“The History” is the book by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the first fully preserved historical—indeed, prose—work in European literature. Herodotus’s composition is not “history” in the modern sense of the word. Although the main plot is the story of the Greco-Persian Wars, the author also creates a real encyclopedia, containing geographical, ethnographic, natural-historical, and literary information. Because of its volume and the very nature of the material presented, “The History” of Herodotus remains an unsurpassed source on the history of the Oecumene in the 6th–5th centuries BCE.