The “Father of History,” as Herodotus has been styled, was born at Halicarnassus, the centre of a Greek colony in Asia Minor, between the years 490 and 480 B.C., and lived probably to sixty, dying about the year 425 B.C.  A great part of his life was occupied with travels and investigations in those lands with which his history is mainly concerned.  His work is the earliest essay in history in a European language.  It is a record primarily of the causes and the course of the first great contest between East and West; and is a storehouse of curious and delightful traveller’s gossip as well as a faithful record of events.  The canons of evidence in his day were defective, for obvious reasons; a miscellaneous divine interposition in human affairs was taken for granted, and science had not yet reduced incredible marvels to ordinary natural phenomena.  Nevertheless, Herodotus was a shrewd and careful critic, honest, and by no means remarkably credulous.  If he had not acquired the conception of history as an exact science, he made it a particularly attractive form of literature, to which his simplicity of style gives a slight but pleasant archaic flavour.  This epitome has been specially prepared far THE WORLD’S GREATEST BOOKS from the Greek text.

I.—­The Rise of Persian Power

I will not dispute whether those ancient tales be true, of Io and Helen, and the like, which one or another have called the sources of the war between the Hellenes and the barbarians of Asia; but I will begin with those wrongs whereof I myself have knowledge.  In the days of Sadyattes, king of Lydia, and his son Alyattes, there was war between Lydia and Miletus.  And Croesus, the son of Alyattes, made himself master of the lands which are bounded by the river Halys, and he waxed in power and wealth, so that there was none like to him.  To him came Solon, the Athenian, but would not hail him as the happiest of all men, saying that none may be called happy until his life’s end.

Thereafter trouble fell upon Croesus by the slaying of his son when he was a-hunting.  Then Cyrus the Persian rose up and made himself master of the Medes and Persians, and Croesus, fearing his power, was fain to go up against him, being deceived by an oracle; but first he sought to make alliance with the chief of the states of Hellas.  In those days, Pisistratus was despot of Athens; but Sparta was mighty, by the laws of Lycurgus.  Therefore Croesus sent envoys to the Spartans to make alliance with them, which was done very willingly.  But when Croesus went up against Cyrus, his army was put to flight, and Cyrus besieged him in the city of Sardis, and took it, and made himself lord of Lydia.  He would have slain Croesus, but, finding him wise and pious, he made him his counsellor.