The Intended audience of Herodotus The Histories was most likely any literate person from the date of it's 'publication' around 420 BC.
The main purpose of The Histories is to describe the wars between Greece and Persia, but it also provides a great deal of information about early civilisation.
Herodotus seems to have traveled extensively around the ancient world, conducting interviews and collecting stories for his book. His writings were scrutinized in ancient times for their accuracy, since Herodotus often reported multiple accounts of an event and then picked the one that he felt was most probable. Despite his critics, Herodotus is considered the "father of history". In addition to Herodotus' Histories, historians have also learned a lot about the Spartans and the Persians from archaeological discoveries and various other writings.
At the beginning of The Histories, Herodotus sets out his reasons for writing it
"This is the showing-forth of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that neither what has come to be from man in time might become faded, nor that great and wondrous deeds, those shown forth by Greeks and those by barbarians, might be without their glory; and together with all this, also through what cause they warred with each other."
This quote explains the reason Herodotus wrote the 'Histories'.
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