The Histories takes its title from the Greek word Herodotus used to describe his own work, historiai – literally ‘investigations’ or ‘enquiry’. His epic account of the Persian Wars is packed with iconic moments: the emperor Xerxes having the sea whipped for insubordination; his army drinking rivers dry as it advances towards Greece; three hundred Spartans fighting to the death at the pass of Thermopylae.

But its greatest attraction lies in the author’s fascination with the exotic and his irrepressible urge to digress. The Histories is a treasure-house of tall tales, arcane information and amusing details, as Herodotus describes how the King of Lydia forced a courtier to spy on his naked queen, offers his explanation of why Egyptians don't go bald, speculates about the existence of werewolves or a race of goat-footed men, and tirelessly pursues the origins of things – the earliest language, the first writing, the sources of rivers.

In his attempt to document every aspect of the known world, and even to look beyond it, he produced an unrivalled alloy of history, ethnography, biology, travel-writing, myth and literature, and one of the greatest, and most unusual, works of prose to survive from ancient times.