Herodotus: The Birth of History

Born at the western extremes of the world’s first superpower, Herodotus was a Greek historian of the 5th Century BCE, his birthplace on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey a small satrapy within a Persian Empire that stretched all the way to the Ganges Plains of north India and the distant desert steppe of Central Asia.

Among aficionados, Herodotus is best known for bringing us history’s first account of cannabis intoxication, which involved the funeral rites of the Scythian nomads on the Black Sea Steppe of what is now Ukraine.

His greatest work, The Histories, a long and psychedelically intricate account of the origin of the Greco-Persian Wars and the diverse cultures of the ancient world, is the founding historical narrative of western literature.

Herodotus is known for his pluralism, humour, scope, meticulous research, eyewitness accounts of his own and others, and his superb stories…. And he was more than happy to feud with other historians…

The painting shown above is The Head of Cyrus Brought to Queen Tomyris by the 17th Century Flemish painter and diplomat, Rubens, based on an account from Book I of The Histories.

Around 530 BCE, after Emperor Cyrus the Great of Persia invaded the Central Asian lands of the Massagetae nomads and caused her son’s death through trickery involving wine and drunkenness, the queen of the Massagetae, Tomyris, defeated the Persian imperial army in a brutal battle.

Tomyris then ordered Cyrus’s decapitated head plunged into a wineskin filled with blood, famously telling the corpse of the most powerful man in the world, “I live and have conquered you in war, and yet by you am I ruined, for you took my son with guile; but thus I make good my threat, and give you your fill of blood.”

Thereafter, Tomyris used Emperor Cyrus’s skull as a goblet, sliced along the top like a cup and no doubt gilded in gold, as was the custom of Eurasian Steppe nomads such as the Xiongnu and the Scythians.