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The work of Herodotus is reported to have been recited at festivals, where prizes were awarded, as for example, during the games at Olympia. [63] Herodotus views history as a source of moral lessons, with conflicts and wars as misfortunes flowing from initial acts of injustice perpetuated through cycles of revenge. [64]
Current scholars generally turn to Herodotus's own writing for reliable information about his life, [5]: 7 supplemented with archaic yet much later sources, such as the Byzantine Suda, a 10th-century encyclopedia which possibly took its information from traditional accounts. Still, the challenge is great:
For instance, Herodotus argued that Homer had exaggerated the story and that the Trojans had been unable to return Helen because she was in Egypt. [1] When sixth century Athenians cited Homer to justify their side in a territorial dispute with Megara, the Megarans responded by accusing the Athenians of falsifying the text. [2]
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.
Herodotus is widely known as the "father of history," his Histories being eponymous of the entire field. Written between the 450s and 420s BC, the scope of Herodotus' work reaches about a century in the past, discussing 6th century BC historical figures such as Darius I of Persia , Cambyses II , and Psamtik III and alludes to some 8th century ...
Practically the only primary source for the Ionian Revolt is the Greek historian Herodotus. [2] Herodotus, who has been called the 'Father of History', [ 3 ] was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor (then under Persian overlordship).
Sources from antiquity are unanimous in declaring that Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, first committed the poems of Homer to writing and placed them in the order in which we now read them. [8] More radical Homerists, such as Gregory Nagy , contend that a canonical text of the Homeric poems did not exist until established by Alexandrian ...
But Herodotus's report is a mixture of Greek and Oriental legends and is not historically reliable. Also, it is assumed that the Median king whom Herodotus's reports are about is the same Deioces, Phraortes ' father; thus, it is not possible to clarify the exact date of the period of his rule; but it can be said that it probably covered most of ...