The life and work of the first great historian
1. Herodotus has been called the ‘father of history’, as he pretty much invented the entire discipline. It was Cicero, the acclaimed Roman orator, who branded Herodotus the ‘father of history’, and sure enough it was Herodotus who first gave us the idea of the historian and ‘history’ as we now understand it. Part of what marked Herodotus out from previous chroniclers or writers on real events was his commitment to objectivity: he wished to follow the evidence and the facts, and to draw conclusions from them. One famous example is his commitment to depicting the Persians – enemy of the Greeks – in an honest and fair light (something which later writer Plutarch sniffily derided, branding Herodotus ‘friend to the barbarians’).