Herodotus

Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus, a Greek city on the south-west coast of Asia Minor then under Persian rule, around 484 BC. Ancient tradition says he left his home city after a political quarrel and later lived for a time on Samos. He is believed to have spent his later years in Athens and in the new colony of Thurii in southern Italy, and to have died around 425 BC.

He travelled widely, and his writings describe places he says he saw or heard about from local informants, among them Egypt, Libya, Babylonia, the Black Sea coast, Scythia and the cities of mainland Greece. These journeys, and the stories gathered on them, fill much of the work he left behind.

His one surviving work, the Histories, takes the Persian Wars of 490 and 480–479 BC as its main subject, tracing how Persia grew into an empire and how the Greek cities came to resist it. It was later divided into nine books, each given the name of a Muse. Cicero called Herodotus the “father of history”, and the title has stayed with him.