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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The Histories of Herodotus is a foundational text in Western literature, providing a rich tapestry of historical narrative interwoven with personal anecdotes, cultural observations, and mythological elements. Written in a prose style that melds inquiry with storytelling, Herodotus's work explores the Greco-Persian Wars, while also delving into the customs, beliefs, and geographies of various civilizations known to him, from the Egyptians to the Scythians. This unique approach not only chronicles events but elevates history to a narrative art form, establishing a precedent for future historians and writers alike. Herodotus, often referred to as the 'Father of History,' was a Greek historian from Halicarnassus whose travels across the ancient world equipped him with a profound understanding of diverse cultures. His desire to record the past stemmed from a passionate commitment to truth and understanding, as well as a response to the tumultuous events of his time. His exposure to different societies and their narratives directly influenced his inclusive and comparative method, ultimately shaping the scope of historical inquiry. I highly recommend The Histories of Herodotus to readers seeking to appreciate the complexities of human nature and the interplay between myth and reality. This seminal work not only deepens our understanding of history but also enriches our perception of the world through Herodotus's insightful reflections, making it an indispensable read for both scholars and general readers. 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 of Herodotus
Table of Contents
Introduction
From desert oracles to sea-crossing armadas, a restless inquiry pursues how power rises, collides, and is remembered. The Histories gathers the wonders and terrors of the known world into a single, searching narrative, attentive to both grand campaigns and the quiet logic of local customs. Herodotus sets events within a landscape of rivers, cities, and deserts, but also within a human terrain of fear, pride, curiosity, and ambition. His vantage is neither narrowly Greek nor uncritically admiring of empire; it is the gaze of a traveler who wants to know why things happen and how people make sense of them.
This book is a classic because it inaugurates historical prose while preserving the vitality of epic storytelling. It forged a path between memory and investigation, asking not only what occurred but how events became the stories communities tell about themselves. Its mixture of analysis and anecdote influenced the evolution of history, ethnography, and travel literature. The work’s enduring themes—freedom and tyranny, fate and contingency, cultural difference and shared humanity—continue to resonate across centuries. Later readers recognized in Herodotus a foundational model of inquiry, one that balances skepticism with wonder, and narrative art with a disciplined attention to causes and contexts.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote in the fifth century BCE, composing in the Ionic dialect of Greek. The Histories examines the origins and course of the conflicts between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire, alongside extensive accounts of distant lands and peoples. The text was later divided by editors into nine books, each named for a Muse, a reminder of its literary as well as historical heritage. Herodotus is often honored, already in antiquity, as the father of history. He traveled widely, gathering reports, observing local practices, and shaping his findings into a coherent work that investigates human action on a continental scale.
At its broadest, the book announces an inquiry into the causes of a vast confrontation, then ranges outward to explore Lydian monarchs, Persian rulers, Egyptian priests, Scythian nomads, and many others. Geography, climate, resources, and ritual practices form an interpretive backdrop to political decisions and military campaigns. Herodotus builds the narrative from distinct yet interlocking stories, allowing readers to see how minor choices and local customs can influence momentous events. The result is a portrait of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds at a pivotal moment, assembled through episodes that illuminate the interplay between environment, belief, leadership, and chance.
Herodotus states a clear purpose: to prevent the deeds of nations from fading into oblivion and to inquire into their causes. His intention is commemorative and analytical at once. He memorializes remarkable actions while probing the impulses, circumstances, and miscalculations that make them possible. Without reducing events to a single explanation, he traces lines of responsibility through character, policy, and ethos. He is motivated by curiosity but governed by method, willing to pause the main narrative when a custom or landscape offers insight into a people’s choices. This dual commitment—to remember and to understand—gives the work its distinctive urgency.
Methodologically, The Histories combines personal observation, testimony from local informants, consultation of earlier accounts, and comparative reasoning. Herodotus often distinguishes what he has seen from what he has been told, weighs competing versions, and leaves room for uncertainty where evidence is mixed. He frequently situates a report within its cultural setting, showing how a community’s assumptions shape what is said and done. Speeches, catalogues, and set descriptions clarify motives and resources, while numerical and genealogical details anchor stories in recognizable frameworks. The result is neither simple chronicle nor pure speculation, but a layered investigation into how knowledge is gathered, tested, and narrated.
One of the book’s most striking features is its ethnographic breadth. Customs, laws, dress, diet, burial rites, and religious practices receive sustained attention, not as colorful digressions but as keys to understanding political behavior. Herodotus observes that each people finds its own way of life best, a recognition that tempers easy judgments and encourages comparison. By placing Greek practices among many others, he prompts readers to consider the relativity of norms and the contingency of power. This cultural perspective extends beyond curiosity; it situates strategy, alliance, and conflict within habits of thought, training, and belief that govern what communities can imagine and accept.
Herodotus achieves his aims through narrative artistry as much as through documentation. He structures episodes with foreshadowing and echo, lets small motifs recur across distances, and varies pace between swift summaries and patient scenes. Character sketches often hinge on a revealing decision or utterance, while vivid set pieces make places and rituals memorable. He balances marvels with scrutiny, acknowledging the allure of the extraordinary while testing it against plausibility. This stylistic versatility explains why the work invites rereading: it offers both the pleasures of story and the satisfactions of analysis, a combination that keeps readers alert to pattern without ignoring the pull of chance.
The Histories survived through manuscript transmission and has been read, studied, and translated for centuries. Its adaptability to different eras owes much to its capaciousness: readers may encounter it as political history, travel writing, moral reflection, or inquiry into knowledge itself. Modern editions and scholarship have refined our understanding of its contexts and sources, yet the text’s core remains accessible. The division into nine books has helped structure reading and teaching, while the work’s language and design reward close attention and comparative study. Its journey from antiquity to the present underscores the enduring appetite for narratives that unite breadth and explanation.
The book’s influence reaches historians, philosophers, anthropologists, and poets. Ancient authors engaged with or challenged its methods; later thinkers adopted its comparative stance and interest in causation. Modern historical writing inherits from Herodotus the practice of framing events within geography, economy, and culture, not merely reciting sequences of battles and treaties. Travel literature borrows his fusion of observation and story. Contemporary ethnography echoes his insistence on understanding a practice within its own logic. Even novelists have learned from his pacing and digressive structure, deploying small, telling episodes to illuminate vast systems of power, belief, and exchange.
For contemporary readers, The Histories offers a guide to thinking amid complexity. It shows how to handle conflicting reports without surrendering judgment, how to respect difference without abandoning critique, and how to track the ripple effects of decisions across landscapes and generations. Its enduring themes—hubris and restraint, freedom and domination, foresight and miscalculation—bear directly on modern questions of governance, empire, and identity. The book’s curiosity models intellectual hospitality; its caution models responsible skepticism. In an age saturated with information and rumor, Herodotus’s balance of openness and evaluation remains a practical virtue and an ethical stance.
In sum, this work marries memory to analysis, narrative to inquiry, and local detail to world-historical scope. It evokes awe at human ambition and ingenuity, sorrow at cruelty and loss, and fascination with the texture of customs that bind communities together. Its central concerns—the uses and limits of power, the allure and danger of certainty, the variability of human practice—grant it a lasting relevance. Readers return to The Histories not only to learn what happened, but to see how explanation itself is crafted. It endures because it teaches us to interpret action without reducing its mystery.
Synopsis (Selection)
Herodotus opens by stating his purpose: to preserve the memory of human achievements and to explain the causes of conflict between Greeks and non-Greeks. He begins with the Lydian kings, recounting the rise of Croesus, his wealth, alliances, and consultations of oracles. Background on the Medes and Persians introduces the birth and ascent of Cyrus, whose challenge overturns Lydian power. An ambiguous oracle that crossing the Halys would destroy a great empire frames Croesus's defeat and the capture of Sardis. Ethnographic notes on Lydian customs, Ionian cities, and regional geography accompany the narrative, linking personal decisions, ritual practice, and expanding imperial ambitions.
Attention shifts to Egypt, presented through inquiry into its geography, climate, and customs. Herodotus surveys the Nile's behavior, debates its sources, and compiles accounts from priests and travelers. He outlines a long succession of Egyptian rulers, monumental works, and religious practices, including the building of the great pyramids and the prominence of animal cults. The narrative describes linguistic experiments under Psammetichus, the role of Naucratis as a Greek emporium, and the reign of Amasis, who cultivates Greek ties. Throughout, comparisons between Egyptian and Greek practices underscore the book's method: assembling testimonies, weighing variants, and recording distinctive laws and ways of life.
Persian affairs resume with Cambyses' conquest of Egypt and accounts of his campaigns, excesses, and failed ventures toward Ethiopia. Reports of sacrilege and disorder precede the usurpation by a Magus posing as Smerdis. A group of seven Persian nobles conspires, kills the impostor, and debates the merits of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy before confirming Darius as king. Administrative reforms follow: satrapies are enumerated and tribute assessed across a vast empire. Herodotus interweaves descriptions of Arabia's aromatics, India's gold-digging ants, and the fortunes of Polycrates of Samos, illustrating the reach of Persian power and the interconnectedness of lands bordering the empire.
Herodotus then turns north to the Scythians, describing their origins, nomadic customs, and burial rites. Darius undertakes a campaign across the Danube, relying on an Ionian bridge and extended supply lines to pursue an elusive enemy. The Scythians avoid pitched battle, draw the Persians into vast spaces, and harass the invaders, prompting an eventual withdrawal. Ethnographic detail extends to neighboring peoples and to the Black Sea region's geography. The focus shifts to Libya and Cyrene, where tribal descriptions, stories of the Battid dynasty, and Persian interests reveal the empire's western limits. Throughout, environment and mobility shape the conduct and outcome of campaigns.
The narrative returns to the Aegean and mainland Greece. Persian commanders consolidate control in Thrace and exact submission from Macedonia, while developments in Ionia prepare the ground for revolt. The failure of the Naxos expedition leads Aristagoras of Miletus to seek allies, obtaining support from Athens and Eretria. Their joint force marches inland and burns Sardis, provoking a vigorous Persian response. Herodotus interlaces these events with the internal reorganization of Athens under Cleisthenes, the creation of new tribes, and conflicts with Sparta. The Ionian Revolt spreads and falters by stages, as rivalries, strategic choices, and resources determine the fate of cities.
After reversals at sea and land, the revolt collapses with the defeat at Lade and the capture of Miletus. Persian reprisals follow, while notable figures such as Histiaeus and Miltiades meet divergent ends. Darius then sends a punitive expedition under Datis and Artaphernes against the Aegean and mainland Greece. Naxos is subdued, Eretria is taken and its people deported, and the force lands at Marathon. Athens and Plataea stand together; a runner seeks Spartan aid, delayed by a festival. The Athenians win a decisive victory, and the Persians withdraw. Herodotus records tactical details, local traditions, and the immediate political consequences.
Preparations for renewed invasion occupy the next phase. Xerxes ascends, resolves on war after counsel and dreams, and assembles a vast multinational army. Engineering projects, including a canal through Mount Athos and pontoon bridges across the Hellespont, facilitate movement into Europe. Greek cities form a defensive alliance under Spartan leadership and choose Thermopylae and Artemisium as contested points. Leonidas and a small allied force hold the mountain pass until a flanking path is revealed; they are overwhelmed after prolonged resistance. Simultaneously, indecisive naval engagements occur at Artemisium. The Greek fleet withdraws southward, preserving cohesion for the next stage of the campaign.
With central Greece exposed, the Athenians evacuate their population to Salamis and other refuges. The Persians occupy and burn Athens, while the Greek commanders debate where to fight. Themistocles argues for a battle in the straits and, through a secret message to Xerxes, compels the Persians to engage in confined waters. The ensuing action at Salamis brings a decisive Greek naval victory under the eyes of the king. Xerxes retreats to Asia, leaving Mardonius to continue operations. Offers of accommodation are made to Athens and rejected; further evacuations occur as the Persians winter and prepare for renewed campaigning.
The campaign concludes with two coordinated victories. Greek forces under Pausanias assemble and defeat Mardonius at Plataea, killing the Persian commander and capturing the opulent camp. Herodotus notes dedications, discipline, and disputes over credit among allies. On the same day, according to his account, the fleet wins at Mycale, encouraging the Ionian cities to break with Persia. Subsequent operations, including the siege of Sestos, secure the Hellespont. The Histories end with brief portraits and reflections that frame a broad inquiry: preserving memory of great deeds, tracing the origins of war, and documenting the diverse customs and powers of the known world.
Historical Context
The Histories is set against the late Archaic and early Classical Eastern Mediterranean, roughly the sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. Its geographic scope stretches from the Aegean to the Nile, from the Black Sea to Mesopotamia and Iran. Herodotus himself, born around 484 BCE in Halicarnassus in Caria under Achaemenid suzerainty, wrote after the events he narrates, likely in the 440s to 420s, while residing in Athens and later Thurii in Magna Graecia. The work moves between Greek poleis and the imperial centers of the Persian Empire, preserving reports gathered through travel and inquiry, and situating Greek struggles within a vast, interconnected imperial world.
The sociopolitical landscape was marked by the rise of the Achaemenid Empire and the transformation of Greek city-states. In Greece, tyranny yielded to experiments in isonomia and democracy, notably at Athens after 508 BCE, while Sparta maintained a militarized oligarchy and led the Peloponnesian League. Ionian Greek cities on the Anatolian coast lived under Persian rule and paid tribute to satraps. Trade, coinage, and naval technology accelerated connectivity. Religious consultation at oracles guided state decisions. This environment of imperial expansion, inter-polis rivalry, and emerging panhellenism frames the conflicts and cross-cultural encounters that The Histories records and interprets.
Lydia under the Mermnadae dynasty dominated western Anatolia in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. From Gyges to Alyattes, it pressed Greek cities of Ionia; Croesus, reigning circa 560 to 546 BCE at Sardis, became famed for wealth and for early bimetallic coinage. He allied with Sparta and Delphi, fought on the Halys against the Medes, and later confronted Persia. Herodotus relates the emblematic tale of Solon advising Croesus, then the king misreading Delphic oracles before losing to Cyrus in 546. The narrative anchors the transition from regional Lydian power to the epochal ascendancy of the Persian Empire.
Cyrus II the Great consolidated the Achaemenid Empire between 559 and 530 BCE. He overthrew Astyages of Media in 550, seized Sardis from Croesus in 546, and captured Babylon in 539 BCE, claiming legitimacy through local cults. Persian rule organized satrapies, drew tribute, and built roads. Herodotus describes the Royal Road from Sardis to Susa and the relay couriers whom neither snow nor night delays, illustrating imperial communications. He uses Persian expansion to knit together disparate ethnographies, explaining how an empire of Medes, Persians, Lydians, Babylonians, and Greeks became the stage for the later wars that dominate his account.
Persian expansion into Egypt occurred under Cambyses II, son of Cyrus, who defeated Psamtik III in 525 BCE after the death of Amasis II. The Persians took Memphis, incorporated the Saite kingdom, and confronted Libyan and Nubian frontiers. Herodotus reports the episodes of Greek intermediaries, the fate of the Apis bull, and campaigns far south that strained logistics. He also preserves extensive observations on Egyptian customs, cities such as Sais and Heliopolis, and riverine agriculture, comparing them with Greek practices. By embedding Persian conquest within Egyptian history, the book chronicles how imperial dynamics shaped, and were shaped by, long-standing Nile civilizations.
Darius I seized power in 522 BCE after the overthrow of the usurper known as the Magus, restructuring the empire. Herodotus recounts the conspiracy of seven nobles and the Persian debate over constitutions, reflecting Greek political concerns through a Persian lens. Darius standardized tribute, minted the gold daric, and linked Nile and Red Sea by canal. His Scythian campaign around 513 rebuilt a bridge over the Bosporus by the Samian engineer Mandrocles and relied on Ionian Greeks to hold the Danube bridge. These projects reveal imperial reach and dependence on subject peoples, themes that the Histories uses to probe the fragility of vast dominion.
The Ionian Revolt (499 to 493 BCE) began after the failure of Aristagoras of Miletus to seize Naxos and his bid to stir the cities against Persia. Athens and Eretria aided the rebels, who burned Sardis in 498, provoking Darius to vow retribution. Persian counteroffensives culminated in the naval defeat of the Ionians at Lade (494) and the brutal fall of Miletus. Herodotus emphasizes factionalism among Ionians, the role of Histiaeus, and the consequences of rebellion, including deportations to the Tigris. He treats the revolt as the immediate trigger for the Persian invasions of mainland Greece and a lesson in disunity.
The first Persian invasion climaxed at Marathon in 490 BCE. Datis and Artaphernes crossed the Aegean, sacked Eretria, and landed on the plain northeast of Athens. Guided by Miltiades, the Athenians, joined by Plataeans, charged the numerically superior enemy, exploiting hoplite depth and the narrow field. Spartan aid was delayed by a religious truce. Herodotus gives casualty figures around 6,400 Persians and 192 Athenians, and details the runner to Sparta and the tactical envelopment. He makes Marathon a foundational moment, where citizen infantry defending their polis frustrated imperial arms, generating a model of courage and communal resolve.
Thermopylae and Artemisium in 480 BCE tested the emergent Hellenic League. Xerxes marched via the Hellespont while storms wrecked parts of his fleet off Magnesia. Leonidas led a small allied force to the pass at Thermopylae; betrayal by Ephialtes opened a mountain path, leading to the Spartans, Thespians, and Thebans remaining and dying in place. Simultaneously, at Artemisium, a Greek fleet under Eurybiades and Themistocles fought indecisive actions while weather again thinned Persian numbers. Herodotus integrates land and sea theaters, contrasting Persian mass and daring with Greek strategic delay, and memorializing the Spartan stand as moral example.
Salamis and the 479 campaigns decided the war. Themistocles, leveraging the cramped straits of Salamis and deceptive messages to Xerxes, induced battle; Greek triremes shattered the larger Persian fleet. Artemisia of Halicarnassus, Herodotus’s countrywoman, emerges as a singular commander advising caution and performing a famous ramming maneuver. Xerxes withdrew to Asia, leaving Mardonius with land forces. At Plataea, under Spartan regent Pausanias, a diverse Greek army defeated Persia; on the same day, according to tradition, Greeks under Leotychidas and Xanthippus triumphed at Mycale, where Ionian contingents turned. Herodotus makes these victories the culmination of collective strategy and fortune.
The creation of a panhellenic war effort preceded victory. In 483 BCE, Athenian silver from Laurion funded about 200 triremes, a navy that Themistocles redirected from rivalry with Aegina to Persian defense. The congress at Corinth in 481 forged the Hellenic League, swearing oaths, deciding on joint command, and committing to fight at Thermopylae and Artemisium. Evacuation of Attica and the fortification of the Piraeus embodied an unprecedented maritime orientation. Herodotus links these policy choices to decisive outcomes, underscoring how institutional adaptability, maritime technology, and political compromise transformed scattered poleis into a coalition capable of resisting an empire.
Athenian internal reforms laid groundwork for resilience. Cleisthenes reorganized the citizen body in 508 or 507 BCE into ten tribes and a Council of 500, diluting clan power and fostering civic identity. Ostracism, used from the 480s, checked potential tyrants. The earlier Peisistratid tyranny had ended in 510 with Spartan intervention, but Hippias later advised Persia and accompanied the Marathon expedition. Herodotus shows how memories of tyranny sharpened Athenian commitments to law and accountability, and how democratic mechanisms marshaled manpower and decision making in crisis, while also creating new vulnerabilities to demagogy and rivalry among ambitious leaders.
Sparta’s constitution, attributed to Lycurgus, featured dual kings, a council of elders, ephors, and a rigorously trained citizen hoplite class sustained by helot labor, especially in Messenia. Sparta led the Peloponnesian League from the sixth century, prioritizing land warfare and stability over innovation. Domestic insecurity made distant campaigns rare. Herodotus presents Spartan deliberation, religiosity, and discipline, from consultation of the Delphic oracle to the ritual constraints that delayed at Marathon. Spartan prestige and leadership at Plataea proved decisive, yet the narrative also hints at tensions between Spartan caution and the strategic daring favored by naval Athens.
The Western Mediterranean formed a related theater. In 480 BCE Carthage, reportedly led by Hamilcar, invaded Sicily and was defeated at Himera by Greek tyrants Gelon of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas. Herodotus notes the coincidence of Himera with Salamis and reports claims of coordination with Persia, though evidence is uncertain. The episode displays the broader pressures on Greek communities and the central role of tyrants in mobilizing resources. By juxtaposing Sicilian events with mainland battles, the Histories portrays a Mediterranean wide contest in which Greek survival depended on local initiative and the contingency of overlapping wars.
Divination, science, and custom interweave in decision making. States and monarchs consulted Delphi and other oracles: Croesus misread a prophecy about a great empire falling; the Spartans and Athenians sought guidance before major campaigns; Xerxes dreamed ominous dreams. Herodotus records the solar eclipse of 585 BCE, attributed to Thales, halting a war between Lydians and Medes, and he catalogs nomoi of Egyptians, Scythians, Persians, and Greeks to highlight cultural plurality. By showing how signs are interpreted within political contexts, the book uses religious and natural phenomena to probe causation, prudence, and the frequent human failure to read events rightly.
The Histories functions as a critique of autocracy and imperial overreach. Herodotus depicts the volatility of kingship: Cambyses’ impieties, Darius’ centralization, Xerxes’ punitive hubris, and Croesus’ downfall after misinterpreting oracles. Satrapal exactions and mass mobilizations expose the burdens on subject peoples. By contrasting Persian despotism with Greek isonomia, he implies that accountability and public deliberation yield better outcomes. The Persian constitutional debate dramatizes the perils and merits of regimes. Repeated patterns of hubris answered by nemesis frame a political ethics that warns against unbounded power, reckless advisers, and the suppression of frank counsel in imperial courts.
Herodotus also critiques Greek society. He exposes fissures among poleis, the betrayals of medizers, and the costs of factionalism that doomed Ionia at Lade. He records slavery and helotry as structural injustices underlying both Spartan order and Athenian prosperity. Democratic Athens, while valorized for collective courage, ostracizes benefactors such as Themistocles, revealing instability in popular judgment. Oracular manipulation and elite rivalry distort policy. By juxtaposing customs across cultures, he undermines chauvinism and urges tolerance, while insisting that freedom demands discipline and unity. The book thus lays bare class divides, civic fragility, and the social toll of war in the fifth century BCE.
Author Biography
Herodotus was a Greek prose writer of the fifth century BCE, widely regarded as a foundational figure in historical inquiry. Known primarily for the Histories, he explored the origins and course of the conflicts between Greeks and the Achaemenid Persian Empire while recording customs, geographies, and stories from many peoples. Ancient writers, notably Cicero, later called him the “father of history,” a label that signals both his ambition and his lasting influence. Writing in Ionic Greek, he combined narrative, investigation, and ethnographic description, shaping a mode of explanation that sought causes and weighed competing reports rather than merely preserving heroic tales.
Ancient testimony places his origins in Halicarnassus, a multilingual port in Caria under Persian rule, a setting that exposed him to Greek and Near Eastern cultures. Specific details of his education are not preserved, but his prose reflects the Ionian tradition of inquiry and an engagement with earlier logographers. He names and critiques Hecataeus, indicating familiarity with that genre’s genealogical and geographical interests. Homeric epic supplied models of grand narrative and moral reflection, even as he adapted those elements to prose. His language is the Ionic dialect, whose rhythms and vocabulary tie him to earlier East Greek writers and oral storytelling practices.
In the Histories, Herodotus describes investigating events and customs through autopsy, conversation, and comparison. He reports personal observation in Egypt, along the Black Sea, and at sites in the eastern Mediterranean, and he records accounts from Phoenicians, Persians, and other interlocutors. He frequently sets out multiple explanations, marking what he was told and what he finds most convincing, while acknowledging uncertainty when evidence is lacking. This methodological self-awareness—signaled by his term historie, “inquiry”—distinguishes his work from mere chronicle. He attends to geography, economy, and social practice, arguing that human choices, contingency, and the workings of power help explain success and failure.
The Histories traces a long arc from the rise of Croesus and the Lydian monarchy to Xerxes’ invasion of Greece and the eventual Greek victories in the early fifth century BCE. Along the way, Herodotus develops ethnographic logoi on Egypt, Scythia, Lydia, and Persia, integrates inquiries into oracles and portents, and explores themes of hubris, fortune, and the instability of empire. His narrative moves by association as well as chronology, allowing digressions that illuminate motives and cultural norms. Later editors divided the work into nine books, named after the Muses, a convention that shaped how readers navigate the sprawling composition.
Herodotus composed over many years, revising and expanding as new materials entered his horizon. While the production context is not documented in detail, the text itself shows careful structuring, ring composition, and an interest in causation that knits disparate episodes together. He draws on oral reports, inscriptions, lists, and poetic traditions, sometimes quoting or paraphrasing earlier verse. His prose balances vivid anecdote with systematic description, and he often pauses to evaluate plausibility or to mark the limits of knowledge. The resulting work stands at the intersection of geography, ethnography, and political narrative, opening a durable path for prose investigation of the past.
Reception in antiquity was mixed but consequential. Thucydides’ history, composed later in the fifth century, advances a more austere model of analysis that implicitly contrasts with Herodotus’s expansive ethnography and storytelling. Cicero praised him, and later biographers and critics both used and contested his accounts; Plutarch’s essay on his “malice” is a notable example of skeptical engagement. Despite doubts about specific reports, ancient geographers and historians mined the Histories for information about lands, peoples, and imperial administration. By the Hellenistic and Roman periods, he had become a standard author, valued for style as well as for the breadth of his material.
Herodotus’s later years are not securely documented. Ancient traditions associate him with Athens and with the colony of Thurii in southern Italy; details of his final years remain uncertain. His legacy, however, is unmistakable. The Histories continues to inform understandings of the Achaemenid world, Archaic and Classical Greece, and the Mediterranean’s connective tissues. Scholars read him critically, testing his reports against archaeology, epigraphy, and comparative anthropology, yet his methodological candor and curiosity still inspire. As a writer, he shaped expectations for narrative history; as an inquirer, he modeled how to ask and weigh questions.
The Histories of Herodotus
Book I: Clio
These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, 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 actions 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, 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, a city of Colchis, on the river Phasis; 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, 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,[2q] 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 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.[1q]
Croesus, son of Alyattes, by birth a Lydian, was lord of all the nations to the west of the river Halys. This stream, which separates Syria from Paphlagonia, runs with a course from south to north, and finally falls into the Euxine. 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, in the manner which I will now relate. There was a certain king of Sardis, Candaules 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, 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, 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.' 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. 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, 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 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 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," 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?"
"Oh! Croesus," replied the other, "thou askedst a question concerning the condition of man, of one who knows that the power above us is full of jealousy, and fond of troubling our lot. A long life gives one to witness much,[3q]
