The Histories by Herodotus - 12 - Conclusion
Conclusion
Quotes
"The Histories are not the chronicle of a single ruler or a single people's contract with its god, but a 'polycentric' narrative that moves easily among the different voices, stories, and points of view of many individuals from many different lands." – Robin Waterfield
"Herodotus was the first historian: no one before him had ever written a book that could be called history." – Charles Van Doren
Notes and Key Takeaways
In Greek, the word 'historia' means 'inquiry'. A literal translation of Herodotus' title would be The Inquiries. This is ultimately where we get our word 'history'.
The Histories is the beginning of history as we know it. It is the beginning of a true inquiry into the past.
But it isn't a story about one thing. It collects different memories from different people and different points of view. And it doesn't tell you what you should be thinking about them. Herodotus says you can believe them or not based on what you think. He even includes stories which he says he doesn't believe are true.
He includes a ton of digressions into some pretty obscure areas. He also acknowledges that he's doing this, and he says that he is not in a position to know which information he's including will rise above the rest and become most significant in the future.
Herodotus is a bit of a relativist. He tells a story about Darius where Darius asked the Greeks, who cremate their elders when they die, how much money it would take for them to eat them instead. The Greeks are disgusted by the idea. He then asks the Indians, who eat their elders when they die, how much money it would take for them to burn them instead. The Indians are disgusted by the idea. It's reasonable to take from this that Herodotus would not dismiss someone who had a foreign point of view. He would instead be curious to know what that point of view was and he would likely work to include it in his book.
The Greco-Persian War was a remarkable victory for the Greeks who then went on to virtually create Western civilization. Philosophy, science, medicine, history, drama, and more, all came to us from ancient Greece and especially ancient Athens. Had the Greeks lost, the whole western world as we know it probably would not exist.
And fighting this war probably also helped stimulate Greece to become as strong and advanced as it became. So it's not only if they lost, but if the war hadn't even happened, Greece would maybe not have become as great as it was or leave us its important legacy either.
This would likely be reason enough for Herodotus to write this book. But he was also writing The Histories during the Peloponnesian Wars when the Spartans and the Athenians were fighting with each other. From that place inside a civil war, he looked back to when both united together to defeat the Persians. So the Father of History perhaps pursued history for the exact same reasons as most people do today: to understand and comment on the present.
He doesn't mention any of that in The Histories, however. For Herodotus, the purpose of The Histories is "to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks." To preserve important memories and stories is another reason to write history.
Herodotus, the world's first historian, was also an amazing writer and storyteller. One reason his work survived was because he was so popular, and many copies of his work were preserved.
Although, just like anyone else that popular, he had his haters, too. Including the world's next greatest historian, Thucydides...