[97] Herodotus's explanation that an event "was going to happen" maps well on to Aristotelean and Homeric means of expression. 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. However, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic of 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.[3]. [8], But Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, unlike Herodotus, nor did he include the oral traditions of Greek history within the larger framework of oriental history. [78] In Book 3, passages 102 to 105, Herodotus reports that a species of fox-sized, furry "ants" lives in one of the far eastern, Indian provinces of the Persian Empire. [98], John Gould argues that Herodotus should be understood as falling in a long line of story-tellers, rather than thinking of his means of explanation as a "philosophy of history" or "simple causality." (1981). Why do we study History. Only scant knowledge of his life can be gleaned from his writings and from references to him by later writings, notably the Suda. [36] According to a very different account by an ancient grammarian,[37] Herodotus refused to begin reading his work at the festival of Olympia until some clouds offered him a bit of shade – by which time the assembly had dispersed. Herodotus claimed to have visited Babylon. Diop argues that Herodotus "always distinguishes carefully between what he has seen and what he has been told." [62] Alan B. Lloyd argues that, as a historical document, the writings of Herodotus are seriously defective, and that he was working from "inadequate sources. [59][57] Fehling concludes that the works of Herodotus are intended as fiction. ), routinely cited Herodotus. He preserved a wealth of early documentation that would have otherwise been lost. [94], Herodotus attributes cause to both divine and human agents. [23] Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view: focused on the context of the polis or city-state. 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 of Lydia and, the best attested of them all, Hecataeus of Miletus. Herodotus is known as the father of history because he was the first historian to collect and systematically document events and create an account. Thus to understand what Herodotus is doing in the Histories, we must not impose strict demarcations between the man as mythologist and the man as historian, or between the work as myth and the work as history. However, Herodotus states that he is merely reporting what he has seen and been told, on several occasions saying that he does not himself believe the story that he reports. [56][57][58][59][60][61][62], Despite the controversy,[63] Herodotus has long served and still serves as the primary, often only, source for events in the Greek world, Persian Empire, and the broader region in the two centuries leading up to his own days. [49] Fehling argues that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and invented his sources. However, we consider Konrad Zuse as the father of the computer with the advent of the Z1, Z2, Z3, and Z4. The town was within the Persian Empire at that time, making Herodotus a Persian subject,[29][30] and it may be that the young Herodotus heard local eyewitness accounts of events within the empire and of Persian preparations for the invasion of Greece, including the movements of the local fleet under the command of Artemisia I of Caria. ", Eventually, Thucydides and Herodotus became close enough for both to be interred in Thucydides' tomb in Athens. Boedeker comments on Herodotus's use of literary devices. (trans.). He was born in 640 BC in Athens and came from a very well-known and highly respected family with a lineage going back to the last king of Athens, Codrus. These giant ants, according to Herodotus, would often unearth the gold dust when digging their mounds and tunnels, and the people living in this province would then collect the precious dust. a Dorian born, who fled from slander's brand, and made in Thuria his new native land. Cicero (On the Laws I.5) said that his works were full of legends or "fables". Father of the computer. Moreover, since 1789, the French National Assembly has appointed a “father” to preside over the opening of a new session. Herodotus has been criticized for the fact that his book includes many obvious legends and fanciful accounts. He was later known as the "Father of Oregon" for his role in assisting the American cause in the Oregon Country. Having become very rich while at the court of Periander, Arion conceived a desire to sail to Italy and Sicily. [11], His debt to previous authors of prose "histories" might be questionable, but there is no doubt that Herodotus owed much to the example and inspiration of poets and story-tellers. Still, certain points may be approximately fixed ... Modern accounts of his life typically[27][28] go something like this: Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus around 485 BC. In response, Dalley has proposed that the Hanging Gardens may have been in Nineveh rather than in Babylon. He described Gelonus, located in Scythia, as a city thousands of times larger than Troy; this was widely disbelieved until it was rediscovered in 1975. 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. In 425 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 wars with Greece, beginning with the rapes of the mythical heroines Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen. The significance of his role is not to be underestimated, however. Why does History matter? For example, in Book 1 he mentions both the Phoenician and the Persian accounts of Io. Archimedes (287 BC–212 BC) is known as Father of Mathematics. The idea was to criticize previous arguments on a topic and emphatically and enthusiastically insert their own in order to win over the audience. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. According to Eusebius[33] and Plutarch,[34] Herodotus was granted a financial reward by the Athenian assembly in recognition of his work. "[56] Nielsen writes: "Though we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of Herodotus having been in Egypt, it must be said that his narrative bears little witness to it. This region, he reports, is a sandy desert, and the sand there contains a wealth of fine gold dust. [80] Similarly, in a Corinthian Oration, Dio Chrysostom (or yet another pseudonymous author) accused the historian of prejudice against Corinth, sourcing it in personal bitterness over financial disappointments[81] – an account also given by Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides. and Dewald, Carolyn (ed.). [65] Herodotus is variously considered "father of comparative anthropology,"[16] "the father of ethnography,"[64] and "more modern than any other ancient historian in his approach to the ideal of total history."[65]. Several "Fathers of Chemistry" If you are asked to identify the father of chemistry, your best answer probably is Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who wrote the book, "Elements of Chemistry," in 1787.He compiled the first complete—at that time—list of elements, discovered and named oxygen and hydrogen, helped develop the metric system, helped revise and standardize chemical nomenclature, … Criticism of Herodotus’ work seems to have originated among Athenians who took exception to his account of the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE) and, specifically, which families were due the most honor for the victory over the Persians. ", Herodotus's means of explanation does not necessarily posit a simple cause; rather, his explanations cover a host of potential causes and emotions. [68], Cheikh Anta Diop provides several examples (like the inundations of the Nile) which, he argues, support his view that Herodotus was "quite scrupulous, objective, scientific for his time." 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