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HERODOTUS. Known as the "Father of History," Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.E.) was born on the southwest coast of Asia Minor in Halicarnassus, which was at that time a Greek-speaking city ruled by Artemisia, queen of Caria, under the overlordship of the Persian Empire. Herodotus traveled widely in that empire and in Greece. Eventually, exiled from Halicarnassus, and having spent some years in Athens (where he gave regular readings of his work), he joined the new colony of Thurii in southern Italy, where he died.

Herodotus is the author of the earliest surviving work of history and one of the masterpieces of Greek literature. It is owing to him that the word "history" came to mean what it does: he introduces his book as "the inquiries (historiai) of Herodotus of Halicarnassus." The usual title in English translations is The Histories. His purpose was to explore the interaction, peaceful and warlike, between Europe (particularly Greece) and Asia (particularly the Persian Empire). Some of his best stories are of kings, but he takes just as much interest in the adventures of differently privileged people—physicians, athletes, merchants, priests, and cooks.

Book 2 of Herodotus's Histories focuses on Egypt (then subject to Persia) and North Africa. Books 1 and 3 include much information on Babylonia, Lydia, and other Persian provinces. Book 4 includes a survey of the peoples of Scythia (the Russian steppes).

One of the means by which Herodotus characterizes peoples is through their food behavior. His descriptions of the Egyptians, Persians, and other highly civilized peoples among whom he had lived are far more nuanced than those of "barbarian" peoples, most of whom he knew only by hearsay. The underlying message to his audience is different in the two cases. He was rightly impressed by the long history of civilization in Egypt and Babylonia and by the efficiency of the Persians: he seems to encourage the reflection that the lifestyle of these peoples is logical in its own terms, sometimes more logical than that of the Greeks, and may have been instrumental in their successes. Barbarian tribes, by contrast, are shown as making stranger and stranger food choices as they recede farther and farther towards the edge of the world, from agriculturalists to pastoral nomads to cannibals.

A structural anthropologist before the term was invented, Herodotus is not one to waste a promising structure. He asserts, and it is likely enough, that if the Persians took a decision while drunk, they made a rule to reconsider it when sober. Few authors between Herodotus and Lévi-Strauss would have dared to add, as Herodotus does, that if the Persians took a decision while sober, they made a rule to reconsider it when they were drunk (Histories, book 1, section 133).

Herodotus is preeminent as a historian of the conflict of cultures. Throughout his work, food behavior is often the focus for sensitive and striking portrayals of culture clash. When Persian ambassadors visited the king of Macedonia, their stupidity in demanding the company of women at dinner, in conflict with local custom, was justly rewarded: the "women" who entered the dining hall were young men in disguise, armed with daggers, and the ambassadors were never heard of again (Histories, book 5, sections 18–20).

See also Africa: North Africa; Greece, Ancient.

Andrew Dalby