ABSTRACT
In The Histories , Herodotus traces the cause and direction of the Persian Wars, in which the poor, independent city-states of Greece acted in concert to defeat invasion by a mighty eastern empire. For Herodotus, the Persian Wars were within living memory, and he interviewed priests, record-keepers and veterans, visited cities and temples, and inspected the heaped bones of the fallen on battlefields. Ultimately, the self-discipline of the Greeks proved superior to slavish obedience to sometimes arbitrarily cruel Persian kings. The Persians met their nemesis after fighting a number of now famous battles on land and sea. Herodotus stressed the mutability of all things; great cities, empires and kings eventually fall, and small things become great, for: ‘Human prosperity never abides long in the same place’.
