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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Herodotus' "The Histories" stands as a monumental work in the canon of ancient literature, offering a detailed chronicle of the Greco-Persian wars and a rich tapestry of the cultural and political landscapes of the era. Written in a narrative style that blends prose with elements of poetry, Herodotus employs a unique historiographical approach, interweaving anecdotal accounts, oral traditions, and meticulous observations to illuminate the complexities of human behavior and fate. His inquiries reflect a profound interest in causality and the interplay between divine and human agency, situating his work at the intersection of history, mythology, and ethnography. Herodotus, often referred to as 'the Father of History,' was born in Halicarnassus around 484 BCE. His extensive travels throughout the known world heavily influenced his perspective, as he encountered diverse cultures and customs. This exposure not only informed his narrative style but also instilled in him a desire to preserve the memories of human actions, thereby ensuring that the deeds of both the great and the obscure were not forgotten in the sands of time. "The Histories" is not merely a record of events; it is an exploration of civilization itself. For readers seeking insight into the formation of Western historical thought and a nuanced understanding of ancient cultures, this text is indispensable. Herodotus' compelling storytelling and profound observations of human nature invite readers to reflect on the complexities of our shared past. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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THE HISTORIES
Table of Contents
Introduction
Empires rise and collide, and in their wake memory becomes a battlefield where glory, fear, and explanation contend.
The Histories holds classic status because it helped define what it could mean to write history in prose: a sustained inquiry into human events that is also a work of narrative art. Herodotus’s storytelling, pacing, and gift for scene-setting gave later generations a model for how to make the past readable and compelling. At the same time, the book’s breadth—moving from courts and cities to customs and landscapes—makes it larger than a chronicle of campaigns. Its enduring power lies in the way it treats public actions as the product of character, chance, and circumstance.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, a Greek author of the fifth century BCE, composed The Histories in a world shaped by rivalry among Greek city-states and by the memory of conflict with the Persian Empire. The work is commonly associated with the decades after the Persian Wars, though its composition is understood as a product of Herodotus’s lifetime rather than a single moment. Written in Greek, it circulated in antiquity as a major literary achievement. The book’s title is closely linked to the idea of inquiry, reflecting its ambition to investigate causes rather than merely list events.
At its center is a grand attempt to explain how Greeks and Persians came to fight and what that struggle revealed about power, leadership, and cultural difference. Herodotus frames his narrative around major confrontations between the Persian Empire and the Greek world while also tracing the earlier expansions and decisions that made those confrontations possible. The premise is not only that events happened, but that they can be examined: motives weighed, sequences reconstructed, and responsibility argued over. The reader is invited to follow a chain of cause and consequence without being forced into a single, simple verdict.
Part of the book’s literary impact comes from its range of voices and materials. Herodotus reports traditions, recounts stories told in different places, and describes practices and beliefs that struck Greek observers as distinctive. He is attentive to the details of travel, geography, and local custom, and he uses them to make distant societies intelligible on their own terms as well as within a wider political story. This mixture of narrative, description, and reflection gives The Histories a texture unlike a modern textbook, closer to a vast, carefully ordered conversation about the world.
The Histories also endures because it repeatedly returns to themes that cross eras: the temptation of overreach, the instability of fortune, and the difficulty of seeing one’s own limits while in the grip of success. Herodotus shows how decisions made in palaces and assemblies can reverberate outward, altering the lives of communities far from the centers of command. He is interested in the way pride, fear, and ambition shape policy, and in how misunderstandings between peoples can harden into permanent hostility. These concerns make the narrative feel urgent even when the settings are ancient.
Equally lasting is the book’s attention to persuasion and judgment. Leaders argue for war or restraint; envoys negotiate; communities debate what honor or safety requires. Herodotus treats speech and deliberation as part of the machinery of history, not as decoration. The reader meets a world in which information is incomplete, rumors travel faster than armies, and authority is tested by uncertainty. By emphasizing how choices are made under pressure, he makes large-scale conflict comprehensible as a succession of human decisions, each with consequences that cannot be fully foreseen at the time.
Herodotus’s influence on later writers is profound and well attested in the long tradition of Greek and Roman historiography. The Histories offered subsequent historians a repertoire of techniques: the integration of ethnographic digressions, the organization of a vast narrative across many regions, and an interest in causation that goes beyond mere dates. It also helped establish expectations about what historical writing could do—inform, entertain, and provoke debate about moral and political responsibility. Even when later authors disagreed with his methods, they responded to the standard his work had set.
At the same time, The Histories has remained a touchstone because it wears its process of inquiry on the surface. Herodotus differentiates among accounts, signals uncertainties, and records competing versions without always collapsing them into a single authoritative story. This openness gives readers a view into how knowledge about the past is assembled—through testimony, observation, and the weighing of plausibility. The book thus becomes not only a history of events but also a history of how people remember and explain events. It invites critical reading as much as it rewards immersion.
Readers encounter in The Histories a richly mapped world: the Mediterranean and beyond, with attention to routes, resources, rivers, and boundaries. Geography is not merely backdrop; it shapes strategy, trade, and imagination. Herodotus’s interest in how environments and institutions differ from place to place contributes to the book’s enduring fascination as a record of ancient perceptions. Yet the purpose is not to collect curiosities for their own sake. The descriptions serve a larger narrative arc, helping explain why certain ambitions were possible, why some campaigns were arduous, and why misunderstandings could be fatal.
Because it balances the particular and the panoramic, The Histories has continued to appeal to readers across centuries. It can be read as a sequence of vivid episodes, as a meditation on imperial power, or as an early experiment in comparative cultural description. Its narrative energy has influenced not only historians but also writers who seek to combine factual reporting with storytelling. The book’s scope encourages the reader to see connections across regions and generations, while its attention to individuals preserves the sense that history is lived at a human scale.
The Histories remains contemporary because it speaks to recurring questions about how societies justify conflict, how leaders interpret risk, and how cultural difference is turned into political narrative. In an age of competing information and contested memory, Herodotus’s insistence on inquiry—on gathering accounts, considering motives, and tracing causes—feels freshly relevant. The book’s classic status is not only a matter of age but of continuing usefulness: it offers a way to think about power and persuasion without reducing them to slogans. Its lasting appeal lies in showing that the struggle to understand events is itself part of history.
Synopsis
Herodotus’s The Histories, composed in the fifth century BCE, presents an inquiry into the causes and course of conflict between Greeks and non-Greeks, especially the Persian Empire. He frames his project as a record meant to preserve notable deeds and explain how hostilities arose. The narrative begins by setting a wide geographic and cultural horizon, moving through accounts of peoples around the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. From the outset, the work blends political history with ethnography, geography, and anecdote, establishing a method that compares customs and institutions while tracking the growth of imperial power and Greek responses to it.
The early books turn to the rise of the Lydian kingdom and its interactions with Greek cities in Asia Minor, using Lydia as a bridge between Greek worlds and larger eastern empires. Herodotus describes the expansion of Lydian influence and the shifting fortunes of rulers, treating prosperity, counsel, and reversals as recurring themes in political life. He then traces how Lydia becomes entangled with the emergence of Persian power, and how local Greek communities face new pressures as authority changes hands. Throughout, he pauses to report traditions, oracle stories, and moral reflections that illustrate how decisions are made under uncertainty.
Herodotus next recounts the origins and consolidation of Persian rule, emphasizing successive rulers, administrative practices, and the mechanisms of expansion. He introduces a wide cast of advisers, courtiers, and subject peoples, portraying empire as a system built through conquest, negotiation, and incorporation. The account often shifts from court politics to broader descriptions of lands brought under Persian control, showing how geography and resources shape strategy. By presenting multiple versions of events and weighing plausibility, he foregrounds the question of how reliable knowledge about the past can be gathered, especially when sources conflict or come from different cultural perspectives.
A substantial portion is devoted to Egypt, treated as both a strategic prize and a distinct civilization with ancient traditions. Herodotus surveys the Nile’s behavior, Egyptian religious practices, social organization, and monumental architecture, frequently contrasting them with Greek norms. He also narrates episodes of conquest and rule in Egypt that illustrate how imperial ambitions meet local conditions and beliefs. These Egyptian logoi function as more than digressions: they broaden the inquiry from a single war to the comparative study of human societies, and they underline the author’s interest in how environment, law, and custom shape collective identity and political resilience.
From Egypt the narrative returns to imperial expansion across North Africa and the Near East, with further excursions into the customs of various peoples encountered along Persian frontiers. Herodotus describes campaigns and diplomatic arrangements that extend Persian reach, while also noting internal tensions and the burdens of governing diverse territories. His attention to roads, tribute, and military organization clarifies the logistical foundations of empire. At the same time, he highlights the role of individual character and counsel, presenting moments where choices at court reverberate across vast distances. The cumulative effect is an escalating sense of scale that anticipates confrontation with mainland Greece.
The focus then sharpens on the Aegean world, where Persian authority intersects with Greek political rivalries and local revolts. Herodotus traces how conflicts among Greek poleis, and between Greeks and their rulers or patrons, create openings for Persian intervention. He presents the interplay of alliances, grievances, and strategic calculations that make wider war possible, without reducing events to a single cause. Attention to messengers, deliberations, and shifting coalitions shows politics as contingent and reactive. The narrative also highlights how communities debate freedom, obligation, and advantage, setting up the central problem of how small states respond when confronted by a dominant imperial power.
As the Persian kings prepare major expeditions, Herodotus describes deliberations over risk, resources, and omens, alongside the practical measures of assembling forces from across the empire. He gives extended attention to the diversity of troops and the organization of command, revealing how imperial unity is constructed from many peoples and interests. Meanwhile, Greek states face their own dilemmas of cooperation and leadership, and the work records debates over strategy and trust. Herodotus’s approach keeps tension on the processes of decision-making rather than on outcomes, emphasizing the uncertainty faced by participants and the competing interpretations offered by later tradition.
The narrative proceeds into the principal military encounters of the Greco-Persian Wars, depicting how geography, naval power, and timing shape engagements. Herodotus describes preparations, movements, and the roles of commanders and contingents, while also noting episodes that illustrate courage, fear, discipline, and miscalculation. He continues to include speeches and reported motivations as a way to explore political reasoning and moral claims, without presenting war as purely tactical. Greek unity and division remain recurrent pressures, and Persian command is shown balancing ambition with the challenges of distance and coordination. The account maintains suspense through alternating perspectives and close attention to circumstance.
In the final stretch, Herodotus continues the conflict’s unfolding across multiple theaters, following the ongoing contest between Persian power and Greek resistance as it shifts in form and location. He remains attentive to the consequences of earlier decisions, the fragility of alliances, and the ways victories and setbacks influence subsequent choices. Across the whole work, his broader message concerns the mutability of fortune, the limits of power, and the importance of understanding other peoples on their own terms. The Histories endures as a foundational experiment in historical inquiry, combining narrative with investigation to ask why societies clash and how memory of great events should be preserved.
Historical Context
Herodotus composed The Histories in the later fifth century BCE, in a Greek world organized around the independent polis and shaped by rivalry among city-states. His narrative centers on the Persian Wars and their prehistory, but it is framed by wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern imperial structures: the Achaemenid Persian monarchy, Egyptian kingship and priesthoods, and the many local elites who governed cities under imperial oversight. The dominant institutions behind the story are courts, assemblies, temples, and armies, all operating in a landscape where diplomacy, tribute, and warfare linked distant regions from the Aegean to the Nile and the Iranian plateau.
Herodotus came from Halicarnassus in Caria (southwestern Anatolia), a Greek-speaking city with strong ties to the Persian Empire. In the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, much of coastal Anatolia was under Persian control, commonly governed through local dynasts and the satrapal system. This background matters because The Histories repeatedly compares Greek civic practices with Persian imperial administration and explores how subject communities negotiated power. Herodotus’ origin in a culturally mixed, empire-facing environment helps explain his attention to ethnography, local traditions, and the tensions between autonomy and imperial rule that permeate his account.
The work emerged after decades of upheaval: the Ionian Revolt (c. 499–494 BCE), the Persian expeditions against mainland Greece (490 and 480–479 BCE), and the shifting alliances that followed. By the time Herodotus was writing, Athens had built a maritime empire through the Delian League (founded 478/477 BCE), while Sparta led the Peloponnesian League, and inter-Greek conflict intensified. The Histories looks back to an earlier confrontation with Persia, but it also reflects an author writing in a world where Greeks themselves were increasingly imperial, competitive, and divided—conditions that color his interest in power, hubris, and the costs of domination.
Herodotus’ immediate predecessors were poets and logographers rather than “historians” in a modern sense. Epic traditions such as Homer provided models for grand narrative, speeches, and moral exempla, while Ionian prose writers collected genealogies and local accounts. Herodotus’ project is distinct in its attempt to preserve “inquiries” (historia) into human events and their causes, combining story, geography, and custom. The cultural institution of public recitation and competitive display of knowledge in Greek sanctuaries and festivals likely shaped the work’s form: episodes are crafted to be memorable, instructive, and debated within a literate but strongly oral public sphere.
The Achaemenid Empire, founded in the mid-sixth century BCE, forms the primary imperial backdrop. Cyrus II’s conquests (including Lydia around 547/546 BCE and Babylon in 539 BCE) brought Greek cities of Asia Minor into Persian orbit and created the administrative world Herodotus describes. Darius I (reigned 522–486 BCE) consolidated rule through satrapies, royal roads, standardized tribute assessments, and a court culture centered on the Great King. The Histories echoes these realities—imperial reach, logistical capacity, and the politics of loyalty—while also questioning the vulnerabilities of large empires and the decision-making within autocratic courts.
Greek–Lydian–Persian interactions before the wars are crucial to the book’s starting assumptions. The fall of the Lydian kingdom under Croesus, long remembered by Greeks and Anatolians alike, offered a powerful lesson about fortune and reversals. Herodotus uses such earlier episodes to frame later conflict as part of a longer chain of actions and consequences across generations. The narrative reflects a real historical process: as Persian power replaced Lydian power in western Anatolia, Greek communities faced new demands—tribute, garrisons, and the authority of appointed tyrants or local elites—shaping the resentments that later erupted in revolt.
The Ionian Revolt is treated as a turning point that connects local grievances to imperial retaliation. Greek cities in Ionia and neighboring regions rebelled against Persian rule in the late sixth century BCE, with notable events including the burning of Sardis (c. 498 BCE). Persian suppression culminated after the naval defeat at Lade (494 BCE) and the capture of Miletus. Herodotus’ account preserves how internal rivalries, leadership failures, and strategic constraints affected the revolt’s outcome. The episode also functions as a critique of factionalism and short-term calculation, themes that resonated in his own era of Greek interstate tension.
Persian punitive and preventive campaigns against Greece followed. The battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, where Athenians and Plataeans defeated a Persian force, became a central symbol of Greek resistance and civic pride. Herodotus integrates Marathon into a broader causal chain rather than treating it as isolated heroism, reflecting the geopolitical reality that Persia sought to secure the Aegean frontier and punish interference. At the same time, his narrative echoes Greek commemorative culture: public memory, tombs, and victory stories shaped how communities understood the event. Herodotus records these traditions while also probing motives, leadership, and contingency.
The great invasion of 480–479 BCE under Xerxes I (reigned 486–465 BCE) anchors the work’s dramatic center. The scale attributed to Persian mobilization reflects the genuine logistical challenge of moving large forces across Anatolia and into Greece, requiring bridges, supply planning, and coordination among many subject peoples. Herodotus’ emphasis on the diversity of Xerxes’ forces mirrors the empire’s multiethnic composition and its method of drawing manpower and ships from across its territories. His narrative also critiques how imperial grandeur and court pressures can push rulers toward risky overreach, a recurring explanatory framework in the book.
Key battles and decisions—such as Thermopylae and Salamis in 480 BCE, and Plataea and Mycale in 479 BCE—are presented not only as military contests but as tests of political cohesion. Herodotus highlights councils, debates, and disputes over strategy among Greek allies, reflecting the reality that Greek warfare depended on coalition politics among fiercely independent poleis. The work’s attention to Spartan kingship, ephors, and Athenian democratic leadership corresponds to institutional differences that mattered in practice. By preserving disagreements and near-failures, The Histories offers a mirror to how fragile collective action could be even against an external threat.
The aftermath of the Persian Wars forms part of the context for Herodotus’ perspective. In the decades after 479 BCE, Athens’ leadership in the Delian League evolved into a more coercive empire, with tribute and garrisons in allied cities. Sparta, wary of Athenian expansion, increasingly positioned itself as a counterweight. Herodotus’ sustained interest in the dynamics of power—how protectors become rulers, how fear and prestige drive policy—fits this environment. While The Histories narrates earlier events, its moral and political questions would have been sharpened by contemporaneous debates about imperialism, autonomy, and the uses of force.
Herodotus also writes within a broader intellectual and religious landscape. Greek sanctuaries such as Delphi, Olympia, and Dodona were major institutions for consultation, display, and inter-polis communication. Oracles, dedications, and panhellenic festivals shaped public understanding of war and legitimacy. The Histories records oracular pronouncements and sacred customs because these were socially consequential, not merely decorative. He often juxtaposes pious interpretation with human agency, reflecting a fifth-century BCE environment where traditional religion coexisted with increasing scrutiny—seen in contemporary intellectual trends—about causation, credibility, and the limits of human knowledge.
Economic and technological developments underpin the book’s world of movement and conflict. By the fifth century BCE, coinage was widely used in Greek cities and in parts of the Near East, facilitating taxation, mercenary pay, and trade. Maritime technology and seamanship were central: triremes and naval logistics shaped both Persian strategy and Athenian power. Herodotus’ attention to fleets, ship numbers, and coastal geography reflects this naval age of the eastern Mediterranean. Trade networks connected the Aegean to Egypt, Phoenicia, and the Black Sea, and The Histories frequently notes resources—timber, grain, metals—that made states strategically valuable.
Social structures described or implied in The Histories include slavery, citizen militias, aristocratic elites, and forms of dependent labor across regions. Greek poleis relied on citizen participation in war and politics, while also excluding women, slaves, and foreigners from full civic rights. Persian and Egyptian societies were organized differently, with royal courts, priestly hierarchies, and varied local arrangements. Herodotus’ ethnographic passages—on marriage, burial, diet, and law—reflect the Greek practice of defining identity through comparison. He sometimes uses cultural contrast to criticize Greek assumptions, showing that “custom is king” and that norms vary without simple rankings.
The Histories’ geographical imagination corresponds to the expanding horizons of the classical era. Greeks traveled as merchants, mercenaries, envoys, and settlers, especially around the Black Sea and in the eastern Mediterranean. Persian imperial roads and administrative centers enabled long-distance movement within the empire. Herodotus incorporates descriptions of rivers, deserts, and frontiers because control of space was a real political problem for empires and alliances. His frequent interest in distances, routes, and resources reflects a world where strategic geography—passes, straits, plains—could determine outcomes, and where knowledge of far regions enhanced prestige and authority.
Herodotus’ method depends on the circulation of stories and the authority of witnesses. Fifth-century BCE Greek culture valued public speech, inquiry, and competitive argument, seen in assemblies and law courts. The Histories includes speeches and debates that reflect this rhetorical environment, even when exact wording cannot be verified. Herodotus distinguishes between what he has been told, what he believes, and what he cannot confirm, signaling an emerging critical stance toward tradition. This approach fits an age when thinkers in various Greek centers were developing new ways to question inherited accounts, while still respecting the social power of memory and fame.
The work also reflects the politics of identity after the Persian Wars. The idea of a shared “Hellas” was strengthened by common conflict, yet remained contested by regional loyalties and rival hegemonies. Herodotus documents both cooperation and betrayal, and he preserves stories of medism (alignment with Persia) alongside tales of resistance, indicating that Greek communities faced real strategic choices rather than a single unified front. By showing multiple perspectives—Greek and non-Greek—he complicates triumphalist narratives. This complexity speaks to a fifth-century environment where propaganda, commemoration, and blame shaped how communities justified power and positioned themselves among rivals.
Author Biography
Herodotus was a Greek author of the fifth century BCE, best known for composing the work traditionally called the Histories. Often described in later antiquity as the “father of history,” he helped shape prose narrative as a medium for investigating human events across cultures and generations. His writing combines inquiry into the causes of conflict—especially the wars between Greeks and the Persian Empire—with wide-ranging accounts of geography, customs, and political life as he understood them. Although many details of his biography are uncertain, his surviving work made him a foundational figure for later historiography and ethnographic description in the Mediterranean world.
He was associated in ancient tradition with Halicarnassus in Caria (in the region of southwestern Anatolia) and wrote in Ionic Greek, a dialect used by earlier prose writers. Little is securely known about his formal education, but his style and aims place him in dialogue with the intellectual currents of the classical Greek world, including Ionian traditions of inquiry and the emerging culture of public discourse. His narrative reflects familiarity with epic poetry, especially Homeric modes of storytelling, while also departing from them by presenting his account as the result of research and collection of reports. His work suggests sustained engagement with varied sources, but specific teachers or mentors cannot be firmly identified.
Herodotus’ method, as presented in his own voice, centers on “inquiry” (historiê): gathering accounts, comparing versions, and recording what he judged worth preserving. He frequently distinguishes between what he saw, what he learned from others, and what he considered plausible, even while including material that later readers debate. The Histories is organized around a large arc that leads to the Greco-Persian conflicts, but it expands outward into descriptions of peoples and places from Egypt and Libya to Scythia and the Near East. His interest in customs, religion, and political practices gives the work a scope broader than battlefield narrative, making it a key early witness to cross-cultural curiosity in Greek prose.
Travel is central to the persona and evidentiary claims of the Histories, and ancient testimony associates him with extensive movement in the Greek and non-Greek world. Within the limits of what can be verified, it is clear that his narrative draws on information about many regions that would have required either firsthand observation or detailed reporting from travelers, officials, and local informants. He reports monuments, rituals, and environmental features, and he compares how different communities explain their own past. At the same time, he often signals disagreement among sources and sometimes offers multiple explanations for the same event, showing an early attempt to manage conflicting testimony rather than suppress it.
The Histories survives as his only securely attributed work, and its literary form is one of its major achievements. Herodotus writes with a distinctive narrative voice: he frames episodes, uses speeches and set pieces, and develops character portraits and moral reflections without presenting a single rigid theory of causation. Themes such as the instability of fortune, the dangers of excessive power, and the tension between human planning and unexpected outcomes recur throughout the narrative. He also treats the relationship between Greeks and “barbarians” with more nuance than simple opposition, recording admiration as well as criticism and preserving stories that emphasize shared humanity alongside cultural difference.
Reception of Herodotus has long been divided between admiration for his breadth and skepticism about his accuracy. Ancient critics could praise his storytelling while also accusing him of credulity, and later historians contrasted his expansive, anecdotal manner with more austere approaches. Modern scholarship likewise recognizes both the limitations of his evidence and the sophistication of his narrative design, including his careful signposting of uncertainty and his interest in how communities remember and justify the past. The Histories remains indispensable not because every report can be confirmed, but because it reveals how a fifth-century BCE author assembled a globalizing narrative from diverse traditions, languages, and viewpoints.
Details of his later life are not securely established, and ancient accounts vary on where he spent his final years. What is clear is that his work endured, was copied and organized in antiquity, and became a central text for subsequent Greek and Roman writers. Herodotus’ legacy is visible in the continuing practice of writing history as an interpretive craft: weighing evidence, acknowledging partial knowledge, and connecting local stories to large-scale events. Beyond historiography, his attention to culture, travel, and the varieties of human custom keeps the Histories relevant to readers interested in anthropology, literature, and the ethics of representing other peoples. His influence persists as scholars revisit both his sources and his narrative strategies to understand how histories are made.
THE HISTORIES
Preface
If a new translation of Herodotus does not justify itself, it will hardly be justified in a preface; therefore the question whether it was needed may be left here without discussion. The aim of the translator has been above all things faithfulness — faithfulness to the manner of expression and to the structure of sentences, as well as to the meaning of the Author. At the same time it is conceived that the freedom and variety of Herodotus is not always best reproduced by such severe consistency of rendering as is perhaps desirable in the case of the Epic writers before and the philosophical writers after his time: nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be reproduced in the form of archaisms of language; and that not only because the affectation of an archaic style would necessarily be offensive to the reader, but also because in language Herodotus is not archaic. His style is the “best canon of the Ionic speech,” marked, however, not so much by primitive purity as by eclectic variety. At the same time it is characterised largely by the poetic diction of the Epic and Tragic writers; and while the translator is free to employ all the resources of modern English, so far as he has them at his command, he must carefully retain this poetical colouring and by all means avoid the courtier phrase by which the style of Herodotus has too often been made “more noble.”1
As regards the text from which this translation has been made, it is based upon that of Stein’s critical edition (Berlin, 1869-1871), that is to say the estimate there made of the comparative value of the authorities has been on the whole accepted as a just one, rather than that which depreciates the value of the Medicean MS[1]. and of the class to which it belongs. On the other hand the conjectural emendations proposed by Stein have very seldom been adopted, and his text has been departed from in a large number of other instances also, which will for the most part be found recorded in the notes.
As it seemed that even after Stein’s re-collation of the Medicean MS. there were doubts felt by some scholars2 as to the true reading in some places of this MS., which is very generally acknowledged to be the most important, I thought it right to examine it myself in all those passages where questions about text arise which concern a translator, that is in nearly five hundred places altogether; and the results, when they are worth observing, are recorded in the notes. At the same time, by the suggestion of Dr. Stein, I re-collated a large part of the third book in the MS. which is commonly referred to as F (i.e. Florentinus), called by Stein C, and I examined this MS. also in a certain number of other places. It should be understood that wherever in the notes I mention the reading of any particular MS. by name, I do so on my own authority.
The notes have been confined to a tolerably small compass. Their purpose is, first, in cases where the text is doubtful, to indicate the reading adopted by the translator and any other which may seem to have reasonable probability, but without discussion of the authorities; secondly, where the rendering is not quite literal (and in other cases where it seemed desirable), to quote the words of the original or to give a more literal version; thirdly, to add an alternative version in cases where there seems to be a doubt as to the true meaning; and lastly, to give occasionally a short explanation, or a reference from one passage of the author to another.
For the orthography of proper names reference may be made to the note prefixed to the index. No consistent system has been adopted, and the result will therefore be open to criticism in many details; but the aim has been to avoid on the one hand the pedantry of seriously altering the form of those names which are fairly established in the English language of literature, as distinguished from that of scholarship, and on the other hand the absurdity of looking to Latin rather than to Greek for the orthography of the names which are not so established. There is no intention to put forward any theory about pronunciation.
The index of proper names will, it is hoped, be found more complete and accurate than those hitherto published. The best with which I was acquainted I found to have so many errors and omissions3 that I was compelled to do the work again from the beginning. In a collection of more than ten thousand references there must in all probability be mistakes, but I trust they will be found to be few.
My acknowledgments of obligation are due first to Dr. Stein, both for his critical work and also for his most excellent commentary, which I have had always by me. After this I have made most use of the editions of Krüger, Bähr, Abicht, and (in the first two books) Mr. Woods. As to translations, I have had Rawlinson’s before me while revising my own work, and I have referred also occasionally to the translations of Littlebury (perhaps the best English version as regards style, but full of gross errors), Taylor, and Larcher. In the second book I have also used the version of B. R. reprinted by Mr. Lang: of the first book of this translation I have access only to a fragment written out some years ago, when the British Museum was within my reach. Other particular obligations are acknowledged in the notes.
Notes to Preface
1 See the remarks of P.-L. Courier (on Larcher’s version) in the preface to his specimens of a new translation of Herodotus (Œuvres complètes de P.-L. Courier, Bruxelles, 1828).
2 Mr. Woods, for example, in his edition of the first book (published in 1873) gives a list of readings for the first and second books, in which he almost invariably prefers the authority of Gronovius to that of Stein, where their reports differ. In so doing he is wrong in all cases (I think) except one, namely i. 134 το δεγομενο. He is wrong, for examine, in i. 189, where the MS. has τουτο, i. 196 αν αγεσθαι, i. 199 οδον, ii. 15 τε δε, ii. 95 υπ αυτο, ii. 103 και προσοτατα, ii. 124 το αδδο (without δαο), ii. 181 νο. Abicht also has made several inaccurate statements, e.g. i. 185, where the MS. has εσ τον Ευφρετεν, and vii. 133 Ξερξεσ.
3 For example in the index of proper names attached to Stein’s annotated edition (Berlin, 1882), to which I am under obligation, having checked my own by it, I find that I have marked upwards of two hundred mistakes or oversights: no doubt I have been saved by it from at least as many.
The First Book of the Histories, called Clio
This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos[7][1q], to the end that1 neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works2 great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians[6], may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.
1. Those of the Persians who have knowledge of history declare that the Phenicians[5] first began the quarrel. These, they say, came from that which is called the Erythraian Sea[3] to this of ours; and having settled in the land where they continue even now to dwell, set themselves forthwith to make long voyages by sea. And conveying merchandise of Egypt and of Assyria they arrived at other places and also at Argos[4]; now Argos was at that time in all points the first of the States within that land which is now called Hellas; — the Phenicians arrived then at this land of Argos, and began to dispose of their ship’s cargo: and on the fifth or sixth day after they had arrived, when their goods had been almost all sold, there came down to the sea a great company of women, and among them the daughter of the king; and her name, as the Hellenes also agree, was Io the daughter of Inachos[2]. These standing near to the stern of the ship were buying of the wares such as pleased them most, when of a sudden the Phenicians, passing the word from one to another, made a rush upon them; and the greater part of the women escaped by flight, but Io and certain others were carried off. So they put them on board their ship, and forthwith departed, sailing away to Egypt. 2. In this manner the Persians report that Io came to Egypt, not agreeing therein with the Hellenes,3 and this they say was the first beginning of wrongs. Then after this, they say, certain Hellenes (but the name of the people they are not able to report) put in to the city of Tyre in Phenicia and carried off the king’s daughter Europa; — these would doubtless be Cretans; — and so they were quits for the former injury. After this however the Hellenes, they say, were the authors of the second wrong; for they sailed in to Aia of Colchis and to the river Phasis with a ship of war, and from thence, after they had done the other business for which they came, they carried off the king’s daughter Medea: and the king of Colchis sent a herald to the land of Hellas and demanded satisfaction for the rape4 and to have his daughter back; but they answered that, as the Barbarians had given them no satisfaction for the rape of Io the Argive, so neither would they give satisfaction to the Barbarians for this.
3. In the next generation after this, they say, Alexander the son of Priam, having heard of these things, desired to get a wife for himself by violence5 from Hellas, being fully assured that he would not be compelled to give any satisfaction for this wrong, inasmuch as the Hellenes gave none for theirs. So he carried off Helen, and the Hellenes resolved to send messengers first and to demand her back with satisfaction for the rape; and when they put forth this demand, the others alleged to them the rape of Medea, saying that the Hellenes were now desiring satisfaction to be given to them by others, though they had given none themselves nor had surrendered the person when demand was made.
4. Up to this point, they say, nothing more happened than the carrying away of women on both sides; but after this the Hellenes were very greatly to blame; for they set the first example of war, making an expedition into Asia before the Barbarians made any into Europe. Now they say that in their judgment, though it is an act of wrong to carry away women by force, it is a folly to set one’s heart on taking vengeance for their rape, and the wise course is to pay no regard when they have been carried away; for it is evident that they would never be carried away if they were not themselves willing to go. And the Persians say that they, namely the people of Asia, when their women were carried away by force, had made it a matter of no account, but the Hellenes on account of a woman of Lacedemon gathered together a great armament, and then came to Asia and destroyed the dominion of Priam; and that from this time forward they had always considered the Hellenic race to be their enemy: for Asia and the Barbarian races which dwell there the Persians claim as belonging to them; but Europe and the Hellenic race they consider to be parted off from them.
5. The Persians for their part say that things happened thus; and they conclude that the beginning of their quarrel with the Hellenes was on account of the taking of Ilion: but as regards Io the Phenicians do not agree with the Persians in telling the tale thus; for they deny that they carried her off to Egypt by violent means, and they say on the other hand that when they were in Argos she was intimate with the master of their ship, and perceiving that she was with child, she was ashamed to confess it to her parents, and therefore sailed away with the Phenicians of her own will, for fear of being found out. These are the tales told by the Persians and the Phenicians severally: and concerning these things I am not going to say that they happened thus or thus,6 but when I have pointed to the man who first within my own knowledge began to commit wrong against the Hellenes, I shall go forward further with the story, giving an account of the cities of men, small as well as great: for those which in old times were great have for the most part become small, while those that were in my own time great used in former times to be small: so then, since I know that human prosperity never continues steadfast, I shall make mention of both indifferently.
6. Crœsus[8] was Lydian by race, the son of Alyattes and ruler of the nations which dwell on this side of the river Halys[9]; which river, flowing from the South between the Syrians7 and the Paphlagonians, runs out towards the North Wind into that Sea which is called the Euxine[10]. This Crœsus, first of all the Barbarians of whom we have knowledge, subdued certain of the Hellenes and forced them to pay tribute, while others he gained over and made them his friends. Those whom he subdued were the Ionians[11], the Aiolians, and the Dorians who dwell in Asia; and those whom he made his friends were the Lacedemonians. But before the reign of Crœsus all the Hellenes were free; for the expedition of the Kimmerians[12], which came upon Ionia before the time of Crœsus, was not a conquest of the cities but a plundering incursion only.8 7. Now the supremacy which had belonged to the Heracleidai[13] came to the family of Crœsus, called Mermnadai, in the following manner:— Candaules[14], whom the Hellenes call Myrsilos, was ruler of Sardis[24] and a descendant of Alcaios, son of Heracles: for Agron, the son of Ninos, the son of Belos, the son of Alcaios, was the first of the Heracleidai who became king of Sardis, and Candaules the son of Myrsos was the last; but those who were kings over this land before Agrond, were descendants of Lydos the son of Atys[21], whence this whole nation was called Lydian, having been before called Meonian. From these the Heracleidai, descended from Heracles and the slave-girl of Iardanos, obtained the government, being charged with it by reason of an oracle; and they reigned for two-and-twenty generations of men, five hundred and five years, handing on the power from father to son, till the time of Clandaules the son of Myrsos. 8. This Candaules then of whom I speak had become passionately in love with his own wife; and having become so, he deemed that his wife was fairer by far than all other women; and thus deeming, to Gyges[15] the son of Daskylos (for he of all his spearmen was the most pleasing to him), to this Gyges, I say, he used to impart as well the more weighty of his affairs as also the beauty of his wife, praising it above measure: and after no long time, since it was destined that evil should happen to Candaules, he said to Gyges as follows: “Gyges, I think that thou dost not believe me when I tell thee of the beauty of my wife, for it happens that men’s ears are less apt of belief than their eyes: contrive therefore means by which thou mayest look upon her naked.” But he cried aloud and said: “Master, what word of unwisdom is this which thou dost utter, bidding me look upon my mistress naked? When a woman puts off her tunic she puts off her modesty also. Moreover of old time those fair sayings have been found out by men, from which we ought to learn wisdom; and of these one is this — that each man should look on his own: but I believe indeed that she is of all women the fairest and I entreat thee not to ask of me that which it is not lawful for me to do.” 9. With such words as these he resisted, fearing lest some evil might come to him from this; but the king answered him thus: “Be of good courage, Gyges, and have no fear, either of me, that I am saying these words to try thee, or of my wife, lest any harm may happen to thee from her. For I will contrive it so from the first that she shall not even perceive that she has been seen by thee. I will place thee in the room where we sleep, behind the open door;9 and after I have gone in, my wife also will come to lie down. Now there is a seat near the entrance of the room, and upon this she will lay her garments as she takes them off one by one; and so thou wilt be able to gaze upon her at full leisure. And when she goes from the chair to the bed and thou shalt be behind her back, then let it be thy part to take care that she sees thee not as thou goest through the door.” 10. He then, since he might not avoid it, gave consent: and Candaules, when he considered that it was time to rest, led Gyges to the chamber; and straightway after this the woman also appeared: and Gyges looked upon her after she came in and as she laid down her garments; and when she had her back turned towards him, as she went to the bed, then he slipped away from his hiding-place and was going forth. And as he went out, the woman caught sight of him, and perceiving that which had been done by her husband she did not cry out, though struck with shame,10 but she made as though she had not perceived the matter, meaning to avenge herself upon Candaules: for among the Lydians[25] as also among most other Barbarians it is a shame even for a man to be seen naked. 11. At the time then she kept silence, as I say, and made no outward sign; but as soon as day had dawned, and she made ready those of the servants whom she perceived to be the most attached to herself, and after that she sent to summon Gyges. He then, not supposing that anything of that which had been done was known to her, came upon her summons; for he had been accustomed before to go11 whenever the queen summoned him. And when Gyges was come, the woman said to him these words: “There are now two ways open to thee, Gyges, and I give thee the choice which of the two thou wilt prefer to take. Either thou must slay Candaules and possess both me and the kingdom of Lydia, or thou must thyself here on the spot be slain, so that thou mayest not in future, by obeying Candaules in all things, see that which thou shouldest not. Either he must die who formed this design, or thou who hast looked upon me naked and done that which is not accounted lawful.” For a time then Gyges was amazed at these words, and afterwards he began to entreat her that she would not bind him by necessity to make such a choice: then however, as he could not prevail with her, but saw that necessity was in truth set before him either to slay his master or to be himself slain by others, he made the choice to live himself; and he inquired further as follows: “Since thou dost compel me to take my master’s life against my own will, let me hear from thee also what is the manner in which we shall lay hands upon him.” And she answering said: “From that same place shall the attempt be, where he displayed me naked; and we will lay hands upon him as he sleeps.” 12. So after they had prepared the plot, when night came on, (for Gyges was not let go nor was there any way of escape for him, but he must either be slain himself or slay Candaules), he followed the woman to the bedchamber; and she gave him a dagger and concealed him behind that very same door. Then afterwards, while Candaules was sleeping, Gyges came privily up to him12 and slew him, and he obtained both his wife and his kingdom: of him moreover Archilochos the Parian, who lived about that time, made mention in a trimeter iambic verse.13 13. He obtained the kingdom however and was strengthened in it by means of the Oracle at Delphi[16]; for when the Lydians were angry because of the fate of Candaules, and had risen in arms, a treaty was made between the followers of Gyges and the other Lydians to this effect, that if the Oracle should give answer that he was to be king of the Lydians, he should be king, and if not, he should give back the power to the sons of Heracles. So the Oracle gave answer, and Gyges accordingly became king: yet the Pythian prophetess[17] said this also, that vengeance for the Heracleidai should come upon the descendants of Gyges in the fifth generation. Of this oracle the Lydians and their kings made no account until it was in fact fulfilled.
14. Thus the Mermnadai obtained the government having driven out from it the Heracleidai: and Gyges when he became ruler sent votive offerings to Delphi not a few, for of all the silver offerings at Delphi his are more in number than those of any other man; and besides the silver he offered a vast quantity of gold, and especially one offering which is more worthy of mention than the rest, namely six golden mixing-bowls, which are dedicated there as his gift: of these the weight is thirty talents, and they stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, (though in truth this treasury does not belong to the State of the Corinthians, but is that of Kypselos the son of Aëtion).14 This Gyges was the first of the Barbarians within our knowledge who dedicated votive offerings at Delphi, except only Midas the son of Gordias king of Phrygia, who dedicated for an offering the royal throne on which he sat before all to decide causes; and this throne, a sight worth seeing, stands in the same place with the bowls of Gyges. This gold and silver which Gyges dedicated is called Gygian by the people of Delphi, after the name of him who offered it.
Now Gyges also,15 as soon as he became king, led an army against Miletos and Smyrna, and he took the lower town of Colophon:16 but no other great deed did he do in his reign, which lasted eight-and-thirty years, therefore we will pass him by with no more mention than has already been made, 15, and I will speak now of Ardys the son of Gyges, who became king after Gyges. He took Priene and made an invasion against Miletos; and while he was ruling over Sardis, the Kimmerians driven from their abodes by the nomad Scythians came to Asia and took Sardis except the citadel.
16. Now when Ardys had been king for nine-and-forty years, Sadyattes his son succeeded to his kingdom, and reigned twelve years; and after him Alyattes. This last made war against Kyaxares the descendant of Deïokes and against the Medes,17 and he drove the Kimmerians forth out of Asia, and he took Smyrna which had been founded from Colophon, and made an invasion against Clazomenai. From this he returned not as he desired, but with great loss: during his reign however he performed other deeds very worthy of mention as follows:— 17. He made war with those of Miletos, having received this war as an inheritance from his father: for he used to invade their land and besiege Miletos in the following manner:— whenever there were ripe crops upon the land, then he led an army into their confines, making his march to the sound of pipes and harps and flutes both of male and female tone: and when he came to the Milesian land, he neither pulled down the houses that were in the fields, nor set fire to them nor tore off their doors, but let them stand as they were; the trees however and the crops that were upon the land he destroyed, and then departed by the way he came: for the men of Miletos had command of the sea, so that it was of no use for his army to blockade them: and he abstained from pulling down the houses to the end that the Milesians might have places to dwell in while they sowed and tilled the land, and by the means of their labour he might have somewhat to destroy when he made his invasion. 18. Thus he continued to war with them for eleven years; and in the course of these years the Milesians suffered two great defeats, once when they fought a battle in the district of Limenion in their own land, and again in the plain of Maiander. Now for six of the eleven years Sadyattes the son of Ardys was still ruler of the Lydians, the same who was wont to invade the land of Miletos at the times mentioned;18 for this Sadyattes was he who first began the war: but for the five years which followed these first six the war was carried on by Alyattes the son of Sadyattes, who received it as an inheritance from his father (as I have already said) and applied himself to it earnestly. And none of the Ionians helped those of Miletos bear the burden of this war except only the men of Chios. These came to their aid to pay back like with like, for the Milesians had formerly assisted the Chians throughout their war with the people of Erythrai. 19. Then in the twelfth year of the war, when standing corn was being burnt by the army of the Lydians, it happened as follows:— as soon as the corn was kindled, it was driven by a violent wind and set fire to the temple of Athene surnamed of Assessos; and the temple being set on fire was burnt down to the ground. Of this no account was made then; but afterwards when the army had returned to Sardis, Alyattes fell sick, and as his sickness lasted long, he sent messengers to inquire of the Oracle at Delphi, either being advised to do so by some one, or because he himself thought it best to send and inquire of the god concerning his sickness. But when these arrived at Delphi, the Pythian prophetess said that she would give them no answer, until they should have built up again the temple of Athene which they had burnt at Assessos in the land of Miletos. 20. Thus much I know by the report of the people of Delphi; but the Milesians add to this that Periander the son of Kypselos, being a special guest-friend of Thrasybulos the then despot of Miletos, heard of the oracle which had been given to Alyattes, and sending a messenger told Thrasybulos, in order that he might have knowledge of it beforehand and take such counsel as the case required. This is the story told by the Milesians. 21. And Alyattes, when this answer was reported to him, sent a herald forthwith to Miletos, desiring to make a truce with Thrasybulos and the Milesians for so long a time as he should be building the temple. He then was being sent as envoy to Miletos; and Thrasybulos in the meantime being informed beforehand of the whole matter and knowing what Alyattes was meaning to do, contrived this device:— he gathered together in the market-place all the store of provisions which was found in the city, both his own and that which belonged to private persons; and he proclaimed to the Milesians that on a signal given by him they should all begin to drink and make merry with one another. 22. This Thrasybulos did and thus proclaimed to the end that the herald from Sardis, seeing a vast quantity of provisions carelessly piled up, and the people feasting, might report this to Alyattes: and so on fact it happened; for when the herald returned to Sardis after seeing this and delivering to Thrasybulos the charge which was given to him by the king of Lydia, the peace which was made, came about, as I am informed, merely because of this. For Alyattes, who thought that there was a great famine in Miletos and that the people had been worn down to the extreme of misery, heard from the herald, when he returned from Miletos, the opposite to that which he himself supposed. And after this the peace was made between them on condition of being guest-friends and allies to one another, and Alyattes built two temples to Athene at Assessos in place of one, and himself recovered from his sickness. With regard then to the war waged by Alyattes with the Milesians and Thrasybulos things went thus.
23. As for Periander, the man who gave information about the oracle to Thrasybulos, he was the son of Kypselos, and despot of Corinth. In his life, say the Corinthians, (and with them agree the Lesbians), there happened to him a very great marvel, namely that Arion of Methymna was carried ashore at Tainaron upon a dolphin’s back. This man was a harper second to none of those who then lived, and the first, so far as we know, who composed a dithyramb, naming it so and teaching it to a chorus19 at Corinth. 24. This Arion, they say, who for the most part of his time stayed with Periander, conceived a desire to sail to Italy20 and Sicily; and after he had there acquired large sums of money, he wished to return again to Corinth. He set forth therefore from Taras,21 and as he had faith in Corinthians more than in other men, he hired a ship with a crew of Corinthians. These, the story says, when out in open sea, formed a plot to cast Arion overboard and so possess his wealth; and he having obtained knowledge of this made entreaties to them, offering them his wealth and asking them to grant him his life. With this however he did not prevail upon them, but the men who were conveying him bade him either slay himself there, that he might receive burial on the land, or leap straightway into the sea. So Arion being driven to a strait entreated them that, since they were so minded, they would allow him to take his stand in full minstrel’s garb upon the deck22 of the ship and sing; and he promised to put himself to death after he had sung. They then, well pleased to think that they should hear the best of all minstrels upon earth, drew back from the stern towards the middle of the ship; and he put on the full minstrel’s garb and took his lyre, and standing on the deck performed the Orthian measure. Then as the measure ended, he threw himself into the sea just as he was, in his full minstrel’s garb; and they went on sailing away to Corinth, but him, they say, a dolphin supported on its back and brought him to shore at Tainaron: and when he had come to land he proceeded to Corinth with his minstrel’s garb. Thither having arrived he related all that had been done; and Periander doubting of his story kept Arion in guard and would let him go nowhere, while he kept careful watch for those who had conveyed him. When these came, he called them and inquired of them if they had any report to make of Arion; and when they said that he was safe in Italy and that they had left him at Taras faring well, Arion suddenly appeared before them in the same guise as when he made his leap from the ship; and they being struck with amazement were no longer able to deny when they were questioned. This is the tale told by the Corinthians and Lesbians alike, and there is at Tainaron a votive offering of Arion of no great size,23 namely a bronze figure of a man upon a dolphin’s back.
