Herodotus

One's view of history is such that it is difficult to separate objectivity from perspective. There is a commonplace of critical thought that history is the victor's version of the story - and certainly women, subjugated minorities and the like would agree to that. There are different aspects of history to be considered as well, even when the historian strives to overcome subjectivity: "If the true history of the world were ever told - and it never will be - it would be told through myths and legends." Herodotus (circa 484-429 B.C.), the Ionian Greek "Father of History," understood that the entire history of an event could never be conveyed by a mere recounting of events, however "objective" one strove to be. Nowhere is that more apparent than in his analysis of the Persian Wars in 480 B.C.

The subject of Herodotus' great work, The Histories, was the entire pageant of the numerous Greek-Persian conflicts summarized as the "Persian Wars." It was a chronicle that took into account events predating the wars by centuries, with oft-times admiring descriptions of the main players, Greek and non-Greek alike. (Plutarch and other anti-Asiatics would later express dislike for this balanced approach, denigrating Herodotus as philobarbaros - pro-barbarian.) As such, the scope of Herodotus' work is too great to address here, but some of its overall themes and characteristics apply to the specific of the events described for the year 480 B.C.

The first thing to always note, make

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could have simply resettled it with his own standing army. Important to the modern historian is the fact that this overwhelmingly large invasion force was perceived by participants as so huge. Such a perception of reality, Herodotus understood, helps to explain the subsequent reactions of the Greeks themselves. It makes seem practicable, for instance, the ease with which Thessaly and other city-states acquiesced to the Persian demand for "earth and water" (that is, providing provisions, safe-passage and nominal acknowledgement of Persian sovereignty in return for freedom from violent conquest). By the same token, such an impression of juggernaut allows Herodotus to illustrate the importance of such a relatively minor engagement at Thermopylae, when a small force of Greeks held back the Persian advance for several days. In modern parlance, Thermopylae was a propagandist's dream come true, comparable to the Alamo in the Texas rebellion against Mexico (1836): relatively few defend a foreordained Lost Cause at great cost to the enemy. As Herodotus accurately perceived, the cost of victory at Thermopylae to Persian ambitions was not calculated only in men. This is an important insight that only an approach such as Herodotus' c

Category: History - H