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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Herodotus's "The Histories" stands as a seminal text in the annals of history and literature, merging anecdotal eyewitness accounts, elaborate descriptions, and an engaging narrative style. Composed in the 5th century BCE, it ventures into the cultural and political landscapes of various societies, from the towering edifices of Egypt to the fervent battles of Greece and Persia. Herodotus employs a sophisticated yet accessible prose that deftly intertwines personal observation with a meticulous chronicle of events, offering not only historical insight but also a meditation on the nature of truth and memory. His work was revolutionary, setting the foundational framework for the discipline of history, and providing a rich tapestry of the ancient world. Herodotus, often called the "Father of History," was himself a traveler and an inquisitive mind, influenced by the complexities of the Persian Wars and the diverse cultures he encountered. Born in Halicarnassus, his explorative journeys through places like Egypt and Babylon imbued him with a deep curiosity about human experience, politics, and war. His intent was not merely to document events but to convey the essence of the human condition, reflecting the political and social ethos of his time. "The Histories of Herodotus" is an essential read for those who seek to understand the interplay of history, culture, and identity in the ancient world. Readers will find rich narratives and unparalleled insights that remain relevant today, inviting them to reflect on the lessons of history and the unfolding story of humanity. 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
At the meeting point of restless curiosity and imperial ambition, a traveler-historian follows the widening ripples of rumor, memory, and witness as small, quarrelsome Greek communities and a vast, orderly Persian empire draw each other into view, measure customs and power against one another, mistake pride for certainty, and, by turns cautious and audacious, are swept toward encounters that test the limits of fortune, the reach of kings, and the stubbornness of human nature, while seas, rivers, and deserts become stages for choice and chance, and the many voices of cities, courts, and camps braid into an inquiry about how conflicts begin and why they matter.
Few works earn the stature of a foundational classic as decisively as The Histories. It stands as the earliest surviving extended work of historical prose in the Western tradition, a book that marries investigative method with narrative artistry. Its pages move from lively portraits of peoples and places to analyses of causes and choices, holding readers through voice, scene, and argument. Because it does not separate storytelling from inquiry, it forged a model for historical writing that remains compelling: fact-seeking guided by curiosity, shaped into a coherent tale. That blend ensures its endurance as literature as well as source.
Herodotus, a Greek from Halicarnassus in Caria, composed The Histories in the fifth century BCE. Writing in the Ionic dialect, he presents what he calls an inquiry into past events, with attention to how and why they occurred. The work grew from the historical horizon of his time, when the memory of conflicts between Greek communities and the Persian Empire remained vivid. Without assuming later conclusions, he assembles materials from different regions of the eastern Mediterranean and beyond, tracing lines of power, custom, and exchange. His authorial presence is clear: a guiding mind who asks questions, compares accounts, and assesses plausibility.
The composition and transmission of The Histories reflect both ambition and care. The text circulated in classical antiquity and, by later editorial tradition, is arranged in nine books, each with distinctive emphases that together build a vast architecture of narrative. Herodotus’ prose moves with conversational clarity, yet accommodates catalogues, speeches, set pieces, and reflective pauses. He draws attention to sources and claims of direct observation, but also records what he has been told, flagging uncertainty when needed. The overall design favors a braided structure, allowing local stories to illuminate larger currents without losing sight of the overarching investigation.
At its core, the book is an exploration of the causes and courses of encounters between Greeks and Persians, set within a larger panorama of earlier kingdoms and rising empires. Herodotus begins with accounts of peoples and rulers whose ambitions, alliances, and miscalculations shaped the conditions for wider conflict. The inquiries move gradually from Lydia and the Near East to the growth of Persian authority and its reach across Anatolia and into the Aegean. Along the way, the narrative pauses to consider geography, trade, religion, law, and memory—elements that help explain how communities imagine themselves and understand others.
Herodotus practices a method that values evidence, contrast, and context. He gathers testimonies, inscriptions, local traditions, and practical observations, and he often offers competing explanations, inviting readers to weigh them. He can be credulous about marvels, but he is also willing to express doubt or adjust judgments when information conflicts. Customs fascinate him; he attends closely to burial rites, dietary rules, dress, and ritual as ways to grasp social worlds. Above all, he treats causation as multifaceted: decisions by leaders, constraints of terrain and logistics, the power of chance, and the force of belief all play roles in events.
Themes of power and its reversals recur insistently. The rise and fall of rulers exemplify the volatility of human ambition, while communities discover that prosperity breeds risk when it shades into arrogance. Moral reflection accompanies political analysis: the limits of human foresight, the burden of responsibility in command, and the uneasy dialogue between freedom and obedience. Explanations that invoke divine warning or sanction appear alongside practical considerations, not as simple certainties but as parts of how people thought. By staging different viewpoints, Herodotus lets readers sense the instability of fortune and the fragile equilibrium on which empires rest.
As literature, The Histories influenced the shape of historical writing and beyond. Later Greek and Roman authors inherited from it the ambition to explain events through narrative form, the use of speech and scene, and the habit of scrutinizing sources. It stands as a touchstone for ethnographic description, encouraging attention to cultural difference without reducing it to caricature. The book also seeded traditions of travel writing and political storytelling, showing how the movement of people and ideas across borders can drive a plot. Even critical successors measured themselves against its example, refining methods in conversation with its achievements.
Readers across centuries have debated Herodotus’ accuracy, yet the work’s honesty about its own limits is part of its appeal. Ancient critics praised his range even as some faulted him for credulity; modern scholarship often confirms details from archaeology, while also noting where hearsay or embellishment has entered. Through manuscript culture and learned commentary, the text remained alive from antiquity through the Byzantine tradition and into modern study. Its survival owes to the fascination it inspires: a storehouse of information, a crafted narrative, and a window onto the mental worlds of people who sought meaning in turbulent times.
Approached as a journey rather than a ledger, The Histories rewards patient attention to how stories interlock. Digressions are deliberate, framing the main thread by showing the breadth of the world that frames decisions. Speeches illuminate character and policy; lists and genealogies map relationships; anecdotes crystallize assumptions. The reader learns to see how explanation works when evidence is uneven and motives are contested. The book thus teaches an attitude: balance assertion with scrutiny, value context, and let complexity stand where reduction would mislead. In learning how Herodotus thinks, we practice how to examine consequential claims in any field.
That stance has clear contemporary relevance. In an interconnected world, encounters across languages, laws, and customs remain sources of friction and discovery. Debates over empire, autonomy, security, and identity echo concerns that animate Herodotus’ inquiry. His insistence on hearing multiple sides, marking uncertainty, and tracing causes across cultural boundaries models intellectual humility and civic seriousness. The pages also remind us that information travels through human networks, shaped by interest and memory, and so must be sifted. Reading The Histories today is to rehearse skills of critical listening and empathetic imagination that matter in journalism, policy, scholarship, and everyday life.
To enter The Histories is to join a conversation about the uses of power and the obligations of knowledge. The book’s classic status rests not only on precedence but on vitality: it shows how narrative can search for truth without pretending to possess it entirely. Its artistry, range, and curiosity draw readers into a world simultaneously distant and familiar, where choices carry long shadows and cultures learn by looking outward. In this balance of story and inquiry lie its lasting appeal and present urgency, an invitation to meet complexity with patience and to reckon with the forces that shape common destinies.
Synopsis
The Histories, composed by Herodotus in the fifth century BCE and traditionally divided into nine books, sets out to explain the causes of conflict between Greeks and non-Greeks and to preserve the memory of remarkable deeds. Bringing together travel observations, reports from informants, and stories circulating in different regions, Herodotus weighs competing accounts and invites readers to consider how knowledge is gathered. The narrative moves between inquiry and action, combining ethnography with political and military history. At its center stands the rise of the Persian Empire and the series of confrontations with Greek communities, framed by questions about power, fortune, responsibility, and the limits of human foresight.
Herodotus opens by recounting stories of legendary abductions that foreshadow disputes over honor and reciprocity, then turns to the kings of Lydia. The rise and wealth of Croesus provide an early case study in the instability of human fortune and the weight of counsel. Seeking to secure his position, Croesus tests oracles, explores alliances with Greek cities, and confronts the expanding power of Persia. The narrative merges political calculation with reflections on destiny, presenting multiple explanations for decisions taken. This Lydian history establishes the pattern of interwoven logoi: regional accounts that clarify customs and circumstances, while gradually converging on the larger Greek–Persian confrontation.
Attention shifts to Persia’s ascent under Cyrus, whose campaigns absorb neighboring powers and reshape the map of the Near East. Herodotus reports varied traditions about Cyrus’s origins and tactics, noting where sources diverge and how rumor and memory interact. Encounters with Ionian Greeks introduce questions about autonomy, tribute, and local leadership. Extended digressions describe lands and peoples brought into the imperial orbit, including notable cities, rivers, and ritual practices. Accounts of Babylon and other centers highlight the interplay of engineering, geography, and rule. Throughout, Herodotus balances admiration for imperial organization with warnings about overreach, sketching the mechanisms by which empires expand and encounter resistance.
The conquest of Egypt under Cambyses anchors a long inquiry into Egyptian geography, religious life, and social customs. Herodotus examines the Nile’s behavior, funerary practices, animal cults, and the record of earlier kings, comparing Egyptian usage with Greek norms and evaluating competing explanations. Once the narrative returns to Persian affairs, internal upheaval and succession lead to the rule of Darius. Administrative order is a prominent theme: Herodotus surveys tribute systems, satrapies, royal communications, and great roads that knit distant territories together. Lists of peoples and levies combine with reports of councils and decisions, preparing the way for renewed Persian ambitions beyond Asia.
Darius’s northern campaign against the Scythians prompts one of the work’s most distinctive ethnographic portraits. Herodotus describes nomadic lifeways, warfare, and ritual, and reflects on how geography shapes strategy. The narrative ranges through Thrace and the regions around the Danube, considering bridges, supply, and the coordination of diverse contingents. Accounts of neighboring peoples, including customs in Libya and Arabia, widen the comparative frame. While military events unfold, Herodotus intersperses marvels, anecdotes, and cautionary tales about leaders who misread terrain or underestimate unfamiliar opponents. The Scythian logos becomes a case study in the limits of imperial reach and the unpredictability of campaigns conducted at great distances.
Persian influence over the Greek cities of Asia Minor sets the stage for the Ionian Revolt, in which local rivalries, grievances, and strategic miscalculations spill into open resistance. Figures such as Aristagoras reveal the interplay between personal ambition and communal risk, while the burning of a major Anatolian center intensifies imperial resolve. Herodotus tracks how this unrest draws in mainland Greeks, reshapes alliances, and prompts retaliatory expeditions across the Aegean. A landmark battle in Attica focuses attention on hoplite warfare, tactics, and logistics. The narrative emphasizes deliberation and contingency, showing how choices by commanders and cities carry consequences beyond their immediate horizons.
Xerxes’ accession and decision to renew large-scale operations against Greece introduce scenes of counsel that dramatize conflicting advice at the Persian court. Herodotus dwells on musters, equipment, and the building works that make the invasion possible, including the bridging of the Hellespont and the canal at Mount Athos. In Greece, negotiations produce a defensive coalition that must reconcile regional rivalries and strategic priorities, informed by oracles and intelligence. The campaign moves through northern Greece to a famous stand at a mountain pass and concurrent naval actions. Leadership, morale, and the management of limited resources define the Greek response to a massive imperial advance.
Subsequent phases of the war feature decisive sea and land engagements, sieges, and shifting calculations on both sides. Herodotus details fleet dispositions, ruses, and debates within the Greek alliance, along with perspectives from Persian commanders. He links battlefield developments with supply lines, weather, and terrain, and he pauses to report inscriptions, dedications, and omens that shaped morale. The narrative considers the fate of cities caught between allegiance and survival, the burdens placed on subject peoples, and the strains within imperial structures. By interlacing campaigns with reflective episodes, Herodotus explores how success and failure emerge from judgment, chance, and the pressures of coalition warfare.
Across its intertwined histories, the work advances a durable inquiry into power, culture, and memory. Herodotus models a method that records different voices, tests stories against observation, and marks the limits of certainty. He probes the instability of prosperity, the cost of arrogance, and the variability of customs, urging readers to balance admiration with scrutiny. Without reducing events to a single cause, The Histories portrays empire and resistance as recurrent human patterns shaped by ambition and circumstance. Its enduring significance lies in the ambition to preserve deeds from oblivion while examining how they became possible, establishing a foundation for historical understanding that remains influential.
Historical Context
The Histories emerges from the mid-fifth century BCE eastern Mediterranean, a world dominated by the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the network of independent Greek city-states. Herodotus sets his inquiry against landscapes stretching from the Aegean to Egypt and Mesopotamia, where imperial satrapies, tributary obligations, and naval coalitions framed politics and war. Greek religion, public festivals, and civic assemblies intersected with royal courts, priesthoods, and long-distance trade. In this setting, Herodotus investigates causes, customs, and power, organizing his narrative around the collision between Persian imperial ambition and Greek self-governing communities—contrasting values of empire and freedom that structured the political and moral debates of his generation.
Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus in Caria, probably in the early fifth century BCE, to an Ionian Greek milieu under Persian suzerainty. His birthplace was culturally mixed—Greek, Carian, and Persian influences overlapped—and ruled by local dynasts loyal to the Great King. Ancient testimonies place him later in Athens and in the western Greek colony of Thurii in southern Italy, where he may have resided during the 440s–420s. His life coincided with dramatic shifts: the Persian invasions of Greece, the rise of Athenian hegemony, and tensions among Greek poleis. His work is shaped by movement—journeys, reports, and interviews—across regions integrated by empire and sea.
The Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus II around the mid-sixth century BCE, provides the geopolitical frame. Cyrus absorbed Lydia (with its capital at Sardis) approximately 546 BCE and captured Babylon in 539. Cambyses II added Egypt around 525. Darius I (r. 522–486) consolidated administration through satrapies, standardized tribute, minted gold darics, and maintained arterial routes such as the Royal Road from Sardis to Susa with a renowned courier system. Xerxes (r. 486–465) inherited this vast, multilingual structure. Herodotus catalogues the empire’s peoples, armies, and fiscal burdens, presenting Persian monarchy as both efficient and vulnerable to overreach.
Greek political life centered on the polis, a citizen community with laws, councils, and assemblies. Athens, after Cleisthenes’ reforms around 508/7 BCE, developed institutions of broad citizen participation—councils, large juries, and magistracies selected by lot. Sparta, by contrast, maintained a disciplined oligarchy with dual kingship and the Gerousia, supported by the helot system. Many Greek cities had known sixth-century tyrannies before evolving toward oligarchic or democratic forms. Along the Anatolian coast, Ionian cities lived under Persian rule, negotiating autonomy, tribute, and local elites. The variety of constitutions informs Herodotus’ comparisons of regimes and his interest in law and custom.
The Ionian Revolt of 499–494 BCE was a pivotal prelude to the larger conflict. Sparked by grievances against Persian-appointed rulers and fiscal demands, the revolt saw Greek cities of Asia Minor, aided briefly by Athens and Eretria, attack Sardis and later face a decisive defeat at Lade. Persian reprisals reimposed control. In The Histories, this episode functions as both a factual cause and a moral key: it illustrates imperial-provincial friction, the risks of hasty alliances, and the contingency of success. Herodotus traces lines from local unrest to imperial strategy, portraying the revolt as the seed of wider confrontation.
The Persian Wars of 490–479 BCE structure much of Herodotus’ narrative. Darius’ expedition met defeat at Marathon (490), an event that became emblematic of hoplite resolve. Xerxes’ massive campaign included the stand at Thermopylae (480), the naval battle at Salamis the same year, and the decisive Greek victories at Plataea and Mycale (479). Herodotus records forces, councils of war, and stratagems, preserving diverse Greek perspectives and Persian motives. He situates military events within political calculation—debates in councils, calls to common Hellenic identity, and competing city interests—revealing how alliances formed under pressure and how leadership emerged amid uncertainty.
After 479 BCE, Greek politics shifted to Athenian leadership of the Delian League, founded around 477. What began as a defensive alliance against Persia evolved into Athenian imperial rule, with tribute assessments, garrisons, and judicial reach over allies. Building programs and the Long Walls (mid-fifth century) signaled confidence and control. Herodotus writes in the shadow of this transformation, aware that hegemonic structures reproduce the dynamics of domination his narrative assigns to Persia. His attention to the cycle of power—acquisition, hubris, and decline—resonates with contemporary anxieties about Athens’ behavior, even as the Persian threat receded from the Aegean.
Economic and technological developments shaped the era’s capacities. Lydia pioneered coinage in the late seventh to early sixth century BCE; by the fifth century, coins facilitated payments across the Aegean and Near East. Persian darics symbolized imperial finance, while Athenian silver from Laurion, intensified after a new seam was found in the 480s, funded trireme fleets advocated by Themistocles. Shipbuilding, bronze rams, and naval tactics transformed warfare and labor, drawing poorer citizens into rowing crews. Overland roads, harbors, and emporia integrated markets. Colonization in western seas during the Archaic period, and the later foundation of Thurii, widened Greek horizons that Herodotus explores.
Social structures underpinned these political economies. Slavery existed across the Greek world; in Athens, enslaved labor and metics contributed to workshops, mines, and commerce. Spartan society rested on helot exploitation, with periodic tensions and controls. Women’s roles varied by city; Spartan women held notable property rights relative to other poleis, while most Greek women’s public participation was limited. The Persian Empire, comprising many ethnic groups, coordinated tribute, military levies, and local laws through satrapal authority. Herodotus observes these variations, connecting social organization to military capacity, political stability, and the moral judgments contemporaries made about freedom and servitude.
Religion and divination structured decision-making. Oracles—most notably Delphi—were consulted by Greeks and, according to Herodotus, by foreign rulers. Sacrifices, omens, and seers informed public policy, especially in times of war. Panhellenic sanctuaries such as Olympia, Delphi, and Isthmia offered arenas where rival cities met in ritual competition, forging networks and prestige. Herodotus preserves oracular responses and dedications, interpreting them as culturally contingent and occasionally ambiguous. His narrative shows how religious authority could bolster or restrain political ambition, and how different communities interpreted divine signs within the constraints of their institutions and traditions.
Cultural life was rich and contested. Homeric poetry supplied shared myth and moral language; lyric and choral traditions flourished across the Archaic and early Classical eras. In Athens, tragedy and comedy became civic institutions; Aeschylus’ Persians (472 BCE) dramatized the wars from the enemy’s perspective. Prose inquiry advanced through logographers like Hecataeus of Miletus, whose genealogies and geographical accounts prefigure Herodotus’ scope. The Histories, written in Ionic prose, blends catalog, travel report, and causal analysis. It reflects a milieu where public performance, debate, and textual circulation shaped reputation and knowledge, and where competing explanations of events were weighed before audiences.
Herodotus’ ethnographic interests mirror fifth-century curiosity and exchange. He reports on Egypt’s antiquity and riverine economy, Scythian steppe lifeways, Phoenician seamanship, Babylonian practices, and Libyan and Thracian customs. Greek commercial presence at Naucratis in Egypt fostered contact and information during the sixth and fifth centuries. While the extent of Herodotus’ travels cannot be verified in every case, he repeatedly distinguishes personal observation from hearsay, preserving conflicting accounts. Through these comparisons, he invites readers to question the universality of Greek norms, presenting culture as patterned yet diverse—an approach that both reflects and challenges contemporary Greek self-understanding.
Debates about law and constitutional order inform the work’s reflections. Athenian reforms, from Solon’s measures in the early sixth century to Cleisthenes’ reorganization, supply a backdrop for discussions of isonomia (equality under law). Herodotus stages a famous constitutional debate among Persian elites, presenting arguments for rule by the many, the few, and the one—a literary device that echoes Greek political discourse. He juxtaposes nomos (custom) as binding across communities while revealing how institutions concentrate or disperse power. This preoccupation with how law shapes behavior aligns his inquiry with broader fifth-century explorations of civic order.
Military systems offer another axis of comparison. Greek hoplite warfare relied on heavy infantry, shield-wall discipline, and citizen-soldiers equipped at personal or civic expense. The rise of large fleets—manned by citizen rowers—linked military power to democratic participation, as Athenian naval victories elevated the political influence of poorer citizens. Persian forces integrated archers, cavalry, and elite infantry drawn from diverse provinces, supported by long-range logistics. Herodotus catalogues contingents and tactics, highlighting how terrain, supply, leadership, and morale affect outcomes. His accounts interweave material capacity with political will, suggesting that institutions predispose communities toward particular strategic choices.
Information circulated through oral tradition, inscriptions, and sanctuaries that accumulated votive offerings and records. Herodotus cites poets, local informants, interpreters, and temple personnel, and notes inscriptions and dedications he claims to have seen. Papyrus facilitated prose composition and transmission. Priesthoods in Egypt and Mesopotamia preserved archives and ritual expertise, while Greek festivals fostered competitive storytelling and public memory. By tracing multiple versions of events and marking uncertainty, Herodotus reflects an intellectual environment that valued debate and empirical detail within the limits of available evidence—an environment shaped by travel, trade, and the prestige of learned communities.
The later sections of The Histories were composed amid changing Greek power dynamics. The Peloponnesian War began in 431 BCE, pitting Athens and its allies against Sparta and its coalition. Although Herodotus’ narrative centers on earlier conflicts, his audience knew that inter-Greek warfare had replaced the Persian threat as the primary danger. Appeals to Hellenic unity during the Persian Wars contrasted with subsequent stasis (civil strife). His emphasis on the instability of fortune and the dangers of imperial domination thus had immediate relevance, offering an implicit commentary on current policies without directly narrating the contemporary war.
Herodotus also addresses economic extraction and imperial administration. He lists tributes, labor levies, and resource flows within the Persian system, illustrating how revenue underwrote infrastructure and armies. Comparable practices appear in Athenian assessments upon allies. Attention to measurement—stades, days’ journeys—and to built works such as canals and bridges underscores how coordinated labor and technical knowledge enabled expansion. Herodotus records the construction and risks of such undertakings, not to marvel alone but to link material ambition with political calculation. Infrastructure becomes a lens on sovereignty: who commands bodies and resources, and at what cost to resilience and legitimacy?","Throughout, Herodotus frames causation as moral and structural. Hubris invites nemesis; transgression of limits—by kings, cities, or individuals—leads to reversal. Yet he balances this moral vocabulary with pragmatic analysis of planning, deliberation, and chance. Oracles speak ambiguously; leaders misread signs; communities learn through loss. By cataloguing alternative accounts and motivations, he situates responsibility in choices shaped by custom, law, and circumstance. This layered approach reflects fifth-century Greek attempts to reconcile divine order with human agency, a tension evident in public trials, theatrical performances, and civic debate over accountability and the nature of justice.","The Histories thus mirrors its age: a connected world of empires and city-states, maritime economies and sacred centers, local customs and expansive ambitions. It critiques overcentralized power while acknowledging the administrative sophistication that empire brings; it celebrates civic freedom yet records internecine conflict. Herodotus’ method—investigation, comparison, and sourced report—anchors a new kind of prose inquiry that seeks causes beyond heroic myth. By preserving multiple voices, he offers both a memorial to deeds and a warning: power untempered by law and reflection tends toward excess, and cultures blind to their own assumptions misread others and themselves.
Author Biography
Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek prose author active in the fifth century BCE, commonly styled the father of history. His surviving work, the Histories, investigates the origins and course of the conflicts between the Greek cities and the Persian Empire while encompassing wide-ranging accounts of lands, peoples, and monuments. Writing in Ionic Greek, he presented inquiry as a method for preserving human deeds and explaining causes. Living amid the aftermath of the Greco-Persian Wars and the rise of classical Athens, he developed a narrative that combined temporal sequence with thematic digression, creating a foundational model for historical explanation in the Mediterranean world.
Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus in Caria, a Dorian-founded city on the Anatolian coast that, in his youth, lay within the Persian imperial sphere. Precise dates are uncertain; most ancient and modern estimates place his life in the early to late fifth century BCE. Direct evidence for his schooling does not survive, but his mastery of Ionic prose and familiarity with epic, genealogy, and geography indicate immersion in the literary culture of Ionia. His prose shows awareness of earlier logographic writing and oral traditions, reflecting an environment in which poets, storytellers, and investigators circulated across the Aegean and Near Eastern worlds.
In the Histories, Herodotus reports travels to and observations in regions including Egypt, the Levant, Asia Minor, the Black Sea littoral, and parts of North Africa. He distinguishes what he claims to have seen from hearsay, often evaluating competing accounts and noting uncertainties. Autopsy, inquiry from local informants, and comparison of traditions form the backbone of his method. He cites inscriptions and measures distances, yet also preserves marvels and stories for which he could not vouch. This mixture of empiricism and reportage made his work both capacious and controversial, balancing curiosity about nomoi, the customs of different peoples, with causal explanation.
The Histories appears to have taken shape in the middle decades of the fifth century BCE. It opens with the rise of Lydia and Persia, follows the expansion under Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, and culminates in the Greek victories over Xerxes and Mardonius. Alongside the war narrative, Herodotus includes ethnographic and geographic logoi on Egyptians, Scythians, Persians, and others. The work survives complete and was later divided by Hellenistic scholars into nine books, each linked to a Muse. Its organization alternates chronology with thematic excursions, a structure that allows explanation of proximate and remote causes while assembling a panoramic vision of the oikoumene.
Herodotus drew on and transformed precedents in Ionian prose. He explicitly engages Hecataeus of Miletus, an earlier logographer, and echoes Homeric epic in diction and narrative patterning. His emphasis on inquiry and rational cause links him to the wider Ionian tradition of investigation, even as he acknowledges the role of divine and oracular forces in human affairs. Ancient testimonia associate him with Athens and, later, with the colony of Thurii in southern Italy; these connections, whether residential or episodic, would have exposed him to a cosmopolitan audience. His language remains predominantly Ionic, marked by stylistic variety and an ear for performance.
Ancient reception was mixed but consequential. Cicero later called him the father of history, praising his achievement in shaping prose narrative. Thucydides, writing after him, adopted a stricter focus on contemporary war and sometimes implied critique of Herodotean method. Plutarch accused him of bias and credulity. Modern scholarship often finds his critical stance more rigorous than detractors allowed, noting his frequent source evaluation and explicit marking of uncertainty. Archaeological and comparative studies have corroborated some of his ethnographic details while rejecting others. Across centuries, readers have valued his vivid storytelling, attention to causation, and interest in the variability of human customs.
Later biographical details are sparse; ancient reports place his death in the later fifth century BCE, with some traditions linking it to Thurii. Whatever the exact circumstances, his legacy is unusually durable. Historiographers have learned from his blend of narrative, analysis, and ethnography; anthropologists and travel writers have traced lineages to his engagement with cultural difference. The Histories continues to attract translators and commentators, informing debates about memory, empire, and cross-cultural understanding. By foregrounding inquiry, preserving multiple voices, and probing causes without claiming omniscience, Herodotus remains a model for historically minded writing in the humanities and social sciences.
The Histories of Herodotus
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[5]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[3] 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[4], 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[6], on the river Phasis; from whence, after despatching the rest of the business on which they had come, they carried off Medea[7], 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[8], 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, 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.
Croesus[10], son of Alyattes[15], by birth a Lydian, was lord of all the nations to the west of the river Halys[9]. 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[11], 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[24], 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[12], 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[4q].' 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 Delphi[26]c oracle[13]. 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[27], 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[28], 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[14].
As soon as Gyges was king he made an in-road on Miletus[16] 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[17], 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[18], 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[19], 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[20], 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[21], 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[22], 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[23]," 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."
