Herodotus (original) (raw)

His chronicles were not dissertations to be coldly pondered over and skeptically conned: they were read aloud at solemn festivals to listening thousands; they were to arrest the curiosity - to amuse the impatience - to stir the wonder of a lively and motley crowd. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall

The Greek researcher and storyteller Herodot or Herodotus of Halicarnassus the son of Lyxes and Dryo and the nephew of an epic poet named Panyassis, born between 500-470 BC (probably 485 BC) and died between 429-413 BC, was the world's first historian. In the Histories, he describes the expansion of the Achaemenid empire under its kings Cyrus the Great, Cambyses and

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T. J. Luce, The Greek Historians. London and New York: Routledge, 1997