That’s the honorable designation given to Herodotus of Halicarnassus (480-425 B.C.) who wrote the earliest account of the geography, people and customs of the ancient world. He titled his writings of inquiry & research with the Greek word: Historia.
We say, History. He said it first, only he said it in Greek.
He invented the form.
His book has remained in print through the centuries. His writing is relaxed, almost chatty, wonderfully illustrative. He takes you along on his travels – south to Egypt, north to Scythia, west to Persia, and east to Italy. You can almost see and hear what he saw and heard.
He combines first-hand observation with tales told by the locals, their religious beliefs, and their very different ways of life. The fabulous, common, and unexpected are all woven into one great tapestry of exploration.
Academic types sniff that he might have written more formerly, with footnotes, cautious qualification, and all the rest of the tip-toeing that make so many History Books so boring. Some critics, from ancient times till now, have suggested, “Father of Lies” a more appropriate title than, “Father of History”.
The indignation is anachronistic, and wrong. It assumes new synonymous with improved. It imagines newer scholastic ways of telling history superior to the way history was told by the guy who invented history. It further imagines Herodotus claimed everything he wrote was true.
He didn’t.
He was careful to distinguish direct experience from what he was told by locals. He didn’t pass judgement on what he was told. He left that for his readers to decide.
Many of the tales he recorded seemed too preposterous to be true. Nonetheless, many of his preposterous tales have been proven true by the last few centuries of discovery and exploration.
Here are a few of his tall-tales now established as fact.
Egyptians told him of a race of tiny black men who lived far to the south, well beyond the final sands of the desert, in a land of wild beasts, lush vegetation, and fruit-bearing trees.
The people were said to be half the size of normal men and completely black. None of that sounded likely to Herodotus’s contemporaries. It remained unlikely until the 1860’s when Anthropologist, Paul Du Chaillu, became famous by confirming just such a place - and just such a people – he called them pygmies.
Herodotus was told of a Phoenician sailing expedition from the Red Sea into the southern ocean. They had been commissioned for this journey by the Egyptian king, Neco, to map the entire coast of Libya (What was then known as Libya we now call Africa). They assumed Libya was surrounded on all sides by ocean. Therefore the expedition would return to Egypt through the Strait of Gibraltar. They did, although a funny thing happened along the way.
After a year and a half of sailing with the Sun at their back they found the Sun shifting to in front of them. How could such a thing be possible? Herodotus was as skeptical as every other reasonable person at the time. He wrote it down, anyway.
The story remained unbelievable until 1492 when Columbus demonstrated the world to be spherical rather than flat as previously supposed.
Some of Herodotus’s stories contained information that wouldn’t be fully understood until the twentieth century. One of these was his description of a type of steam-bath commonly used by the Scythians. It was constructed of three poles tied together at the top. The tripod was then wrapped tightly in woolen cloth. Inside this little tent they placed a dish filled with red-hot stones. Hemp was thrown upon the stones, producing a thick warm vapor. Herodotus tells us the Scythians delighted in these vapor baths. He supposed they used the steam in place of bathing in water.
Modern readers will suppose something more.
Herodotus thought hemp comparable to flax - a useful plant for making clothing. He did not suspect any benefit in burning it other than aromatic. I’m pretty sure the Scythians knew what they were doing, and why. They just didn’t tell Herodotus.
A friend of mine who was stationed in Korea during the Cold War told me a similar story.
He was a young soldier then, and as young soldiers often are, he was sometimes tempted to local houses of ill repute. He recalled one of that offered an additional amenity - steam-baths in which bundles of marijuana were tossed alternately with the water on the heating stones.
He found it a distinct improvement over the standard steam-bath.
I imagine Herodotus’s Scythians would agree.
The Pyramids of the Gaza Plateau were already old when Herodotus visited them twenty-five hundred years ago. Though old they still had most of their original magnificence intact, including the limestone sheathing. They gleamed in the desert Sun. Herodotus was impressed. he asked the priests how it was built, and how long it took to build.
The priests told him that the first part of the process was building a very long and very wide causeway of stone blocks from the Nile to the plateau. This took ten years to construct. When completed It was five furlongs in length, sixty feet in width and, forty-eight feet at its highest point. The top was polished smooth to make it easier to drag the several tons of each block from Nile to site. Herodotus thought the causeway
as impressive as the Pyramid itself.
The blocks were lifted from ground level by ”contrivances made of short timbers”. These same mysterious devices were then lifted to the completed tier, then to the next and so on until all sides met at the top eight-hundred feet later. The limestone sheathing was begun at the top and continued to the base. One hundred thousand conscripted laborers worked in three month shifts till the work was done.
The entire process for the Pyramid took twenty years.
That’s what Herodotus was told. He wrote it down.
Straightforward, but . . . What exactly were these “contrivances made of short timbers”? A lot of engineers would like to know. Controversy continues to this day about how the Great Pyramid was built. It is an enduring mystery. Equally mysterious is the time-frame of thirty years for the building of both causeway and Pyramid. How is that possible.
Is Herodotus’s account right? Nobody knows. Herodotus didn’t know either.
He just wrote it down.
One of the oral “histories” within his Historia is a story told about Croesus, King of Lydia, and Cyrus, King of Persia. Croesus, having completed his conquest of Lydia thought he might extend his empire into Cyrus’s Persia. He inquired of the Oracles of Delphi. They foretold that if Croesus attacked Persia, he would destroy a great empire. Croesus attacked.
He lost.
The empire destroyed was his own.
We hear what we want to hear.
Croesus’s invasion was pushed back to his capital city, Sardis. Croesus was captured, but not killed. Cyrus had him chained and set upon a pyre to be burned to death. Cyrus had heard that Croesus was a god-fearing man. He was curious to see if any god might save Croesus from this fiery death.
A sudden storm put out the flames. Duly impressed, Cyrus had the chains removed and Croesus brought before him. Around them, the city was being sacked by Cyrus’s troops. Croesus asked Cyrus if he was pleased by the burning and looting. Yes, said Cyrus, my army is destroying your city. Croesus replied, “It’s your city now.
Cyrus immediately ordered an end to the pillage and destruction. With respect and gratitude he appointed Croesus to be his permanent personal councilor. That’s the story, and a good one it is. Some have doubted Croesus ever existed. Recent archaeology has uncovered evidence that he did.
Much doubt. Much validation.
Herodotus himself has said, “My business is to record what people say. I am by no means bound to believe it”.
New revelations and enduring mysteries are both connected to Herodotus’s Historia. That’s what makes it such interesting reading. Modern discoveries will probably always bring us back to his Historia.
I’ve read it three times. My little Penguin Classics paperback is dog-eared and full of my marginal scribbles. Each reading revealed information I had previously passed over.
I might read it for a fourth time.
Now that I’ve learned a little more I might notice what ignorance made invisible in earlier readings.
Veritatem dies aperit (time reveals the truth)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca -
Roman philosopher
My copy from 1972