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1. Can you name the outstanding people of the country you live?

2. What is their contribution to the cultural, political and scientific heritage?

3. Can we say that famous people influence the course of events in the history of any country? In what way?

4. What is your favourite person in the worlds history? Why?

Text 1. The “Father of History”

Read the text and say whether there is some new information for you and explain why Herodotus was called the “father of history”.

Herodotus (485 – 425 B.C.), Greek historian, called the “Father of History”, was born at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor. Herodotus was thus born a Persian subject and as such he continued until he was 30 or 35 years old.

The family of Herodotus belonged to the upper rank of the citizens. It is clear from the extant work of Herodotus that he has devoted himself to the literary life. It is probable that from an early age he was interested in travels both in Greece and in the foreign countries. He traversed Asia Minor and European Greece, he visited all the most important islands of the Archipelago, Rhodes, Cyprus, Delos, Crete, Aegina. He undertook the long and dangerous journey from Sardis to the Persian capital Susa, visited Babylon and the western shores of the Black sea – as far as the estuary of the Dnieper; he travelled in Scythia and in Thrace, explored the antiquities of Tyre, coasted along the shores of Palestine and made a long stay in Egypt. During his journeys he accumulated materials. Having in his mind the scheme of his great work, he gave much time to the elaboration of all its parts, and took care to obtain by personal observation a full knowledge of the various countries.

The great work of Herodotus has been called “a universal history”, “a history of wars between the Greeks and the barbarians”, and “a history of the struggle between Greece and Persia”. But these titles are too comprehensive. Herodotus, who omits wholly the histories of Phoenicia, Carthage and Etruria – three of the most important among the states existing in his day – cannot have intended to compose a “universal history”, the very idea of which belongs to a later age.

He speaks in places as if his object was to record the wars between the Greeks and the barbarians; but as he omits the Trojan War, the wars connected with the Ionian colonization of Asia Minor and others, it is evident that he doesn’t really aim at embracing in his narrative all the wars between the Greeks and the barbarians. Nor does it ever seem to have been his object to give an account of the entire struggle between Greece and Persia.

His intention was to write of a particular war-the great Persian war of invasion. In tracing the growth of Persia from a petty subject Kingdom to a vast dominant empire, he has occasion to set out the histories of Lydia, Media, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Scythia, Trace; and to describe the countries and the people inhabiting them, their natural productions, climate, geographical position, monuments, etc.; while in noting the contemporary changes in Greece, he is led to tell of the various migrations of the Greek race, their colonies, commerce, progress in the arts, revolutions, internal struggle, wars with one another, legislation, religious tenets and the like.

Notes:

cannot have intended – не мог иметь намерений

Nor does it seem to have been his object – он также не ставил себе целью