Analyzing of Herodotus

Analyzing of Herodotus

Herodotus, a Greek writer, is considered to be the world’s first historian, “the father of history.” The History is to seek one’s roots of Western civilization of democratic members. Herodotus looked to oral history, to compile his writings. He encompasses gossip, myths, and rumors. Sometimes, he would provide inconsistent of events and entice to the readers to determine which to believe. This is where the historians become relevant to the story of Herodotus. If he is said to be “the father of history,” how could historians construe Herodotus as “the father of lies?”

Herodotus was akin to Homer in more than one way. He was a native of the Asia Minor coast, and, though citizen of a Dorian city, the vehicle of Ionian culture. Like Homer he used the Ionic dialect, and like him a form of it not tied to any one city but a conflation. Like him he used an early form of syntax, with many main verbs and few periods. All the above Herodotus, as a narrative writer, showed himself to be in the Homeric tradition. It could hardly have been otherwise. Herodotus was an intense artist, and what writers are keen on history. He had to turn to the poets; and of these the best was to the point, being both a teller of stories and, as was then thought, the recorder of actual events. Herodotus was born between the two Persian Wars, after Marathon and before Salamis. He must have been full of talk about them; and when he decided to write their history, he could not have failed to bear in mind the writer of the only other war in the Greek world that could match the Persian Wars in significance. This kinship of Herodotus with Homer was recognized in antiquity. A recent historian of Greek literature wrote that the breadth of Herodotus's theme was epic and the treatment no less so. When considering Herodotus as a writer of purpose of epic, no more disqualified as such for being a historian.

Equality is a good thing. Evidence for this is the fact that while they were under tyrannical rulers, the Athenians were no better in war than any of their neighbors, yet once they got rid of their tyrants, they were by far the best of all. This, then, shows that while they were oppressed, they were, as men working for a master, cowardly, but when they were freed, each one was eager to achieve for himself (Herodotus 5.78).

The rule of Polycrates is clear, that the tyrants of Samos, coincided with the Persian King Cambyses, that Polycrates’ downfall occurred in Persia which took place in 522 B.C. The death of the Polycrates can certainly be reasonable in 522-518 B.C. There is synchronism between the Greek and Persian history. The death of Croesus is the conquest of Lydia. Herodotus mentioned this event along with several other authors as taking place between 550 B.C. and 539 B.C (Herodotus, I. 29).

Rawlinson (156) Plutarch has suggested that Herodotus’s appeal for the Athenians lay flattering exploit to Athenian. Herodotus Rhetoric literary style, his chain, and good story has made his history popular and instructive since Aristotle’s comment. Thucydides criticized Herodotus’s account of Egyptian Kings. “Thucydides predecessor’s pointily connected facts from Herodotus’s own work and insisted history must rely on autopsy, not hearsay (Rawlinson, 19). “As for Solon’s interview with Croesus, some think to prove by chronology that it is fictitious. But when a story is so famous and so well-attested, and what is more to the point, when it comports so well with the character of Solon, and is so worthy of his magnanimity and wisdom, I do not propose to reject it out of deference to any chronological canons, so called, which thousands are to this day revising, without being able to bring their contradictions into any general agreement (Plutarch, Parallel Lives Solon 27.1).” History affirms that Croesus resigned, as last king of Lydia, from 560 to 546 B.C., over the cities and the people between the coast of Asia Minor to the west and the river Halys in the East, having his capital city of Sardis, which is between Mount Tmolus and the river Hermos.

According to Herodotus (Book I) there are three main events in the first book of ‘The Histories’: Solon’s visit to Croesus in Sardis, Croesus’ consultation of the oracle at Delphi, and the fall of Sardis. The utterances of the oracle at Delphi had significant influence over Croesus, King of Lydia and the Athenian politician, Themistocles as they were both consulting the oracle under different circumstances. Herodotus suggests one of the main differences between Greeks and barbarians is the ability of clever Greeks to interpret oracles correctly. In the ‘Lydios logos’, Herodotus makes several references to Croesus seeking guidance from the oracle at Delphi. The first follows his son’s death when he sent messengers to all the oracles of Greece and Libya, with the