person
Herodotus
also: Геродот
Greek historian of the 5th century BC, traditionally called the "father of history"; the narrator's mock-scholarly claim to find hints of a "dog tax" in his and Xenophon's writings is a parody of pedantic historical-survey methodology applied to an absurd subject.
Reading notes
- From the Notes of a Hot-Tempered Man §2 Herodotus and Xenophon
Both are genuine 5th-century-BC Greek historians; the narrator's claim to find "hints" of a dog tax in their writings is invented on the spot, a comic flourish of false erudition typical of a would-be pedant padding a thin thesis with impressive-sounding classical authority.