Herodotus

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of histories, dubbed by his detractors as the father of lies. Herodotus (c484 to 425 BC or later) was raised in Halicarnassus in modern Turkey when it was part of the Persian empire and, in the years after the Persian Wars, set about an inquiry into the deep background to those wars. He also aimed to preserve what he called the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks, seeking out the best evidence for past events and presenting the range of evidence for readers to assess. Plutarch was to criticise Herodotus for using this to promote the least flattering accounts of his fellow Greeks, hence the 'father of lies', but the depth and breadth of his Histories have secured his reputation from his lifetime down to the present day.

With

Tom Harrison Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews

Esther Eidinow Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol

And

Paul Cartledge A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:49.4	Hello to some Herodotus was the father of history to a few others the father of lies
0:55.2	He's been famous since the fifth century BC when he wrote about the Persian Wars in order he said to preserve the great and marvelous deeds of Greeks and barbarians and especially
1:05.2	why they're walled against each other.
1:07.8	And he covered not just politics, warfare and diplomacy, but culture, ideology, geography, and religion, a combination so prized by readers in the ancient
1:16.2	world that when so much else has been lost, his histories are the longest single piece
1:21.1	of Greek prose to be preserved from that time and it's
1:24.5	written with wonderful gusto. With me to discuss erolators are Tom Harrison,
1:29.3	professor of ancient history at the University of St Andrews, Esther A Aidenau, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol,
1:37.0	and Paul Cartlet, A.G. Lervantes, Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge.
1:43.0	Paul, can you tell us what we know about the early life of Euryorisis?
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