Herodotus

Herodotus was born about 484 BC at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor; Cicero called him the father of history. He travelled through Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylon, the shores of the Black Sea and all of Greece, gathering reports from priests, old men and eyewitnesses, and wrote the first great work of history in the West. He spent his later years in Athens and at Thurii in southern Italy and died about 425 BC. His lively, generous narrative and his deep curiosity about foreign customs also make him the founder of ethnography and travel writing.