ABSTRACT
The Roman statesman Cicero was the first of whom we know to call Herodotus Father of History (On the Laws 1.5). No one in antiquity seems to have disputed his primacy, although a few in modern times have thought Hecataeus deserving of the title. Yet scarcely any of Hecataeus’ fragments suggest he discussed the history of either Greece or foreign peoples (although direct speech is attested: FGrH 1T20); his interests were in myth, genealogy, geography and ethnography. Herodotus claims the title by default. Yet how deserving was he? How good an historian was the founder of the genre?
