Herodotus is the ''Father of History and—according to some—also the Father of Lies.''As a discipline, history begins with Herodotus' Histories, the first known systematic investigation of the past. Explicitly, The Histories deal with the Persian Wars, the Greeks' double defeat of the formidable forces led against them by the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes, but Herodotus' work includes much more than just the narration of that conflict. It encompasses geography, gossip, gods and even a bit of arithmetic. A master storyteller, Herodotus won an audience for history not only in his day but for all time. Since he invented history, no century has passed without a historian to record it.

This is part two of a lecture series titled History and Civilization!


This lecture series is brought to you by Mark L. Damen
Professor of History and Classics, Utah State University. For more information please visit: https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/02HEROD.htm