The Histories 

The Histories is the well known work of the Herodotus.  The Histories was written from 450s B.C to 420s B.C in the Ionic dialect f classical Greek. This book serves as the evidence of the ancient politics, clashes, geography and traditions of different cultures which were known around Western Asia and the Mediterranean at that time.  In this book he wrote several things about Babylon, Black Sea, Phoenicia, and Egypt.  This is one of the main reasons that Marcus Tullius Cicero claimed him to be the father of the history. “The Histories” is the story about the rise of the Persian power and the conflict between Greece and Persia.

The battles which are described are the ones fought at the Salamis, Marathon and Thermopylae. Herodotus story is the historical evidence of the events which happened in his lifetime. The Persian was first tool place just before Herodotus was born, whereas the second war was happed when he was a young child. This gave the chance to question his elders about the two wars and he wanted to collect details for his story.  The Histories also included a lot of information about the Egypt.  The ethnography, geography and history of the Egypt are what he wrote about.  When he was in Egypt, he was fascinated by the customs of the Egyptians due to their differences compared to the Greek culture. Herodotus wrote about how the people in Egypt did everything backwards in connection to the Greeks.  He observed about their writing and descried how the people wrote from write to left rather than left to right. Herodotus traveled all over the world, conducting interviews, collecting information about the ancient world and started writing stories.  The Histories is divided into nine books such as Book I (Clio), Book II (Euterpe), Book III (Thalia), Book IV (Melpomene), Book V (Terpsichore), Book VI (Erato), Book VII (Polymnia), Book VIII (Urania) and Book IX (Calliope).

Questionnaire:

• Who wrote “The Histories”?
• Explain more about “ The Histories”.