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292 HERODOTUS

Herodotus, the Father of History, as he has been called since Cicero's time, was born about 484 B. c. He was a native not of Greece proper but of Halicarnassus, a city of Asia Minor, founded by the Dorians but at the time of his birth subject to the Persians. When he was a little over thirty years of age he was obliged to leave his native city on account of political dissensions there, and traveled for more than ten years, traversing Asia Minor and European Greece in all directions, and making a long visit to Egypt. He was a great admirer of Athens, where on one occasion he is said to have received a gift of ten talents (SlO.OOO) from the people for a recitation from his works, which glorify that city as the savior of Greece in the contests with Per- sia. Finally he became a citizen of Thurii, a new Athenian colony in southern Italy, where he died about 425 B. c.

The History, Herodotus's one gi-eat work, has come down to us in its entirety. The subject was the conflict between the Greeks and the Barbarians (Asiatics) which culminated in the Persian wars of invasion. The first six of the nine books deal with the earlier history of the two nations, and form a magnificent introduction to the description of the final conflict in the last three books.

Before Herodotus, the writing of history had been con- fined to two classes of people, — the Epic Poets, who aimed at the picturesque rather than the accurate, and the Logo- graphers, who stated unconnected facts without regard to form. He was the first to describe historical events with attention to literary style, unity of theme, and fidelity to