Histories of Herodotus
In his Histories, which chronicles the historical aspects of ancient Greece, Egypt and other regions of Asia Minor, Herodotus focuses in the beginning on the myths associated with these cultures and civilizations from his own distant past which at the time had acquired some relevance based on what was viewed as historical truth. Some of these myths, which now through archeological evidence may have some basis in fact, include the abduction of Io by the Phoenicians, the retaliation of the Greeks by kidnapping Europa, the abduction of Helen from Sparta by Paris and the consequences which resulted in the Trojan War.
Following this, Herodotus examines the activities and consequences of more recent historical myths associated with the cultures of the Lydians, the Egyptians, the Scythians and the Persians, all of which are interspersed with so-called dialogue spoken by the leading figures of these cultures. However, Herodotus' ability to separate fact from fiction was hampered to a great degree by not having access to any major primary sources, thus making it difficult to determine which narrative was based on actual events and which was pure mythology.
As to the portraits that emerge from Herodotus' Histories, the Persian empire, founded by Cyrus the Great in the sixth century B.C.E. As the Achaemenid empire which lasted more than twelve hundred years, was a truly faith-based culture under the guise of Zoroastrianism with the "Zend Avesta" as its predominant religious text. Along with Cyrus the Great, revealed by historical sources to have delivered the Jews from persecution in Babylon, King Darius was one of history's great lawgivers who made legal reform in his empire a main priority while adhering to
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traditional laws and the laws based on his imperial control and authority as the king of ancient Persia.
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One of Greece's greatest leaders was Solon, who much like Darius, took up the task of social and political reform. Solon altered much of the existing Greek laws and formed his own legal-based codes which resembled those of Hammurabi, the great lawmaker of Babylon; yet those of Solon were far more secular in that they laid out the rules for society to govern itself, similar in nature to today's democratic systems of government.
In the wars of 480 B.C.E., particularly focused at Thermopylae and Artemisium, the Greeks were victorious against the Persians for several key reasons. First, the Greeks were not only land-based but were also seafarers; the Spartan armies prevailed on land while the Athenian armies conquered the Persians at sea. Some historians note that the Greeks made fewer and less strategic mistakes than the Persians, not to mention fighting on their own soil as compared to the Persians, whose armies were mostly made up of disorganized, unmotivated mercenaries who spoke several different languages, thus making it nearly impossible to organize the armies into one cohesive, superior unit.
The Histories of Herodotus are still quite relevant today, for they help us to understand the complexities of history while pointing out how mythology can sometimes be misconstrued as fact. Without such texts as the Histories as a relatively major source of information, the true
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aspects of history would be unknown and would greatly assist in the repetition of past errors and judgments in today's world.
Undoubtedly, the Histories by Herodotus is a tale about the clash between two mighty civilizations that, for the most part, controlled a good portion of…
