This chapter explores the Histories’ interest in human nature on the battlefield in terms of valour. It reviews instances in which the historical actors – including Pixodarus, Xerxes, and Themistocles – foreground the strategic importance of "surpassing nature." This is a motif that places the speakers in a network of sophistic and later, Platonic, theories on man’s desire to outstrip his own nature. At stake is a philosophy of "superior nature" that is strongly undercut by the complexity of the action on the battlefield.

This chapter surveys the evidence for the sophistic debate on relativism as evident in the fragments of the sophists, including comic and tragic poets. A widespread interpretation of the Histories claims that Herodotus supports nomos without qualification. By contrast, this chapter argues that this claim fails to capture the complexity of Herodotus’ engagement with those figures who use nomos as a rhetorical ploy to justify what is contrary to popular ethics. Similarly, Presocratic thinkers were working through the challenges presented by those who identified nomos as only a relative set of values as opposed to an objective norm to be followed. The Histories’ exploration of the problem of relating custom and law to justice takes place in the context of the rise and expansion of Persian imperialism. Further, it implicates the despot in a relativizing of justice and constitutes a key explanatory paradigm in the Persian attack against the Greek mainland in the Greco-Persian Wars.

This final chapter shifts to look to Herodotus’ reception in the early fourth century in the Dissoi Logoi. What questions does Herodotus raise for subsequent philosophers? How does allusion to the Histories in a treatise that is explicitly philosophical expand our understanding of his project? What is the consequence of this for Herodotus’ generic positionality? The Dissoi Logoi offers a case study in the reception of the Histories as an example of its prominence in intellectual culture. The second half of the chapter reprises the conclusions of the book and reexamines the value of reading what will become early Greek "historiography" alongside philosophy.

This chapter turns to Herodotus’ unique narratorial reticence in making firm truth claims. "What is said" and "what seems" are found with much greater frequency than "what is true." Juxtaposing the Histories with contemporary discussions on epistemology will demonstrate the extent to which truth was problematized as a standard of inquiry in the fifth century. The narrator’s response to this is to use truth as an elusive criterion in order to highlight the difficulty of meeting its conditions. The final portion of this chapter looks to the frequency of "veridical" εἰμί in the Histories and points to its status as a criterion of accuracy in Presocratic epistemology. It argues for its incorporation in historical narrative as a distinctive marker of epistemic certainty.

Starting from the Solon-Croesus episode, this chapter argues that Herodotus’ inquiry establishes a horizon of expectation in which historical memory (through the narratives of Tellus and Cleobis and Biton) opens up a new space for philosophical knowledge. The second half of the chapter suggests that the Histories’ generic affiliation with history over philosophy is anachronistic in the fifth century BCE. It demonstrates that Herodotus was not interpreted as a historian in his own time and that "inquiry" and "love of wisdom" characterize the dynamic and highly experimental intellectual culture of this period.

The study of nature as an object of scientific interest matured through the investigations of Presocratic philosophers on the observable world. Herodotus is in dialogue with those expanding its domain into the spheres of natural science and the human. Physis embraces the interior and exterior regularities of subjects as diverse as landmasses, rivers, seas, elements, animals, and men. Unique to Herodotus, however, is the use of nature as a category of historical explanation; it is a standard of measurement that permits historical inference.

The assassination of the False Smerdis in Book 3 and the ensuing constitutional uncertainty offer Herodotus an inflection point to pause and consider the institution of monarchy in Persia in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. This chapter reexamines the speeches given by the conspirators in advance of the coup and its aftermath. In these episodes, Darius undermines a key nomos held by the Persians, their abhorrence of falsehood. Darius does so as a private citizen but given his subsequent rise to the throne, this invites comparison with the Great Kings. Darius’ disregard for nomos opens a philosophical debate on human motivation and self-interest. In a speech to the Persian conspirators, the future monarch defends "egoism," the philosophy that all action is performed to maximize the individual’s self-interest. This view is set alongside orations by the Persians Otanes and Prexaspes, exponents of cooperative action and altruism, respectively. The chapter argues that fifth-century intellectual culture engaged in a spirited interrogation of the individual in relation to self-interest, often in terms of the social contract. The clash between motivation on behalf of the one versus the many will illustrate the complex negotiation in Persia of ruler and ruled, self and society.