Herodotus book 1 summary
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Portret Herodota w świetle traktatu De Herodoti malignitate Plutarcha z Cheronei
Authors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24917/20841043.7.2.3Keywords:
Plutarch, Herodotus, truth, liar, malice, moralistAbstract
Portrait of Herodotus in the light of Plutarch’s treatise De Herodoti malignitate: As a Platonist and moralist Plutarch paid particular attention truth. No wonder that in his reference to Herodotus’ Histories he took into consideration the issue of historical truth, which was for him very important — both in its ethical as well as didactic aspect. In his De Herodoti malignitate the Chaeronean moralist is concerned with truth as well as with offering moral uplift. Plutarch presents Herodotus as a perfidious liar who falsely presented such famous and heroic Greeks as Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles or Pausanias and — above all — depreciatingly treated the Boeotians and Corinthians. Moreover, Plutarch accuses the historian of Halicarnassus of
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Herodotus wrote only one book, known today as the Histories. The Greek word that forms its title, historiai, from which our word “history” derives, means inquiries—and so a more accurate title might be the Inquiries of Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The first great work of literary prose to be written outside of the Biblical tradition, the Histories is not only the forerunner of all discursive writing in the Western canon, but it is also the most complete surviving document of Pre-Socratic thought, the writings of the other Pre-Socratic thinkers being fragmentary.
Overall, the Histories narrates the events culminating in the great Persian Wars between the city-states of Greece and the empire of Achaemenid Persia. In the earlier portions of the work, the historical (or mythical) account is interspersed with descriptions of the customs and beliefs of various peoples, including the Persians, the Greeks, the Scythians, the Egyptians, and others, focusing particularly on their distinctive piety and its relationship to politics and war. In addition to studying the customs (nomo CAIS The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies Home About CAIS Articles News Archive Announcements Seminars Submission Contact Us Copyright Disclaimer Search Follow us on IRANIAN MILITARY HISTORY: THE ACHAEMENID DYNASTY 1. Herodotus and His Critics Today the method which aims at the reconstruction of historical events on the basis of data that are quantifiable becomes every day more generally accepted; for this reason it would be proper to ask who is the author of this historical method. In my opinion the first quantitative historian was Herodotus. The "Father of History" is not considered by the generality of scholars of ancient history and culture to provide an example of sound historical method. He is almost universally considered a man of mediocre intellect who believed all sorts of fairytales, collected spuri
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An Analysis of Herodotus in
By: Professor Livio Catullo Stecchini