"Herodotus was the first to organize a vast enquiry about a war and its causes. This is indeed the legacy of Herodotus to European historiography, and I am not going to say that it is an enviable legacy from every point of view. It has made war the central theme or one of the very central themes of European historiography ever since. If I had to answer the famous question an Oxford undergraduate once put to Sir John Myres – "Sir, if Herodotus was such a fool as they say, why do we read him for Greats?" – my answer would be that Herodotus was not only the founder of European historiography in a generic way: he provided European historiography with one of its leading and recurring themes, the study of war, in its origins, main events, results."