Herodotus, The Father of
History
Herodotus was a Greek historian who
was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) and
lived in the fifth century BC (c. 484–c. 425 BC), a contemporary of Socrates.
He is widely referred to as "The Father of History" (first conferred
by Cicero); he was the first historian known to have broken from Homeric
tradition to treat historical subjects as a method of
investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials systematically and
critically, and then arranging them into a historiographic narrative. The
Histories is the only work which he is known to have produced, a record of his
"inquiry" on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, including a
wealth of geographical and ethnographical information. Some of his stories were
fanciful and others inaccurate; yet he states that he was reporting only what
he was told; a sizable portion of the information he provided was later
confirmed by historians and archaeologists. Despite Herodotus' historical
significance, little is known of his personal life and academic history.
Excerpt from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.
Grateful thanks to Wikipedia.
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