Ἱστορίαι
The Histories
Herodotus Ἡρόδοτος · c. 484 – c. 425 BCE
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Herodotus set out to explain why Greeks and Persians went to war, and on the way he asked about everything: Egyptian embalming, Scythian burials, the rise of Lydia and Persia. He reports what he was told, often says when he doubts it, and gives non-Greeks their due. The digressions are the method, not a lapse. The word for his inquiry became the name of the whole subject.