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Article: Travels with the father of history and geography: Justin Marozzi has spent the past four years travelling in Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece on the trail of Herodotus. Here, he describes his passion for the man who invented history and why we should all read him 2,500 years after the Greek wrote his one-volume masterpiece.
- Article from:
- Geographical
- Article date:
- January 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Circle Publishing Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When Herodotus sat down to write his epic history of the Persian Wars sometime in the second half of the fifth century BC, he can hardly have thought he would still be required reading 2,500 years later.
It's unlikely he had any inkling that future generations would celebrate him as the 'Father of History', as well as a pioneering geographer and anthropologist, not to mention the world's first travel writer and foreign correspondent, a fearless explorer, irrepressible storyteller, madcap dramatist, author of the first prose epic and an enlightened multiculturalist before the word even existed. It's particularly doubtful he ever anticipated David Hogarth ...