Herodotus Quotes

From great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.

Stranger, tell the people of Lacedaemon That we who lie here obeyed their commands.

Before battle was joined they say that someone from Trachis warned him how many Persians there were by saying that when they fired their bows, they hid the sun with the mass of arrows. Dianeces, so the story goes, was so dismissive of the Persian numbers that he calmly replied, "All to the good, my friend from Trachis. If the Persians hide the sun, the battle will be in shade rather than sunlight."

Men trust their ears less than their eyes.

Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably.

I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.

The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.

Haste in every business brings failures.

"At sea your men will be as far inferior to Greeks as women are to men." (By Artemisa, the best persian warrior in Salamina, a very courageous woman. A superbe irony!).

It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.

The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.

Far better is it to have a stout heart always, and suffer one's share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen.

When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.

In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.

It was a kind of Cadmean victory.