Herodotus to POTUS

Never before in contemporary world history has a President of the United States (POTUS) been so publicly maligned, abused and reviled, as Donald Trump through 2025-2026. Besides millions who have suffered and died violent deaths because of authoritarian American policies in different parts of the world, US citizens have now taken to the streets and minced no words during the ‘No King’ anti-war campaign. Never before has such volatility and uncertainty been created in economies across the world, following executive orders of the White House.

While POTUS, as a belligerent war commander is leading multinational armies and high-technology arms attacking the ancient lands of West Asia, it is fascinating to plough through ‘The Histories’ of Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian who is probably the first to have questioned the reason for hostilities and conflicts in the world. ‘The Histories’ was written 2500 years ago by Herodotus; obviously his world was much smaller than ours even though he set out to record ‘human events’.

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At the start of the book, he stated: “Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered is in particular the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks.” Scholars over the centuries have identified this passage as the key to understanding the entire Histories. What was the world of Herodotus?

It was the Aegean Sea, with its mountainous and forested lands: areas lying on the western shore constituted Greece; those on the eastern, Persia. “And so right away we hit upon the heart of the matter ~ Herodotus is born, grows up and just as he starts to figure out everything around him, one of his very first observations is that the world is sundered, split into East and West and that these halves are in a state of dissension, conflict, war,” wrote Ryszard Kapuściński, one of Poland’s finest traveller-reporters whose ‘Travels with Herodotus’ remains a cult book, translated in English in 2008.

With his emphasis on reporting ‘human events’ and the cause of hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks, Herodotus revealed his stature as a visionary reporter-chronicler who cannot be thought of as a provincial scribe or a narrow-minded lover of Athens and the Greek way of life. “The author of The Histories enters the stage as a visionary on a world scale, an imagination capable of encompassing planetary dimensions ~ in short, as the first globalist,” said Kapuściński, sharing his admiration for the ancient Greek who was grappling with the same questions that confront us today: Why is the Anglo-Saxon world pitted against Islamic nations of West Asia?

Why is Israel decimating West Asians, committing genocide? When, come to think of it, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are Abrahamic religions, branches of the same tree, children of the same founding father. Thanks to The Histories of Herodotus, the questions revealed, and repeated since the dawn of history may help our world get greater clarity, a better perspective of POTUS’ war policies. Herodotus was questioning 2500 years ago, as Kapuściński too discovered in post-war Europe: Why do people wage war against one another? What are the origins of wars?

What do people hope to accomplish when they start a war? What drives them? What do they think? What is their goal? An unending litany of questions! Herodotus dedicated his life, diligently, tirelessly to finding these answers. He concentrated his attention and his inquiries: Why does Greece (that is Europe) wage war with Persia (that is, with Asia)? Why do these two worlds ~ the West and the East ~ fight against each other, and do so to the death? Was it always thus? Will it always be thus? The POTUS, First Lady, their children and confidantes are well-known in our world, thanks to detailed media coverage of their lifestyles, preferences for limousines, luxury villas, designer jewellery et al.

At the same time, stand-up comedians throughout the world caricature Trump and his family, and despite the ruthlessness and black deeds of POTUS, audiences roar with laughter even though their hearts are numb with pain. In sharp contrast, readers may not be aware of Herodotus today. Born in 485 BCE in Halicarnassus, a port city in Asia Minor, Herodotus moved to Athens when he was a strapping young man of 35, and from there several years later to the Greek colony of Thurii in southern Italy.

He died around 425 BCE, at the age of sixty. He travelled extensively during his life and he left us The Histories. In Athens, he gave lectures, appeared for meetings and author evenings ~ he probably made his living that way. He established important contacts ~ with Socrates, Sophocles, Pericles. This wasn’t that difficult for Athens had a population of 100,000. Herodotus moved out of Athens for a reason which would resonate with us today: citizenship issue.

Athenian authorities passed a draconian law according to which only those both of whose parents were born in Attica would be entitled to political rights. Herodotus was unable to obtain Athenian citizenship; he set off once again and finally settled permanently in Thurii. In many ways, he became a citizen of the world, rather than just another bright spark of Greece. The historian-reporter in Herodotus is obsessed with memory, which he knows is fragile, defective and impermanent.

Memory can be erased. Yet Man is incomplete without memory even though it is such an unreliable element. Memory is the key to understanding the human soul and its contours. So, what does Herodotus do? He realised the importance of the individual, the person who remembered the past and set out to reach this person to ‘dig out the story’, as we say today. This is how reportage began in ancient Greek and has continued to pose its challenges.

Herodotus looked at the phenomenon of memory, just as Heraclitus the Greek philosopher who lived before him considered fire. Fire transforms, there is eternal motion in fire as it burns and dies out. Memory too dies out; new images appear but they are not identical to those that came before ~ these are different. Just as one cannot step twice into the same river, so it is impossible for a new image to be exactly like the earlier one. It is this principle of an irreversible passing away that Herodotus understood perfectly, and he wanted to set himself in opposition to its destructive power: to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time.

Through his travels, collecting abundance of material and facts, Herodotus formulated his laws of history, open to be studied in our age of uncertainty. He arrived at a principle in answer to the question “who first undertook criminal acts of aggression.” Having this question as to precedence in mind makes it easier to negotiate the tangled and intricate twists and turns of history, to explain to ourselves what forces and events set it in motion. This principle is linked to the eternal law of revenge, the law of reprisal, of an eye for an eye. Revenge is not only a right ~ it is a most sacred obligation, wrote Kapuściński in his ‘Travels with Herodotus’.

The second law of history from Herodotus pertains more to human life. It states that “human happiness never remains long in the same place.” In great detail is narrated the story of powerful and rich King Croesus who ruled from Lydia around 560 BCE. Feeling threatened by the rise of King Cyrus in neighbouring Persia, he decided to wage war and humiliate Cyrus. Croesus propitiated the Delphic deity with gifts and gigantic offerings to obtain a favourable prophecy from an oracle who declared: “If you set out against the Persians, you will destroy a great state”.

Croesus blinded by the lust of aggression interpreted the prediction to mean: if you set out against Persia, you will destroy it. Persia after all was truly a great state. That is why King Croesus attacked, but he lost the war, and as a result ~ in accordance with the prophecy, annihilated his own great state. For POTUS engulfed in the brutalities of war, The Histories of Herodotus provides several key messages which may be grasped before it is too late.

(The writer is a researcher-auth or on history and heritage issues and a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya)