Embedded in Greek myth, there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city ; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to the fifth-century historian Herodotus, the accepted version that linked all Hellenes.

The shrine of Dodona was the oldest Hellenic oracle, according to the fifth-century historian Herodotus and in fact, dates to pre-Hellenic times, perhaps as early as the second millennium BC when the tradition probably spread from Egypt.

The oldest known mention of " Atlantic " is in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC ( Hdt.

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 account which Herodotus gives of the hostilities between the two states in the early years of the 5th century BC is to the following effect.

All the incidents subsequent to the appeal of Athens to Sparta are expressly referred by Herodotus to the interval between the sending of the heralds in 491 BC and the invasion of Datis and Artaphernes in 490 BC ( cf.

# 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.

It is probable, therefore, that Herodotus is in error both in tracing back the beginning of hostilities to an alliance between Thebes and Aegina ( c. 507 BC ) and in putting the episode of Nicodromus before Marathon.

But its prosperity dates from 544 BC, when the majority of the people of Teos ( including the poet Anacreon ) migrated to Abdera to escape the Persian yoke ( Herodotus i. 168 ).

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

As early as 490 BC a breed of large horses was bred in the Nisaean plain in Media to carry men with increasing amounts of armour ( Herodotus 7, 40 & 9, 20 ).

Herodotus ( 484 c BC – 425 c BC ) attests that the Gandarian mercenaries ( i. e. Gandharans / Kambojans of Gandari Strapy of Achaemenids ) from the 20th strapy of the Achaemenids were recruited in the army of emperor Xerxes I ( 486-465 BC ), which he led against the Hellas.

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.

Early conceptions of ecology, such as a balance and regulation in nature can be traced to Herodotus ( died c. 425 BC ), who described one of the earliest accounts of mutualism in his observation of " natural dentistry ".

Herodotus visited Egypt in the 5th century BC and recounts a story he was told about vaults under the pyramid built upon an island where lay the body of Cheops.

* 440 BC: Herodotus defends the Athenian political freedom in the Histories.

The earliest known critical historical works were The Histories, composed by Herodotus of Halicarnassus ( 484 BC – c.

Herodotus (; Hēródotos ) was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria ( modern day Bodrum, Turkey ) and lived in the fifth century BC ( 484 – 425 BC ).

In 425 BC, which is about the time that Herodotus is thought by many scholars to have died, the Athenian comic dramatist, Aristophanes, created The Acharnians, in which he blames The Peloponnesian War on the abduction of some prostitutes-a mocking reference to Herodotus, who reported the Persians ' account of their wars with Greece, beginning with the rapes of the mythical heroines Io, Europa, Medea and Helen.

Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus around 484 BC.

Herodotus ( 5th century BC ), the great Greek historian ; one of the earliest historians whose work survives.

Concerning Herodotus ( 5th century BC ), one of the earliest historians whose work survives, his recount of strange and unusual tales are gripping but not necessarily representative of the historical record.

Italian language | Italian translation of Herodotus ' Histories by Count Matteo Maria Boiardo, published in Venice, Aldine Press in 1502 ( 1533?

For example, the story of the Amazons settling with the Scythians ( Herodotus Histories 4. 110. 1-117. 1 ).

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, The Histories

* Herodotus, The Histories

The Histories of Herodotus vii. 33-37 and vii. 54-58 give details of building and crossing of Xerxes ' Pontoon Bridges.

Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world, yet most classicists agree he still believed the earth to be flat because of his descriptions of literal " ends " or " edges " of the earth.

Herodotus announced the size and scope of his work at the beginning of his Researches or Histories:

Only fragments of the latter's work survive ( and the authenticity of these is debatable ) yet they allow us glimpses into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories, as for example in the introduction to Hecataeus's work, Genealogies:

Herodotus actually mentions Hecataeus in his Histories, on one occasion mocking him for his naive genealogy and, on another occasion, quoting Athenian complaints against his handling of their national history.

Although The Histories were often criticized in antiquity for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism — Lucian of Samosata attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae Historiae and went as far as to deny him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed — modern historians and philosophers take a more positive view of Herodotus's methodology, especially those searching for a paradigm of objective historical writing.

Herodotus wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect yet he was born in Halicarnassus, originally a Dorian settlement.

According to Lucian, Herodotus took his finished work straight from Asia Minor to the Olympic Games and read the entire Histories to the assembled spectators in one sitting, receiving rapturous applause at the end of it.

Aristotle refers to a version of The Histories written by ' Herodotus of Thurium ' and indeed some passages in the Histories have been interpreted as proof that he wrote about southern Italy from personal experience there ( IV, 15, 99 ; VI 127 ).

Despite this, The Histories of Herodotus displays many of the techniques of more modern historians.

Ephorus made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, Herodotus ( Histories, 2. 53 ) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and the 4th century BC sophist Alcidamas in his work Mouseion even brought them together for an imagined poetic agon, which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.

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 ).

Later, Herodotus ( Histories i. 7 ) adds that the " Meiones " were renamed Lydians after their king, Lydus ( Λυδός ), son of Atys, in the mythical epoch that preceded the rise of the Heracleid dynasty.

Herodotus, in Book II of his Histories, describes as a " labyrinth " a building complex in Egypt, " near the place called the City of Crocodiles ," that he considered to surpass the pyramids in its astonishing ambition:

Herodotus ' description of the Egyptian Labyrinth, in Book II of The Histories, inspired some central scenes in Bolesław Prus ' 1895 historical novel, Pharaoh.

* Herodotus, The Histories, Newly translated and with an introduction by Aubrey de Sélincourt, Harmondsworth, England, Penguin Books, 1965.