Herodotus called them Androktones (" killers of men "), and he stated that in the Scythian language they were called Oiorpata, which he asserted had this meaning.

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:

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.

Connected with this episode, Herodotus recounts a rumour that this manoeuver by the Persians had been planned in conjunction with the Alcmaeonids, the prominent Athenian aristocratic family, and that a " shield-signal " had been given after the battle.

Herodotus tells us that c. 482 BC Xerxes I ( the son of Darius ) had two pontoon bridges built across the width of the Hellespont at Abydos in order that his huge army could cross from Persia into Greece.

According to Herodotus ( vv. 34 ), both bridges were destroyed by a storm and Xerxes had those responsible for building the bridges beheaded and the strait itself whipped.

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.

Edwards notes that the pyramid had " almost certainly been opened and its contents plundered long before the time of Herodotus " and that it might have been closed again during the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt when other monuments were restored.

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.

In fact one modern scholar has wondered if Herodotus left his home in Asiatic Greece, migrating westwards to Athens and beyond, because his own countrymen had ridiculed his work, a circumstance possibly hinted at in an epitaph said to have been dedicated to Herodotus at Thuria ( one of his three supposed resting places ):

Thucydides, who had been trained in rhetoric, became the model for subsequent prose-writers as an author who seeks to appear firmly in control of his material, whereas Herodotus with his frequent digressions appeared to minimize ( or possibly disguise ) his auctorial control.

Some " calumnious fictions " were written about Herodotus in a work titled On the Malice of Herodotus, by Plutarch, a Theban by birth, ( or it might have been a Pseudo-Plutarch, in this case " a great collector of slanders "), including the allegation that the historian was prejudiced against Thebes because the authorities there had denied him permission to set up a school.

According to the Suda ( an 11th-century encyclopaedia of Byzantium which likely took its information from traditional accounts ), Herodotus learned the Ionian dialect as a boy living on the island of Samos, whither he had fled with his family from the oppressions of Lygdamis, tyrant of Halicarnassus and grandson of Artemisia I of Caria.

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.

As Herodotus himself reveals, Halicarnassus, though a Dorian city, had ended its close relations with its Dorian neighbours after an unseemly quarrel ( I, 144 ), and it had helped pioneer Greek trade with Egypt ( II, 178 ).

In the days of the Greek historians Ctesias and Herodotus, 400 BC, Nineveh had become a thing of the past ; and when Xenophon the historian passed the place in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand the very memory of its name had been lost.

Herodotus mentions writing on skins as common in his time, the 5th century BCE ; and in his Histories ( v. 58 ) he states that the Ionians of Asia Minor had been accustomed to give the name of skins ( diphtherai ) to books ; this word was adapted by Hellenized Jews to describe scrolls.

Herodotus says that the Neuri had Scythian customs, but they were at first not considered Scythian.

Herodotus commented that this was a " highly presumptuous way to address the Hellespont " but in no way atypical of Xerxes.

There is no proof that Herodotus derived the ambitious scope of his own work, with its grand theme of civilizations in conflict, from any predecessor, despite much scholarly speculation about this in modern times.

Using Herodotus ' standard of 600 feet for one stadium obtains 4545 miles ; however, there is no way to tell which standard foot was in effect.

It is assumed that they had shrines at the top, but there is no archaeological evidence for this and the only textual evidence is from Herodotus.

It is no accident that even today Thucydides turns up as a guiding spirit in military academies, neocon think tanks and the writings of men like Henry Kissinger ; whereas Herodotus has been the choice of imaginative novelists ( Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient and the film based on it boosted the sale of the Histories to a wholly unforeseen degree ) and — as food for a starved soul — of an equally imaginative foreign correspondent from Iron Curtain Poland, Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Herodotus claimed Nile crocodiles had a symbiotic relationship with certain birds, such as the Egyptian plover, which enter the crocodile's mouth and pick leeches feeding on the crocodile's blood ; with no evidence of this interaction actually occurring in any crocodile species, it is most likely mythical or allegorical fiction.

Also according to Herodotus ( III. 139 ), Darius, prior to seizing power and " of no consequence at the time ", had served as a spearman ( doryphoros ) in the Egyptian campaign ( 528 – 525 BCE ) of Cambyses II, then the Persian Great King.

Coincidentally archaeology has turned up a major fire on the acropolis of Xanthus in the mid-6th century BC, but as Anthony Keen points out, there is no way to connect that fire with the event presented by Herodotus.

Ancient authors such as Herodotus and Plutarch are the main source of information, yet they wrote about Solon long after his death, at a time when history was by no means an academic discipline.

* c. 484 – 425 BC Herodotus tells us Egyptian doctors were specialists: Medicine is practiced among them on a plan of separation ; each physician treats a single disorder, and no more.

The population was very small in ancient times, and except for the brief mentions in Herodotus and Pausanias, has left little or no record in the history of those times.

The allied Greek land forces, which Herodotus states numbered no more than 4, 200 men, had chosen Thermopylae to block the advance of the vastly numerically superior Persian army.

A mythic element of a black dove that initiated the oracle at Dodona, which Herodotus was told in the 5th century BC may be an attempt to account for a folk etymology applied to the archaic name of the sacred women that no longer made sense ( an aitiological myth ).

It is assumed that they had shrines at the top, but there is no archaeological evidence for this and the only textual evidence is from Herodotus.

According to Herodotus " The Spartans sent the men with Leonidas on ahead so that the rest of the allies would see them and march with no fear of defeat, instead of medizing like the others if they learned that the Spartans were delaying.

In any case, no such story appears in Herodotus.

An alternative Greek form, Μιν ( Min ), was cited by the 5th-century BCE historian Herodotus, a variant no longer considered the result of contamination from the name of the god Min.

Herodotus also mentioned the Scythians but no other tribes.

Herodotus has no doubt that this was only a pretence on Aristagoras's part of giving up power.

However, Herodotus leaves us in no doubt that his real aim was simply to escape his quasi-captivity in Persia.

Illustrated above is Ilya Yefimovich Repin's Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom ( 1876 ). There are currently no known written accounts of Slavic mythology predating the fragmentation of the Proto-Slavic people into West, East, and South Slavs, with the possible exception of a short note in Herodotus ’ Histories, mentioning a tribe of Neuri in the far north, whose men, Herodotus claims, transform themselves into wolves for several days each year.

Darius consented and Histiaeus, whom Herodotus claimed had no intention of putting down the rebellion, returned to Ionia to assist Aristagoras.

According to Herodotus he was said to have traveled around the world with an arrow symbolizing Apollo, eating no food.