Similarities Between Herodotus And Cabeza De Veca

Today historians are abundant, and they cover almost every aspect of history that someone could think of. In the past, though, these historians were few and far between. The general coconscious today is that Herodotus was the first of these historians that wrote down what he discovered. He covered a lot on the Egyptians and the Greeks because as it turns out, their cultures are linked. The Egyptians had been around for a good couple of centuries before the Greeks were formed, but Herodotus found that there were a lot of similarities between these two ancient civilizations. For instance, they both had many gods and celebrated many of the same ones in the same ways. Herodotus believed that this was because the Greeks adopted a lot of the Egyptian

Cabeza De Vaca set out to accomplish something very similar to what Herodotus accomplished. “Herodotus went well outside these bounds, writing about Egypt, Scythia, Persia, and other countries; he took up the study of customs and moeurs among them, as might a modern anthropologist” (Epstein). They were both documenting a culture and how that culture what similar to other cultures around it. Herodotus probably would have approved of the fact that Cabeza De Vaca lived with the different tribes of Indians that he is presenting in his essay. Because he lived with these tribes he was able to accurately present the ways in which they lived, and he was able to get a better sense of their culture. “We remained with the Avavares Indians for eight months, according to our reckoning of the moons” (Para 6). Through living with the Indians he was able to become somewhat of an expert on their culture and that made it possible for him to accomplish the same thing as Herodotus. If he had been influenced by Herodotus, Cabeza De Vaca knew that he needed to be well versed in the ways of the people and their culture before he could accurately record anything about them. He found that the best way to accomplish the same thing as Herodotus was to live with a certain culture, and Herodotus would have approved of this approach. “His detailed account, published in English with

Basically Cabeza De Vaca is able to accomplish something that Herodotus was not able to accomplish centuries before. He is able to show his personality in his writings. It is also clearer what in his essay a fact is, and what is more of his perception of an event. “Nothing was talked about in this whole country but of the wonderful cures which God, Our Lord, performed through us, and so they came from many places to be cured” (Para 3). Cabeza De Vaca incorporates his religion throughout this passage, and this is one of the ways that he is able to put more of himself in his essay. He is present information exactly as it happened through his eyes, and this makes it seem more like he is telling a story they presenting the facts of a culture. “The story of Cabeza de Vaca makes for almost hallucinatory reading: a dreamlike journey that ranges from the marshes of North America to the pampas of South America” (Arana). Like the stories of many castaways, Cabeza De Vaca tells his own real life tale that is intriguing and factual. Herodotus is the opposite of this, where he is more fact oriented and does not use the format of telling a story to get his point across. He is still notable, but it seems to modern readers that maybe Cabeza De Vaca is more successful in his