Primary Exploration On Herodotus’ Historiography Method And Historical Idea

As the founder and the pioneer of the western classical historiography, Herodotus is recognized as "the Father of History" in western historiography circle. The historiography method and historical idea in his work History which has distinctive innovation and a far-reaching influence to the later generations.On the basis of inherited predecessors’writing style for epic and narrative prose, Herodotus progressed characteristic interleave way by himself and created a series of historiography methods, constructed historical narrative, account with universality and macroscopic view and rational-critical. On the historical idea, even though he inherited predecessors’historical idea of deity and historical viewpoint of heros, it’s also have some characteristics on historical idea of religion. Herodotus inherited predecessors’historical viewpoint of heros, but he even founded the historical idea of human-oriented and combined the historical viewpoint of heros with historical idea of human-oriented. For the non-Greek world, just the foreign lands not barbarians. For all of the nations on his known world, he thought they are equally and owned the idea of ethnic equality. Herodotus advocated the concept of democracy, because he encouraged the democratic politics and insisted on freedom and tolerance.Herodotus lived in a highly developed times and was masterly influenced by civilization in economy, politics and culture. Nevertheless, Herodotus finished his long travel without afraid of hardship, achieved the first real historical writing in west and created the western classical historiography.