The playfulness with the truth also is actually something very serious, in so far as these are the different accounts that are given. And it's very important that theare different accounts. Eand this, this is what he's trying to get to as how do you get to the truth? I think, in those, in those issues. But i did wone to pick up on something that paul was talking about with war, because what's what and humanity, and this idea that what you see very clearly also is the effect on women, on the rest of families.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of histories, dubbed by his detractors as the father of lies. Herodotus (c484 to 425 BC or later) was raised in Halicarnassus in modern Turkey when it was part of the Persian empire and, in the years after the Persian Wars, set about an inquiry into the deep background to those wars. He also aimed to preserve what he called the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks, seeking out the best evidence for past events and presenting the range of evidence for readers to assess. Plutarch was to criticise Herodotus for using this to promote the least flattering accounts of his fellow Greeks, hence the 'father of lies', but the depth and breadth of his Histories have secured his reputation from his lifetime down to the present day.
With
Tom Harrison
Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews
Esther Eidinow
Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol
And
Paul Cartledge
A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson