/lit/ - Literature

[yRаn !mHBuhWvEhs No.2745120]

Why did they call him "The Father of Lies"?

[Anonymous No.2745123]

I think you must've misread. He's actually known as the 'father of long lies'. He was a notorious over-sleeper.

[Anonymous No.2745126]

Apparently Ethiopians have black semen, Ramses II came before the pyramid builders, and Nebuchadnezzar was a woman.

According to him. All this according to someone who actually read him.

[Anonymous No.2745128]

because he embellished where thucydides transcribed. his writing is probably more interesting if less trustworthy.

[Anonymous No.2745134]

He told a lot of fantastical stories that are patently untrue. There's always been debate about whether he actually visited the places he did (all or some or none of them), where he got his stories, etc. Some people think he just fabricated it all wholesale to make a good story, and even in antiquity he got shit on for it.

The more moderate view is that his fantastical stories are the result of a fundamentally different worldview informed by talking to people in the places he visited and getting mostly wacky apocryphal stories. It's not hard to imagine him getting incorrect information about pyramid texts because his guide or his interpreter misled him or just made something up on the spot to fuck with the tourist.

There are some major problems with his account, too, especially when it comes to Egypt. He bizarrely neglects to mention absolutely incredible sights he MUST have seen if he were physically in the regions he describes, and he is far off in his descriptions of certain things. But there are proposed solutions to these, and dispute about those proposals, etc.

If you read the opening of Thucydides' book, it's generally thought that he's directly referring to his immediate predecessor Herodotus in his criticism of certain methods of doing/recording history.

[Anonymous No.2745137]

he didn't give a fuck about history

[Anonymous No.2745143]

>>2745120

Because he made shit up and told people it was true. That said, it was their fault for believing him.

[Anonymous No.2745150]

'Father of Lies' is kind of bullshit too, though. Every inaccuracy of his was just further stimulus for seeking the real truth. He didn't destroy the writing of history, he just began it on the level of gossip and left it to his successors to improve upon it.

[Anonymous No.2745158]

He's that kid in high school who made stuff up just to look cool.

[Anonymous No.2745174]

>>2745137
this.

myth and lies can be just as important, as real and some times preferable.

anyway it's not all other accounts have perfect accuracy

[Anonymous No.2745209]

Because he was the first pathological liar history ever recorded.

[Anonymous No.2745216]

He also said that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were real.

[Anonymous No.2745230]

>>2745216

>implying

[Anonymous No.2745237]

>>2745216

>Herodotus, writing about Babylon closest in time to Nebuchadnezzar II, does not mention the Hanging Gardens in his Histories. However, it is possible that cuneiform texts on the Hanging Gardens may yet be found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon

[Anonymous No.2745348]

>>2745216
>>2745237
burned

[Anonymous No.2745354]

>>2745120
I've never read him, but I was under the impression you had to be stupid to take it seriously. Histories is next on my list, though. I mean, he includes deities for fucks sake.

[Anonymous No.2745363]

It's because he went around collecting oral histories, superstition and crap like that, and recorded everything no matter how stupid it sounded. So a lot of gullible idiots took his books as fact when they were anything but.

[Anonymous No.2745405]

>>2745363
And he was also stupid for collecting pointless, trivial and useless garbage.

[Anonymous No.2745495]

Almost no one in this thread had read him.

Herodotus tries very hard to separate myth (μύθος) from history and acknowledges the differences and problems of both. You have to understand he was living in a time where almost no one kept even reliable chronicles, and most people would have known what little they did of the history of their people or city solely through oral tradition and general "doxa" (δόξα), general consensus, public opinion, etc.

Thucydides starts his Peloponnesian War by basically flat-out saying "I have found nearly it impossible to get any concrete information of historical events from even a generation ago". He basically says, because historical inquiry is so neglected, no one knows anything. All that shit about Athens' tyrants, Solon, etc., it's all doxa and myth. So he starts his inquiry with the Peloponnesian War, which he experienced directly, and because it was recent enough that he can still talk to a majority of figures who were involved, people who actually witnessed Pericles' orations, etc.

Herodotus just doesn't do this. He thinks it is valuable in and of itself to record what the various regions preserve, their doxa and mythos, what they think of themselves, what they think of the world around them. Without him we'd be missing an enormous wealth of information about antiquity that can actually be ratified by later archaeology and more rigorous history.

[Anonymous No.2745498]

>>2745495
You deserve a medal.

[Anonymous No.2745512]

>>2745495
>>2745495
>>2745495
>>2745495
>>2745495
>>2745495

[Anonymous No.2745518]

>...he smiles tolerantly at some tales of divine intervention, and offers a possible natural explanation; and he reveals his general method with a twinkle in his eye when he says: "I am under obligation to tell what is reported, but I am not obliged to believe it; and let this hold for every narrative in this history."

Don't worry guys, he had that twinkle in his eye.

[Anonymous No.2745525]

>immediately starts off by blaming everything on the Phoenicians
>The Phoenicians were pretty much the "Rich Jews" of their time
>Persian and Greek gossip both agree on this
>mfw why can't we be friends?

[Anonymous No.2747292]

>>2745495
That clears up many things.