Herodotus being so miraculous, and the Herodotean urge to seek origins still being so strong with us, the desire to historicise him remains irresistible. Knowing what lay around and behind him could make clearer what was unique about him; it could, assuming an agreed definition of history, tell us whether he really was its Father. It happens that we do have a certain amount of information - desperately fragmentary, permitting only the smallest number of verifiable hypotheses - about his predecessors and contemporaries. But in truth, if one wishes to know what relationship exists between Herodotus and his colleagues, it is best to look first in Herodotus' own text.

Herodotus is frequently argumentative and judgemental. From the very first chapters he rejects foolish opinions, weighs up conflicting evidence, makes firm pronouncements on method: were it not for his winning charm, one could find all this very irritating (as indeed some readers have). For all its prominence, however, scholars have only recently begun to relate this feistiness to Herodotus' conception of himself as an historian. For it is obvious (now) that he must be arguing with someone, and a close study of the intellectual terrain over which these battles and negotiations are being conducted can do much to illuminate Herodotus' situation as a writer.