Herodotus

The article deals with some topics connected with imperialist tendencies in Greece of the last half of the 5th and the first half of the 4th century BC and with treatment of these developments in the work of the authors mentioned in the title. The author argues against a recent hypothesis, according to which Herodotus was still alive and writing in the period when the Peloponnesian War came to its end. Observations are made concerning foreign-policy sympathies of Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon.

Herodotus’ logos about Scythians and ξεινικὰ νόμαια – amusing and ominous, as is typical of him, yet insightful – consists of two stories about the sad lots of Anacharsis and Scyles; the story begins with a statement that Scythians shun practicing customs of other peoples, particularly those of Hellas; it ends as an adage asserting the initial statement: that is the way Scythians guard their customs (IV.76–80). Herodotus describes the barbarian neighbours’ attitude towards foreign and alien customs.

The article deals with the major factors of emergence of historical science (exactly as science, which presupposes investigation rather than a pure appraisal of facts) in Greece on the verge of Archaic and Classical periods.