himself. The Iliad begins, after a request of the Muse that she sing of the anger of Achilles and the quarrel
with Agamemnon that provoked that anger, with Homer asking, and then answering, the question, “Which
of the gods set these two men to oppose each other in conflict?” Homer’s assumption is that any
explanation is going to involve the gods and, indeed, the first sentence of the Iliad includes reference to
the “fulfillment of Zeus’ plan.”
The opening sentence of Herodotus’ history is very different. There is no invocation of the Muse and no
reference to the gods; rather, Herodotus names himself and says that he will be especially concerned with
“the cause of the conflict” between Greeks and barbarians. His analysis of the cause of the conflict
proceeds, as Herodotus tells us, from his “investigations,” the Greek word for which is historia. This
word is used very early in Herodotus’ first sentence; in fact, the only two words that precede it in the text
are “Herodotus” and “Halicarnassus.” The word historia was often used to refer to investigations into
natural phenomena (a meaning that is preserved in the English expression “natural history”) and
Herodotus’ use of the word is perhaps a further indication of his indebtedness to the Milesian
philosophers, who were also natural scientists. Because of Herodotus’ prominent use of it here, the Greek
word historia became specialized and came to be used primarily to refer to what we usually mean today
by “history.” What we usually mean today by “history,” however, is not merely an account of events in the
past but an account that shows an awareness of the need to explain why and how those events took place.
Herodotus’ emphasis in his first sentence on “the cause of the conflict” displays this awareness, and his
concentration on causes is reflected in the structure of his history. For it is only about halfway through his
history, in the fifth of the nine books into which his work is traditionally divided, that Herodotus begins
his account of the Ionian Revolt, the event that many historians today would regard as the beginning of the
Persian Wars.
“According to the Persians – but not the Greeks – that is how Io wound up in Egypt and that is what
began the series of criminal acts. After that, they say, some Greeks landed at the Phoenician port of
Tyre and abducted Europa, the king's daughter. (The Persians are not able to identify these Greeks,
but I assume they were from Crete.) Well, now things were even, but then the Greeks are supposed to
have become responsible for the second offense: They sailed as far as the Phasis river, to the city of
Aea in Colchis, on board a warship and there, after they had taken care of the business that had
brought them to that place, they abducted the king's daughter Medea. When the king of the Colchians
sent a herald to Greece to seek recompense for the abduction and to demand the return of his
daughter, the Greeks are alleged to have responded by saying that, since they hadn't paid them back
for the abduction of Io of Argos, they weren't going to pay them back either.” (Herodotus 1.2)Herodotus is interested in investigating not only the cause of the Persian Wars but the nature of historical
causation itself. He cannot, however, conduct this investigation directly, since the necessary concepts and
theoretical terminology could not begin to develop until after Herodotus’ pioneering work. Instead, his
examination of the nature of causation is implicit in his method and needs to be extracted carefully from
his easygoing and seemingly anecdotal manner. After his opening sentence, Herodotus spends two pages
recounting what the Persian authorities have to say about the origins of the hostilities between the
inhabitants of Europe and Asia. Herodotus discounts what these authorities have to say, but not because
they are Persians; in fact, what Herodotus puts into their mouths is a collection of purely Greek stories.
Their account relates the abductions of various mythical women, among whom is Helen, whose abduction
precipitated the Trojan War. Helen had been carried off from Greece by the Trojan Paris in retaliation for
the Greeks’ abduction of the Asiatic Medea, whose abduction in turn was a response to a still earlier pair
of reciprocal intercontinental abductions. Although Herodotus makes no claim for any connection between