SOURCE: "The Sources: The Evidence for Written Sources," in his Herodotus, Twayne Publishers, 1982, pp. 142-53.

Evans is professor of classics at the University of British Columbia, Canada. In the following excerpt, he finds little clear evidence that Herodotus relied on written sources. He describes Herodotus instead as an original researcher and interviewer whose History synthesizes the claims of a variety of mostly oral informants, including the guardians of official oral traditions, keepers of family genealogy, and individual storytellers.

Some four centuries after Herodotus, another historian from Halicarnassus, Dionysius, briefly described the beginnings of historical research: "Before the Peloponnesian War [431-404 B.C.] there were many early historians in many places. Among them were Eugeon of Samos, Deiochus of Proconnesus, Eudemos of Paros, Democles of Phygele, Hecataeus of Miletus, Acusilaus of Argos, Charon of Lampsacus, and Amelesagoras of Chalcedon. A second group was born a little before the Peloponnesian...