# Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος, Hēródotos) (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC) was a historian, known for his writings on the conflict between Greece and Persia, as well as the descriptions he wrote of different places and people he met on his travels.

## The Histories

* I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place.
** Book 1, Ch.5.
* Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
** Book 1, Ch. 8.
* When this response reached Croesus, it afforded him far more pleasure than anything else the oracle had told him, because he was sure that a mule would never replace a man as the Persian king, and that in consequence he and his descendants would rule for ever. He next turned his mind to investigating which was the most powerful Greek state, so that he could gain them as his allies. As a result of his enquiries, he discovered that Lacedaemon and Athens were the outstanding states, and that Lacedaemon was populated by Dorians while Athens was populated by Ionians. For these two peoples—the one Pelasgian, the other Hellenic—had been pre-eminent in the old days. The Pelasgians never migrated anywhere, but the Hellenes were a very well-travelled race. When Deucalion was their king, they were living in Phthia, but in the time of Dorus the son of Hellen they were in the territory around Mounts Ossa and Olympus, known as Histiaeotis. Then they were evicted from Histiaeotis by the Cadmeans and settled on Mount Pindus, where they were called Macedonians. Next they moved to Dryopis, and from Dryopis they finally reached the Peloponnese and became known as the Dorians.
** Book 1, Ch. 56; as translated in The Histories (1998) by Robin Waterfield and Carolyn Dewald pp. 23-24 ISBN 0192824252, 9780192824257
* In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.
** Variant translation: In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
** Book 1, Ch. 87.
* It was a kind of Cadmean victory.
** Book 1, Ch. 166, referring to a victory where both sides suffer extreme losses. Derived from the legends of Thebes, where the sons of Oedipus, and hence descendants of Cadmus, fought to the death.
* I am going to talk at some length about Egypt, because it has very many remarkable features and has produced more monuments which beggar description than anywhere else in the world.
** Book 2, Ch. 35.
* From great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.
** Book 2, Ch. 120.
* If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
** Book 2, Ch. 173.
* For if one should propose to all men a choice, bidding them select the best customs from all the customs that there are, each race of men, after examining them all, would select those of his own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best
** Book 3, Ch. 38
* It is better to be envied than pitied.
** Book 3, Ch. 52
** Variant: How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
* Force has no place where there is need of skill.
** Book 3, Ch. 127.
* The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
** Book 4, Ch. 74.
* Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably.
** Book 5, Ch. 20, 4 (Loeb).
* Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know.
** Book 5, Ch. 22, 1 (Loeb).
* But Alexander (I of Macedon), proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for first place.
** Book 5, Ch. 22, 2.
* It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.
** Book 7 , Ch. 10.
* Haste in every business brings failures.
** Book 7, Ch. 10.
* When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.
** Book 7, Ch. 46.
* Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
** Book 7, Ch. 49.
* Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
** Book 7, Ch. 50.
* Far better is it to have a stout heart always, and suffer one's share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen.
** Book 7, Ch. 50 (trans. George Rawlinson)
** Variant translation: It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
* I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.
** Book 7, Ch. 152.
* Although he had plenty of troops he did not have many men.
** Book 7, Ch. 210.
* The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.
** Book 7, Ch. 211.
* Before battle was joined they say that someone from Trachis warned him how many Persians there were by saying that when they fired their bows, they hid the sun with the mass of arrows. Dianeces, so the story goes, was so dismissive of the Persian numbers that he calmly replied, "All to the good, my friend from Trachis. If the Persians hide the sun, the battle will be in shade rather than sunlight."
** Book 7, Ch. 226.
* Stranger, tell the people of Lacedaemon That we who lie here obeyed their commands.
** Book 7, Ch. 228.
* From Peloponnesos (came) the Lakedaimonians..., the Corinthians..., the Sikyonians..., the Epidaurians..., the Troiezenians... All these (groups)... belong to the Dorian and Macedonian nation (and) had emigrated last from Erineus and Pindos and Dryopis.
** Book 8, Ch. 43.
* "It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs."
** Book 8, Ch. 60.
* "At sea your men will be as far inferior to Greeks as women are to men." (By Artemisa, the best persian warrior in Salamina, a very courageous woman. A superbe irony!).
** Book 8, Ch. 68.
* "My men have turned into women and my women into men!"
** Book 8, Ch. 98.
* It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.
** Book 8, Ch. 98
** variant: Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
*** Paraphrase: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
**** Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.
* The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.
** Book 8, Ch. 140.
* This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.
** Book 9, Ch. 16
** Variant translations:
*** Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.
*** The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
* In soft regions are born soft men.
** Book 9, Ch. 122

## Misattributed

* Call no man happy till he dies.
** Herodotus actually attributes this to Solon in a conversation with King Crœsus.
** Variants:
** Deem no man happy, until he passes the end of his life without suffering grief
** Many very wealthy men are not happy, while many who have but a moderate living are fortunate; and in truth the very rich man who is not happy has two advantages only as compared with the poor man who is fortunate, whereas this latter has many as compared with the rich man who is not happy. The rich man is able better to fulfil his desire, and also to endure a great calamity if it fall upon him; whereas the other has advantage over him in these things which follow: — he is not indeed able equally with the rich man to endure a calamity or to fulfil his desire, but these his good fortune keeps away from him, while he is sound of limb, free from disease, untouched by suffering, the father of fair children and himself of comely form; and if in addition to this he shall end his life well, he is worthy to be called that which thou seekest, namely a happy man; but before he comes to his end it is well to hold back and not to call him yet happy but only fortunate. Now to possess all these things together is impossible for one who is mere man, just as no single land suffices to supply all things for itself, but one thing it has and another it lacks, and the land that has the greatest number of things is the best: so also in the case of a man, no single person is complete in himself, for one thing he has and another he lacks; but whosoever of men continues to the end in possession of the greatest number of these things and then has a gracious ending of his life, he is by me accounted worthy, O king, to receive this name.
*** The History of Herodotus Book I, Chapter 32.
* Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
** Actually a quotation from a letter of Lord Chesterfield dated May 8, 1750.
* Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
** Though widely attributed to Herodotus this in fact comes from the Histories of Polybius, Book 16, chapter 28: "Some men, like bad runners in the stadium, abandon their purposes when close to the goal; while it is at that particular point, more than at any other, that others secure the victory over their rivals". (Translation of Evelyn S Shuckburgh).
* The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
** The words of Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius.
* Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
** This statement is not to be found in the works of Herodotus. It appears in the acknowledgements to Mark Twain's A Horse's Tale (1907) preceded by the words "Herodotus says", but Twain was simply summarizing what he took to be Herodotus' attitude to historiography.

## Quotes about Herodotus

* The invention of brewing is ascribed to the Egyptians... from whence it seems to have passed to... western nations... Herodotus attributes the discovery of the art of brewing to Isis the wife of Osiris.
** Friedrich Accum, A Treatise on the Art of Brewing (1821) pp. 1-2.
* If we take up his book, we are filled with admiration till the last syllable and always seek for more.
** Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 'Ep. ad Pompeium', The Three Literary Letters (Ep. ad Ammaeum I, Ep. ad Pompeium, Ep. ad Ammaeum II), translated and edited by W. Rhys Roberts (1901), p. 111
* The History of Herodotus works up the materials thus collected into an artistic picture of the world, grouped round a central idea. This idea is the great struggle between East and West, between Asiatic and Greek, of which the Persian Wars formed the last chapter. The History falls into two chief parts. The first five books are an introduction, tracing the rise and growth of the Persian power. The last four books relate the Persian invasions of Greece under Darius and Xerxes.
** Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Greek Literature (1877), p. 104
* It is a prose tragedy, which justifies the ways of Heaven to men by showing how sin is punished with ruin.
** Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Greek Literature (1877), p. 105
* He was the first artist in prose. As a historian, he fails chiefly by inattention or insensibility to political cause and effect. He will account for a great event merely by some accident which was the immediate occasion of it, without seeking to find any deeper source. And he tells us little or nothing about constitutional change. His charm of style is all the greater for his almost child-like simplicity, and he is one of the most delightful story-tellers. His narrative flows on in what the Greeks called the running style, seldom attempting compact periods.
** Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Greek Literature (1877), p. 106
* Herodotus was the first to organize a vast enquiry about a war and its causes. This is indeed the legacy of Herodotus to European historiography, and I am not going to say that it is an enviable legacy from every point of view. It has made war the central theme or one of the very central themes of European historiography ever since. If I had to answer the famous question an Oxford undergraduate once put to Sir John Myres – "Sir, if Herodotus was such a fool as they say, why do we read him for Greats?" – my answer would be that Herodotus was not only the founder of European historiography in a generic way: he provided European historiography with one of its leading and recurring themes, the study of war, in its origins, main events, results.
** Arnaldo Momigliano, 'Some Observations on Causes of War in Ancient Historiography', Acta Congressus Madvigiant, Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Classical Studies 1954, vol. I (1958), pp. 199-211, quoted in A. D. Momigliano, Studies in Historiography (1966; 1969), p. 116
* We have now collected enough evidence to be able to say that he can be trusted. Curiously enough we are in a better position to judge him as an historian of the East than as historian of the Persian Wars. In the last century Orientalists have scrutinized Herodotus with the help of archaeology and with the knowledge of languages that he could not understand. They have ascertained that he described truthfully what he saw and reported honestly what he heard. Where he went wrong, either his informants misled him or he had misunderstood in good faith what he was told. We are not so well placed for the history of the Persian Wars because Herodotus himself remains our main source. Wherever we happen to be able to check him with the help of inscriptions or of simple topography, we have no reason to be dissatisfied with him... We know that his history is respectable because we are now able to check it against independent evidence.
** Arnaldo Momigliano, 'The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography', History, Vol. 43, No. 147 (1958), pp. 2-3
* His epic tale of the Persian wars was a unique document of the Greek past.
** Arnaldo Momigliano, 'The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography', History, Vol. 43, No. 147 (1958), p. 7

## External links

* Herodotus quotes and sayings