Scholarship on Herodotus, ancient Greece and Rome

Herodotus was quite widely read in antiquity, and discussion about him was rather animated. Ancient scholars analyzed issues related to the ethnic he used in the first sentence of the Histories, his style, his sources, and his reliability. He was defined as the “prose Homer” of history and the “most Homeric” of historians. A Life of Homer was also ascribed to him. Alexandrian scholars divided his work into nine books entitled after the Muses, and a very fragmentary papyrus reports a commentary on Book 1 attributed to Aristarchus of Samothrace. The only “Life of Herodotus” which has been handed down is the entry in the Suda, a Byzantine lexicon. Lexica and scholia to Herodotus are scarcely preserved.