The Massageteans or (; ) were an Iranian nomadic confederation in antiquity known primarily from the writings of Herodotus.

His oracular shrine in Abae in Phocis, where he bore the toponymic epithet Abaeus (, Apollon Abaios ) was important enough to be consulted by Croesus ( Herodotus, 1. 46 ).

According to Herodotus, Amasis, was asked by Cambyses II or Cyrus the Great for an Egyptian ophthalmologist on good terms.

Amasis worrying that his daughter would be a concubine to the Persian king refused to give up his offspring ; Amasis also was not willing to take on the Persian empire so he concocted a trickery in which he forced the daughter of the ex-pharaoh Apries, whom Herodotus explicitly confirms to have been killed by Amasis, to go to Persia instead of his own offspring.

One such figure was Phanes of Halicarnassus, who would later on leave Amasis, for reasons Herodotus does not clearly know but suspects were personal between the two figures.

He was buried at the royal necropolis of Sais, and while his tomb was never discovered, Herodotus describes it for us:

According to Herodotus, when Anacharsis returned to the Scythians he was killed by his own brother for his Greek ways and especially for the impious attempt to sacrifice to the Mother Goddess Cybele, whose cult was unwelcome among the Scythians.

Aegina, according to Herodotus, was a colony of Epidaurus, to which state it was originally subject.

# Herodotus nowhere states or implies that peace was concluded between the two states before 481 BC, nor does he distinguish between different wars during this period.

Herodotus had no Athenian victories to record after the initial success, and the fact that Themistocles was able to carry his proposal to devote the surplus funds of the state to the building of so large a fleet seems to imply that the Athenians were themselves convinced that a supreme effort was necessary.

Herodotus ( Histories iv. 189 ) thought he had identified the source of the ægis in Libya, which was always a distant territory of ancient magic for the Greeks:

Androphagi ( Ancient Greek: " Ἀνδροφάγοι " for " man-eaters ") was an ancient nation of cannibals north of Scythia ( according to Herodotus ), probably in the forests between the upper waters of the Dnepr and Don.

The earliest bestiary in the form in which it was later popularized was an anonymous 2nd century Greek volume called the Physiologus, which itself summarized ancient knowledge and wisdom about animals in the writings of classical authors such as Aristotle's Historia Animalium and various works by Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, Solinus, Aelian and other naturalists.

Herodotus, who has been called the ' Father of History ', was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor ( then under Persian overlordship ).

Nevertheless, Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off ( at the Siege of Sestos ), and may therefore have felt that Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting.

A negative view of Herodotus was passed on to Renaissance Europe, though he remained well read.

There does, however, seem to have been a delay between the Athenian arrival at Marathon, and the battle ; Herodotus, who evidently believed that Miltiades was eager to attack, may have made a mistake whilst seeking to explain this delay.

Herodotus does not estimate the size of the Persian army, only saying that they were a " large infantry that was well packed ".

Herodotus suggests that this was the first time a Greek army ran into battle in this way ; this was probably because it was the first time that a Greek army had faced an enemy composed primarily of missile troops.

Harris dates studies of both to Classical Greece and Classical Rome, specifically, to Herodotus, often called the " father of history " and the Roman historian, Tacitus, who wrote many of our only surviving contemporary accounts of several ancient Celtic and Germanic peoples.

Many changes that were subsequent with ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides.

The statue of Herodotus in Bodrum, ancient Halicarnassus.

A few modern scholars have argued that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and invented his sources yet his reputation continues largely intact: " The Father of History is also the father of comparative anthropology ", " the father of ethnography ", and he is " more modern than any other ancient historian in his approach to the ideal of total history ".

According to a very different account by an ancient grammarian, Herodotus refused to begin reading his work at the festival of Olympia until some clouds offered him a bit of shade, by which time however the assembly had dispersed-thus the proverbial expression " Herodotus and his shade " to describe any man who misses his opportunity through delay.

Herodotus's recitation at Olympia was a favourite theme among ancient writers and there is another interesting variation on the story to be found in the Suda, Photius and Tzetzes, in which a young Thucydides happened to be in the assembly with his father and burst into tears during the recital, whereupon Herodotus observed prophetically to the boy's father: " Thy son's soul yearns for knowledge.

Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before Herodotus ' own time, which would place him at around 850 BC ; while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th century BC.

According to Herodotus, Libya began where ancient Egypt ended, and extended to Cape Spartel, south of Tangier on the Atlantic coast.

According to the Bauer-Danker Lexicon, the noun ίδιωτής in ancient Greek meant " civilian " ( ref Josephus Bell 2 178 ), " private citizen " ( ref sb 3924 9 25 ), " private soldier as opposed to officer ," ( Polybius 1. 69 ), " relatively unskilled, not clever ," ( Herodotus 2, 81 and 7 199 ).

This family is reasoned to be a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean substratum of the 2nd millennium BC, sometimes referred to as Pre-Greek, and this is supported by confirmation from ancient Greek authors like Herodotus in Histories that the Etruscans were from Lydia ( SW Turkey ).

Reconstruction of the Ecumene ( inhabited world ) ancient map from Herodotus, c. 450 BC.

Herodotus spoke of the Macrobians, an ancient people and kingdom postulated to have been located on the Somali peninsula during the first millennium BC.

In ancient Greece, this can be found in the writings of Herodotus, Thucidides, Hippocrates, Epicurus, Protagoras, Polus, Plato and Aristotle.

Some subsequent ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides.

Hecateus of Abdera writes that the Oceanus of the Hyperboreans is neither the Arctic Ocean nor Western Ocean, but the sea located to the north of the ancient Greek world, called " the most admirable of all seas " by Herodotus ( lib.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus gave the following account of the phoenix in the fifth century BC while describing the animals of Egypt:

Sulimirski views the Histories of Herodotus as the most important literary source relating to ancient Scyths.

He did say that the ancient Persians called all the Scyths Σάκαι ( Sacae, Herodotus 7. 64 ).

In it the names of Herodotus and the names of his title, except Saka, as well as many other words for " Scythian ," such as Assyrian Aškuz and Greek Skuthēs, descend from * skeud -, an ancient Indo-European root meaning " propel, shoot " ( cf.

The use of the abacus in Ancient Egypt is mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus, who writes that the Egyptians manipulated the pebbles from right to left, opposite in direction to the Greek left-to-right method.

The connection to Phoenician religion claimed by Herodotus I. 105, 131 ) has led to inconclusive attempts at deriving Greek Aphrodite from a Semitic Aštoret, via hypothetical Hittite transmission.

Herodotus also describes that just like his predecessor, Amasis II relied on Greek mercenaries and council men.

The word is attested in Herodotus, who wrote some of the first surviving Greek prose, but this may not have been before 440 or 430 BC.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Xerxes sought his harem after being defeated in the Greco-Persian Wars.

The main source for the Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus.

Herodotus mentions for several events a date in the lunisolar calendar, of which each Greek city-state used a variant.

Herodotus records that when heralds of the Persian king Darius the Great demanded " earth and water " ( i. e., symbols of submission ) of various Greek cities, the Athenians threw them into a pit and the Spartans threw them down a well for the purpose of suggesting they would find both earth and water at the bottom, these often being mentioned by the messenger as a threat of siege.

In antiquity, the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya ( Africa ), with the Nile and the River Phasis forming their boundaries — though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.

But the form of the OHG and Gothic words suggests it is also a borrowing, perhaps indeed directly or indirectly from Greek " ἐλέφας " ( elephas ), which in Homer only meant " ivory ", but from Herodotus on the word also referred to the animal.

Herodotus is the first who stated the main characteristics of ethnicity, with his famous account of what defines Greek identity, where he lists kinship ( Greek: ὅμαιμον-homaimon, " of the same blood "), language ( Greek: ὁμόγλωσσον-homoglōsson, " speaking the same language "), cults and customs ( Greek: ὁμότροπον-homotropon, " of the same habits or life ").

Herodotus employs a deceptively simple narrative style, in which the original Greek is Ionian in dialect, including some Homeric and other forms.

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 naive, often charming-all traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus himself.

But unlike Herodotus, Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, nor did he include the oral traditions of Greek history within the larger framework of oriental history.