Ancient Greece — Herodotus invented history — not record-keeping, but history as inquiry, the systematic attempt to figure out why things happened. His account of the Persian Wars is really an attempt to understand the entire known world.

The digressions are the best part. Herodotus wanders off to describe Egyptian mummification techniques, Scythian customs, and the habits of every culture he encountered. Some of it is accurate. Some is clearly hearsay reported with a raised eyebrow. All of it is fascinating.

What holds it together is a serious moral argument: hubris destroys empires. Croesus, Cyrus, Xerxes — they all overreach, and they all pay. The Greek tragic pattern applied to geopolitics, and it has not stopped being relevant.

"Call no man happy until he is dead — that wisdom runs through every page."

Long but never boring. The father of history earned the title.