In the Library
The Histories of Herodotus
Herodotus, 450 BCE
- Form
- Form Essay
- Reading time
- Reading time 21 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by G. C. Macaulay
- Chapters
- Chapters 9
- Length
- Length 285k words
£1.99
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About the book
A Lydian king named Croesus shows off his treasury to a visiting Athenian sage, who refuses to call any man happy until he is dead. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, writing in the middle of the fifth century before Christ, called his work an inquiry into the great deeds of Greeks and barbarians and the cause of the war between them. The nine books wander from Egyptian embalming rites to Scythian funerals to the gardens of Babylon and the court of Persian kings before arriving at the great battles: Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis. Cicero called him the father of history; later readers, noting the talking ants and gold-digging dogs, called him the father of lies. He was the first writer in the West to ask why.