Herodotus

Herodotus came from Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, travelled through Egypt, Babylon, Scythia and Greece, and wrote the Histories, the first work of history in the Western sense, to preserve the great deeds of Greeks and barbarians and to show why they fought. The war with Persia, from Croesus to the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, is the spine; the digressions on the customs of every people he met are the flesh, and he tells what he was told while noting what he doubts. Cicero called him the father of history, and others the father of lies. Thucydides wrote to correct him.