ABSTRACT
It was said before that Herodotus’ subject is the Persian Wars (499-479 BC), but this is not completely accurate. Here is his proem: Herodotus of Halicarnassus herein puts on display the result of his inquiries so that man’s past may not fade into oblivion over time nor the great and amazing deeds displayed by both Greeks and barbarians be without renown, with particular attention to the reason they went to war with one another. There is no specific mention here of Persians or the wars with Persia; the clash, rather, is on a grander scale: between barbarians and Greeks, between East and West. Yet the wars with Persia take up roughly the last half of the work and are recounted in much more detail than is any other sequence of events. They clearly are the focus and the climax of the Histories as a whole, but they do not constitute the whole.
