The Histories

The first work of history in the Western tradition — and still one of the most readable. Herodotus of Halicarnassus set out to explain why Greeks and Persians went to war, and in doing so swept up the whole known world: the customs of Egypt, the rise of Persia, the lives of kings and tyrants, and the wonders and rumours he gathered on his travels. The narrative builds to the great clash of the Persian Wars — Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis — but its lasting pleasure is the inquiring, digressive voice that earned its author the title Father of History (and, to his critics, Father of Lies).