| Transcript |
| Intro | · | |
| 0:07 | · | Giant gold-digging ants, |
| 0:09 | · | a furious king who orders the sea to be whipped 300 times, |
| 0:14 | · | and a dolphin that saves a famous poet from drowning. |
| · | Who is Herodotus |
| 0:18 | · | These are just some of the stories from The Histories by Herodotus, |
| 0:22 | · | an Ancient Greek writer from the 5th century BCE. |
| 0:26 | · | Not all the events in the text may have happened |
| 0:29 | · | exactly as Herodotus reported them, |
| 0:31 | · | but this work revolutionized the way the past was recorded. |
| 0:35 | · | Before Herodotus, the past was documented as a list of events |
| 0:40 | · | with little or no attempt to explain their causes |
| 0:42 | · | beyond accepting things as the will of the gods. |
| 0:47 | · | Herodotus wanted a deeper, more rational understanding, |
| 0:50 | · | so he took a new approach: |
| 0:52 | · | looking at events from both sides to understand the reasons for them. |
| · | Hometown |
| 0:57 | · | Though he was Greek, Herodotus's hometown of Halicarnassus |
| 1:01 | · | was part of the Persian Empire. |
| 1:03 | · | He grew up during a series of wars between the powerful Persians |
| 1:07 | · | and the smaller Greeks, |
| 1:09 | · | and decided to find out all he could about the subject. |
| 1:13 | · | In Herodotus's telling, the Persian Wars began in 499 BCE, |
| 1:18 | · | when the Athenians assisted a rebellion by Greeks living under Persian rule. |
| 1:23 | · | In 490, the Persian King, Darius, sent his army to take revenge on Athens. |
| 1:30 | · | But at the Battle of Marathon, the Athenians won an unexpected victory. |
| · | The Persian Wars |
| 1:35 | · | Ten years later, the Persians returned, planning to conquer the whole of Greece |
| 1:40 | · | under the leadership of Darius's son, Xerxes. |
| 1:44 | · | According to Herodotus, when Xerxes arrived, |
| 1:47 | · | his million man army was initially opposed by a Greek force |
| 1:51 | · | led by 300 Spartans at the mountain pass of Thermopylae. |
| 1:56 | · | At great cost to the Persians, |
| 1:58 | · | the Spartans and their king, Leonidas, were killed. |
| 2:02 | · | This heroic defeat has been an inspiration to underdogs ever since. |
| 2:07 | · | A few weeks later, the Greek navy tricked the Persian fleet |
| 2:11 | · | into fighting in a narrow sea channel near Athens. |
| 2:14 | · | The Persians were defeated and Xerxes fled, never to return. |
| 2:20 | · | To explain how these wars broke out and why the Greeks triumphed, |
| 2:23 | · | Herodotus collected stories from all around the Mediterranean. |
| 2:28 | · | He recorded the achievements of both Greeks and non-Greeks |
| 2:31 | · | before they were lost to the passage of time. |
| 2:34 | · | The Histories opens with the famous sentence: |
| 2:38 | · | "Herodotus, of Halicarnassus, here displays his inquiries." |
| 2:42 | · | By framing the book as an "inquiry," |
| 2:44 | · | Herodotus allowed it to contain many different stories, |
| 2:47 | · | some serious, others less so. |
| 2:50 | · | He recorded the internal debates of the Persian court |
| 2:52 | · | but also tales of Egyptian flying snakes |
| 2:56 | · | and practical advice on how to catch a crocodile. |
| 3:00 | · | The Greek word for this method of research is "autopsy," |
| 3:03 | · | meaning "seeing for oneself." |
| 3:06 | · | Herodotus was the first writer to examine the past |
| 3:08 | · | by combining the different kinds of evidence he collected: |
| 3:12 | · | opsis, or eyewitness accounts, |
| 3:15 | · | akoe, or hearsay, |
| 3:17 | · | and ta legomena, or tradition. |
| 3:19 | · | He then used gnome, or reason, |
| 3:22 | · | to reach conclusions about what actually happened. |
| 3:26 | · | Many of the book's early readers were actually listeners. |
| 3:29 | · | The Histories was originally written in 28 sections, |
| 3:33 | · | each of which took about four hours to read aloud. |
| 3:37 | · | As the Greeks increased in influence and power, |
| 3:40 | · | Herodotus's writing and the idea of history spread across the Mediterranean. |
| 3:46 | · | As the first proper historian, Herodotus wasn't perfect. |
| 3:49 | · | On occasions, he favored the Greeks over the Persians |
| 3:53 | · | and was too quick to believe some of the stories that he heard, |
| 3:56 | · | which made for inaccuracies. |
| 3:59 | · | However, modern evidence has actually explained |
| 4:01 | · | some of his apparently extreme claims. |
| 4:04 | · | For instance, there's a species of marmot in the Himalayas |
| · | Conclusion |
| 4:08 | · | that spreads gold dust while digging. |
| 4:11 | · | The ancient Persian word for marmot is quite close to the word for ant, |
| 4:16 | · | so Herodotus may have just fallen prey to a translation error. |
| 4:21 | · | All in all, for someone who was writing in an entirely new style, |
| 4:25 | · | Herodotus did remarkably well. |
| 4:28 | · | History, right down to the present day, has always suffered from the partiality |
| 4:32 | · | and mistakes of historians. |
| 4:35 | · | Herodotus’s method and creativity earned him the title |
| 4:38 | · | that the Roman author Cicero gave him several hundred years later: |
| 4:42 | · | "The Father of History." |
