Armanda Hasa Words- 1316 October 20th, 2014
212820866 AP/HUMA 2100 6.0 Ryan Wei
Essay
Does Herodotus reveal anything about the sources from which he obtained the information for his narratives of Thermopylae and Salamis? Does he reveal anything about his own view of what happened in each case?
To this day, the only historical source that we have based on the Persian and Ancient Greece battles is the one offered by Herodotus. Herodotus is commonly considered as an intellectual historian and commonly referred to as the "Father of History". From what I have read, his work mainly seems to contain a geographical and anthropological introduction on the Persian's quest of the Greek land. It is suggested that for one to believe a story, the one telling it must support it with quantifiable data in order to be generally accepted. However, in the stories of Battle of Thermopylae and Battle of Salamis, Herodotus does not seem to reveal anything about the information of where his sources came from.
Map showing major incidents of the second Persian ...
English:
So-called "Snake column" or "Serpents column" that...This would raise the question of whether Herodotus has been honest with the information reported or whether everything he has written has been false. Throughout both of the stories, Herodotus presents his collected information in different ways. Sometimes he uses direct quotes, and sometimes he paraphrases. In many cases he tends to form an opinion on a particular situation as if he is describing the right from the wrong. Thus, this essay will focus on whether Herodotus presented his collected information just as he got them, whether he chooses to present some with more certainty over others and what opinions he has on the information he reports.
It is clear that Herodotus could not be present at any given time in these two battles because they happened way before he wrote the...