Herodotus: The Father of History | “Inquiry” and the Birth of History (Lecture 2)

Lecture 2: In this lecture, we discuss the task that Herodotus set himself in writing his account of the past and the reasons he gives for undertaking such a task. We begin by looking at the kinds of writing about the recent past that predated Herodotus, especially the works of the logographers and of Hecataeus. The lecture then analyzes the opening sentence of the Histories, in which Herodotus sets out his reasons for writing his work, in close detail, defining and discussing several key Greek words. We pay special attention to the Greek word historiê - “inquiry” or “research” - from which our word history is derived, and consider the implications of the fact that no word for history existed before Herodotus wrote his work. Through the close reading of the first sentence, we see how Herodotus invented a whole new genre, as he set out to examine the events leading up to the great Persian Wars, the causes of those events, and their interrelationships with one another.

Supplementary Reading:
Fowler, “Herodotos and His Contemporaries.”
Arieti, Discourses, Introduction, pp. 1–7.
Lateiner, Historical Method, Introduction.
Oxford Classical Dictionary, “Logographers.”

Lecture 3: https://www.bitchute.com/video/MMZQI3DALpWc/