Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a fifth-century BCE Greek historian whose Histories is the earliest surviving large-scale work of Greek historical prose. He came from the culturally mixed city of Halicarnassus in Caria and travelled widely, or at least gathered information about regions stretching from Egypt and the Near East to Scythia and the western Greek world. Ancient traditions about his exile and movements are difficult to verify, but his work clearly reflects extensive engagement with different peoples, customs, landscapes and oral traditions.

The Histories ultimately centres on the conflicts between the Persian Empire and the Greek states, especially the invasions associated with Darius I and Xerxes. Herodotus combines political and military narrative with geography, ethnography, family stories, religious explanations and explicit discussion of conflicting evidence. He sometimes records marvels or reports that modern readers regard sceptically, yet he frequently distinguishes what he saw from what he merely heard. His inquiry into causes, testimony and cultural difference earned him the later title ‘father of history’, while also making him a model for debate about historical method.

John Man’s Amazons follows the stories preserved by Herodotus and later writers while drawing on archaeology from Scythian and Sarmatian burial sites, where some women were interred with weapons, armour and riding equipment. In Herodotus’ The Histories, Herodotus’s Histories is a major source for the Greco-Persian Wars and the wider world that led to them. Gore Vidal’s Creation is framed as Cyrus’s memoir, written late in life as a rebuttal to Herodotus, whom he believes has misrepresented Persia and its role in history.