Herodotus of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum in modern Turkey) was an ancient Greek historian who wrote what most scholars regard as the first work on history. He earned the title “The father of History” for the creation of The Histories. He was exiled from Halicarnassus after a palace coup and spent the next few years traveling. These journeys took him to Egypt, Babylon, Ukraine, and onto Italy and Sicily. Herodotus almost certainly he lived for a period in Athens and it is likely that he died in one of Athens’ colonies in southern Italy. The Histories was recognized as a new form of literature at its publication sometime between 430 and 424 BCE. Prior to Herodotus, histories had been chronicles and epics that preserved knowledge of the past, but embellished them with legend and made up facts that supported a narrative. Herodotus was the first to treat history as research project and a subject that could reveal knowledge about human behavior.
While he has sometimes dropped from academic favour, he was always a core part of the great books canon. The Histories was attacked almost immediately upon publication for bias, inaccuracy, and plagiarism.  Herodotus was accused of exaggerating the extent of his travels and for fabricating his sources. Despite this the work has endured intact and, while criticized for xenophobia and exaggeration in the past, is now considered the first true work of history and Herodotus is recognized not only as a pioneer in history but also in ethnography and anthropology.

The Histories was divided by later editors into nine books. The first six books deal with the growth of the Persian Empire. The expansion of the Persian Empire inevitably leads to conflict with the Greeks who are expanding into the Aegean themselves. The sixth book ends with the graphic depiction of the Battle of Marathon in 490BCE, where the smaller Athenian army soundly defeats the invading Persians.
The last three books of The Histories detail the preparations and actions of the Persian king Xerxes to avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon and finally absorb Greece into the Persian Empire.
The books detail Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, the famous Battle of Thermopylae, where 5,000 Spartans and Thebans held off the 500,000 strong Persian army for days allowing the Athenians to prepare their fleet which would later defeat the Persians at the Battle of Salamis.
The Histories ends with the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, when the Persian invaders were finally wiped and the Persian Empire finally retreated back to Persia.
In 431 BCE, The Peloponnesian War broke out between Sparta and Athens and it is thought that Herodotus began his Histories to remind Greeks of their past alliances and the ongoing threat from empires abroad.