Herodotus and the Presocratics
Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century BCE

Places Herodotus' Histories in dialogue with Presocratic thought and explores their reception in later philosophical culture.

K. Scarlett Kingsley (Author)

9781009338547, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2024

272 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'Kingsley's work is an important and necessary contribution to understanding Herodotus. … this erudite, thorough and thoughtful account is a welcome addition to Herodotus scholarship, and it persuasively and substantively makes its major claim: that Herodotus, the father of history, is a philosophic thinker in his own right.' Lindsay Mahon Rathnam, The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought

Herodotus' Histories was composed well before the genre of Greek historiography emerged as a distinct narrative enterprise. This book explores it within its fifth-century context alongside the extant fragments of Presocratic treatises as well as philosophizing tragedy and comedy. It argues for the Histories' competitive engagement with contemporary intellectual culture and demonstrates its ambition as an experimental prose work, tracing its responses to key debates on relativism, human nature, and epistemology. In addition to expanding the intellectual milieu of which the Histories is a part and restoring its place in Presocratic thought, K. Scarlett Kingsley elucidates fourth-century philosophy's subsequent engagement with the work. In doing so, she contributes to a revision of the sharp separation between the ancient genres of philosophy and history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

1. Introduction: transtextual histories: history, philosophy, and intellectual culture
2. Relativism, king of all
3. The pull of tradition: egoism and Persian revolution
4. History peri physeos
5. Physis on the battlefield
6. Historical inquiry and presocratic epistemology
7. Herodotean philosophy.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]