14. Q. How many years may have elapsed after Homer wrote the world’s first great epic, before Herodotus wrote the world’s first great history? A. Five hundred years.
15. Q. When did Thucydides write his historical masterpiece? A. Promptly after Herodotus—perhaps while Herodotus was still among the living.
16. Q. What makes Herodotus differ so much in seeming antiquity from his younger contemporary, Thucydides? A. It is largely the striking contrast in tone and manner between the two historians.
17. Q. What has gained for Herodotus a traditional and popular repute of untrustworthiness, that he is far from deserving? A. His credulity, together with his plan of reporting reports, to a great extent irrespective of their probable truth.
18. Q. What is said of Herodotus’s efforts to gain information? A. He was very painstaking in his efforts to gain information, and traveled extensively.
19. Q. What does the word history in its present universal usage mean? A. A supposedly trustworthy account, written with a degree of philosophical insight into cause and effect, of transactions rising to a certain height of importance and dignity.
20. Q. In the use of Herodotus what did the word history mean? A. Merely a report of investigations, researches, inquiries undertaken by the author.
21. Q. What is there to the conception of Herodotus’s work? A. A kind of epic majesty and sweep.
22. Q. Where and when was Herodotus born? A. In Halicarnassus, a Dorian Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor, about 484 B. C.
23. Q. When and where did Herodotus die? A. When and where he died is not certainly known.