Herodotus: The Birth of History (TRIH ep 330)
450 BCE · Resource
Hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss Herodotus — his life, methods and enduring appeal — drawing on Tom Holland's Penguin translation and his children's book The Wolf Girl, The Greeks and The Gods. They situate Herodotus in fifth-century BC Halicarnassus, emphasize his cosmopolitan perspective on the Persian Empire and his role as the first major prose historian, travel writer and ethnographer.
On these timelines: The Rest Is History (podcast), Resources: Combined
Around 450 BCE
- Peloponnesian War (431 BCE)
- Persian invasions of Greece (499 BCE)
- Achaemenid Persian Empire (550 BCE)
- Aristotle (384 BCE)
- Plato (428 BCE)
- Roman Republic founded (509 BCE)
- Plato's Republic written (375 BCE)
- Alexander the Great (356 BCE)
- Cleisthenes' reforms (508 BCE)
- Mahabharata (400 BCE)