Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian born in the early fifth century BCE. Often known as the “Father of History,” Herodotus is remembered for his Histories, an extended retelling of the Greco-Persian War that highlights its historical causes and regional effects in the historian’s characteristic, often fantastic storytelling style. As one of, if not the first, to approach the practice of recording history, Herodotus’s historiographical style is marred by his allegiance to his predecessors; contemporary writers wrote in prose, telling incredible stories of mythology and tragedy. The Histories carries on this tradition, employing classical Greek literary conventions in a text intended as a work of historical non-fiction. Despite certain inaccuracies and factual liberties, the Histories is the most accurate compendium of sixth- to fifth-century BCE Greek, West Asian, and North African history available to scholars and remains a critical part of the Western literary canon. 

Unlike many histories of ancient Greece, Herodotus’s Histories was written shortly after the events it recounts occurred. It is a collection of stories compiled from the author’s many travels throughout Greece, Asia Minor, and many other regions of the ancient world. The account follows Herodotus’s “inquiry” style of historiography, basing his claims on his education, interactions with primary sources, and observations of his world and environs. Modern historians divide his text into nine books which simultaneously tell the stories of the Persian Empire’s growth and the Greco-Persian War while integrating conversational off-shoots on regional history, mythology, hearsay, and gossip. His presence pervades the narrative and many aspects of the war's history are told entirely through his eyes. 

Broadly, books one through five explain the circumstances that led up to the conflict between Greece and Persia and describe the circumstances that led Persia to become a regional superpower, including its history, geography, linguistic and cultural diversity, and social structure. Herodotus details the lineage of four Persian kings and describes the events and expansion projects of Kings Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes. These tellings are intercut with other loosely connected histories; the Persian kings spent much time in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and many Greek cities. Their contact with the tertiary edges of the Greco-Persian world led Herodotus to derail the narrative and build an interconnected image of the world as it once existed.

 From this extensive background, books six through nine turn to the war itself, beginning with the Ionians’ revolt against their Persian rulers, following King Xerxes of Persia’s invasion of Greece, and ending with the Greeks' defeat of the Persians at the Battles of Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. The Histories provides an in-depth analysis of the war, from the Ionian revolt of 499 BCE and ending with the surprising defeat of the Persian army in 479 BCE, but the work also offers insight into the complex and deeply interwoven multiculturalism of the region in question, discussing centuries of nuanced background that led up to the war.

As Herodotus explains in the later chapters, the Hellenistic world was left reeling by the events of the early fifth century, shattered by a war that they seemed unlikely to win. Their victory over the seemingly invincible Persian army was costly, and the loss of a major regional influence left a power vacuum ready to be filled. As such, the ramifications of this twenty-year conflict were felt well into Herodotus’s time, aftershocks that he looked to history to explain.