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Herodotus, writing about 30 to 40 years after the events he describes, did, according to Miller ( 2006 ) in fact base his version of the battle on eyewitness accounts, so it seems altogether likely that Pheidippides was an actual historical figure, although the same source claims the classical author didn't ever in fact mention a Marathon-Athens runner in any of his writings.
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Herodotus and writing
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 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, writing about Babylon closest in time to Nebuchadnezzar II, does not mention the Hanging Gardens in his Histories.
Herodotus, some five centuries before Strabo, supplied further information about Rhodopis in his Histories, writing that Rhodopis came from Thrace, and was the slave of Iadmon of Samos, and a fellow-slave of Aesop.
Herodotus had seen and described the Cadmean writing in the temple of Apollo at Thebes engraved on certain tripods.
Herodotus thought the Cimmerians and the Thracians closely related, writing that both peoples originally inhabited the northern shore of the Black Sea, and both were displaced about 700 BC, by invaders from the east.
Surely much intervening literature regarding Cydippe the priestess of Hera has been lost, since Plutarch was writing about 300 years after Herodotus first told the story.
Herodotus ( 1. 7 ) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia, yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale, writing, " The Heraclides, descended from Heracles and the slave-girl of Iardanus ...." Omphale as slave-girl seems odd.
The ancient historian Herodotus cited him as " the best and most honourable man in Athens ", and he received similarly reverent treatment in the writing of the philosopher Plato.
In the 1st century BC, Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentioned the chronicle-type format of the writing of the logographers in the age before the founder of the Greek historiographic tradition, Herodotus ( i. e. before the 480s BC ), saying " they did not write connected accounts but instead broke them up according to peoples and cities, treating each separately.
These tombs, containing Scythian artistic and armament metallurgy ( e. g. acinaces ), have moreover been dated to 550-450 BC — roughly the timeframe of Herodotus ' writing.
Coxie may also have designed the tapestries for Phillip II's Royal Palace of Madrid depicting episodes of the life of Cyrus II, based on the writing of Herodotus.
Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, wrote that the Egyptians " practise circumcision for the sake of cleanliness,
Herodotus, who lived from approximately 484 to 425 BC, is the earliest of the classical writers to give an account of her career, writing almost one hundred years later.
The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, considered her the equivalent of Aphrodite: According to Herodotus, the ancient Arabians believed in only two gods:
Although the Chinese geographical writing in the time of Herodotus and Strabo were of lesser quality and contained less systematic approach, this would change from the 3rd century onwards, as Chinese methods of documenting geography became more complex than found in Europe ( until the 13th century ).
Herodotus mentions the Corinthian helmet in his Histories when writing of the Machlyes and Auseans, two tribes living along the River Triton in ancient Libya ( the portion of ancient Libya he describes is most likely in modern Tunisia ).
" It would seem that the Goths, who then occupied the region between the southern coast of the Baltic and the upper waters of the Dnieper ," Taylor argued in a subsequent paper, " must have obtained a knowledge of the art of writing from the merchants of Olbia and other Greek colonies on the Euxine, who, according to Herodotus, voyaged forty days ' journey to the North by the great trade route of the Dnieper.
That one nation may turn into another nation over time, both by splitting ( colonisation ) and by merging ( syncretism, acculturation ) is implicitly acknowledged by ancient writers ; Herodotus describes the Armenians as " colonists of the Phrygians ", implying that at the time of writing clearly separate groups originated as a single group.
Herodotus and about
Most of our information about him is derived from Herodotus ( 2. 161ff ) and can only be imperfectly verified by monumental evidence.
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 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.
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.
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 himself reported dubious information if it was interesting, sometimes adding his own opinion about its reliability.
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.
In fact Herodotus was in the habit of seeking out information from empowered sources within communities, such as aristocrats and priests, and this also occurred at an international level, with Periclean Athens becoming his principal source of information about events in Greece.
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 ).
Herodotus was also known for visiting the various battle sites he wrote about, including the battle of Thermopylae.
According to Greek historian Herodotus, Darius wanted to know more about Asia.
Thucydides ' history of the Peloponesian War and Herodotus ' history of the Persian War ( both written in the 5th century BC ) survives in about eight early copies, the oldest ones dating from the 10th century AD.
What is known about the easternmost satraps and borderlands of the Achaemenid Empire are alluded to in the Darius inscriptions and from Greek sources such as the Histories of Herodotus and the later Alexander Chronicles ( Arrian, Strabo et al .).
According to the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, about 600 BC, Necho II undertook to dig a west-east canal through the Wadi Tumilat between Bubastis and Heroopolis, and perhaps continued it to the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea.
Like his predecessor Herodotus, known as " the father of history ", Thucydides places a high value on eyewitness testimony and writes about events in which he himself probably took part.
In the time of Herodotus, about 450 BC, their judicial functions had been restricted to cases dealing with heiresses, adoptions and the public roads.
He, along with Philo of Byzantium, Strabo, Herodotus and Diodoros of Sicily, is attributed with the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which he described in a poem composed about 140 BC:
The Greek historian Herodotus described the hippopotamus in The Histories ( written circa 440 BC ) and the Roman Historian Pliny the Elder wrote about the hippopotamus in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia ( written circa 77 AD ).
However, in his Histories, ix. 120 – 122, the Greek writer Herodotus describes the execution of a Persian general at the hands of Athenians in about 479 BC: " They nailed him to a plank and hung him up ... this Artayctes who suffered death by crucifixion.
These traditions are found in different passages of Herodotus, and in a later form, but with some trustworthy detail about his household, in the fragments of Ctesias.
Except for a few basic generalities, such as that the Lycians probably fought in the Trojan War, nothing mentioned by the works produced under the name of Homer, or the other poets, or anything said by Herodotus about Lycians prior to his own time, is generally granted any historical validity.
Though Herodotus was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus, he rejected snowmelt as a cause of the annual flood of the Nile river ; according to his translator and interpreter, Livio Catullo Stecchini, he left unsettled the question of an equatorial Nile, since the geography of Sub-Saharan Africa was unknown to him.
Much of the surviving information about the Scythians comes from the Greek historian Herodotus ( c. 440 BC ) in his Histories and Ovid in his poem of exile Epistulae ex Ponto, and archaeologically from the exquisite goldwork found in Scythian burial mounds in Ukraine and Southern Russia.
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