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 no mistake about it, is that Herodotus wrote from a basic belief that the Greeks were better than the Persians. On one level, this was the assumption of the victor: the huge Persian Empire had attempted to conquer the tiny city-states of mainland Greece and been repelled, hence, Greece had bettered Persia - an objective statement of fact. On another level, it was a conclusion of philosophy.
It was a specifically Greek philosophical worldview that informed ...