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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Herodotus's "The Histories" stands as a pioneering work in the realm of historical narrative, intertwining a rich tapestry of anecdotal accounts, cultural observations, and intricate political analyses from the Greek and Persian worlds. Written in the 5th century BCE, this text employs a prose style that ebbs and flows between informational chronicle and engaging storytelling, inviting readers into a vibrant world of conflict, exploration, and human experience. Herodotus not only chronicles the Greco-Persian Wars but also provides an extensive examination of the customs, beliefs, and histories of various peoples, positioning his work within the larger context of a burgeoning inquiry into the nature of history and human behavior. Herodotus, often considered the 'Father of History,' was born in Halicarnassus (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) around 484 BCE. His travels throughout the Mediterranean and his interactions with diverse cultures undoubtedly influenced his writing. A keen observer of human nature and a seeker of truth amidst competing narratives, Herodotus aimed to create a comprehensive account that transcends mere dates, weaving the thread of humanity's shared past through mythology, geography, and ethics. Recommended for both scholars and general readers, "The Histories" remains an essential text for understanding the foundations of historical inquiry and narrative techniques. Herodotus's profound insights into human behavior and sociopolitical dynamics continue to resonate, making this work a timeless exploration of the complexities of history, encouraging readers to appreciate the interwoven nature of cultures and events that shape our world. 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
Across deserts, rivers, and the narrow straits between continents, a restless inquiry follows the swell of empires and the choices of ordinary people, testing where curiosity meets power, where custom resists conquest, and where the fortunes of cities pivot on courage, counsel, and chance, until a vast collision between cultures fills the horizon like a gathering storm whose rumble reaches every shore, as storytellers tally wonders and witnesses weigh rumors, as maps lengthen and names multiply, and as memory strains to preserve deeds before time erases them, the question of how and why events unfold refuses to be silenced.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, writing in the fifth century BCE in the Ionian dialect of Greek, composed the work known as The Histories, the earliest surviving example of extended historical prose in Western literature. Its central premise is straightforward yet capacious: to record human achievements and explain the causes of conflict between Greeks and non-Greeks, above all the confrontation with the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The scope ranges from family dynasties to continental campaigns, but the guiding intention remains an inquiry into events and their origins. This introductory compass points readers toward a world where explanation competes with memory, and testimony invites debate.
Although now presented in nine books, a division attributed to Hellenistic editors, the narrative flows as a single, intricately braided investigation. Herodotus interleaves accounts of rulers and towns with descriptions of landscapes, customs, marvels, and technologies. He pauses to report alternative versions, marks uncertainties, and resumes the main thread, building a mosaic whose pieces illuminate one another. Genealogies, speeches, catalogues, and travel notes do not distract from the central story so much as furnish the conditions under which it unfolds. The result is neither annal nor archive alone, but a dynamic composition designed to make causes visible amid the press of detail.
The book’s classic status rests first on its literary ambition. Herodotus adapts the resources of epic, lyric, and local logoi to craft a prose with memorable characters, suspense, and moral questioning. Ancient readers prized this blend: Cicero later hailed him as the father of history, while other writers contested his credulity, a debate that helped define historical method. Thucydides wrote with sharper focus on contemporary war, yet his project stands in dialogue with Herodotus’s broader canvas. Across centuries, historians, essayists, and travel writers have borrowed his techniques of scene-building, ethnographic notice, and comparative reasoning, finding in them a model for narrative explanation.
Enduring themes animate every section: the seductions and limits of power, the instability of fortune, the peril of overreach, and the profound force of custom. Herodotus contrasts small communities and vast empires without reducing either to caricature, attentive to the choices of advisors, envoys, artisans, and rulers. He tracks how decisions, rumors, and omens circulate, how rivers and seasons shape campaigns, how wealth unites and corrupts. Throughout, the work probes the tension between freedom and submission, center and periphery, law and desire. These themes are not abstract theses; they emerge from stories that test them under pressure, inviting careful, ethical interpretation.
Herodotus signals methods as well as tales. He distinguishes what he has learned by inquiry from what he has seen, notes where he relies on informants, and sometimes preserves multiple explanations without deciding among them. Rather than weakness, this openness becomes a principle of intellectual honesty, allowing readers to weigh plausibility. His narrative architecture—anticipations, returns, and ring-like structures—trains attention across distance, linking a custom in Egypt to a tactic in Anatolia, or a forgotten treaty to a later diplomatic turn. The book thus models how to collect, compare, and test information while never losing the pulse of lived experience.
The historical canvas is the eastern Mediterranean and Near East in the age of the Achaemenid kings, when Persian authority stretched from the Indus to the Aegean and from Egypt to the Caucasus. Greek city-states, diverse in language and law, confronted this imperial system in trade, diplomacy, and war. Herodotus’s own birthplace, Halicarnassus in Caria, stood at a cultural crossroads within the Persian sphere, sharpening his attention to borderlands and mixed identities. The narrative’s central arc follows how contact intensified into open conflict, tracing alliances, grievances, and ambitions without assuming a single perspective. Geography and politics continually interact, shaping possibilities and risks.
The Histories ranges widely beyond battlefields. It lingers over the Nile’s floods, the resources of Lydia, the nomadisms of the steppe, and the engineering of bridges and canals. Customs receive sustained attention: burial rites, marriage practices, diet, dress, and law. Herodotus presents these with curiosity and comparative tact, highlighting differences without denying kinship. He records marvels alongside practical observations, giving later readers a valuable, if uneven, repository of information. The work’s ethnographic disposition has influenced disciplines far beyond classics, encouraging questions about how we describe other cultures, how we handle wonder, and how explanation can coexist with respect for diversity.
The reception of The Histories is itself a chapter in intellectual history. Ancient scholars preserved and commented on the text; Hellenistic librarians standardized its book divisions; Roman authors admired and contested it; Byzantine copyists transmitted it through the manuscript tradition. Early modern editors and translators helped install Herodotus in school curricula and civic libraries, where his narratives shaped historical imagination alongside epic and tragedy. Modern scholarship has reappraised his chronology, sources, and aims, yet the work’s readability remains central to its survival. Each generation, meeting his pages, confronts both the allure of story and the discipline of evidence.
As literature, the work excels in scene-setting and characterization. Rulers deliberate under pressure; envoys test boundaries with tact or provocation; engineers and seers feature alongside soldiers and farmers. Herodotus orchestrates contrasts—opulence and austerity, sea and steppe, youth and age—to create momentum and irony. He crafts episodes with beginnings, middles, and ends while threading them into the larger design. Speeches dramatize competing values and strategies; anecdotes crystallize broader patterns. Even when details are disputed, the narrative’s architecture and rhythm carry persuasive force, inviting readers to inhabit unfamiliar worlds and to reflect on the fragile hinge by which decision becomes destiny.
Readers new to The Histories benefit from treating it simultaneously as a literary creation and a historical inquiry. Expect variety of pace and register: a catalog may yield to a swift tale; a measured analysis may follow a marvel. Attend to how sources are introduced, how comparisons are drawn, and how the narration signals uncertainty. Translations differ in tone; a clear, well-annotated edition will aid with names, measures, and geography. Above all, let questions guide the reading: what counts as evidence here, which voices are heard, and how do customs shape choice? The book rewards patience with accumulating clarity and surprise.
Herodotus speaks urgently to the present. His pages examine empire, migration, religious practice, environmental constraint, rumor, and miscommunication—phenomena as current as today’s headlines. He shows how leaders frame narratives, how communities hold memory, and how encounters across borders can harden into hostility or open into learning. The Histories endures because it makes thinking in public both possible and pleasurable: a mind testing reports, weighing actions, and holding complexity without surrendering judgment. In an age saturated with information, his example encourages responsible curiosity and resilient skepticism, reminding us that understanding others and understanding power remain inseparable tasks for civic life.
Synopsis
Herodotus of Halicarnassus composed The Histories in the fifth century BCE as an inquiry into the origins of conflict between Greeks and non-Greeks, especially the rise of the Persian Empire and the wars that followed. Organized later into nine books, the work blends travel observation, oral testimony, and earlier traditions to preserve notable deeds and explore their causes. Herodotus reports multiple versions of events, weighing plausibility while acknowledging limits of knowledge. Alongside political narrative, he records customs, geography, and marvels from many lands. Recurrent concerns include the instability of power, the role of chance and human decision, and how differing cultures understand order and justice.
Book One opens with legendary accounts of East–West abductions, then turns to the Lydian kingdom and its monarch Croesus, whose expansion brings him into contact with the Ionian Greeks. Herodotus traces earlier Lydian history through the rise of the Mermnad dynasty and recounts Croesus’s attempts to secure divine and human counsel before confronting Persia. He backtracks to the making of the Median and Persian powers: the consolidation of Medes under Deioces and successors, the fall of Astyages, and the emergence of Cyrus. The book closes with the Persian conquest of Lydia and introductions to Persian customs, administrative practices, and imperial ambition.
Book Two is largely an ethnography of Egypt. Herodotus investigates the Nile’s course and flooding, describes the landscape from Delta to Thebes, and reports on rituals, funerary practices, and the organization of priesthoods and kingship. He surveys monumental works, engineering, and measures of time, relaying what Egyptian informants and his own observations suggest. He compares Greek and Egyptian customs, noting resemblances and differences in religion, diet, and law. Questions about chronology, origins, and the transmission of knowledge thread the book, as Herodotus weighs competing claims while acknowledging where evidence is uncertain or traditions conflict.
Book Three follows Persian expansion under Cambyses, whose campaign against Egypt alters regional balances and prompts accounts of behavior that inform Herodotus’s reflections on rulership. The narrative then turns to Achaemenid governance, notably satrapies and tribute assessments. Greek affairs intersect in the Aegean with Samos under Polycrates and changing local allegiances. A Persian succession crisis arises with the figure remembered as the Magus, provoking a conspiracy among Persian nobles and a programmatic debate on political constitutions. Darius emerges as king, and the book closes by widening the ethnographic lens to Arabia, India, and other regions, including reported marvels and valuable resources.
Book Four shifts north and west to the Scythians and the lands around the Black Sea. Herodotus catalogs nomadic customs, burial rites, and patterns of warfare, interweaving geography and origin stories. Darius campaigns against the Scythians, building bridges and testing strategies across rivers and steppes, while Greek cities on the fringes weigh obligations and self-preservation. The narrative also explores North Africa: the colonization of Cyrene from Thera, the city’s relations with neighboring peoples, and political upheavals in Barca. Ethnographic passages on Libyan communities and animals accompany these histories, emphasizing adaptation to landscape and the variability of human practice.
Book Five returns to the Aegean and mainland Greece. Persian influence extends into Thrace and Macedon, while in Ionia Persian-backed officials negotiate local politics. The failed expedition to Naxos helps prompt the Ionian Revolt under Aristagoras, drawing in allies and provoking shifts in loyalty among cities. Herodotus intertwines this with constitutional change in Athens, detailing Cleisthenes’ reforms and the city’s struggle with Spartan interference. He also describes Persian communications over long distances, including the Royal Road. Appeals to distant powers, internal factionalism, and the question of autonomy form a recurring pattern as interests collide across islands and coasts.
Book Six narrates the escalation and crisis of the Ionian Revolt, including sea battles, sieges, and reprisals that reverberate through the Greek world. Herodotus records the fall of major cities and the consequences for their populations, then follows Persian punitive expeditions westward. In Greece, alliances form and falter, embassies cross seas, and religious calendars complicate mobilization. A famed encounter on the Attic plain becomes a focal point, framed by strategic choices, local leadership, and debates over tactics. Throughout, Herodotus highlights logistics, morale, and the significance of command, without reducing outcomes to a single cause or actor.
Book Seven expands to an imperial scale as Xerxes prepares a massive invasion. Herodotus details engineering feats, provisioning, and the mustering of a multiethnic army and fleet. Persian deliberations and Greek counsels expose competing assessments of risk, honor, and necessity. The march through Thrace and the crossing into Greece lead to standpoints where terrain, training, and resolve are tested. Book Eight continues with naval maneuvers and coastal operations, the evacuation and devastation of cities, and the fraught unity of a Greek alliance. Rivalries among commanders, calculated deception, and individual initiative shape pivotal sea battles that alter the campaign’s momentum.
Book Nine brings the conflict to climactic land and sea engagements and their aftermath in mainland Greece and Ionia. Herodotus traces military movements, councils, and sieges, then follows the dispersal of forces and the reordering of power. He closes with episodes that reflect on wealth, reciprocity, and the reversals that accompany imperial projects. Across the whole work, his method—presenting variants, naming sources, and distinguishing observation from report—models a critical inquiry into human affairs. The Histories endures for its synthesis of narrative and ethnography and for its meditation on fortune, overreach, and the tangled causes behind collective triumphs and disasters.
Historical Context
The Histories takes shape in the mid-fifth century BCE, across the eastern Mediterranean where independent Greek city-states bordered the vast Achaemenid Persian Empire. Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus in Caria, a Greek city under Persian dominion, and he wrote in the Ionic dialect. He composed his inquiry roughly between the 440s and 420s BCE, during an age of vigorous civic institutions, competitive warfare, and expanding trade. Greek politics revolved around the polis—self-governing communities with laws, magistrates, and assemblies—while the Persian Empire unified diverse peoples through royal authority. Temples, oracles, and traditional cults organized religious life, giving sacred meaning to political decisions and communal memory.
The Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great in the late sixth century BCE, provides the most imposing backdrop to Herodotus’ narrative. Cyrus consolidated power over the Medes, conquered Lydia around 546 BCE, and captured Babylon in 539 BCE. Cambyses II added Egypt in 525 BCE. Darius I (522–486 BCE) reorganized the realm into satrapies, standardized tribute, promoted long-distance communication along the Royal Road from Susa to Sardis, and issued gold darics. Imperial Aramaic served administration across great distances. Herodotus recounts these transformations and campaigns, portraying how imperial organization, wealth, and mobility set conditions for confrontation with the autonomous Greek city-states.
Within the Greek world, political forms varied widely. Many poleis were governed by assemblies and councils with shifting balances among aristocrats, magistrates, and common citizens. Sparta preserved a mixed system with dual kingship and strict social discipline; Athens, after Cleisthenes’ reforms (c. 508/507 BCE), expanded citizen participation, reshaped tribal units, and empowered its assembly. Shared sanctuaries and festivals—Olympia, Delphi, and others—reinforced a sense of kinship amid intense rivalries. Earlier colonizing movements had spread Greek settlements around the Aegean and Black Sea, linking communities by trade and kin ties. Herodotus situates conflicts against this tapestry of local autonomy, regional alliances, and a fragile but real Panhellenic identity.
The Ionian Revolt (499–493 BCE) serves as a central prelude. Ionian Greek cities along the Anatolian coast had fallen under Persian control after Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia. Local tyrants, economic pressures, and the ambitions of Aristagoras of Miletus spurred rebellion. A small Athenian and Eretrian expedition helped burn Sardis (c. 498 BCE), provoking a harsh imperial response. Persian forces suppressed the revolt decisively after defeating the Ionian fleet at Lade (494 BCE) and punishing Miletus. Herodotus presents these events as the immediate cause for later invasions of Greece, tracing how regional grievances escalated into a trans-Aegean war that would test alliances and strategies on both sides.
Darius I launched the first Persian invasion of mainland Greece in 490 BCE, seeking to subdue Eretria and Athens, both implicated in the burning of Sardis. The Persians sacked Eretria and landed at Marathon, where Athenian citizens, joined by Plataeans, met them in a hoplite phalanx. The Greeks won a striking victory, which Herodotus presents as a turning point in Athenian confidence and prestige. The battle’s outcome alerted both Greeks and Persians to the potency of citizen infantry and local terrain. Herodotus preserves multiple traditions surrounding plans, contingents, and strategies, illustrating how civic memory and military history were intertwined in the classical polis.
Xerxes I, succeeding Darius, prepared a massive expedition against Greece in 480–479 BCE. Persian engineers joined the continents with pontoon bridges across the Hellespont and cut a canal through the Athos peninsula to ease navigation. Many Greeks submitted; others formed a defensive league led by Sparta. The famous stand at Thermopylae and the contemporaneous naval actions off Artemisium gave way to the decisive Greek naval victory at Salamis (480 BCE). In 479 BCE, Persian forces were defeated at Plataea on land and at Mycale at sea. Herodotus’ narrative remains the principal surviving account, combining strategic analysis, local testimony, and the interplay of leadership and chance.
Sparta’s institutions shaped the coalition’s conduct. A hereditary dual kingship, a council of elders, ephors, and rigorous communal training formed a military society wary of innovation yet capable of decisive action. Spartan dominance in the Peloponnesian League organized allied contingents and leadership during the conflict. Herodotus depicts Spartan customs, discipline, and the constraints of helot labor that underpinned the city’s martial readiness. He shows how Sparta’s prestige and cautious diplomacy affected alliance politics, while individual figures, including Leonidas, stand within an institutional framework that prized obedience to law and tradition even amid the extraordinary pressures of interstate warfare.
Athens offers a contrasting model of civic power. After the reforms of Cleisthenes, the assembly and council channeled citizen decision-making. A critical development came when Athenians used the windfall from the Laurion silver mines around 483/482 BCE to build a large trireme fleet, a policy often associated with Themistocles. Sea power proved decisive at Salamis, elevating Athens within the anti-Persian coalition. In the aftermath, the Delian League formed (478 BCE), ostensibly to continue the war and secure the Aegean, while increasingly consolidating Athenian control. Writing amid Athenian ascendancy, Herodotus tests democratic decision-making against fortune, foresight, and the hazards of power.
The Lydian kingdom, centered at Sardis, illuminates the complex prehistory of Greek–Persian relations. Lydia’s famed wealth under Croesus and its strategic command of inland routes tied Anatolia to the Aegean. Many historians credit Lydia with pioneering coinage in electrum in the late seventh century BCE, revolutionizing exchange. Croesus cultivated relations with Greek sanctuaries and cities before falling to the armies of Cyrus. Herodotus’ account of Croesus—consultations at Delphi, shifting alliances, and rapid reversals of fortune—exemplifies how rulers navigated regional networks of diplomacy and religion, and how prosperity could invite risk when met by expanding imperial power.
Egypt features prominently in The Histories as a locus of antiquity, wealth, and specialized knowledge. The Saite dynasty promoted Greek trade at Naucratis, and Amasis II (570–526 BCE) is associated with granting privileges to Greek merchants. Cambyses II conquered Egypt in 525 BCE, extending Persian rule to the Nile. Herodotus reports that he traveled in Egypt, gathering accounts from priests and local informants about rituals, the Nile’s floods, and monumental works. While some details conflict with modern scholarship, his sustained ethnographic interest reveals how Greek observers interpreted long-established civilizations and how Persian expansion altered existing patterns of commerce and rule.
Herodotus devotes substantial attention to the northern frontier of the Persian world, describing Scythian societies in the Eurasian steppe. He recounts Darius I’s campaign beyond the Danube (traditionally dated to c. 513 BCE), highlighting the difficulties settled empires faced when confronting mobile pastoralists. Greek colonies along the Black Sea—such as Olbia—served as conduits for information, goods, and ideas between Greek and Scythian communities. Burial customs, warfare, and mythic genealogies appear in his narrative, not as curiosities alone but as examples of how environment and mode of life shape political resistance, alliances, and the limits of imperial logistics.
The Phoenicians, long-distance traders and expert mariners from cities like Tyre and Sidon, are another cornerstone of Herodotus’ world. Their ships were essential to Persian naval power in the Aegean. He credits the Phoenicians with transmitting alphabetic writing to the Greeks, an account that reflects broader patterns of cultural exchange in the early first millennium BCE, though details are debated. Purple dye, timber, and craft production integrated Phoenicia into Mediterranean markets. In the conflicts narrated by Herodotus, Phoenician contingents exemplify the empire’s reliance on the specialized skills of subject peoples and the maritime infrastructures that connected distant theaters of war.
Economic and technological developments permeate the story. Coinage spread from western Anatolia across the Greek world, facilitating market exchange and military financing. Darius’ darics symbolized imperial reach, while locally minted silver coinages underwrote Greek civic economies. The Persian Royal Road and relay post system accelerated communications. Naval technology—especially the trireme with three banks of oars—enabled ramming tactics and rapid maneuver. Engineering feats such as pontoon bridges and canals altered strategic geography. Herodotus underscores how provisioning armies, moving information, and mastering sea lanes often decided campaigns as much as individual valor or battlefield formations.
Religious practice, divination, and sacred authority shape decision-making throughout The Histories. Greek communities sought guidance from Delphi, Dodona, and local oracles, and regularly framed political choices in sacrificial and festival calendars. Persian kings, in their inscriptions, invoked Ahura Mazda as the source of royal legitimacy, while permitting a degree of local cult continuity. Dreams, omens, and prodigies recur in Herodotus, not as mere superstition but as forces that structured deliberations. The recurrent moral pattern—where excess and arrogance invite downfall—aligns with Greek notions of hubris and nemesis. By collecting prophecies and outcomes, he shows how policy and piety interlocked in the ancient Mediterranean.
Herodotus wrote amid the rise of prose inquiry. Earlier logographers, notably Hecataeus of Miletus, modeled ethnographic and geographic description, while epic poetry preserved heroic paradigms and communal memory. Fifth-century audiences encountered emerging rhetorical practices and debates over evidence and authority. Herodotus’ method combined autopsy—seeing for himself where possible—with reports from local informants, inscriptions, and competing oral accounts. He weighs explanations, sometimes presenting multiple versions and judging plausibility. In doing so, he advances a reflective approach to causation and responsibility that differs from mythic narration, while still attentive to traditional stories when they illuminate motives, customs, and beliefs.
The maritime turn of Greek strategy transformed social dynamics. Rowing a trireme required large numbers of skilled citizens and residents, drawing on the labor and coordination of poorer classes as well as wealthier hoplites. Port facilities, shipyards, and steady supplies of timber, bronze, and sailcloth tied warfare to economic planning. Across the broader region, slavery remained fundamental to household and civic economies, while agriculture anchored seasonal rhythms. Symposium culture, athletic contests, and festivals shaped civic identity. Herodotus’ digressions on funerals, marriage customs, diet, and dress among multiple peoples illustrate how everyday practices underwrote political loyalties, created misunderstandings, and framed perceptions of justice.
Herodotus’ work unfolds within well-established diplomatic patterns: guest-friendship, treaty oaths, and tribute obligations. Greek poleis negotiated alliances through proxenoi and envoys; the Persian court integrated elites through gifts, honors, and governorships. Local autonomy often persisted under imperial oversight, provided tribute and military service were rendered. Herodotus tracks envoys and messengers as carefully as generals, emphasizing persuasion, coercion, and miscommunication. He also notes the role of geographic chokepoints—straits, passes, and plains—in shaping coalitions and defections. By situating events within these diplomatic and spatial constraints, he reveals how choices by communities and rulers responded to structural pressures rather than to destiny alone. Lastly, The Histories stands as both mirror and critique of its age. It preserves the memory of Greek and non-Greek achievements while questioning the stability of fortune and the wisdom of empire. Herodotus highlights the costs of overreach—Persian and Greek alike—by attending to counsel ignored, limits misjudged, and customs misunderstood. His comparative method resists easy cultural hierarchies, foregrounding the variability of law and belief. Written amid Athenian prominence and imperial ambitions, the work probes power’s temptations and counsels measured deliberation, framing history as inquiry into causes, character, and consequence.
Author Biography
Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek prose writer active in the fifth century BCE, remembered above all for the Histories, a sweeping inquiry into the origins and course of the Greco-Persian conflicts. Born in Caria on the Anatolian coast, he wrote in an era shaped by Persian imperial power and the rise of classical Greek city-states. His work blends political narrative with geography, ethnography, and reflection on causation, offering one of the earliest sustained attempts to explain events through human motives and custom. In later antiquity he was celebrated, notably by Cicero, as the "Father of History," even as some readers questioned his credulity.
Little about Herodotus's early education can be securely documented, and no formal schooling is reliably attested. He wrote in Ionic Greek and drew upon a prose tradition already developed in the region, particularly the logographers, with Hecataeus of Miletus often cited as an antecedent. The literary atmosphere also included Homeric epic, whose narrative reach and scene-setting shaped his storytelling. Living in a culturally mixed Carian milieu, he encountered Greek and Near Eastern traditions that later informed his comparisons of peoples and customs. Rather than citing mentors, Herodotus foregrounds method, presenting his book as an investigation anchored in questioning, collecting accounts, and assessing plausibility.
Herodotus often distinguishes what he claims to have seen from what others told him, marking a practice of autopsy and reported testimony. In the Histories he presents observations from Egypt, the Black Sea region, Phoenicia, and parts of Asia Minor and the Aegean, while acknowledging when evidence is uncertain or disputed. He records conversations with local informants, describes monuments and sanctuaries, and at times cites inscriptions or oracular records. His curiosity about nomoi - customs - extends to language, ritual, burial, dress, and political organization. By offering multiple versions of events and reasoning toward the most persuasive, he modeled habits of source comparison that later historians adapted.
His sole securely attributed work, the Histories, ranges from legendary prefaces to a narrative culminating in the defeat of Xerxes' invasion and the campaigns of 480-479 BCE. Later editors divided it into nine books named for the Muses, but its structure reflects interlaced logoi - country studies, biographies, and battle narratives. Lydian and Persian expansions, the rise of Athens and Sparta, and the fortunes of rulers such as Croesus supply causal backstories to the wars. Ethnographic and geographic digressions punctuate the main line of events, broadening the canvas while offering contrasts that illuminate Greek self-understanding, the dynamics of power, and the unpredictability of fortune.
Herodotus's career unfolded within networks of itinerant intellectuals common in the classical Greek world. Later testimonies report that he gave public readings, possibly at festivals; while details are uncertain, his work circulated widely by the later fifth and Hellenistic periods. Ancient reception was mixed: admirers praised scope, style, and curiosity, while critics accused him of credulity or partiality. Thucydides, writing after him, adopted a more austere method that contrasts with Herodotean storytelling. Despite disagreements over specific tales, the Histories quickly became a central monument of Greek prose, entering the educational canon and continuing to be copied, excerpted, and discussed across antiquity.
Although he does not promote a formal program, Herodotus advances recurrent ideas. He examines nomos as a governing force - how custom shapes judgment - and juxtaposes societies to test Greek assumptions. He attributes outcomes to a mixture of human choice, chance, and what informants call divine will, reporting oracles and wonders while often signaling caution. He analyzes causes (aitiai) and pretexts (prophaseis), tracing chains of decisions, rivalries, and misunderstandings. His portraits of tyrannies and empires stress the dangers of overreaching and the reversals that follow success. These emphases knit his ethnographic materials and political narrative into a sustained inquiry rather than a mere compilation.
Ancient tradition places Herodotus in Thurii, a colony in southern Italy, during his later years, and some manuscripts style him 'of Thurii.' Exact dates for his death are unknown, but it likely occurred in the later fifth century BCE. Whatever his final residence, the Histories secured a legacy that endured through antiquity, medieval transmission, and modern scholarship. Renaissance readers prized his Greek and breadth of observation; contemporary historians and classicists test his claims against material evidence. His blend of narrative, comparison, and inquiry remains a touchstone for writing about cultures, empire, and conflict, and keeps his work central to historical pedagogy.
The Histories
Book I: Clio
These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus[1], which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actio[3]ns of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud.
According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phœnicians began to quarrel. This people, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Erythræan Sea[2], having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria. They landed at many places on the coast, and among the rest at Argos, which was then pre-eminent above all the states included now under the common name of Hellas. Here they exposed their merchandise, and traded with the natives for five or six days; at the end of which time, when almost everything was sold, there came down to the beach a number of women, and among them the daughter of the king, who was, they say, agreeing in this with the Greeks, Io, the child of Inachus. The women were standing by the stern of the ship intent upon their purchases, when the Phœnicians, with a general shout, rushed upon them. The greater part made their escape, but some were seized and carried off. Io herself was among the captives. The Phœnicians put the women on board their vessel, and set sail for Egypt. Thus did Io pass into Egypt, according to the Persian story, which differs widely from the Phœnician: and thus commenced, according to their authors, the series of outrages.
At a later period, certain Greeks, with whose name they are unacquainted, but who would probably be Cretans, made a landing at Tyre, on the Phoenician coast, and bore off the king's daughter, Europé. In this they only retaliated; but afterwards the Greeks, they say, were guilty of a second violence. They manned a ship of war, and sailed to Aea[4], a city of Colchis, on the river Phasis[5]; from whence, after despatching the rest of the business on which they had come, they carried off Medea, the daughter of the king of the land. The monarch sent a herald into Greece to demand reparation of the wrong, and the restitution of his child; but the Greeks made answer that, having received no reparation of the wrong done them in the seizure of Io the Argive, they should give none in this instance.
In the next generation afterwards, according to the same authorities, Alexander the son of Priam[6], bearing these events in mind, resolved to procure himself a wife out of Greece by violence, fully persuaded, that as the Greeks had not given satisfaction for their outrages, so neither would he be forced to make any for his. Accordingly he made prize of Helen; upon which the Greeks decided that, before resorting to other measures, they would send envoys to reclaim the princess and require reparation of the wrong. Their demands were met by a reference to the violence which had been offered to Medea, and they were asked with what face they could now require satisfaction, when they had formerly rejected all demands for either reparation or restitution addressed to them.
Hitherto the injuries on either side had been mere acts of common violence; but in what followed the Persians consider that the Greeks were greatly to blame, since before any attack had been made on Europe, they led an army into Asia. Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women[4q], since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian[7] girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. Henceforth they ever looked upon the Greeks as their open enemies. For Asia, with all the various tribes of barbarians that inhabit it, is regarded by the Persians as their own; but Europe and the Greek race they look on as distinct and separate.
Such is the account which the Persians give of these matters. They trace to the attack upon Troy their ancient enmity towards the Greeks. The Phoenicians, however, as regards Io, vary from the Persian statements. They deny that they used any violence to remove her into Egypt; she herself, they say, having formed an intimacy with the captain, while his vessel lay at Argos, and perceiving herself to be with child, of her own free will accompanied the Phoenicians on their leaving the shore, to escape the shame of detection and the reproaches of her parents. Whether this latter account be true, or whether the matter happened otherwise, I shall not discuss further. I shall proceed at once to point out the person who first within my own knowledge inflicted injury on the Greeks, after which I shall go forward with my history, describing equally the greater and the lesser cities. For the cities which were formerly great have most of them become insignificant; and such as are at present powerful, were weak in the olden time. I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay.
Croesus[10], son of Alyattes, by birth a Lydian, was lord of all the nations to the west of the river Halys[8]. This stream, which separates Syria from Paphlagonia, runs with a course from south to north, and finally falls into the Euxine[9]. So far as our knowledge goes, he was the first of the barbarians who had dealings with the Greeks, forcing some of them to become his tributaries, and entering into alliance with others. He conquered the Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians of Asia, and made a treaty with the Lacedaemonians. Up to that time all Greeks had been free. For the Cimmerian attack upon Ionia, which was earlier than Croesus, was not a conquest of the cities, but only an inroad for plundering.
The sovereignty of Lydia, which had belonged to the Heraclides, passed into the family of Croesus, who were called the Mermnadae[11], in the manner which I will now relate. There was a certain king of Sardis[27], Candaules[12] by name, whom the Greeks called Myrsilus. He was a descendant of Alcaeus, son of Hercules. The first king of this dynasty was Agron, son of Ninus, grandson of Belus, and great-grandson of Alcaeus; Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last. The kings who reigned before Agron sprang from Lydus, son of Atys[19], from whom the people of the land, called previously Meonians, received the name of Lydians. The Heraclides, descended from Hercules and the slave-girl of Jardanus, having been entrusted by these princes with the management of affairs, obtained the kingdom by an oracle. Their rule endured for two and twenty generations of men, a space of five hundred and five years; during the whole of which period, from Agron to Candaules, the crown descended in the direct line from father to son.
Now it happened that this Candaules was in love with his own wife; and not only so, but thought her the fairest woman in the whole world. This fancy had strange consequences. There was in his bodyguard a man whom he specially favoured, Gyges[13], the son of Dascylus. All affairs of greatest moment were entrusted by Candaules to this person, and to him he was wont to extol the surpassing beauty of his wife. So matters went on for a while. At length, one day, Candaules, who was fated to end ill, thus addressed his follower: "I see thou dost not credit what I tell thee of my lady's loveliness; but come now, since men's ears are less credulous than their eyes, contrive some means whereby thou mayst behold her naked." At this the other loudly exclaimed, saying, "What most unwise speech is this, master, which thou hast uttered? Wouldst thou have me behold my mistress when she is naked? Bethink thee that a woman, with her clothes, puts off her bashfulness. Our fathers, in time past, distinguished right and wrong plainly enough, and it is our wisdom to submit to be taught by them. There is an old saying, 'Let each look on his own[1q].' I hold thy wife for the fairest of all womankind. Only, I beseech thee, ask me not to do wickedly."
Gyges thus endeavoured to decline the king's proposal, trembling lest some dreadful evil should befall him through it. But the king replied to him, "Courage, friend; suspect me not of the design to prove thee by this discourse; nor dread thy mistress, lest mischief be. thee at her hands. Be sure I will so manage that she shall not even know that thou hast looked upon her. I will place thee behind the open door of the chamber in which we sleep. When I enter to go to rest she will follow me. There stands a chair close to the entrance, on which she will lay her clothes one by one as she takes them off. Thou wilt be able thus at thy leisure to peruse her person. Then, when she is moving from the chair toward the bed, and her back is turned on thee, be it thy care that she see thee not as thou passest through the doorway."
Gyges, unable to escape, could but declare his readiness. Then Candaules, when bedtime came, led Gyges into his sleeping-chamber, and a moment after the queen followed. She entered, and laid her garments on the chair, and Gyges gazed on her. After a while she moved toward the bed, and her back being then turned, he glided stealthily from the apartment. As he was passing out, however, she saw him, and instantly divining what had happened, she neither screamed as her shame impelled her, nor even appeared to have noticed aught, purposing to take vengeance upon the husband who had so affronted her. For among the Lydians, and indeed among the barbarians generally, it is reckoned a deep disgrace, even to a man, to be seen naked.
No sound or sign of intelligence escaped her at the time. But in the morning, as soon as day broke, she hastened to choose from among her retinue such as she knew to be most faithful to her, and preparing them for what was to ensue, summoned Gyges into her presence. Now it had often happened before that the queen had desired to confer with him, and he was accustomed to come to her at her call. He therefore obeyed the summons, not suspecting that she knew aught of what had occurred. Then she addressed these words to him: "Take thy choice, Gyges, of two courses which are open to thee. Slay Candaules, and thereby become my lord, and obtain the Lydian throne, or die this moment in his room. So wilt thou not again, obeying all behests of thy master, behold what is not lawful for thee. It must needs be that either he perish by whose counsel this thing was done, or thou, who sawest me naked, and so didst break our usages." At these words Gyges stood awhile in mute astonishment; recovering after a time, he earnestly besought the queen that she would not compel him to so hard a choice. But finding he implored in vain, and that necessity was indeed laid on him to kill or to be killed, he made choice of life for himself, and replied by this inquiry: "If it must be so, and thou compellest me against my will to put my lord to death, come, let me hear how thou wilt have me set on him." "Let him be attacked," she answered, "on the spot where I was by him shown naked to you, and let the assault be made when he is asleep."
All was then prepared for the attack, and when night fell, Gyges, seeing that he had no retreat or escape, but must absolutely either slay Candaules, or himself be slain, followed his mistress into the sleeping-room. She placed a dagger in his hand and hid him carefully behind the self-same door. Then Gyges, when the king was fallen asleep, entered privily into the chamber and struck him dead. Thus did the wife and kingdom of Candaules pass into the possession of Gyges, of whom Archilochus the Parian, who lived about the same time, made mention in a poem written in iambic trimeter verse.
Gyges was afterwards confirmed in the possession of the throne by an answer of the Delphic oracle[14]. Enraged at the murder of their king, the people flew to arms, but after a while the partisans of Gyges came to terms with them, and it was agreed that if the Delphic oracle declared him king of the Lydians, he should reign; if otherwise, he should yield the throne to the Heraclides. As the oracle was given in his favour he became king. The Pythoness[15], however, added that, in the fifth generation from Gyges, vengeance should come for the Heraclides; a prophecy of which neither the Lydians nor their princes took any account till it was fulfilled. Such was the way in which the Mermnadae deposed the Heraclides, and themselves obtained the sovereignty.
When Gyges was established on the throne, he sent no small presents to Delphi, as his many silver offerings at the Delphic shrine testify. Besides this silver he gave a vast number of vessels of gold, among which the most worthy of mention are the goblets, six in number, and weighing altogether thirty talents, which stand in the Corinthian treasury, dedicated by him. I call it the Corinthian treasury, though in strictness of speech it is the treasury not of the whole Corinthian people, but of Cypselus, son of Eetion. Excepting Midas, son of Gordias, king of Phrygia, Gyges was the first of the barbarians whom we know to have sent offerings to Delphi. Midas dedicated the royal throne whereon he was accustomed to sit and administer justice, an object well worth looking at. It lies in the same place as the goblets presented by Gyges. The Delphians call the whole of the silver and the gold which Gyges dedicated, after the name of the donor, Gygian.
As soon as Gyges was king he made an in-road on Miletus and Smyrna, and took the city of Colophon. Afterwards, however, though he reigned eight and thirty years, he did not perform a single noble exploit. I shall therefore make no further mention of him, but pass on to his son and successor in the kingdom, Ardys
Ardys took Priêné and made war upon Miletus. In his reign the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomads of Scythia, entered Asia and captured Sardis, all but the citadel. He reigned forty-nine years, and was succeeded by his son, Sadyattes, who reigned twelve years. At his death his son Alyattes mounted the throne.
This prince waged war with the Medes[30] under Cyaxares, the grandson of Deioces, drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, conquered Smyrna, the Colophonian colony, and invaded Clazomenae. From this last contest he did not come off as he could have wished, but met with a sore defeat; still, however, in the course of his reign, he performed other actions very worthy of note, of which I will now proceed to give an account.
Inheriting from his father a war with the Milesians, he pressed the siege against the city by attacking it in the following manner. When the harvest was ripe on the ground he marched his army into Milesia to the sound of pipes and harps, and flutes masculine and feminine. The buildings that were scattered over the country he neither pulled down nor burnt, nor did he even tear away the doors, but left them standing as they were. He cut down, however, and utterly destroyed all the trees and all the corn throughout the land, and then returned to his own dominions. It was idle for his army to sit down before the place, as the Milesians were masters of the sea. The reason that he did not demolish their buildings was that the inhabitants might be tempted to use them as homesteads from which to go forth to sow and till their lands; and so each time that he invaded the country he might find something to plunder.
In this way he carried on the war with the Milesians for eleven years, in the course of which he inflicted on them two terrible blows; one in their own country in the district of Limeneium, the other in the plain of the Maeander. During six of these eleven years, Sadyattes, the son of Ardys who first lighted the flames of this war, was king of Lydia, and made the incursions. Only the five following years belong to the reign of Alyattes, son of Sadyattes, who (as I said before) inheriting the war from his father, applied himself to it unremittingly. The Milesians throughout the contest received no help at all from any of the Ionians, excepting those of Chios, who lent them troops in requital of a like service rendered them in former times, the Milesians having fought on the side of the Chios during the whole of the war between them and the people of Erythrae.
It was in the twelfth year of the war that the following mischance occurred from the firing of the harvest-fields. Scarcely had the corn been set alight by the soldiers when a violent wind carried the flames against the temple of Minerva Assesia[22], which caught fire and was burnt to the ground. At the time no one made any account of the circumstance; but afterwards, on the return of the army to Sardis, Alyattes fell sick. His illness continued, whereupon, either advised thereto by some friend, or perchance himself conceiving the idea, he sent messengers to Delphi to inquire of the god concerning his malady. On their arrival the Pythoness declared that no answer should be given them until they had rebuilt the temple of Minerva, burnt by the Lydians at Assesus in Milesia.
Thus much I know from information given me by the Delphians; the remainder of the story the Milesians add. The answer made by the oracle came to the ears of Periander[23], son of Cypselus, who was a very close friend to Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus at that period. He instantly despatched a messenger to report the oracle to him, in order that Thrasybulus, forewarned of its tenor, might the better adapt his measures to the posture of affairs.
Alyattes, the moment that the words of the oracle were reported to him, sent a herald to Miletus in hopes of concluding a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians for such a time as was needed to rebuild the temple. The herald went upon his way; but meantime Thrasybulus had been apprised of everything; and conjecturing what Alyattes would do, he contrived this artifice. He had all the corn that was in the city, whether belonging to himself or to private persons, brought into the market-place, and issued an order that the Milesians should hold themselves in readiness, and, when he gave the signal, should, one and all, fall to drinking and revelry.
The purpose for which he gave these orders was the following. He hoped that the Sardian herald, seeing so great store of corn upon the ground, and all the city given up to festivity, would inform Alyattes of it, which fell out as he anticipated. The herald observed the whole, and when he had delivered his message, went back to Sardis. This circumstance alone, as I gather, brought about the peace which ensued. Alyattes, who had hoped that there was now a great scarcity of corn in Miletus, and that the people were worn down to the last pitch of suffering, when he heard from the herald on his return from Miletus tidings so contrary to those he had expected, made a treaty with the enemy by which the two nations became close friends and allies. He then built at Assesus two temples to Minerva instead of one, and shortly after recovered from his malady. Such were the chief circumstances of the war which Alyattes waged with Thrasybulus and the Milesians.
This Periander, who apprised Thrasybulus of the oracle, was son of Cypselus, and tyrant of Corinth. In his time a very wonderful thing is said to have happened. The Corinthians and the Lesbians agree in their account of the matter. They relate that Arion of Methymna[24], who as a player on the harp, was second to no man living at that time, and who was, so far as we know, the first to invent the dithyrambic measure[25], to give it its name, and to recite in it at Corinth, was carried to Taenarum on the back of a dolphin.
He had lived for many years at the court of Periander, when a longing came upon him to sail across to Italy and Sicily. Having made rich profits in those parts, he wanted to recross the seas to Corinth. He therefore hired a vessel, the crew of which were Corinthians, thinking that there was no people in whom he could more safely confide; and, going on board, he set sail from Tarentum. The sailors, however, when they reached the open sea, formed a plot to throw him overboard and seize upon his riches. Discovering their design, he fell on his knees, beseeching them to spare his life, and making them welcome to his money. But they refused; and required him either to kill himself outright, if he wished for a grave on the dry land, or without loss of time to leap overboard into the sea. In this strait Arion begged them, since such was their pleasure, to allow him to mount upon the quarter-deck, dressed in his full costume, and there to play and sing, and promising that, as soon as his song was ended, he would destroy himself. Delighted at the prospect of hearing the very best harper in the world, they consented, and withdrew from the stern to the middle of the vessel: while Arion dressed himself in the full costume of his calling, took his harp, and standing on the quarter-deck, chanted the Orthian. His strain ended, he flung himself, fully attired as he was, headlong into the sea. The Corinthians then sailed on to Corinth. As for Arion, a dolphin, they say, took him upon his back and carried him to Taenarum, where he went ashore, and thence proceeded to Corinth in his musician's dress, and told all that had happened to him. Periander, however, disbelieved the story, and put Arion in ward, to prevent his leaving Corinth, while he watched anxiously for the return of the mariners. On their arrival he summoned them before him and asked them if they could give him any tiding of Arion. They returned for answer that he was alive and in good health in Italy, and that they had left him at Tarentum, where he was doing well. Thereupon Arion appeared before them, just as he was when he jumped from the vessel: the men, astonished and detected in falsehood, could no longer deny their guilt. Such is the account which the Corinthians and Lesbians give; and there is to this day at Taenarum, an offering of Arion's at the shrine, which is a small figure in bronze, representing a man seated upon a dolphin.
Having brought the war with the Milesians to a close, and reigned over the land of Lydia for fifty-seven years, Alyattes died. He was the second prince of his house who made offerings at Delphi. His gifts, which he sent on recovering from his sickness, were a great bowl of pure silver, with a salver in steel curiously inlaid, a work among all the offerings at Delphi the best worth looking at. Glaucus, the Chian, made it, the man who first invented the art of inlaying steel.
On the death of Alyattes, Croesus, his son, who was thirty-five years old, succeeded to the throne. Of the Greek cities, Ephesus was the first that he attacked. The Ephesians, when he laid siege to the place, made an offering of their city to Diana, by stretching a rope from the town wall to the temple of the goddess, which was distant from the ancient city, then besieged by Croesus, a space of seven furlongs. They were, as I said, the first Greeks whom he attacked. Afterwards, on some pretext or other, he made war in turn upon every Ionian and Aeolian state, bringing forward, where he could, a substantial ground of complaint; where such failed him, advancing some poor excuse.
In this way he made himself master of all the Greek cities in Asia, and forced them to become his tributaries; after which he began to think of building ships, and attacking the islanders. Everything had been got ready for this purpose, when Bias of Priêné (or, as some say, Pittacus the Mytilenean) put a stop to the project. The king had made inquiry of this person, who was lately arrived at Sardis, if there were any news from Greece; to which he answered, "Yes, sire, the islanders are gathering ten thousand horse, designing an expedition against thee and against thy capital." Croesus, thinking he spake seriously, broke out, "Ah, might the gods put such a thought into their minds as to attack the sons of the Lydians with cavalry!" "It seems, oh! king," rejoined the other, "that thou desirest earnestly to catch the islanders on horseback upon the mainland,- thou knowest well what would come of it. But what thinkest thou the islanders desire better, now that they hear thou art about to build ships and sail against them, than to catch the Lydians at sea, and there revenge on them the wrongs of their brothers upon the mainland, whom thou holdest in slavery?" Croesus was charmed with the turn of the speech; and thinking there was reason in what was said, gave up his ship-building and concluded a league of amity with the Ionians of the isles.
Croesus afterwards, in the course of many years, brought under his sway almost all the nations to the west of the Halys. The Lycians and Cilicians alone continued free; all the other tribes he reduced and held in subjection. They were the following: the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybians, Paphlagonians, Thynian and Bithynian Thracians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Pamphylians.
When all these conquests had been added to the Lydian empire, and the prosperity of Sardis was now at its height, there came thither, one after another, all the sages of Greece living at the time, and among them Solon[16], the Athenian. He was on his travels, having left Athens to be absent ten years, under the pretence of wishing to see the world, but really to avoid being forced to repeal any of the laws which, at the request of the Athenians, he had made for them. Without his sanction the Athenians could not repeal them, as they had bound themselves under a heavy curse to be governed for ten years by the laws which should be imposed on them by Solon.
On this account, as well as to see the world, Solon set out upon his travels, in the course of which he went to Egypt to the court of Amasis, and also came on a visit to Croesus at Sardis. Croesus received him as his guest, and lodged him in the royal palace. On the third or fourth day after, he bade his servants conduct Solon over his treasuries, and show him all their greatness and magnificence. When he had seen them all, and, so far as time allowed, inspected them, Croesus addressed this question to him. "Stranger of Athens, we have heard much of thy wisdom and of thy travels through many lands, from love of knowledge and a wish to see the world. I am curious therefore to inquire of thee, whom, of all the men that thou hast seen, thou deemest the most happy?" This he asked because he thought himself the happiest of mortals: but Solon answered him without flattery, according to his true sentiments, "Tellus[17] of Athens, sire." Full of astonishment at what he heard, Croesus demanded sharply, "And wherefore dost thou deem Tellus happiest?" To which the other replied, "First, because his country was flourishing in his days, and he himself had sons both beautiful and good, and he lived to see children born to each of them, and these children all grew up; and further because, after a life spent in what our people look upon as comfort, his end was surpassingly glorious. In a battle between the Athenians and their neighbours near Eleusis, he came to the assistance of his countrymen, routed the foe, and died upon the field most gallantly. The Athenians gave him a public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid him the highest honours."
Thus did Solon admonish Croesus by the example of Tellus, enumerating the manifold particulars of his happiness. When he had ended, Croesus inquired a second time, who after Tellus seemed to him the happiest, expecting that at any rate, he would be given the second place. "Cleobis and Bito[18]," Solon answered; "they were of Argive race; their fortune was enough for their wants, and they were besides endowed with so much bodily strength that they had both gained prizes at the Games. Also this tale is told of them:—There was a great festival in honour of the goddess Juno at Argos, to which their mother must needs be taken in a car. Now the oxen did not come home from the field in time: so the youths, fearful of being too late, put the yoke on their own necks, and themselves drew the car in which their mother rode. Five and forty furlongs did they draw her, and stopped before the temple. This deed of theirs was witnessed by the whole assembly of worshippers, and then their life closed in the best possible way. Herein, too, God showed forth most evidently, how much better a thing for man death is than life. For the Argive men, who stood around the car, extolled the vast strength of the youths; and the Argive women extolled the mother who was blessed with such a pair of sons; and the mother herself, overjoyed at the deed and at the praises it had won, standing straight before the image, besought the goddess to bestow on Cleobis and Bito, the sons who had so mightily honoured her, the highest blessing to which mortals can attain. Her prayer ended, they offered sacrifice and partook of the holy banquet, after which the two youths fell asleep in the temple. They never woke more, but so passed from the earth. The Argives, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made, which they gave to the shrine at Delphi."
When Solon had thus assigned these youths the second place, Croesus broke in angrily, "What, stranger of Athens, is my happiness, then, so utterly set at nought by thee, that thou dost not even put me on a level with private men?"
