Herodotus pioneered many methods and sources that historians use today. He depended heavily on his own observations from his extensive travels. He also interviewed individual Greeks, Persians, and others. He did not rigorously separate fact from fiction as modern historians try to do.
He also composed long speeches, most of which had never been actually spoken. But Herodotus presented a balanced picture of the Greeks and Persians at war. Remarkably, much of his account was from the Persian point of view. Although he wrote about oracles and dreams influencing men, he did not put the gods in the middle of the action as Homer had done.
In the first sentence of The Histories , Herodotus explained why he wrote his monumental work:. Herodotus of Halicarnassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds—some brought forth by the Hellenes [Greeks], others by the barbarians [Persians]—not go unsung; as well as the causes that led them to make war on each other.
Known for his vast riches, Croessus learned of an oracle who predicted he would destroy a great empire. This emboldened him to attack the Persians to the east. The Persian King Cyrus crushed his army and conquered Lydia.
Only then did Croessus realize that the empire he would destroy was his own. Herodotus thus set the stage for the fall of great men who came too close to thinking of themselves as all-powerful gods. Herodotus described a remarkable scene in Persian history following the sudden death of King Cambyses.
Persian nobles debated whether they should continue the monarchy rule by a king , or adopt a democracy rule by the many or an oligarchy rule by the few. The noble Darius reminded his countrymen that King Cyrus had alone made the decisions that created the Persian Empire. This argument convinced the nobles to stay with a monarchy. They also agreed to make Darius the new king. Herodotus told how Darius reorganized and expanded the Persian Empire so that it reached from western India in Asia to Thrace, north of Greece, in Europe.
Greece comprised many city-states. The most important were Athens, a democracy, and Sparta, an oligarchy. These city-states were not unified and thus were in danger if King Darius ever decided to conquer Greece. In B. Darius easily crushed the revolt. He then retaliated against Athens by mounting a massive seaborne invasion of Greece in B.
The Athenians with a few allies defeated Darius at the battle of Marathon. Herodotus described how the Athenians finally won:. In their victory there, they allowed the barbarian troops that they had routed to flee and then. His son, Xerxes, succeeded him in B. A few years after Darius died, Xerxes decided to lead a second invasion of Greece. Herodotus quoted a long speech Xerxes made to the Persian nobles, stating his reasons and intentions. This speech, like others that Herodotus quoted in The Histories, probably never took place.
Persians, I am not about to introduce a new custom to you, instead I shall follow the tradition handed down to me. I was struck by the realization that we could gain glory; take possession of lands fully as extensive, productive, and fertile as those which we have now; and at the same time obtain vengeance and retribution, too. He also assembled a navy that consisted of war ships from subject states. As the massive army and navy moved toward Athens, Spartans held a key pass in the mountains at Thermopylae.
Xerxes asked an exiled Spartan if his countrymen would fight the overwhelming Persian army. For though they are free, they are not free in all respects, for they are actually ruled by a lord and master: law is that master, and it is the law that they inwardly fear—much more so than your men fear you. They do whatever it commands, which is always the same: It forbids them to flee from battle, and no matter how many men they are fighting, it orders them to remain in their rank or perish.
Xerxes laughed at this, wrote Herodotus, but was stunned when the Spartans repelled three assaults by his army. The Spartans were defeated only after a Greek betrayed them by showing the Persians a concealed path through the mountains. The Athenian leader Themistocles persuaded the others that this meant the Athenians should fight at sea with their wooden ships.
The Athenian navy destroyed the Persian fleet as Xerxes looked on in horror. The Spartans went on to win a great land victory over the Persian army, forcing it to march back across the pontoon bridge to Persia, never to return. After the defeat of Xerxes, many Greek city-states joined a league, headed by Athens with its superior navy, to defend Greece from any further Persian invasions.
Athens, however, began to demand tribute—money, soldiers, or warships—from league members. In addition, Athens forced other city-states to join the league and prevented any member from leaving it.
It also pressured league cities to adopt a democratic government like its own. The combination of tribute and expanded trade created a wealthy Athenian Empire. This, in turn, enabled Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, to launch a major building program in the city. One of his projects included the famous Parthenon, a temple to the goddess Athena. Pericles admitted that the Athenian Empire was a tyranny but argued the benefits it brought to Athens outweighed its evils.
Meanwhile, the Spartans with their dominant land army withdrew to their homeland of Peloponnesus, a wide peninsula connected to the Greek mainland by a narrow strip of land. Sparta differed greatly from Athens. It was a regimented, militaristic society.
All Spartan males, ages 20—60, were soldiers. Women and slaves performed most other tasks in Sparta. Its government was an oligarchy, drawn from the professional warrior class. As Athens gathered more Greek city-states into its empire, the Spartans began to view the Athenians as a threat.
Sparta formed its own defensive league, and before long sporadic fighting broke out with Athens and its allies.
A peace treaty between Athens and Sparta did not last long, and in B. Fighting in Greece continued for most of the next 27 years. Herodotus was still alive at the start of the Peloponnesian War, but another Greek, Thucydides , would write its history. Thucydides was born into a wealthy Athenian family about B. Little else is known about the first 30 years of his life.
Assigned to command a fleet off the coast of Thrace, he failed to prevent the Spartans from capturing an Athenian colony. As was the custom, Athens punished Thucydides by exiling him from Athens for 20 years. With lots of time on his hands, Thucydides decided to write a prose account of the war as it happened, almost like a modern news reporter.
He traveled extensively into the war zones, observed battles, interviewed Athenian and Spartan military and political leaders, and read documents relating to the war. He was the first to analyze human behavior in wartime. He concluded that war was rooted in human nature and would be repeated in the future. Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides rejected telling crowd-pleasing stories and concentrated on the facts of important events.
He avoided writing about myths, oracles, and superstitions. He recognized that even eyewitnesses could not always be reliable sources. In general, he tried hard to be accurate, fair, and unbiased. Like Herodotus, Thucydides quoted speeches, but these actually took place. Thucydides heard some of them himself. Typically slow to act, Sparta finally agreed to lead the fight against Athens, demanding that it restore independence to the Greek cities under its control.
Thucydides wrote that only an honest leader like Pericles could make Athenian democracy work. Thucydides was interested in how both soldiers and civilians behaved in wartime. Athens quickly crushed the revolt, and the people of the city slaughtered the rebel faction.
This incident prompted Thucydides to comment on the evils of revolution:. The sufferings that revolution entailed upon cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same. The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition. As the war resumed, Athenian leaders argued for a major military expedition to Sicily.
When Herodotus was not traveling, he returned to Athens; there, he became something of a celebrity. He gave readings in public places and collected fees from officials for his appearances.
In B. Herodotus spent his entire life working on just one project: an account of the origins and execution of the Greco-Persian Wars — B. Most of what we know about the Battle of Marathon is from Herodotus.
After Herodotus died, editors divided his Histories into nine books. Each was named after one of the Muses. The first five books look into the past to try to explain the rise and fall of the Persian Empire. They describe the geography of each state the Persians conquered and tell about their people and customs. The next four books tell the story of the war itself, from the invasions of Greece by Persian emperors Darius and Xerxes to the Greek triumphs at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale in and B.
He treats every piece of his narrative, from the main themes to the digressions and from the facts to the fictions, with equal importance. He shows how Persian hubris led to the downfall of a great empire, but he also places a great deal of stock in gossipy tales of personal shortcomings and moral lessons. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
Leonidas c. Although Leonidas lost the battle, his death at Thermopylae was seen as a heroic sacrifice because he sent most The Battle of Marathon in B. The battle was fought on the Marathon plain of northeastern Attica and marked the first blows of the Greco-Persian War.
With the Persians closing in on the Greek capitol, Athenian general Hercules known in Greek as Heracles or Herakles is one of the best-known heroes in Greek and Roman mythology. His life was not easy—he endured many trials and completed many daunting tasks—but the reward for his suffering was a promise that he would live forever among the gods The warrior Achilles is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology.
Cleopatra VII ruled ancient Egypt as co-regent first with her father, then with her two younger brothers and finally with her son for almost three decades. She was part of a dynasty of Macedonian rulers founded by Ptolemy, who served as general under Alexander the Great during The Athenian philosopher Plato c.
In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates. The Academy he
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