The Hestia project brings this enquiry into the 21st century medium of digital technologies.īrowse the project team’s objectives and watch a short video clip from the academic lead, Dr. Find out how by following the links in the menu below. In this way, he reproduces the ‘enquiry’ effect, with the result that to be a reader of Herodotus is to become an historian. Herodotus structures his account as discourse: this group said this, the other group said that, I for one cannot say for sure. If you want to really understand the past, you have to research it, not just take someone’s word for it. In these activities, we try to show that history is really a matter of ‘open enquiry’. Our word for ‘history’ comes from the Greek word historia (or historiê in some dialects), meaning ‘enquiry’, which Herodotus uses right at the beginning of his narrative. By exploring this Herodotus OpenLearn Collection, we can all join that grand tradition, and become research historians.

Herodotus is described by some as the 'Father of History', but his fantastic stories have also given rise to the name 'Father of Lies'.įor generations, ancient historians have been grappling with the challenge of sorting out the ‘truth’ of Herodotus’ stories. ‘Publishing’ in this period did not just involve the production of a written text, but the reading of that text out loud before an audience, and it’s claimed ‘the Histories’ were read aloud, in full, at the Olympic Games. In ‘The Histories’, Herodotus is carrying out one of the earliest known ethnographic descriptions, as well as historical enquiry. He remarks on noteworthy deeds of Greek and non-Greek people, placing his narrative in the context of towns and cities that had risen and fallen. In the resulting work, ‘The Histories’, Herodotus explores the world of his own time, offering a narrative discourse that reflects on conflicts in the past that had given rise to its present organisation. This war was waged between his peoples, the Greeks, and the Persians. Sometime in the middle of the 5th century BC, Herodotus, a Greek, living in a city called Halicarnassus (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) set out to explain the origins of the Great War from a generation before. Explore ‘The Histories’ by Herodotus: an open enquiry

The Histories by Herodotus