---
node: herodotus
type: person
slug: herodotus
title: "Herodotus"
lead: "Herodotus (c. 484–c. 425 BC) was a Greek writer from Halicarnassus whose Histories, an inquiry into the Greco-Persian Wars and everything connected to them, led Cicero to call him the father of history."
published: 2026-07-10
updated: 2026-07-10
image_file: herodotus.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marble_bust_of_Herodotos_MET_DT11742_(cropped).jpg"
image_author: "Metropolitan Museum of Art"
image_license: "CC0"
---

## Who they were

Herodotus was born c. 484 BC at Halicarnassus, then under Persian rule, in modern Turkey. By his own account he traveled widely — to Egypt, the Levant, and the Black Sea — though how far he actually went is debated. He later lived in Athens, joined the colony of Thurii in Italy, and died c. 425 BC.

## What they did

His Histories is an investigation — a historia — of the Greco-Persian Wars and everything connected to them: geography, customs, and the marvels of Egypt, Persia, and Scythia. He gathered accounts wherever he went, often reporting several versions of a story and sometimes flagging his own disbelief — a real if uneven critical stance. Cicero later called him the father of history; for his tall tales, critics ancient and modern also dubbed him the father of lies. He was notably curious about, and often admiring of, non-Greeks: the work is as much about Persia and Egypt as about Greece.

## Legacy

Modern archaeology and Persian records have vindicated some of his details and refuted others. The Histories nonetheless stands as the founding work of history-writing and of ethnography in the Western tradition.