The Histories — who's who

Reigns 559–530 BCE. Overthrows Media, conquers Lydia and Babylon. Treated with respect by Herodotus as a just founder. Dies on a foolish campaign against the Massagetae.

Conquers Egypt in 525 BCE. Behaves erratically and sacrilegiously, in Herodotus’s account, stabbing the sacred Apis bull and killing his own brother. Dies in disgrace returning from Egypt.

Reigns 522–486 BCE. Comes to the throne through conspiracy after Cambyses. Reorganises the empire, campaigns against Scythia, suppresses the Ionian Revolt, and sends the expedition that fails at Marathon.

Reigns 486–465 BCE. Decides, against Artabanus’s advice, to invade Greece with an army of overwhelming size. Watches Thermopylae and Salamis from a throne. Returns to Persia when the war is lost.

The Lydian king whose wealth, pride, and fall open the whole work. His story is the Histories’ first and clearest statement of the pattern that governs everything that follows.

Commands the Greek forces at Thermopylae. Stays with his three hundred to die when the Persians find the mountain path. His death is the work’s emblem of what citizenship at its best can demand and produce.

Built the Athenian fleet before the war, manoeuvred the Greek commanders into the narrow strait of Salamis, destroyed the Persian fleet in a single afternoon. Exiled from Athens and died as a guest of the Persian court.

Commands the Greek land forces at Plataea in 479. Defeats and kills the Persian general Mardonius. Later disgraced for negotiating with Persia.

The Athenian who visits Croesus and refuses to call him happy while he is still alive. Appears only in Books I and III but names the doctrine the Histories is built on.

Argues against the invasion of Greece and against the bridging of the Hellespont. Herodotus uses him as the voice of reason that power overrules. His counsel summarises the Histories’ doctrine of reversal.

Travels with Xerxes after his exile from Sparta. Gives Xerxes the famous answer about why Greeks fighting for their own laws will resist an army fighting for a king. The political theory of the Histories in a single conversation.