Posted on 12/07/08
History's father
History, like poetry, began with war. Around 440 BC, some three centuries after Homer, singing of the wrath of Achilles, composed The Iliad, a Greek by the name of Herodotus embarked upon a project no less epic. His goal was to explain what would now be termed "the clash of civilizations": the inability of the peoples of East and West to live together in peace. A fateful and enduring theme - and prompted, in Herodotus's case, by a concern to explain how the King of Persia, the most powerful man on the planet, had recently sought to conquer Greece.
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