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Herodotus and the invention of history
Herodotus and the invention of history

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With the information explosion online, how can you tell fake news from the real thing, or be more sensitive to how information can be weaponised? In the fifth-century BCE, a Greek by the name of Herodotus faced a similar challenge when he set out to examine why his people, the Greeks, and the Persians went to war with each other. Chief among his tasks was deciding what and whom to believe, as he pieced together the events of the past. His response was to produce an enquiry (in Greek: historiē, which is where the English word 'history' comes from). Explore how Herodotus puts together his enquiry and learn how he makes the problem of finding out what happened to ours too.