Herodotus

I was born at Halicarnassus, a Greek city under the Persian king’s shadow. I undertook inquiry so that great deeds, and their causes, would not pass into silence. I listened in marketplaces and halls; I marked what I saw from what I was told, and I judged when I must.

My roads ran far. By ship I went to Egypt, as far as Elephantine, gauging the Nile’s rise by marks on stone and asking priests about their burials and gods. In Tyre I saw a temple to Heracles with twin pillars. Among the Scythians I heard of hemp-smoke beneath felt tents and of a people drinking mare’s milk. Across Asia I traced the King’s Road with its measured stages and the couriers whom neither snow nor darkness delayed.

I sought the first causes of enmity between Asia and Europe: from Phoenician tales to the fortune of Croesus, who mistook Apollo’s answer. I set down how Darius tested Greek and Indian customs, how Xerxes bridged the Hellespont, and how his fleet met its fate at Salamis. I praised Persians where they were worthy, and I did not spare Greeks when folly ruled them.

My tongue is Ionic; my pages are woven with speeches, wonders, and cause. Some called me a lover of stories; I answer that different men speak differently of the same thing. In later years I went west to the colony at Thurii, and there I ordered my inquiries, that memory might hold what time dissolves.