WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.960 Okay, let's just jump right in. When you try 00:00:02.960 --> 00:00:06.240 to find the very starting point. That, you know, 00:00:06.259 --> 00:00:09.000 the first real attempt at what we call history, 00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:11.679 not just a list of kings, but a real systematic 00:00:11.679 --> 00:00:15.300 inquiry. You always land on one person. Inevitably, 00:00:15.300 --> 00:00:18.100 you land on Herodotus. Right. And he's this figure 00:00:18.100 --> 00:00:21.399 whose entire legacy is a contradiction. He's 00:00:21.399 --> 00:00:23.280 the guy who defines what it is to be a historian. 00:00:23.660 --> 00:00:25.600 But at the same time, he's almost immediately 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:28.760 branded as, well, a teller of tall tales. And 00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:31.679 that's the core of our deep dive today. We're 00:00:31.679 --> 00:00:33.560 talking about Herodotus, the man who gets that 00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:36.479 famous title, the father of history. A title 00:00:36.479 --> 00:00:39.520 that didn't come until much later. Oh, much later. 00:00:39.579 --> 00:00:41.560 It was the Roman orator Cicero who called him 00:00:41.560 --> 00:00:43.960 that centuries after his death. But that title, 00:00:43.960 --> 00:00:45.979 you know, carries a lot of weight because he 00:00:45.979 --> 00:00:48.100 was seen as the founder of rational historical 00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:51.200 research. But also. But also, almost immediately, 00:00:51.380 --> 00:00:53.460 his own contemporaries started calling him the 00:00:53.460 --> 00:00:56.200 father of lies. So our mission today is to really 00:00:56.200 --> 00:00:58.659 get into that conflict, to distill the life, 00:00:58.740 --> 00:01:01.969 the work, and this legacy. And we have to move 00:01:01.969 --> 00:01:04.469 beyond just the title. We need to get into how 00:01:04.469 --> 00:01:07.629 he worked. You know, what was his method? Where 00:01:07.629 --> 00:01:10.650 did he go? And why did his approach stir up so 00:01:10.650 --> 00:01:12.670 much controversy? A controversy that, frankly, 00:01:12.810 --> 00:01:15.629 is still going on today. It absolutely is. From 00:01:15.629 --> 00:01:18.189 ancient Athens to modern archaeology, people 00:01:18.189 --> 00:01:20.689 are still debating his reliability. So the source 00:01:20.689 --> 00:01:22.510 material we've pulled together for you is pretty 00:01:22.510 --> 00:01:24.430 comprehensive. We're looking at biographical 00:01:24.430 --> 00:01:26.829 facts. We're looking at analysis of his writing, 00:01:26.890 --> 00:01:29.109 the histories. And we're looking at all these 00:01:29.109 --> 00:01:31.709 different views. that have shaped his reputation 00:01:31.709 --> 00:01:33.989 over, what, two and a half thousand years? Pretty 00:01:33.989 --> 00:01:35.709 much. And it's so important to remember that 00:01:35.709 --> 00:01:38.209 Herodotus was a man caught between worlds. He 00:01:38.209 --> 00:01:41.390 was a Greek, but also a Persian subject, a Dorian, 00:01:41.390 --> 00:01:45.329 but writing an Ionian. And that tension, that's 00:01:45.329 --> 00:01:47.230 really the secret ingredient to his whole work. 00:01:47.370 --> 00:01:49.290 So let's start with the basics. Who was he exactly? 00:01:49.670 --> 00:01:52.579 Okay, so Herodotus. He was a Greek historian 00:01:52.579 --> 00:01:54.640 and geographer. He lived in the 5th century BC, 00:01:54.859 --> 00:01:58.859 so roughly from about 484 BC to maybe 425 BC. 00:01:59.079 --> 00:02:01.459 And his entire identity, everything we know about 00:02:01.459 --> 00:02:04.500 him, is tied to his one surviving work. The masterpiece, 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:07.359 the histories. Exactly. Which is really the birth 00:02:07.359 --> 00:02:09.659 of historical prose as we know it. Before him, 00:02:09.659 --> 00:02:11.979 you had poetry and maybe some local chronicles, 00:02:12.060 --> 00:02:14.539 but nothing on this scale. And when most people 00:02:14.539 --> 00:02:16.819 hear the histories, they immediately think of 00:02:16.819 --> 00:02:19.900 one thing. The Greco -Persian Wars. That's the 00:02:19.900 --> 00:02:22.180 main event, for sure. It's the original epic 00:02:22.180 --> 00:02:24.939 narrative of East versus West. He's building 00:02:24.939 --> 00:02:28.199 this incredible story around the massive clashes 00:02:28.199 --> 00:02:31.319 that defined his century. Marathon, Thermopylae. 00:02:31.340 --> 00:02:34.979 All of them. Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis. 00:02:35.740 --> 00:02:39.280 Plataea, Michaeli, those huge famous battles 00:02:39.280 --> 00:02:42.240 are the narrative engine driving the whole thing 00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:44.539 forward. But that's not all it is, is it? It's 00:02:44.539 --> 00:02:46.840 so much more than just a war report. Oh, absolutely. 00:02:47.139 --> 00:02:49.219 And if you only focus on the battles, you're 00:02:49.219 --> 00:02:51.699 missing what made his work so revolutionary. 00:02:52.330 --> 00:02:54.689 And so controversial. The histories is constantly 00:02:54.689 --> 00:02:57.169 veering off the main path. The famous digressions. 00:02:57.169 --> 00:02:59.750 The famous digressions or Logoi. He pulls the 00:02:59.750 --> 00:03:02.550 lens way back from the fighting to give you this 00:03:02.550 --> 00:03:05.449 incredibly rich cultural, ethnographical and 00:03:05.449 --> 00:03:07.949 geographical context. He's basically writing 00:03:07.949 --> 00:03:10.050 an encyclopedia of the entire known world at 00:03:10.050 --> 00:03:12.669 the time. It's like he knew you couldn't possibly 00:03:12.669 --> 00:03:15.169 understand why the Greeks and Persians were fighting 00:03:15.169 --> 00:03:18.289 unless you understood how they lived, their gods, 00:03:18.469 --> 00:03:21.310 their politics, their customs. He got that instinctively. 00:03:21.389 --> 00:03:24.650 He understood that you had to explain their political 00:03:24.650 --> 00:03:27.469 systems, their religious beliefs, even their 00:03:27.469 --> 00:03:29.509 trade routes and their climate. He wasn't just 00:03:29.509 --> 00:03:31.050 building a battlefield. He was building their 00:03:31.050 --> 00:03:34.229 entire world. It's a wellspring of additional 00:03:34.229 --> 00:03:36.590 information, as scholars have called it. That's 00:03:36.590 --> 00:03:39.030 the perfect phrase for it. He weaves in his own 00:03:39.030 --> 00:03:41.280 travels to Egypt. these amazing descriptions 00:03:41.280 --> 00:03:44.599 of the Scythian nomads on the Black Sea, his 00:03:44.599 --> 00:03:47.639 deep dives into Babylonian customs and the history 00:03:47.639 --> 00:03:50.599 of the Lydian kings. It's all in there. But that 00:03:50.599 --> 00:03:53.439 process, that deep context setting, that's where 00:03:53.439 --> 00:03:55.479 the trouble starts, right? That's exactly it. 00:03:55.539 --> 00:03:57.560 Because he gave the same narrative weight to 00:03:57.560 --> 00:04:00.620 things he could verify and to, well, colorful 00:04:00.620 --> 00:04:03.520 local legends he picked up on his travels. And 00:04:03.520 --> 00:04:05.879 for his critics, that journalistic choice was 00:04:05.879 --> 00:04:08.780 a disaster. So our mission today is to hold those 00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:11.159 two things in balance. The meticulous reporter 00:04:11.159 --> 00:04:13.840 on one side and the, let's say, enthusiastic 00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:16.980 storyteller on the other. And to see how his 00:04:16.980 --> 00:04:20.500 unique life, his own story, made that contradiction 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:23.319 not just possible, but inevitable. Okay, let's 00:04:23.319 --> 00:04:25.439 get into that life then. Let's move past the 00:04:25.439 --> 00:04:27.160 text for a minute and look at the man himself. 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:30.420 Where does his story begin? It begins in a place 00:04:30.420 --> 00:04:33.060 called Halicarnassus. It was in a region called 00:04:33.060 --> 00:04:35.329 Carraria. which is in modern -day Turkey, Asia 00:04:35.329 --> 00:04:38.730 Minor. He was born there around 485 BC. And the 00:04:38.730 --> 00:04:40.990 setting is everything here. Everything. Because 00:04:40.990 --> 00:04:43.709 Helicarnassus in the 5th century BC was under 00:04:43.709 --> 00:04:45.889 Persian control. It was part of the Achaemenid 00:04:45.889 --> 00:04:47.810 Empire. Wait, let's just pause on that. That's 00:04:47.810 --> 00:04:50.910 a staggering detail. The man who wrote the definitive 00:04:50.910 --> 00:04:53.129 history of the Greeks fighting for their freedom 00:04:53.129 --> 00:04:56.519 against Persia was a Persian subject. He grew 00:04:56.519 --> 00:04:59.120 up, he was educated, he lived his early life 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:01.300 as a subject of the very empire he was writing 00:05:01.300 --> 00:05:03.459 about. I mean, that immediately implies a certain 00:05:03.459 --> 00:05:05.959 perspective, doesn't it? A kind of objectivity, 00:05:05.959 --> 00:05:09.500 or at least a complex dual allegiance that someone 00:05:09.500 --> 00:05:11.420 born and raised in Athens just wouldn't have. 00:05:11.660 --> 00:05:13.959 It creates this incredible complexity from the 00:05:13.959 --> 00:05:16.879 very start. And his family reinforces this idea 00:05:16.879 --> 00:05:20.379 of him being a man between cultures. We know 00:05:20.379 --> 00:05:23.319 his parents were Lyxes and Dryo, and he had a 00:05:23.319 --> 00:05:25.879 brother. Theodorus. And he was related to a poet. 00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:29.459 Yes, an epic poet named Peñasus. Peñasus was 00:05:29.459 --> 00:05:31.860 either his uncle or his cousin. The sources are 00:05:31.860 --> 00:05:33.779 a little fuzzy on that. But he was a big deal. 00:05:33.800 --> 00:05:36.199 And he was actually killed during a failed uprising 00:05:36.199 --> 00:05:39.079 against the local tyrant. The tyrant Legdamus, 00:05:39.100 --> 00:05:41.620 who was backed by the Persians. Exactly. So his 00:05:41.620 --> 00:05:43.959 immediate family was politically active and violently 00:05:43.959 --> 00:05:46.800 opposed to the regime, even while Herodotus himself 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:48.800 was, you know, technically a subject of that 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:50.879 regime. And there's another layer here, too, 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:53.800 with the family names, Lyxes and Peniasus. Those 00:05:53.800 --> 00:05:55.660 aren't Greek names, are they? No, they're Canarian 00:05:55.660 --> 00:05:58.639 names. It's a subtle but really important clue. 00:05:58.920 --> 00:06:01.639 It suggests that Herodotus probably wasn't from 00:06:01.639 --> 00:06:04.379 a family of pure Greek colonists. He was more 00:06:04.379 --> 00:06:07.060 likely a Hellenized Canarian native. So he has 00:06:07.060 --> 00:06:10.000 Canarian roots, a Greek education, and he's a 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:12.540 Persian subject. That's three identities all 00:06:12.540 --> 00:06:15.279 rolled into one. And that cosmopolitan perspective 00:06:15.279 --> 00:06:18.810 is what you need. to write a truly global history. 00:06:18.970 --> 00:06:21.149 He wasn't just telling the story of Athens or 00:06:21.149 --> 00:06:23.250 Sparta, he was telling the story of the entire 00:06:23.250 --> 00:06:26.339 eastern Mediterranean world. Okay, so that brings 00:06:26.339 --> 00:06:28.379 us to one of the big literary mysteries about 00:06:28.379 --> 00:06:31.699 him, the dialect. Ah, yes. Halicarnassus was 00:06:31.699 --> 00:06:34.139 a Dorian settlement, but he wrote every single 00:06:34.139 --> 00:06:36.720 word of the histories in the Ionian dialect. 00:06:37.279 --> 00:06:40.300 How did this Dorian -adjacent Persian subject 00:06:40.300 --> 00:06:43.160 end up writing in the high literary dialect of 00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:45.079 the Ionians? Well, the traditional explanation, 00:06:45.259 --> 00:06:47.079 the one we get from the Suda, that 10th century 00:06:47.079 --> 00:06:49.220 Byzantine encyclopedia we have to rely on for 00:06:49.220 --> 00:06:51.720 so much of this, it tells a very neat romantic 00:06:51.720 --> 00:06:54.639 story. Which is? That Herodotus and his family 00:06:54.639 --> 00:06:57.230 had... to flee Halicarnassus to escape the tyrant 00:06:57.230 --> 00:06:59.490 Lictamus, they went into exile on the island 00:06:59.490 --> 00:07:02.149 of Samos, which is a major Ionian cultural center. 00:07:02.649 --> 00:07:04.910 And the story is that he learned the dialect 00:07:04.910 --> 00:07:07.170 there as a political refugee. It's a great story. 00:07:07.269 --> 00:07:10.029 His literary style was literally forged in the 00:07:10.029 --> 00:07:12.550 fires of political trauma. It's a wonderful narrative. 00:07:12.750 --> 00:07:14.569 The problem is the pseudo was written over a 00:07:14.569 --> 00:07:16.850 thousand years after Herodotus lived, so we have 00:07:16.850 --> 00:07:18.550 to take it with a grain of salt. Is there any 00:07:18.550 --> 00:07:22.290 better evidence? More... Concrete. There is, 00:07:22.410 --> 00:07:24.649 actually. And this is where modern archaeology 00:07:24.649 --> 00:07:27.370 has really changed the picture. In recent decades, 00:07:27.509 --> 00:07:29.610 inscriptions have been found in Halicarnassus 00:07:29.610 --> 00:07:32.490 itself. Okay. And these inscriptions show that 00:07:32.490 --> 00:07:34.790 Ionic Greek was being used in official documents 00:07:34.790 --> 00:07:38.029 in the city during Herodotus' lifetime. So he 00:07:38.029 --> 00:07:40.290 might not have needed to go into exile to learn 00:07:40.290 --> 00:07:43.129 it. Exactly. It suggests the Ionian dialect was 00:07:43.129 --> 00:07:45.949 already a recognized literary or official language 00:07:45.949 --> 00:07:49.779 right there in his hometown. Which kind of negates 00:07:49.779 --> 00:07:53.000 the need for the whole dramatic Samos exile story, 00:07:53.180 --> 00:07:55.360 at least for that reason. That's a classic case 00:07:55.360 --> 00:07:57.480 of good story getting complicated by the facts. 00:07:57.779 --> 00:08:00.439 But the political drama was still very real. 00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:03.540 The Suda also gives him another, even more dramatic 00:08:03.540 --> 00:08:06.160 role, doesn't it? The heroic liberator. It does, 00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:08.639 but pretty much every modern scholar doubts this 00:08:08.639 --> 00:08:11.639 part. The Suda is the only source that claims 00:08:11.639 --> 00:08:13.920 Herodotus personally returned to Alicarnassus 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:16.319 later in life and led the revolt that finally 00:08:16.319 --> 00:08:18.759 overthrew Lictamus. It sounds a little too good 00:08:18.759 --> 00:08:21.180 to be true. It sounds like a biographical flourish, 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:23.800 you know? Turning the father of history into 00:08:23.800 --> 00:08:26.610 an action hero. There's no other corroborating 00:08:26.610 --> 00:08:29.410 evidence, so we should probably see him as an 00:08:29.410 --> 00:08:31.589 intellectual first, not a military commander. 00:08:31.930 --> 00:08:34.309 Okay, so maybe not a commander, but his hometown 00:08:34.309 --> 00:08:36.750 definitely set him up for a life of research 00:08:36.750 --> 00:08:39.629 and travel. Absolutely. Halicarnassus wasn't 00:08:39.629 --> 00:08:42.110 some sleepy little town. It was an outward -looking 00:08:42.110 --> 00:08:44.669 international port. It was actually known for 00:08:44.669 --> 00:08:47.450 pioneering Greek trade with Egypt. So it was 00:08:47.450 --> 00:08:50.710 a cosmopolitan place. Deeply. And that commercial 00:08:50.710 --> 00:08:54.240 international atmosphere. was the perfect environment 00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:57.220 for his kind of research. His family probably 00:08:57.220 --> 00:09:00.000 had business contacts all over the Persian -controlled 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:02.600 world, which would have made his incredible travels 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:04.980 possible. And when we talk about his travels, 00:09:05.039 --> 00:09:07.019 we're not talking about a quick vacation. This 00:09:07.019 --> 00:09:10.279 was serious, long -term fieldwork. He was an 00:09:10.279 --> 00:09:12.639 investigative journalist, an ethnographer. He 00:09:12.639 --> 00:09:15.120 wasn't just reading scrolls in a library. He 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:17.620 integrated his own eyewitness accounts directly 00:09:17.620 --> 00:09:20.299 into his writing. Where can we definitively say 00:09:20.299 --> 00:09:22.889 he went? We know for sure he spent a lot of time 00:09:22.889 --> 00:09:26.570 in Egypt, probably after 454 BC. He traveled 00:09:26.570 --> 00:09:28.529 up and down the Nile, collecting stories from 00:09:28.529 --> 00:09:31.169 temple priests and local guides. His visit might 00:09:31.169 --> 00:09:33.470 have even been connected to an Athenian military 00:09:33.470 --> 00:09:35.889 expedition there, which would mean he was traveling 00:09:35.889 --> 00:09:38.070 with some level of protection. And beyond Egypt? 00:09:38.350 --> 00:09:41.110 The detail in his writing strongly suggests he 00:09:41.110 --> 00:09:43.970 went much further into the Persian Empire. He 00:09:43.970 --> 00:09:46.490 seems to have traveled to Tyre, the great Phoenician 00:09:46.490 --> 00:09:49.149 city, and then followed the Euphrates River deep 00:09:49.149 --> 00:09:51.830 into Mesopotamia. possibly all the way to Babylon 00:09:51.830 --> 00:09:54.870 itself. Wow. And he also traveled north to the 00:09:54.870 --> 00:09:57.149 Black Sea region, giving us these incredible 00:09:57.149 --> 00:09:59.570 descriptions of the Scythians and the geography 00:09:59.570 --> 00:10:02.110 of what's now Ukraine. He was traversing entire 00:10:02.110 --> 00:10:04.909 empires to collect oral traditions. But eventually 00:10:04.909 --> 00:10:07.450 this life of travel led him away from Asia Minor 00:10:07.450 --> 00:10:09.730 and straight into the heart of the Greek world, 00:10:09.870 --> 00:10:13.909 to Athens. Why the move? It seems like after 00:10:13.909 --> 00:10:16.409 all the political instability back home, he maybe 00:10:16.409 --> 00:10:18.750 fell out of favor. Or maybe he just wanted a 00:10:18.750 --> 00:10:22.610 bigger stage. Around 447 BC, he moves to Periclean 00:10:22.610 --> 00:10:25.169 Athens, which was the absolute cultural and intellectual 00:10:25.169 --> 00:10:27.309 center of the universe at that point. And he 00:10:27.309 --> 00:10:29.789 loved it there. He clearly did. He expresses 00:10:29.789 --> 00:10:32.429 open admiration for the city's democratic institutions 00:10:32.429 --> 00:10:35.429 and its people. And you can feel that admiration 00:10:35.429 --> 00:10:37.950 in the histories. And did Athens love him back? 00:10:38.110 --> 00:10:41.470 Was he a big deal? He was a superstar. His writings 00:10:41.470 --> 00:10:43.549 show he was very well connected. He knew the 00:10:43.549 --> 00:10:45.710 city's layout intimately. He knew the leading 00:10:45.710 --> 00:10:49.049 political families like the Alcmianids. But we 00:10:49.049 --> 00:10:51.470 have even better proof of his status. Which is? 00:10:51.690 --> 00:10:54.809 A massive financial reward. Plutarch tells us 00:10:54.809 --> 00:10:57.090 that the Athenian assembly officially voted to 00:10:57.090 --> 00:10:59.529 give Herodotus a prize of ten talents for his 00:10:59.529 --> 00:11:02.169 work. Ten talents. Okay, you have to put that 00:11:02.169 --> 00:11:04.009 in context for us. What does that actually mean? 00:11:04.210 --> 00:11:07.309 It's an astronomical sum of money. A single talent 00:11:07.309 --> 00:11:10.100 was a huge amount. It was enough to build and 00:11:10.100 --> 00:11:12.740 equip a state -of -the -art warship, a trireme, 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:16.059 for a year or pay the wages of a huge number 00:11:16.059 --> 00:11:19.000 of workers. So 10 talents is? It's the kind of 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:21.399 money states gave to other states. It's millions 00:11:21.399 --> 00:11:24.360 in modern currency. It was a clear public statement 00:11:24.360 --> 00:11:26.820 of high patronage from the most powerful city 00:11:26.820 --> 00:11:29.299 in Greece. It confirms he was seen as an essential 00:11:29.299 --> 00:11:31.639 cultural figure even while he was still writing. 00:11:31.929 --> 00:11:34.529 That is incredible. But Athens wasn't his final 00:11:34.529 --> 00:11:38.149 stop, was it? No. For some reason, around 443 00:11:38.149 --> 00:11:41.950 BC, he moved again. He joined an Athenian -sponsored 00:11:41.950 --> 00:11:44.590 colony being founded in southern Italy, a place 00:11:44.590 --> 00:11:47.450 called Thuri in modern Calabria. Which is why 00:11:47.450 --> 00:11:50.370 Aristotle calls him Herodotus of Thurium. That's 00:11:50.370 --> 00:11:52.929 right. So his life really was this trans -Mediterranean 00:11:52.929 --> 00:11:55.629 journey. He starts as a Persian subject in Asia 00:11:55.629 --> 00:11:58.610 Minor, becomes an Athenian intellectual, and 00:11:58.610 --> 00:12:01.509 ends his days as a citizen in Magna Graecia. 00:12:01.879 --> 00:12:04.259 in Italy. He was a true man of the world. So 00:12:04.259 --> 00:12:06.100 now we have to talk about how people actually 00:12:06.100 --> 00:12:08.820 heard the histories. We think of publishing a 00:12:08.820 --> 00:12:11.120 book, but in the fifth century BC, that wasn't 00:12:11.120 --> 00:12:13.360 a thing. It was a totally oral culture. That's 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:16.139 such a crucial point. He didn't publish his work. 00:12:16.279 --> 00:12:19.659 He performed it. He gave dramatic public oral 00:12:19.659 --> 00:12:22.539 recitations. The way you got your ideas out there 00:12:22.539 --> 00:12:24.320 was to stand up in front of a crowd and deliver 00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:26.509 them. Like a performance. And it was competitive. 00:12:26.870 --> 00:12:29.850 Highly competitive. John Marinkola, a great scholar 00:12:29.850 --> 00:12:32.190 of Herodotus, pointed out that the early books 00:12:32.190 --> 00:12:34.590 of the histories seem almost engineered for this. 00:12:34.960 --> 00:12:36.779 He talks about them containing performance pieces. 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:39.460 These are sections that are almost detachable. 00:12:39.539 --> 00:12:42.019 You can easily memorize one, a great story about 00:12:42.019 --> 00:12:45.100 a Lydian king or a strange Egyptian custom, and 00:12:45.100 --> 00:12:47.480 deliver it on its own for maximum dramatic effect. 00:12:47.659 --> 00:12:49.779 So it wasn't just a reading. It was more like 00:12:49.779 --> 00:12:51.899 intellectual theater. Or intellectual combat. 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:55.639 In 5th century Greece, you'd have philosophers 00:12:55.639 --> 00:12:58.259 and authors reciting their work in public squares, 00:12:58.480 --> 00:13:01.620 like the Athenian Agora or at big festivals. 00:13:01.860 --> 00:13:04.279 And the goal was to critique your rival's art. 00:13:04.299 --> 00:13:07.159 arguments, and then enthusiastically insert your 00:13:07.159 --> 00:13:09.899 own to win over the audience. Herodotus was a 00:13:09.899 --> 00:13:12.120 master of this. Which makes those famous stories 00:13:12.120 --> 00:13:14.120 about him reciting at the Olympic Games make 00:13:14.120 --> 00:13:16.279 so much more sense. Right. The Olympics were 00:13:16.279 --> 00:13:18.460 the biggest stage you could get. And the most 00:13:18.460 --> 00:13:20.700 famous story, the one from the writer Lucian, 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:23.960 is this incredibly romantic one. Go on. Lucian 00:13:23.960 --> 00:13:25.899 says Herodotus took his finished work straight 00:13:25.899 --> 00:13:28.899 from Anatolia to the Olympic Games, read the 00:13:28.899 --> 00:13:31.440 entire thing to the assembled crowds, and received 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:34.679 rapturous, thunderous applause. One performance, 00:13:34.879 --> 00:13:37.240 and his fame was sealed across the entire Greek 00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:39.759 world. That's the story of the triumphant genius. 00:13:40.500 --> 00:13:43.080 But there's another, much funnier and much more 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:45.940 human story, isn't there? There is, a very different 00:13:45.940 --> 00:13:49.019 account from an ancient grammarian. This version 00:13:49.019 --> 00:13:51.980 says Herodotus was at Olympia, all ready to perform, 00:13:52.259 --> 00:13:55.220 but he was a bit fussy. He refused to start reading 00:13:55.220 --> 00:13:57.480 until he had perfect shade from the clouds. He 00:13:57.480 --> 00:14:00.539 was waiting for a cloud. Apparently. And by the 00:14:00.539 --> 00:14:02.320 time the perfect cloud rolled in, the entire 00:14:02.320 --> 00:14:04.659 audience had gotten bored and wandered off. That's 00:14:04.659 --> 00:14:07.580 hilarious. A brilliant author undone by a bit 00:14:07.580 --> 00:14:09.700 of sunshine. And it actually led to a proverb 00:14:09.700 --> 00:14:12.799 in the ancient world, Herodotus and his shade. 00:14:13.100 --> 00:14:15.460 It was a saying you'd use for someone who misses 00:14:15.460 --> 00:14:18.799 a huge opportunity because they hesitated or 00:14:18.799 --> 00:14:20.820 waited for perfect conditions that never came. 00:14:21.019 --> 00:14:23.740 I love that. The contrast between the celebrated 00:14:23.740 --> 00:14:26.120 genius and the cautious procrastinator tells 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:28.559 you so much about how people saw him. It really 00:14:28.559 --> 00:14:31.360 does. But there's one more story about his recitals, 00:14:31.440 --> 00:14:33.860 maybe the most powerful one. The one that connects 00:14:33.860 --> 00:14:37.279 him to his great successor, Thucydides. Ah, yes. 00:14:37.399 --> 00:14:40.320 This one, recorded in the Sutta, is so dramatic 00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:42.940 it might be made up, but it's just so resonant. 00:14:43.149 --> 00:14:45.169 The story goes that during one of Herodotus' 00:14:45.269 --> 00:14:48.429 performances, probably in Athens, a young boy 00:14:48.429 --> 00:14:50.669 was in the audience with his father. And that 00:14:50.669 --> 00:14:54.049 boy was Thucydides. Very young Thucydides. And 00:14:54.049 --> 00:14:56.289 he was so moved by the power of the storytelling, 00:14:56.409 --> 00:14:58.889 by the sheer grandeur of the history, that he 00:14:58.889 --> 00:15:01.830 just burst into tears. Wow. And Herodotus supposedly 00:15:01.830 --> 00:15:04.490 saw this, turned to the boy's father and said, 00:15:04.629 --> 00:15:08.169 your son's soul yearns for knowledge. That's 00:15:08.169 --> 00:15:09.850 incredible. It's like the passing of a torch. 00:15:10.379 --> 00:15:12.639 The founder of the discipline inspiring the man 00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:14.720 who had come to define its other half. It's the 00:15:14.720 --> 00:15:17.740 perfect symbolic moment, even if it's a complicated 00:15:17.740 --> 00:15:20.799 inheritance. It shows the immediate emotional 00:15:20.799 --> 00:15:23.500 power of his work. Speaking of endings, what 00:15:23.500 --> 00:15:26.019 about his own? His life was so eventful, but 00:15:26.019 --> 00:15:29.779 his death seems ambiguous. It is. We don't have 00:15:29.779 --> 00:15:31.720 a clear death date. The best clue is his own 00:15:31.720 --> 00:15:33.779 text. There's nothing in the histories that we 00:15:33.779 --> 00:15:37.120 can reliably date to later than 430 B .C. So 00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:39.179 the consensus is he probably died shortly after 00:15:39.179 --> 00:15:41.940 that, maybe before he turned 60. And his final 00:15:41.940 --> 00:15:44.620 resting place is itself a historical mystery. 00:15:44.799 --> 00:15:47.179 I mean, the irony of the first historian's grave 00:15:47.179 --> 00:15:50.039 being a debated fact is just perfect. It's the 00:15:50.039 --> 00:15:52.200 ultimate Herodotian contradiction, isn't it? 00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:54.519 We have three completely different claims about 00:15:54.519 --> 00:15:56.460 where he was buried. OK, what are they? Well, 00:15:56.580 --> 00:15:59.649 Marcellinus in his biography of Thucydides. claims 00:15:59.649 --> 00:16:02.789 that Herodotus and Thucydides were so close that 00:16:02.789 --> 00:16:04.929 Herodotus was actually buried in Thucydides' 00:16:05.090 --> 00:16:08.909 family tomb in Athens. A huge honor. Placing 00:16:08.909 --> 00:16:11.490 him right at the center of the Greek world, what 00:16:11.490 --> 00:16:13.909 are the other claims? The Suda gives us two more. 00:16:14.429 --> 00:16:17.110 One is that he was buried up in Pella, in Macedonia. 00:16:17.370 --> 00:16:19.389 And the other is that he was buried in the Agora, 00:16:19.690 --> 00:16:22.169 the main public square, in Thurii, where he spent 00:16:22.169 --> 00:16:24.990 his last years. So Athens, Macedonia, or Italy? 00:16:25.559 --> 00:16:27.539 The fact that three different places were all 00:16:27.539 --> 00:16:30.100 claiming him just shows how important his legacy 00:16:30.100 --> 00:16:33.200 was. Everyone wanted to own a piece of the father 00:16:33.200 --> 00:16:35.159 of history. Do we know anything about his personal 00:16:35.159 --> 00:16:37.460 life? Did he have a family? There's one very 00:16:37.460 --> 00:16:40.600 late fascinating source. It mentions a man named 00:16:40.600 --> 00:16:43.320 Pleasurus the Thessalian, a hymn writer, who 00:16:43.320 --> 00:16:46.340 was supposedly Herodotus' erominos. Which, for 00:16:46.340 --> 00:16:48.960 our listeners, was a term often used for a younger 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:52.039 male companion or lover in the pederastic tradition 00:16:52.039 --> 00:16:55.159 common in classical Greece. Exactly. And the 00:16:55.159 --> 00:16:57.500 source says this Pleasurus was also Herodotus' 00:16:57.639 --> 00:17:01.279 heir. So while it's a late source, it's led many 00:17:01.279 --> 00:17:03.340 historians to assume that Herodotus probably 00:17:03.340 --> 00:17:06.349 died without any children of his own. leaving 00:17:06.349 --> 00:17:08.630 his estate to this younger companion. It gives 00:17:08.630 --> 00:17:11.089 us a little glimpse into his world, away from 00:17:11.089 --> 00:17:14.069 the battlefields and the grand histories. A small, 00:17:14.109 --> 00:17:17.069 humanizing detail. Okay, let's get to the absolute 00:17:17.069 --> 00:17:20.089 core of this deep dive. His method. How did he 00:17:20.089 --> 00:17:22.369 actually do history? What did he think he was 00:17:22.369 --> 00:17:25.170 doing? Well, he tells us. Right at the very beginning 00:17:25.170 --> 00:17:27.430 of the histories, in the prologue, he lays out 00:17:27.430 --> 00:17:30.440 his mission statement. And it's incredibly ambitious. 00:17:30.700 --> 00:17:32.779 She basically has three goals. What's the first 00:17:32.779 --> 00:17:34.880 one? The first is the most fundamental job of 00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:37.619 any historian, to prevent the traces of human 00:17:37.619 --> 00:17:40.579 events from being erased by time. He saw his 00:17:40.579 --> 00:17:42.799 work as an act of memory, a fight against being 00:17:42.799 --> 00:17:45.460 forgotten. A noble cause. But the second goal 00:17:45.460 --> 00:17:47.380 is the one that I think is truly revolutionary, 00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:50.079 especially for a Greek author at that time. It's 00:17:50.079 --> 00:17:52.220 the one that sets him apart. His second goal 00:17:52.220 --> 00:17:55.279 was to preserve the fame of important and remarkable 00:17:55.279 --> 00:17:58.079 achievements produced by both Greeks and non 00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:00.960 -Greeks. Non -Greeks. He explicitly says he's 00:18:00.960 --> 00:18:02.940 going to give credit to the other side. He insists 00:18:02.940 --> 00:18:05.539 on it. He's not just interested in the Athenians 00:18:05.539 --> 00:18:08.099 and Spartans. He wants to talk about the achievements 00:18:08.099 --> 00:18:10.519 of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Scythians, 00:18:10.519 --> 00:18:14.000 and yes, even the Persians. That is a staggering 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:17.539 commitment to impartiality for that era. He's 00:18:17.539 --> 00:18:19.380 saying my story isn't just about us. It's about 00:18:19.380 --> 00:18:21.480 everyone involved. It was a revolutionary kind 00:18:21.480 --> 00:18:24.140 of nonpartisanship. And then his third goal was 00:18:24.140 --> 00:18:27.599 the most analytical. He wanted to identify, and 00:18:27.599 --> 00:18:30.910 I quote. In particular, the cause of the hostilities 00:18:30.910 --> 00:18:33.630 between Greeks and non -Greeks. The cause. The 00:18:33.630 --> 00:18:36.410 why. He wasn't just listing events. He was actively 00:18:36.410 --> 00:18:39.309 searching for causation. That impulse, the search 00:18:39.309 --> 00:18:42.029 for why things happen, is maybe the single greatest 00:18:42.029 --> 00:18:44.410 gift he gave to the writing of history. So he's 00:18:44.410 --> 00:18:47.809 moving way beyond just reciting local myths or 00:18:47.809 --> 00:18:50.910 family trees. Far beyond that. Before him, the 00:18:50.910 --> 00:18:53.029 standard model was just chronicling local traditions. 00:18:53.720 --> 00:18:56.819 But he was inspired by this epic clash of civilizations 00:18:56.819 --> 00:19:00.000 to tell a much bigger story, a story of corporate 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:02.700 life higher than that of the city, as one scholar 00:19:02.700 --> 00:19:05.509 put it. He was trying to explain the world. But 00:19:05.509 --> 00:19:07.430 he wasn't the first person to ever write in prose, 00:19:07.569 --> 00:19:10.509 was he? He had predecessors. He did. We can't 00:19:10.509 --> 00:19:13.009 forget the logographers, the prose writers who 00:19:13.009 --> 00:19:15.890 came before him. A later critic, Dionysius of 00:19:15.890 --> 00:19:18.549 Halicarnassus, lists seven of them. The most 00:19:18.549 --> 00:19:20.849 important one, the biggest influence on Herodotus, 00:19:20.849 --> 00:19:23.329 was Hecateus of Miletus. And what were their 00:19:23.329 --> 00:19:26.089 books like? Dionysius describes them as fairly 00:19:26.089 --> 00:19:29.369 simple, unadorned accounts. They focused on local 00:19:29.369 --> 00:19:32.200 history. geography, genealogies of their own 00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:34.660 cities. And crucially, they included a lot of 00:19:34.660 --> 00:19:37.380 popular legends and myths, which Dionysius called, 00:19:37.500 --> 00:19:40.700 you know, a bit naive or melodramatic. So Herodotus 00:19:40.700 --> 00:19:43.220 didn't invent the idea of including myths and 00:19:43.220 --> 00:19:46.460 legends. Not at all. He took the basic format 00:19:46.460 --> 00:19:49.400 of the logographer's prose writing, an interest 00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:51.900 in geography, the inclusion of myths, but he 00:19:51.900 --> 00:19:54.599 elevated it. He integrated his own rigorous travel 00:19:54.599 --> 00:19:56.900 research, he applied that idea of causation, 00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:00.200 and he wove it all into a single, cohesive, dramatic 00:20:00.200 --> 00:20:04.319 story about a huge war. He gave it a grand narrative 00:20:04.319 --> 00:20:07.220 structure. Exactly. Where Hecateus was recording 00:20:07.220 --> 00:20:09.960 local traditions, Herodotus was putting those 00:20:09.960 --> 00:20:12.779 traditions into a global framework. Given his 00:20:12.779 --> 00:20:15.579 background as a Persian subject, how did he actually 00:20:15.579 --> 00:20:18.619 treat the Achaemenid Empire in his writing? His 00:20:18.619 --> 00:20:21.220 treatment of Persia is extensive and often surprisingly 00:20:21.220 --> 00:20:24.039 sympathetic. He includes these deep dives into 00:20:24.039 --> 00:20:26.420 the rise of Cyrus the Great, the expansion under 00:20:26.420 --> 00:20:29.140 Darius and Xerxes. He understood that to explain 00:20:29.140 --> 00:20:31.259 the war, you had to understand your opponent's 00:20:31.259 --> 00:20:33.359 history, their motivations, their legitimacy. 00:20:33.720 --> 00:20:36.359 Which brings us to the central dilemma, the father 00:20:36.359 --> 00:20:39.920 of history versus the father of lies. It all 00:20:39.920 --> 00:20:42.119 hinges on his method for gathering information. 00:20:42.500 --> 00:20:44.579 It really does. And his main defense, the one 00:20:44.579 --> 00:20:47.319 he uses himself, was very simple. He insisted 00:20:47.319 --> 00:20:49.180 that his job was to report what he could see 00:20:49.180 --> 00:20:51.339 with his own eyes and what he was told by others. 00:20:51.759 --> 00:20:53.839 He's basically a journalist. He acts like one. 00:20:53.940 --> 00:20:57.180 He keeps inserting these little disclaimers into 00:20:57.180 --> 00:20:59.960 the text, saying things like, I am obligated 00:20:59.960 --> 00:21:02.640 to report what is said, but I am not obligated 00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:05.900 to believe it. OK, but if he includes wild stories, 00:21:06.140 --> 00:21:09.039 you know, giant gold digging ants or people with 00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:11.400 their feet on backwards just because someone 00:21:11.400 --> 00:21:14.740 told him, how can we possibly trust the stuff 00:21:14.740 --> 00:21:16.619 he tells us about the Battle of Marathon? And 00:21:16.619 --> 00:21:18.859 that is the essential question. That's the debate 00:21:18.859 --> 00:21:21.599 that has defined his legacy for. 2 ,500 years. 00:21:21.799 --> 00:21:24.380 And it's a question he saw coming. He wasn't 00:21:24.380 --> 00:21:26.519 working with a modern scientific standard of 00:21:26.519 --> 00:21:29.720 verifiable truth. So what was his standard? His 00:21:29.720 --> 00:21:33.000 duty, as he saw it, was comprehensive collection. 00:21:33.259 --> 00:21:35.160 He included all these different viewpoints, all 00:21:35.160 --> 00:21:36.920 these oral traditions, all these fanciful accounts, 00:21:37.079 --> 00:21:38.799 precisely because they were part of the cultural 00:21:38.799 --> 00:21:41.900 record. He was collecting the entire data set 00:21:41.900 --> 00:21:44.299 and then leaving it up to you, the reader, to 00:21:44.299 --> 00:21:46.660 decide what you believed. So in modern terms, 00:21:46.700 --> 00:21:48.460 he's less of an editor and more of a curator. 00:21:48.700 --> 00:21:51.500 He's presenting the raw material, not the final 00:21:51.500 --> 00:21:54.319 filtered analysis. That's a great way to put 00:21:54.319 --> 00:21:56.619 it. He saw it as a kind of intellectual honesty. 00:21:56.859 --> 00:21:58.579 He wasn't going to leave out a widely believed 00:21:58.579 --> 00:22:00.460 Egyptian story just because it sounded crazy 00:22:00.460 --> 00:22:03.559 to a Greek. And that choice is what makes his 00:22:03.559 --> 00:22:06.539 work so rich. But it's also what gave his critics 00:22:06.539 --> 00:22:08.519 all the ammunition they needed. And they started 00:22:08.519 --> 00:22:11.119 firing that ammunition almost immediately. The 00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:13.700 Father of History title came centuries later. 00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:16.910 Father of Lies. started circulating right away. 00:22:17.069 --> 00:22:19.630 It did. The criticism was aimed squarely at his 00:22:19.630 --> 00:22:21.789 inclusion of all these strange stories in the 00:22:21.789 --> 00:22:25.210 folk tales. To many Greeks, especially the Athenians 00:22:25.210 --> 00:22:28.609 who really valued logic and precision, Herodotus' 00:22:28.670 --> 00:22:32.309 digressions just felt unserious, exaggerated, 00:22:32.710 --> 00:22:34.990 or maybe just plain made up. And the biggest 00:22:34.990 --> 00:22:38.029 critic wasn't some nobody. It was the next great 00:22:38.029 --> 00:22:41.170 Greek historian, the man he supposedly inspired 00:22:41.170 --> 00:22:44.559 as a boy. Thucydides Thucydides, who wrote the 00:22:44.559 --> 00:22:46.700 history of the next big conflict, the Peloponnesian 00:22:46.700 --> 00:22:49.099 War, was completely dismissive of Herodotus' 00:22:49.160 --> 00:22:51.400 methods. He basically called him a storyteller, 00:22:51.480 --> 00:22:54.220 not a historian. He accused Herodotus of just 00:22:54.220 --> 00:22:56.440 making things up for entertainment value to please 00:22:56.440 --> 00:22:58.799 the crowds at his recitations. And this sets 00:22:58.799 --> 00:23:01.299 up the great divide in how to write history, 00:23:01.480 --> 00:23:04.869 a divide that still exists. It's the origin story 00:23:04.869 --> 00:23:07.529 for two totally different approaches. So what 00:23:07.529 --> 00:23:09.569 are the core differences? Why was Thucydides 00:23:09.569 --> 00:23:11.750 so harsh? They were just profoundly different 00:23:11.750 --> 00:23:14.609 thinkers. Thucydides was trained in rhetoric, 00:23:14.869 --> 00:23:18.190 the art of logic, and persuasive argument. He 00:23:18.190 --> 00:23:21.390 cared about verifiable, concrete facts, evidence 00:23:21.390 --> 00:23:24.119 he could check and cross -reference. He wanted 00:23:24.119 --> 00:23:26.579 to write a timeless, objective record, and he 00:23:26.579 --> 00:23:28.519 tried to keep his own opinions out of it as much 00:23:28.519 --> 00:23:30.700 as possible. He's like the analytical political 00:23:30.700 --> 00:23:34.079 scientist of the ancient world. Exactly. And 00:23:34.079 --> 00:23:36.740 Thucydides focused his work almost entirely on 00:23:36.740 --> 00:23:39.180 the polisis, the city -state. That was the political 00:23:39.180 --> 00:23:41.519 reality for an Athenian. He was interested in 00:23:41.519 --> 00:23:44.039 the mechanics of war and politics between states 00:23:44.039 --> 00:23:46.599 like Athens and Sparta. But Herodotus, the world 00:23:46.599 --> 00:23:48.980 traveler, had a much broader view. A completely 00:23:48.980 --> 00:23:52.220 different scope. His work is full of these beautiful 00:23:52.220 --> 00:23:54.589 sprawls. sprawling digressions that go miles 00:23:54.589 --> 00:23:57.930 away from the main topic. To a critic like Thucydides, 00:23:58.109 --> 00:24:00.950 that just looked like a lack of focus, a lack 00:24:00.950 --> 00:24:04.009 of intellectual control. Herodotus was interested 00:24:04.009 --> 00:24:06.490 in the clash of entire civilizations, East versus 00:24:06.490 --> 00:24:09.250 West. Thucydides was the Athenian insider focused 00:24:09.250 --> 00:24:11.789 on the hard data. Herodotus was the globalist 00:24:11.789 --> 00:24:15.150 synthesizing vast cultural narratives. So Thucydides 00:24:15.150 --> 00:24:18.230 valued logos, rational argument. While Herodotus 00:24:18.230 --> 00:24:21.700 valued Historia in its original sense. inquiry, 00:24:21.799 --> 00:24:24.700 which included mythos, storytelling. It's a tension 00:24:24.700 --> 00:24:26.619 between scientific certainty and comprehensive 00:24:26.619 --> 00:24:29.119 cultural inclusion. And this made Herodotus a 00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:31.279 target, not just for other historians, but for 00:24:31.279 --> 00:24:34.039 mockery right there on the Athenian stage. The 00:24:34.039 --> 00:24:36.240 most famous example is from the great comic playwright 00:24:36.240 --> 00:24:40.619 Aristophanes. In 425 BC, In his play, The Icarnians, 00:24:40.759 --> 00:24:43.220 Aristophanes just openly makes fun of Herodotus. 00:24:43.299 --> 00:24:45.980 How does he do it? Well, Aristophanes, as a joke, 00:24:46.079 --> 00:24:48.160 blames the start of the massive Peloponnesian 00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:50.779 War on the abduction of a few prostitutes. He's 00:24:50.779 --> 00:24:52.940 using a completely trivial cause to explain a 00:24:52.940 --> 00:24:55.519 gigantic conflict. And what's the specific target 00:24:55.519 --> 00:24:58.400 of the satire? He's directly mocking Herodotus' 00:24:58.460 --> 00:25:00.319 own explanation for the start of the Persian 00:25:00.319 --> 00:25:02.960 Wars. Herodotus reports the Persian version. 00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:05.599 which is that the whole conflict began with a 00:25:05.599 --> 00:25:09.480 series of mythical abductions of women io europa 00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:13.019 medea helen aristophanes thought this was ridiculous 00:25:13.019 --> 00:25:16.319 using these distant mythical rapes to explain 00:25:16.319 --> 00:25:20.359 a huge geopolitical war it was a savage but very 00:25:20.359 --> 00:25:23.559 funny piece of literary criticism and this constant 00:25:23.559 --> 00:25:27.140 ridicule It might have had real world consequences 00:25:27.140 --> 00:25:29.440 for Herodotus. There's a fascinating theory about 00:25:29.440 --> 00:25:31.640 that. One modern scholar speculated that all 00:25:31.640 --> 00:25:34.400 this mockery, this slanderous brand, might have 00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:36.359 been the real reason he left the Greek world 00:25:36.359 --> 00:25:39.019 of Asia Minor and moved west to Athens and then 00:25:39.019 --> 00:25:41.950 Italy. Fleeing the critics. Possibly. There's 00:25:41.950 --> 00:25:44.150 a supposed epitaph for him from Thurii that says 00:25:44.150 --> 00:25:46.210 he was a Dorian who fled from Slander's brand 00:25:46.210 --> 00:25:49.470 and made Thurii his new home. Fled from Slander's 00:25:49.470 --> 00:25:51.630 brand. That's such a powerful phrase. It perfectly 00:25:51.630 --> 00:25:53.910 sums up his fate. His work was so original that 00:25:53.910 --> 00:25:56.150 it attracted both immense praise and intense 00:25:56.150 --> 00:25:59.410 scorn. Exactly. And yet, for all that scorn, 00:25:59.450 --> 00:26:02.190 for all the criticism, modern science and archaeology 00:26:02.190 --> 00:26:03.650 are proving him right about a lot of things. 00:26:03.930 --> 00:26:07.180 And this is his ultimate defense, isn't it? It 00:26:07.180 --> 00:26:10.799 is a huge portion of the histories, his geographical 00:26:10.799 --> 00:26:13.579 descriptions, his accounts of things like Lydian 00:26:13.579 --> 00:26:16.460 gold panning techniques, his incredibly detailed 00:26:16.460 --> 00:26:19.519 reports on Egyptian mummification and architecture. 00:26:20.079 --> 00:26:23.660 A lot of it has been confirmed by modern archaeology. 00:26:23.779 --> 00:26:26.359 He wasn't just making it all up. So the distinction 00:26:26.359 --> 00:26:29.940 is crucial. He wasn't a liar, but he also wasn't 00:26:29.940 --> 00:26:32.240 a modern scientist. Precisely. He's now generally 00:26:32.240 --> 00:26:35.380 seen as a remarkably reliable source for huge 00:26:35.380 --> 00:26:39.150 swaths of ancient history. Most historians today 00:26:39.150 --> 00:26:41.329 would still say his accounts have inaccuracies. 00:26:41.430 --> 00:26:43.910 The numbers of soldiers are often wildly exaggerated, 00:26:44.190 --> 00:26:46.470 for instance. But they attribute that not to 00:26:46.470 --> 00:26:48.710 malice, but to his sources and his commitment 00:26:48.710 --> 00:26:50.990 to reporting what he was told. So the challenge 00:26:50.990 --> 00:26:52.930 for us is the same as it was for the ancient 00:26:52.930 --> 00:26:55.009 Greeks. We have to read him critically. You have 00:26:55.009 --> 00:26:57.049 to try and separate the verified report from 00:26:57.049 --> 00:26:59.650 the enthusiastic anecdote. He forces you to think 00:26:59.650 --> 00:27:01.750 and... Maybe that's his greatest contribution. 00:27:02.009 --> 00:27:03.950 Okay, this has been an incredible exploration. 00:27:04.009 --> 00:27:06.009 Let's try and pull it all together. Let's summarize 00:27:06.009 --> 00:27:08.430 the man and the tension he represents. Well, 00:27:08.470 --> 00:27:10.509 we've seen that Herodotus was this figure of 00:27:10.509 --> 00:27:13.250 multiple colliding identities. He was a Persian 00:27:13.250 --> 00:27:15.509 subject who wrote the great story of Greek victory. 00:27:16.230 --> 00:27:20.329 A Dorian who wrote an Ionian. an exile who became 00:27:20.329 --> 00:27:22.849 a celebrated Athenian intellectual, and then 00:27:22.849 --> 00:27:25.690 a citizen of a colony in Italy. He was a geographer, 00:27:25.829 --> 00:27:28.069 an ethnographer, and a performer. All of those 00:27:28.069 --> 00:27:30.970 things. And his legacy is defined by that central 00:27:30.970 --> 00:27:33.690 tension. He was the man who wanted to stop history 00:27:33.690 --> 00:27:35.960 from being forgotten. who was committed to honoring 00:27:35.960 --> 00:27:38.680 both Greeks and non -Greece. And yet he was immediately 00:27:38.680 --> 00:27:41.059 slammed with that slanders brand for including 00:27:41.059 --> 00:27:43.680 the very details, the folktales, the strange 00:27:43.680 --> 00:27:46.559 customs that make his work so incredibly rich. 00:27:46.819 --> 00:27:49.460 His inclusive, expansive method is the polar 00:27:49.460 --> 00:27:52.319 opposite of the tight, fact -focused rhetorical 00:27:52.319 --> 00:27:55.019 style of his successor, Thucydides. And in a 00:27:55.019 --> 00:27:57.119 way, they present us with a choice that every 00:27:57.119 --> 00:27:59.339 historian, every journalist still has to make. 00:27:59.640 --> 00:28:02.180 Which is? Do you prioritize comprehensive collection, 00:28:02.420 --> 00:28:04.559 which means including the messy, contradictory 00:28:04.559 --> 00:28:07.359 human element of the story? Or do you curate 00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:09.559 your material tightly, including only the most 00:28:09.559 --> 00:28:12.539 verifiable facts, to create a single authoritative 00:28:12.539 --> 00:28:15.339 truth? That choice is still at the heart of how 00:28:15.339 --> 00:28:17.640 we write about the world today. And that brings 00:28:17.640 --> 00:28:19.660 us to our final thought for you, which is rooted 00:28:19.660 --> 00:28:22.319 in this very modern conflict between information 00:28:22.319 --> 00:28:25.279 and entertainment. Herodotus was in this unique 00:28:25.279 --> 00:28:28.180 position. He was an outsider. a subject of an 00:28:28.180 --> 00:28:31.259 empire, and he made it his explicit policy to 00:28:31.259 --> 00:28:33.819 report everything he saw and everything he was 00:28:33.819 --> 00:28:36.900 told. This method led to both incredible historical 00:28:36.900 --> 00:28:39.700 discoveries and at the same time, relentless 00:28:39.700 --> 00:28:42.940 accusations of exaggeration. So in our world 00:28:42.940 --> 00:28:44.759 today, a world where we struggle every single 00:28:44.759 --> 00:28:47.339 day with information overload, trying to separate 00:28:47.339 --> 00:28:49.920 facts from rumors on social media, where every 00:28:49.920 --> 00:28:53.420 major news source is accused of bias. What modern 00:28:53.420 --> 00:28:55.779 title would we give to an author like that? Think 00:28:55.779 --> 00:28:57.900 about it. What would we call a journalist today 00:28:57.900 --> 00:29:00.579 whose meticulous investigation was balanced by 00:29:00.579 --> 00:29:03.319 a commitment to reporting all sources, even the 00:29:03.319 --> 00:29:06.000 strange, the biased, the unverified ones? And 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:08.359 as a result, their work leads to both genuine, 00:29:08.359 --> 00:29:11.019 confirmed scoops and constant, relentless accusations 00:29:11.019 --> 00:29:14.200 of inaccuracy or fake news. Is that person a 00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:16.440 necessary curator of the entire human experience 00:29:16.440 --> 00:29:18.619 or are they just someone chasing clicks and drama 00:29:18.619 --> 00:29:21.480 over objective truth? That tension is Herodotus' 00:29:21.599 --> 00:29:24.650 enduring gift to you. He challenges us, even 00:29:24.650 --> 00:29:27.509 now, 2 ,500 years later, to define for ourselves 00:29:27.509 --> 00:29:29.309 the ever -shifting boundary between history, 00:29:29.470 --> 00:29:30.630 reporting and storytelling.