,' was born between 490 and 480 B.C., between the first and the second of those two Persian invasions of Greece of which he was hereafter to write the history. He was born at Halicarnassus, one of those Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor which were conquered by the Persians, and whose efforts to recover liberty were the cause of the Persian wars. Halicarnassus, originally founded by Dorian settlers, had in course of time become an Ionic city, and consequently Herodotus wrote in the Ionic dialect. When the colonies were freed from the Persian yoke the citizens of Halicarnassus differed as to the form of government to adopt, and Herodotus left his native town. His travels were of remarkable extent: he travelled not only over Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean Sea, but over Greece proper. He spent much time at Athens and at Delphi, and paid visits also to Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Olympia, and Dodona. He also journeyed to Macedonia, Thrace, and the coasts of the Black Sea. Above all he penetrated to the interior of the Persian empire, to Susa, Ecbatana, and Babylon; and he 'did' Egypt. On the journey thither he visited Tyre, and from Egypt he reached Cyrene. In 443 B.C. the colony of Thurii was founded by Athens, and Herodotus joined it, whether in that year or not is uncertain. From Thurii he visited Sicily and Lower Italy. He lived to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, 432 B.C., and perhaps not later than 425 B.C., but when, where, or how he died we do not know. Cuneiform inscriptions prove that the revolt of the Mædes referred to in book i. 30 took place under Darius I., and not Darius II., so that we cannot infer from the passage that Herodotus was alive at the latter date (409 B.C.).
Herodotus, then, spent a large part of his life in travelling. These travels he undertook for the purposes of his history, and his activity, mental as well as physical, in collecting information and making inquiries, historical, geographical, ethnological, mythological, and archaeological, was extraordinary. His history was designed to record not only the wars but the causes of the wars between Greece and the barbarians: thus, as to the Greek the whole world was either Greek or barbarian, he could have no difficulty in finding a place for all his information. The way in which he actually weaves it together is as follows. Beginning with the conquest of the Greek colonies in Asia Minor by the Lydian king Cæsus, he has an oppor- tunity for giving a history of the kings of Lydia and a description of the country. The Lydians were conquered by the Persians, whose history and empire have now to be described. Amongst the conquests of Cyrus were Babylon and the Massagetæ; of Cambyses, Egypt, the account of which fills book ii. In book iii. the organisation of the Persian empire by its great statesman-king, Darius, enables Herodotus to emphasise the contrast between the might and magnitude of Persia on the one hand and the inferiority of Greece on the other. The invasion of the Scythians by Darius in book iv. allows Herodotus to place the remarkably interesting ethnological information he had gathered from the emporiums on the coast of the Black Sea. And the statement that Darius intended to invade the north coast of Africa brings in what Herodotus had learned at Cyrene and on the journey to it. In books v. to ix. we have the history of the two Persian wars.
Herodotus has been called 'the father of history,' but, as we have seen, he has an equal right to be called 'the father of geography.' This combination of history and geography is not a feature which distinguishes him from his predecessors, the 'logographers.' They not only composed chronological lists, containing probably a brief account of the events recorded, but they also composed topographical works, which, however, contained in many cases a history of the places described. Thus history and geography (scarcely discriminated) existed before Herodotus' time, nor did he divide them. But the work of Herodotus is to the bald, brief, disconnected notes of his predecessors what the work of Homer was to the poems of his predecessors. It is the beginning of Greek prose, as is Homer's of Greek verse; but whereas we have no fragment of any of the poets who lived before Homer, we have of the prose-writers before Herodotus, and the advance in point of form is remarkable. In reading Herodotus we feel very strongly that the style is the man, possibly because we know so little of the man; but in any case the character revealed by the style is sympathetic in a high degree, and probably few writers of any age or country have so many devoted personal friends as Herodotus counts amongst his readers. He is so simple, so frank, so talkative, amiable, and respectful. He wrote indeed not to be read, but to be heard, like all other classical Greek authors, and he read his history in public at Athens and other places. Thus we may account partly for the fact that we seem to hear him talk rather than to be reading an author. But, beyond the charm of style, Herodotus had the knack of taking interest in the right things—i.e. things which have continued to interest people for 2300 years. On the one hand, he could write in a spirit worthy of the glorious fight for liberty fought by the Greeks at Marathon, Thermopylæ, and elsewhere. On the other, he delighted in the manners and customs of strange peoples, and in things ancient and mysterious. As to his honesty as a historian there is practically no doubt—the author of the De Malignitate and Professor Sayce notwithstanding: he never says what he does not believe. He does not apparently suppress alternative versions, and he distinguishes between what he saw and what he was told. He did not believe all that he was told, though he did believe occasionally things which were not true. He is not a scientific historian: what he tells is frequently not history: it is something better—legend. Very possibly he wholly misconceives the strategy of Mardonius, but he preserves the êthos of the Greeks who fought—which is of much more moral importance. His story about Rhampsinitus is altogether unhistorical, but it is not only more interesting but more valuable for the history of the people than hieroglyphic inscriptions recording the number of captives taken or killed by some king.
The editio princeps is by Aldus (1502). The best critical editions are those by Gaisford and Stein (Berlin, 1869). The best Latin commentary is that of Baehr (Leip. 1856); the best German, Stein (Berlin, 1877); the best English, Rawlinson (4 vols. 1858). The last contains a translation. Another English translation is by G. C. Macaulay (2 vols. 1890). The appendices to Professor Sayce's edition of books i.-iii. are valuable.