Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek inquirer who traveled the eastern Mediterranean and set down what he learned of Greeks and barbarians. The Histories makes history a form of writing that preserves great deeds and seeks causes, moral and political as well as military. He reports conflicting testimony, marks his doubts, and leaves the reader to judge. The Persian Wars sit inside a wide ethnographic frame. The pattern he often finds is pride meeting retribution. Thucydides would tighten method. The difference between curious report and severe test begins here.