een cited as "Father of Histories--Father of Lies" through the ages as a result. Finley states that to this day
Herodotus is often badly misjudged as if he were no more than a mere story-teller with a charming style and boundless credulity.
R.G. Collingwood similarly finds the invention of history by Herodotus to have been a remarkable achievement and notes that this is so because of the anti-historical tendency of Greek thought against which Herodotus was working:
History is a science of human action: what the historian puts before himself is things that men have done in the past, and these belong to a world of change, a world where things come to be and cease to be. Such things, according to the prevalent Greek metaphysical view, ought not to be knowable, and therefore history ought to be impossible.
History for the Greeks did have a value, for its teachings were useful for human life. The mere fact that the rhythm of history's changes was likely to repeat itself made history valuable as a device for teaching values and right behavior. History c
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