Originally published on June 19, 2019 (Episode 116)
Introduction
Herodotus set out to preserve great deeds from oblivion—and to explain why events unfolded as they did. In his Histories, he blends travel, ethnography, speeches, and causal analysis into something recognizably “history,” even if it refuses to be as tidy as modern historians insist upon.
Jennifer Roberts and I explore what makes Herodotus the “first historian”: his curiosity about peoples and places, his comfort with multiple causes, and his willingness to test stories against what he’s seen or can reason out. We also ask how his methods can still sharpen our own reading of sources and our sense of what counts as a historical explanation.
About the Guest
Jennifer T. Roberts is Professor of Classics at the City College of New York. She co-edited a translation of Herodotus’s Histories and is the author of Herodotus: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2011) and The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece (OUP, 2019), a history of the Peloponnesian War.
For Further Investigation
Jennifer T. Roberts, Herodotus: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2011)
—, The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece (OUP, 2019)
Herodotus, Histories, translated by Walter Blanco, edited by Walter Blanco and Jennifer T. Roberts (W.W. Norton, 2013)
Related Episodes
“The View from Thucydides’ Tower”—Barry Strauss on Herodotus’ successor…and intellectual opposition???
“Polybius of Megalopolis”—another ancient historian, some centuries after Herodotus, who also worked under Herodotus’ shadow
“The Forever War”—Jennifer T. Roberts on the Peloponnesian War, the great war between the Greeks
Listen & Discuss
If Herodotus is the “father of history,” what elements of his practice still define the field?
How does his blend of storytelling and source-testing shape what we call explanation?
Where does Herodotus help us read culturally “other” societies with more care?
Know a friend who swears Thucydides is the only grown-up in the room? Share this and let Herodotus have his say.
