He was a liar. At least, that’s what Plutarch thought. Centuries after the fact, the famous biographer penned a scathing essay titled On the Malice of Herodotus, basically calling the world's first historian a fraud. But here’s the thing about The Histories by Herodotus: the man wasn't trying to be a modern academic. He was a traveler with a notebook and a massive amount of curiosity.
Herodotus didn't have a library. He had ears. He walked through Egypt, sat in marketplaces in Babylon, and asked the Greeks why they were so obsessed with fighting Persians. The result is a sprawling, chaotic, and utterly brilliant masterpiece that somehow birthed the entire concept of history as we know it today.
Why The Histories by Herodotus Isn't Just a Boring Textbook
If you pick up a copy expecting a dry list of dates, you’re in for a shock. It’s more like a 5th-century BC version of a travel vlog mixed with an investigative documentary. He starts with a simple question: why do the East and West hate each other? To answer that, he goes back to myths of kidnapped princesses—Io, Europa, Medea—treating legend as the precursor to geopolitics.
He’s obsessed with "the other." While most Greeks thought everyone else was a "barbarian" (which literally just meant people who sounded like they were saying "bar bar bar"), Herodotus was actually interested in how they lived. He spends an entire book—Book II—just talking about Egypt. He talks about how they use cats to protect grain, how they embalm bodies, and how the Nile's flooding cycles work.
Sometimes he gets it wrong. Really wrong. He mentions giant gold-digging ants in India that are the size of foxes. For years, people used this to prove he was making things up. Then, in the 1980s, explorer Michel Peissel found that marmots in the Himalayas actually do dig up gold-bearing soil. The locals even had a name for it. Herodotus wasn't lying; he was reporting what he heard, and the "ants" were likely a translation error or a misunderstanding of a Persian word for marmot.
The Persian Wars: The Meat of the Story
The central spine of The Histories by Herodotus is the conflict between the massive Persian Empire and the tiny, squabbling Greek city-states. It’s David vs. Goliath, but with more bronze and bad weather. You get the iconic moments: the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, the naval brilliance at Salamis, and the absolute hubris of Xerxes.
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Xerxes is the ultimate villain-protagonist here. Herodotus paints him as a man blinded by ate—a sort of divine madness or delusion. There’s a famous scene where Xerxes tries to build a bridge across the Hellespont. A storm destroys it. Instead of just rebuilding, Xerxes orders his men to give the Hellespont three hundred lashes with a whip and throw a pair of fetters into the water to "chain" the sea. It’s insane. It’s also a perfect lesson in why empires fall.
The Gritty Details of Battle
Herodotus doesn't shy away from the carnage. When he describes the Battle of Marathon, he mentions a Greek soldier named Epizelus who was struck blind in the middle of the fight, not by a sword, but by the "ghost" of a giant hoplite.
- Marathon: Where a messenger supposedly ran 26 miles (though Herodotus actually says Pheidippides ran 150 miles to Sparta first).
- Thermopylae: The narrow pass where Leonidas made his stand.
- Salamis: The sea battle where Themistocles tricked the Persians into a bottleneck.
The narrative style is non-linear. He’ll be talking about a major battle and then suddenly stop for ten pages to tell you about the sexual habits of a tribe in Libya or the weird way Scythians take steam baths using hemp seeds. It’s distracting. It’s also why the book is still readable 2,500 years later.
The "Liar" Label and Modern Archaeology
For a long time, scholars looked down on him. They preferred Thucydides, who wrote about the Peloponnesian War with a much more "serious" and "scientific" tone. Thucydides was the political scientist; Herodotus was the storyteller.
But archaeology keeps bailing Herodotus out.
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He described a specific type of Egyptian cargo boat called a baris. He said they were built like brickwork and had a single rudder passing through a hole in the keel. For centuries, no such boat was ever found. Then, in the sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion, archaeologists found "Ship 17." It was exactly what he described. Every weird detail matched.
He’s not a liar. He’s a "hearsay" journalist. He frequently uses phrases like "this is what they say, but I don't necessarily believe it." He gives you the options. He tells you what the Persians say happened, what the Phoenicians say happened, and then he tells you what he thinks. It’s surprisingly transparent for a guy writing before the invention of the printing press.
Freedom vs. Despotism: The Big Theme
At its core, The Histories by Herodotus is an exploration of political systems. He includes a famous "Constitutional Debate" (which almost certainly never happened as described) where three Persian nobles argue over whether monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy is best.
It’s weird to hear Persians arguing for democracy in a Greek book, but that’s Herodotus for you. He wanted to show that the Greek victory wasn't just about better shields or luck. It was about isonomia—equality before the law. He argued that the Greeks fought harder because they were fighting for themselves, while the Persians were fighting because they were terrified of their king's whip.
How to Actually Read This Behemoth
Don't try to read it cover to cover in one sitting. You'll die of exhaustion by the time you reach the Scythians.
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Honestly, the best way to handle The Histories by Herodotus is to treat it like a collection of short stories that happen to be connected by a war. Start with the story of Croesus and Solon in Book I. It's a perfect self-contained lesson on why you shouldn't call yourself the happiest man alive until you're actually dead.
Then, skip around. Read about the Babylonian marriage markets. Look up the description of the walls of Babylon. Notice how he obsesses over the "wonders" of the world. He was the first person to really codify the idea that the world is a place worth seeing and recording.
Translation Matters
If you grab a translation from 1910, it’s going to be rough. It'll feel like reading a legal brief. Look for the Tom Holland translation (the historian, not the actor) or the Landmark Herodotus. The Landmark version is great because it has maps on almost every page. You need maps. Without them, you’ll have no idea where the Ionians are compared to the Dorians, and you'll get lost in the geography of the Persian satrapies.
Actionable Insights for the Modern Reader
Reading Herodotus isn't just an academic exercise. It changes how you see the world today.
- Question the Source: Follow his lead. When you hear a wild claim, ask "Who told you that?" and "What was their bias?" Herodotus was the original fact-checker, even if he didn't always have the tools to verify the facts.
- Look for the 'Why': Don't just look at events; look at the cultural undercurrents. Herodotus shows that wars aren't just about land; they're about clashing worldviews.
- Embrace the Digression: In your own work or life, the "side quests" often hold the most value. The most interesting parts of his book are the things he wasn't "supposed" to be writing about.
- Check the Geography: Understanding a conflict requires understanding the terrain. Use a map when following global news, just as you would when reading about the pass at Thermopylae.
The legacy of this work isn't just in the history it recorded, but in the way it taught us to look at our neighbors. It reminds us that every culture has its own "custom is king" mentality. What's normal to you is insane to someone else, and Herodotus was the first person to tell us that that's okay. If you want to understand the roots of Western civilization and the eternal friction between East and West, there is simply no better place to start than this messy, brilliant, 2,500-year-old book.