Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian born in Halicarnassus in Asia Minor. He lived during the 5th century BCE, in the age of the Persian Wars. Following possible exile, he travelled extensively across the Persian Empire, Egypt, and the Greek world. He later joined the founding of the Athenian colony of Thurii in Italy around 443 BCE, where he likely completed his work. He is generally believed to have been born around 484 BCE and to have died between 430 and 420 BCE.
His sole surviving work is the Histories, a complete multi-volume prose narrative written in the Ionic dialect. It centres on the Greco-Persian wars and reaches outward through extensive digressions that record the peoples and places of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world he visited. The complete text survives in medieval manuscripts, divided by later editors into nine books.
Available Works
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