Herodotus: The First Historian And Anthropologist
Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a historian and geographer in ancient Greece. He lived between 484 and 425 BC. Many experts consider him the first historian and anthropologist.
He was the first to provide a reasoned and structured overview of human actions and events. To achieve this, he used a wide range of oral and written historical sources. Herodotus was very ahead of his time. Let us study his life in greater detail.
Herodotus and history
The nine books in History, his greatest work, had two goals:
- To record the events that both the Greeks and the barbarians experienced.
- To explain the causes of these events and their effects on both Greek and Persian societies.
The events recorded by Herodotus were centered on the Persian Wars (492-478 BC), in which the Greeks and the Persian Empire fought. But that’s not all he covered since the stories sometimes went away from this main topic.
These events were recorded in prose instead of poetry. Despite the fact that Homer, the narrator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, managed to influence Herodotus, he did not try to adapt his style in these works.
Yet both narrators had certain things in common. They told in the third person and used elevated language.
Another major difference between epic poems and Herodotus’ historiography is the sources he used. While the mice were Homer’s primary inspiration, Herodotus focused on gathering information.
Herodotus: The traveling historian
Herodotus traveled a lot. As such, it is not surprising that he wrote down everything he saw and heard during his travels. This is reflected in his method of collecting sources. It consisted of the following points:
- Search for and gather information about the things people witnessed. He used descriptions of the geographical characteristics of places. He also described the customs of the people he visited, as well as their most striking peculiarities.
- When he could not gather information directly, he relied on oral testimonies from the natives of the countries he visited.
- He also used written sources produced by epic poets and logographers.
In his work, Herodotus explained how and why he collected the information he used to describe an incident. In fact, he emphasized both the importance and the difficulty of using different sources to describe a historical event in order to make them as true as possible. This use of direct sources, both oral and written, is what made Herodotus’ work legendary. It changed the way people wrote about history.
The 9 books in History
His long work, History, is divided into 9 books:
- In the first book, he covered the possible causes of the Persian wars. He focused on Lydia’s government in Krøsus’ time. According to this historian, he encouraged conflict between the Greeks and the Persians.
- The second book is about Egypt and its wonderful wonders. The author described relevant geographical features and the most striking Egyptian customs. He also summed up the country’s long history.
- In the third book , he discusses the reasons that prompted Cambyses II to attack Egypt with the aim of conquering it. He also described Cambysia’s personality and military campaign. The book ends with his death and Darius Is ascension to the throne.
- Book 4 has two parts. The first is about Skytia (a Central Asian region) and the second is about Libya.
- From the fifth to the ninth book, Herodotus focused on military conflicts between the Greeks and the Persians during the Persian Wars. The fifth book covered the Persian advance against the Greeks, especially in Macedonia and Thrace. It also talked about the history, geography and culture of Sparta and Athens.
- The sixth book is about Darius’ expedition that ended with a Greek victory at the Marathon.
- Book 7 describes a series of dramatic battles, such as the Battle of Thermopylene.
- Finally, the 8th and 9th books describe the battles of Salamis and Plataiai, respectively.
The first historian and anthropologist
As a result of the information gathering methods Herodot used, many current historians consider him the father of the academic field. Thanks to his descriptions of some events, we have an overview of conflicts that affected ancient Europe and Asia.
Experts do not just consider Herodotus the first historian. They also say that he was the first anthropologist. This is because he used participatory observation, which is a fundamental feature of what is called ethnography today.
