On the Malice of Herodotus

On the Malice of Herodotus or On the Malignity of Herodotus (Ancient Greek: Περὶ τῆς Ἡροδότου κακοηθείας) is an essay by Plutarch criticizing the historian Herodotus for all manner of prejudice and misrepresentation in the latter's Histories. It has been called "the first book review" and "the first instance in literature of the slashing review." The 19th-century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and contrasts Herodotus's journalistic openness to events ("the honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his 'malignity'") to Plutarch's preferred idealizing and moralizing tone.