At the beginning of the first book of hi Histories, Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus tells the story of the coup d'état of the Lydian ruler Gyges. The entire story, with three actors, appears to be based on a play.…
In October 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus took Babylon, the ancient capital of an empire covering modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. In a broader sense, Babylon was the ancient world's capital of scholarship and science. The subject provinces…
Herodotusoffers a strange description: everything is the reversal of a custom that existed in Greece. The explanation is that the ancient Greeks believed that the barbarians on the edges of the earth were the opposite of the civilized people in…
The story of Glaucus illustrates Herodotus' use of the digressions. The main line of his account is about the Spartan king Leotychidas, who demands back several prisoners from the Athenians, but Herodotus makes the king tell a story to make…
According to Herodotus - and all ancient people - the edges of the earth were the parts of the world where fabulous creatures and savage barbarians lived. Herdotus' ideas are offered here in the translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt.
The Greek researcher and storyteller Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fifth century BCE) was the world's first historian. In The Histories, he describes the expansion of the Achaemenid empire under its kings Cyrus the Great, Cambyses and Darius I the Great, culminating…
One of the most fantastic stories by Herodotus is his account of the gold-digging ants in India, which has unexpectedly found confirmation.
The gold digging "ants"
[3.102] Besides these, there are Indians of another tribe, who border on the city of Caspatyrus,…
The Greek researcher and storyteller Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fifth century BCE) was the world's first historian. In The Histories, he describes the expansion of the Achaemenid empire under its kings Cyrus the Great, Cambyses and Darius I the Great, culminating…