Herodotus Books & Biography

Often referred to as the “father of history,” Herodotus was born in what is now modern-day Turkey in 484 BCE. He travelled the world in order to collect eyewitness accounts of the Greco-Persian Wars and conduct first-hand research, and his work is amongst the earliest Greek prose to survive in its entirety. Although Herodotus’s method of collecting information was unique for the time, he, like many Greek scholars of the period, is criticized for manipulating his reporting of events and witnesses accounts in order to improve the narrative tone. The Histories is Herodotus’s only known work, and is still referred to by modern historians as providing an important perspective on life in ancient times. Recently, Herodotus’s written account of the Battle of Thermopylae was adapted into the film 300 by Zack Snyder. Herodotus is said to have died in 625 BCE at the age of 60, although this date cannot be confirmed.