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 (Ηρόδοτος) 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 Darius the Great, culminating in king Xerxes' expedition in 480 BC against the Greeks, which met with disaster in the naval engagement at Salamis and the battles at Plataea and Mycale. Herodotus' remarkable book also contains ethnographic descriptions of the peoples that the Persians have conquered, fairy tales, gossip, legends. Herodotus wrote the first scientific history (probably between 450 – 430 BC); that is, he began by asking questions, rather than just telling what he thinks he knows. Moreover, these questions were "about things done by men at a determinate time in the past, [and the history itself ] exists in order to tell man what man is by telling him what man has done" (Collingwood 1946).

The Histories of Herodotus

Herodotus the Father of Lies, Notes about Herodotus

Herodotus' Conception of Foreign Languages

The Herodotus lunar crater

IMAGES

Herodotus Sculpture

Herodotus, Massimo Inv 124478

Image of the first book of Herodotus, given the name Clio, the name of a Muse associated with history

Anfang des ersten Buchs des Herodots, nach der Muse Clio benannt

Greek Peports

Ο διπλός λόγος του Ηροδότου

Η παγκοσμιοποίηση στον Ηρόδοτο , Θεωρίης είνεκεν

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