Herodotus biography essay requirements

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Cleomenes is driven mad by constant assassination attempts and he kills himself.

There is a story about a man named Pheidippides meeting the god Pan on his way to request back up from Sparta. The Suda also claims that Herodotus spent time in the Macedonian court in Pella, where, supposedly, the young Thucydides, who was a member of the aristocracy in nearby Thrace, burst into tears after hearing a declamation of the Histories. This is no doubt apocryphal, but Thucydides himself does obliquely refer to certain Herodotean “errors” in his prefatory Archaeology, and so was aware of his predecessor.

The date of Herodotus’ death is unknown.

He himself says that his travels included sojourns in Egypt, Arabia, and Tyre, where he gathered first-hand material, and he takes pains to distinguish hearsay evidence (which he often relays) from autopsy, or those things that he saw himself. There is a town burning in Sardis, and Darius vows revenge against Athens.

Meanwhile the Persians realize they probably won't be able to hold off the Greek rebellion for much longer.

Book Six

In preparation to fight against the Persians, the Ionian army receives help from Dionysius of Phocaea.

Sparta is late to the battle. The Suda further states that Herodotus was sent into exile on the island of Samos by the tyrant Lygdamis, and that he subsequently returned and expelled the tyrant from the city, before leaving for the Athenian colony of Thurii in southern Italy. The arrangement of the work itself suggests Herodotus’ intention, and the reader is encouraged to think through the logic of the Histories’many anecdotes and unfolding episodes.

Little is known about the events of Herodotus’ life.

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When two Magi rebel against Cambyses, he is killed.

Darius I comes to power in Persia. Xerxes defeats them again and commands his army to decapitate Leonidas and hang his body from a cross.

Book Eight

Eurybiades replaces Leonidas. He is commonly referred to as “the father of history,” an appellation given him by the Roman orator and politician Cicero.

Herodotus’ only book, known to posterity as the Histories, is the first complete, extant prose work from the great intellectual flourishing of fifth-century Greece; Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is the second.

Such biographical details may or may not be accurate. At any rate, he must have died before 413 BCE, because he states in the Histories (IX, 73) that the Spartans never occupied the town of Decelea in northern Attica. Athens summons help from Sparta again, and some Spartan history is told explaining why they always have two kings, and how they divide up responsibility.

Demaratus of Sparta is impeached for lying about his ancestry.

Gyges seizes the throne and conquers Candaules in combat. We learn an unpleasant tale about Xerxes's wife torturing and mutilating the wife of Masistes. In other words, they are less likely to be attacked by invaders since everyone knows that they worked together to defeat the Persians.

Herodotus himself maintains that the true value of the story can be found in the glory of the individual souls who died on the battlefields.

The Nile is the main reason the kingdom exists, in Herodotus's opinion.

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