History Literature / TheHistories

-->--'''Herodotus of Halincarnassus''', preface of ''The Histories''

* AccidentalMurder: Adrastus the Phrygian was a family friend of Croesus who was involved in two instances of accidental deaths. The first was when he killed his brother in an accident, but he was exiled from his home and lost everything because of it. The second one was when he went on a hunting trip with Atys, the son of Croesus, to stop a boar. Adrastus threw his spear at the boar, but he unfortunately missed and killed Atys in the process, much to his horror. He became convinced that he was the unluckiest of men, so he went to Atys's funeral and killed himself.

* AmazonBrigade: They say that some Amazons ended up in Scythian territory, eventually mating with Scythians to form the Sauromatai, who still have some Amazon customs regarding women.
* ArmorIsUseless: Inverted -- armor is actually a decisive factor in battles, with Persians and Spartans being of equal bravery, but the Persians being more poorly-armored and shielded.

* ButThouMust: Xerxes and Artabanos try so very hard to resist the urge to invade Hellas (ancient Greece). But a dream-spirit compels both of them.

* DreamingOfThingsToCome: Croesus once had a dream that Atys, one of his sons, would be killed by a blow from an iron weapon, so he took drastic measures in an attempt to protect Atys from this fate. One day, Adrastus, a Phrygian and a family friend of Croesus, asked for permission to have Atys go on a hunting trip with him so that he could stop a boar that was destroying the crops. Croesus initially declined on the grounds of trying to prevent his dream from coming true but relented at Atys's insistence. Unfortunately, the dream came true. Atys was indeed killed by a blow from an iron weapon... it's that the blow was accidental and that Adrastus was aiming for the boar the entire time. Needless to say, Croesus and Adrastus were both devastated at the outcome.

** One of the Thracian tribes, the Trausians, mourn childbirth and celebrate death.

* ExactWords: Herodotus reports that Croesus had a dream that his son Atys would be killed by ''a blow from an iron weapon''. Later, Atys, Adrastus, and a group of other men go on a hunting trip to stop a boar that was destroying the crops. When the group encountered the boar, the men threw their spears at it, but Adrastus missed and accidentally killed Atys instead. The dream did not specify that Atys would be ''murdered''.

-->--'''Herodotus of Halincarnassus''', Opening Paragraph of ''The Histories''

->''"These are the inquiries of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, put forth so that the great and terrible deeds of Greeks and barbarians alike shall not be forgotten for all of time; and more importantly, to show how the two races came into conflict."''

** After avenging her brother by killing a "a vast number of Egyptians", Queen Nitocris of Egypt suffocates herself in a room full of hot ashes to escape being killed at the hands of her people.

* NoEnding: The book abruptly ends with some Persian intrigues after the war. [[ItMakesSenseInContext The intent was probably to subtly call attention to how the hubris and mismanagement of the Persian kings led to their downfall,]] [[AnAesop and how even now Athens was going the same way and would also come to a bad end they didn't change their imperialist and arrogant ways.]] [[IgnoredAesop Of course, it flew right over the heads of the Athenians of the time,]] [[LostAesop and fails to connect with us today,]] since we aren't contemporary Athenians. [[{{Applicability}} Of course, one could argue that this lesson is important to all other great powers of history,]] but that gets messy quick.

* PerspectiveFlip: With respect to the [[Literature/TheBible Old Testament.]] In ''The Histories'', the Persians are the [[BigBad Big Bads.]] In the Old Testament, the Persians (especially Darius) are considered heroes by the Jews, because they free the Jews from the Babylonian captivity and support building the Second Temple.
* PhantomThief: An unnamed thief pulls quite a few tricks to plunder the treasure of King Rhampsinitos, remove evidence of his acts, and hook up with the king's daughter. The only reason why the secrets of any of his exploits were known was because the king pardoned him in order to hire him.

* {{Realpolitik}}: For, although speeches are made concerning freedom and honor, they also appeal to the lust for glory, wealth, and power.

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: For, by rebellion against the oracles of the gods, mortal men only succeed in sealing their fates ever more strongly. Astyages trying to prevent the rising of Cyrus is a big example of this.

* UnstoppableMailman: More or less how Herodotus describes the persian courier system, considering how rugged and inhospitable the Iranian landscape could get, it was some pretty high praise.

* YouCantFightFate: Oh so very much...

** After his Magi interpret a dream of Medean king Astyages to mean that his baby grandson Cyrus would overthrow him, Astyages gives Cyrus to a shepherd (indirectly) to be killed. The shepherd instead raises Cyrus as his own child, and the child goes on to overthrow Astyages and became Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire.

* DangerWithADeadline: The earliest known recorded mention of a werewolf transformation being reversible (therefore ending the danger) dates back to Ancient Greece, most famously in the ''The Histories''. However, those particular transformations lasted several days. It's worth noting, however, that these "werewolves" were ''actual wolves''; the wolf-man chimera of today is a more recent invention.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 484-425 BC) is the author of ''The Histories'', an account of the rise of the [[AncientPersia Persian Empire]] and its conflicts with neighboring states and peoples, particularly the Greeks, culminating in Xerxes the Great's invasion of Greece and its defeat by an alliance of Greek city-states in 480-79 BC.

* ScienceMarchesOn: On writing about a Phoenician expedition to circumnavegate Africa commissioned by the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho, Herodotus says that the Phoenicians claimed that "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right", but clarifies that he doesn't believe this is true. Today, this very claim is the strongest evidence of the story being real, as this is indeed what would have happened if they were in the Southern Hemisphere.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Something Herodotus is prone to in his account of the Near Eastern empires. Examples:
** Herodotus has Khufu (a.k.a. Cheops, the king who built the Great Pyramid) living at around 900 BC or so. Khufu actually lived around 2500 BC. Herodotus claims Khufu was a cruel tyrant but modern historical evidence suggests Khufu was well-loved and his reign prosperous.
** There was probably no "Median empire", not if the contemporary literary and archeological evidence is anything to go by. Medes, yes, but they were probably more like a patchwork of tribes and city-states that miiiight have been on the road to forming an empire.