history reading Q

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Start here! Halicarnassus was a Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia/Asia Minor.

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"Our sea" is the Mediterranean.

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"Alexander" here is Paris.

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Here he begins his history with Croesus, a king who ruled the large Anatolian kingdom of Lydia from c. 560 - 547 BCE.

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"Lacedaemonians" are Spartans. The name comes from Laconia, the region around Sparta.

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Here Herodotus begins the first of his many digressions. Here he goes way back in time to explain how Croesus' family came to the throne of Lydia.

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Gyges probably lived in the first half of the 7th century BCE, between c. 700 - 650 BCE.

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Miletus and Smyrna were Greek cities on the western coast of Anatolia in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.

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Delphi was the site of a Greek sanctuary to Apollo. Oracles were messages from priestesses at Delphi that gave advice or predicted the future. This advice was worded cryptically and often open to interpretation.

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After his account of Candaules and Gyges, Herodotus gives a summary of the next two Lydian kings before getting to Croesus. You can skim ahead to section 26, at the top of page 12.

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Now we have returned to where Herodotus left off when he started his digression in section 7, with king Croesus of Lydia, who ruled from c. 560 - 547 BCE

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As Herodotus summarizes here, Solon was an Athenian who reorganized the Athenian political system. The Greek tradition dates this to around 594 BCE, but then it is a bit strange that he is visiting Croesus in the 550s BCE. Most scholars think it is unlikely that Solon actually met Croesus, even though Herodotus clearly thought he did.

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Midas was a famous king of Phrygia in central Anatolia, he ruled in the late 8th century BCE. By the time of king Croesus, Phrygia had been incorporated into the kingdom of Lydia.

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Here Herodotus goes on another digression to explain the state of affairs in Greece around the time that Croesus was preparing for war. After describing some dialects he writes about the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus' rise to power. Pisistratus ruled from c. 546 - 527 BCE.

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And here he continues his digression by describing how the Spartans came to be so powerful.

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In Greek myth Orestes, son of Agamemnon, avenged Agamemnon's murder after he returned from the Trojan War.

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And here the digression that started in section 57 ends with Croesus continuing his preparations for war against Cyrus of Persia.

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This is the oracle from Delphi described in sections 53-54, the one that said he would "destroy a great empire." Cappadocia is in southern Anatolia.

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The Scythians were semi nomadic people who lived around the Black Sea.

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We are not really sure where Pteria is, although it should be somewhere in southern Anatolia.

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If Meles is a real person we think he would have lived in the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE.

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The "Pythian priestess" is the priestess of Apollo.

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Tyrrhenia is the southern and western coast of Italy, bordering the "Tyrrhenian Sea" that is partially enclosed by Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia.

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Here Herodotus gives a short description of Lydia and its inhabitants.

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Here Herodotus departs from his account of Cyrus on another one of his digressions to explain the rise of the Medes. You can skim ahead to section 107 on page 38.

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Here Herodotus returns to the origins of Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire. Astyages was king of Media, a powerful kingdom located in what is now northern Iraq and Iran.

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Stop here!