Editing Herodotus (section)

==Place in history==
[[File:HERODOTUS(1897) p2.387 THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HERDOTUS.jpg|thumb|upright=2|Reconstructed map of the world based on the writings of Herodotus]]
Herodotus announced the purpose and scope of his work at the beginning of his ''Histories:''<ref name=Hetrod-in-Encyc-Wrld-Bio/>

{{quote|Here are presented the results of the inquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks.|Herodotus, ''The Histories'' (tr. R. Waterfield, 2008)<ref name=Waterfield-Dewald-1998/>}}

===Predecessors===
His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has been debated. Herodotus's place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact. [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]], a literary critic of [[Principate|Augustan Rome]], listed seven predecessors of Herodotus, describing their works as simple unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including popular legends, sometimes melodramatic and naïve, often charming – all traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus himself.{{refn|,<ref name=Burn-1972-Herod-Hists/>{{rp|page=23}} citing Dionysius ''On Thucydides''}}

Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain, but according to the ancient account, these predecessors included [[Dionysius of Miletus]], Charon of Lampsacus, [[Hellanicus of Lesbos]], [[Xanthus (historian)|Xanthus of Lydia]] and, the best attested of them all, [[Hecataeus of Miletus]]. Of these, only fragments of Hecataeus's works survived, and the authenticity of these is debatable,<ref name=Burn-1972-Herod-Hists/>{{rp|page=27}} but they provide a glimpse into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own ''Histories''.

===Contemporary and modern critics===
{{missing|section|substantive details of modern criticism|date=June 2024}}
It is on account of the many strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics have branded him "The Father of Lies".<ref name=Burn-1972-Herod-Hists/>{{rp|page=10}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1998-9/Pipes.htm |title=Herodotus: Father of History, Father of Lies |access-date=16 November 2009 |first=David |last=Pipes |archive-date=27 January 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080127105636/http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1998-9/Pipes.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement. In fact, one modern scholar<ref name=Rawlinson-1859-Hist-Herod-v1/> has wondered whether Herodotus left his home in Greek [[Anatolia]], migrating westwards to Athens and beyond, because his own countrymen had ridiculed his work, a circumstance possibly hinted at in an epitaph said to have been dedicated to Herodotus at one of his three supposed resting places, [[Thouria, Messenia|Thuria]]:
{{poemquote|Herodotus the son of Sphynx
lies; in Ionic history without peer;
a Dorian born, who fled from slander's brand
and made in Thuria his new native land.<ref name=Burn-1972-Herod-Hists/>{{rp|page=13}}|sign=|source=}}

Yet it was in Athens where his most formidable contemporary critics could be found. In 425&nbsp;BC, which is about the time that Herodotus is thought by many scholars to have died, the Athenian comic dramatist [[Aristophanes]] created ''[[The Acharnians]]'', in which he blames the [[Peloponnesian War]] on the abduction of some prostitutes – a mocking reference to Herodotus, who reported the Persians' account of their [[The Persian Wars|wars with Greece]], beginning with the rapes of the mythical heroines [[Io (mythology)|Io]], [[Europa (consort of Zeus)|Europa]], [[Medea]], and [[Helen of Troy|Helen]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Lawrence A. |last=Tritle. |year=2004 |title=The Peloponnesian War |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |pages=147–148}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=John |last=Hart |year=1982 |title=Herodotus and Greek History |publisher=Taylor and Francis |page=174}}</ref>

Similarly, the Athenian historian [[Thucydides]] dismissed Herodotus as a story-teller.<ref name=Murray-1986-Grk-histns/>{{rp|page=191}} Thucydides, who had been trained in [[rhetoric]], became the model for subsequent prose-writers as an author who seeks to appear firmly in control of his material, whereas with his frequent digressions Herodotus appeared to minimize (or possibly disguise) his authorial control.<ref name=Waterfield-Dewald-1998>{{cite book |translator-last1=Waterfield |translator-first1=Robin |editor-last1=Dewald |editor-first1=Carolyn |year=1998 |title=The Histories by Herodotus |publisher=Oxford University Press |place=Oxford, UK |at="Introduction", p.&nbsp;xviii|isbn=9780199535668}}</ref> Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view: focused on the context of the ''[[polis]]'' or city-state. The interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilization was a recent memory.<ref name=Murray-1986-Grk-histns/>{{rp|page=191}}
{{quotation|Before the Persian crisis, history had been represented among the Greeks only by local or family traditions. The "Wars of Liberation" had given to Herodotus the first genuinely historical inspiration felt by a Greek. These wars showed him that there was a corporate life, higher than that of the city, of which the story might be told; and they offered to him as a subject the drama of the collision between East and West. With him, the spirit of history was born into Greece; and his work, called after the nine Muses, was indeed the first utterance of [[Clio]].|[[Richard Claverhouse Jebb|R. C. Jebb]]|source=<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard C. |last=Jebb |author-link=Richard Claverhouse Jebb |title=The Genius of Sophocles |title-link=s:The Genius of Sophocles#7 |at=section 7}}</ref>}}

Though Herodotus is generally considered a reliable source of ancient history, many present-day historians believe that his accounts are at least partially inaccurate, attributing the observed inconsistencies in the ''Histories'' to exaggeration.<ref>{{Cite web |title=8 Myth and Truth in Herodotus' Cyrus Logos |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/27438/chapter/197305154 |access-date=27 September 2023 |website=Oxford Academic|date=2012 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199693979.003.0009 |last1=Chiasson |first1=Charles C. |pages=213–232 |isbn=978-0-19-969397-9 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Mark |first=Joshua J. |title=Herodotus |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/herodotus/ |access-date=27 September 2023 |website=World History Encyclopedia |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Larkin |first=Patrick |date=11 March 2022 |title=Herodotus, Homer, and The Histories |url=https://you.stonybrook.edu/undergraduatehistoryjournal/2022/03/11/herodotus-homer-and-the-histories/#:~:text=He%20inflated%20these%20numbers%20for,for%20many%20students%20of%20history. |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231012152047/https://you.stonybrook.edu/undergraduatehistoryjournal/2022/03/11/herodotus-homer-and-the-histories/ |archive-date=12 October 2023 |access-date=27 September 2023 |website=Stony Brook Undergraduate History Journal |language=en-US}}</ref>