The Greek writer Herodotus (ca. 484–425 BCE) hailed from Halicarnassus, a city in the region of Caria in southwestern Anatolia. He was the author of the Histories, the first major Greek work in prose (probably composed about 440 BCE). His topic was the Persian Wars, a series of conflicts that the Greek coalition fought with the Achaemenid, or Persian, Empire during the reigns of Darius I (r. 521–486 BCE) and Xerxes I (r. 486–465 BCE). The work is full of ethnographic data concerning the myriad peoples in the empire, including the Persians.