History Assignment

History Assignment

Svitak, Adora

I know that the words "history assignment" are rather drab at least. For homework, I have been commanded by the most grand exalted Beastie to write about something I've learned about in history recently.

As a matter of fact, I'm going to write about not "something" but rather "someone." Any guesses? I particularly admire the Greek Herodotus ("The Father of History"), so that's who I will be writing about.

Herodotus was born in about 484 B.C. in Helicarnassus, a Greek colony. He traveled to many different places, like the Asia Minor and Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Babylon. At about 447 B.C. he moved to Athens. He interviewed people to learn about their way of living and their history, and compiled all his findings in his book Histories.

Not all of Histories was exactly pure history, however. Herodotus made up stories to keep his readers' attention. Who knows? Maybe the "Father of History" could more accurately be called the "Father of Tabloids, Yellow Journalism, and Exaggeration and Embellishment." I'm pretty sure that if Herodotus were a historian today, he'd get fired immediately for making stories up. Personally, I sort of like Herodotus for the tales he created. He probably made them to keep people interested, after all. Pretty good publicity skills, huh?

Herodotus wrote a nine-part history that covered the Persian, or Greco-Persian, Wars, which were a series of struggles between Persia and Greece. Recently I did a presentation on "10 Events that shaped Ancient Greece" and most of those events were battles. Honestly, I had a difficult time finding events that weren't--when the Greeks weren't squabbling among themselves, it seems like they always got into wars with superpowers around them.

Herodotus also bothered to cover daily life. Daily life might be boring to us, but the way we live our life will probably be drastically different from the way humans from two centuries into the future will live their lives. I don't know if Herodotus had our interests in mind when he covered people's daily life in his studies, but we should definitely record the way we live our lives for the benefit of future intelligent organisms.