Herodotus' work is divided into nine books. Each has the name of one of the nine Muses. The division was probably made by the Alexandrian editors of Herodotus.
The foreword to Book One gives us the writer's name and place of origin. It also tells us of his intention to keep human events and achievements alive in memory.
"This is the display of the enquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by humankind not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvellous deeds - some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians - not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other."
Up to a point, Herodotus went about his business like a present-day journalist, transmitting what he saw and heard. At the same time, however, he treated his selected information critically, comparing one narrative with another. This of course did not prevent him recording stories he did not himself believe in. He narrated them as he heard them - but did not hesitate to express disbelief where he thought it necessary. As he himself tells us, he relied on personal experience and oral sources; and he relied also on information from written texts by his precursors. |
Here we must look in more detail at what Herodotus meant by the term historia. It implies information (1,1); knowing or finding out by question-and-answer; an investigation carried out (2,118; 1,19); and also a written statement of investigation, a relating (7,96). So we see that the main thing about Herodotus' work is recording and relating information: the writer's critical approach and personal stance are incidental phenomena. This was why Thucydides had his doubts about the validity of Herodotus.
In his work Herodotus by and large takes as his guide the early geography and ethnography that provided him with a foundation for his view of historical development. However, he regards himself as being better informed than his predecessors. Hence he is able to make corrections to their work. For instance, he finds fault with the view that Europe and Asia-plus-Africa are of equal size, asserting that Europe is the larger. He judges the customs of the peoples he is describing by their specific cultural status. Hence it would be quite wrong to say that the term barbarian, as used by Herodotus, is derogatory: customs characterize a particular race from the very moment that they flow from a specific cultural attitude. The same custom may be acceptable to one people, unacceptable to another, without this denoting derogation of the latter. The word barbarian in Herodotus implies nothing more than 'difference', 'otherness'. |
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As a true descendant of the Ionian philosophers, Herodotus believed in a state of power equilibrium between the divine, the human, and the natural. He laid particular emphasis on destiny, and he believed in a revenge-and-reprisal relationship. This is why he delved back into the past of the two peoples he was dealing with in his Histories: he regarded the Persian wars was having had their roots in ancient wrongs. A second cause of the wars was, he thought, the Persians' desire to extend their sway.
Herodotus' attempt to unify his work via the concept of causality is supremely 'historical'. Throughout he was asking the question: "How did Y result from X?". Though perfectly well aware that a war can have economic, social, or other causes, Herodotus preferred to derive the reasons for events by using the concept of 'double motivation'. This meant in effect explaining occurrences by divine and human operation simultaneously. On the one hand it was obvious that things which occurred ought to occur - that they had a metaphysical mission, namely to maintain order. But at the same time people could be regarded as fully responsible for their actions.
Herodotus' work is both a particular (a history of the peoples of Hellas and the East) and a universal (the proof that there is orderliness in history). From ancient times onwards, his work has been very variously evaluated. Plutarch took him to task for being too partisan; Cicero, in the same breath as he labelled Herodotus the Father of History, claimed that the book contained umpteen fairy-tales. In our own time, many people have doubted the credibility of what he wrote, going so far as to deny that there is any truth in it whatsoever. We must at all costs be cautious in making absolute judgments for or against Herodotus' veracity. Much of the information he collected may have been fictitious (though it must obviously have been believed by some for them to have been relating it); he may treat his statements about sources in a rather cavalier way; but that is not enough to make him a Munchausen. Lastly, we should never forget that the criteria for evaluating a work as history were not the same then are they are now.
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