SOURCE: "Herodotus," in A History of Greek Literature: From the Earliest Period to the Death of Demosthenes, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900, pp. 306-27.

[In the following essay, Jevons provides a general introduction to the History, addressing Herodotus's rhetorical methods and beliefs and considering his credibility as a travel narrator.]

Halicarnassus, the birthplace of Herodotus, was situated on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, and was originally occupied by Carians. Dorian emigrants from Troezene then settled there, and for some time the place belonged to a confederation consisting of six Dorian cities, but eventually was excluded or withdrew from the alliance. Like the other Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, Halicarnassus became subject first to the Lydian power, and then, when Cyrus conquered the Lydian kingdom, to the Persian empire. In pursuance of the policy which they employed elsewhere, the Persians did not directly govern Halicarnassus, but established or confirmed the rule of a native Tyrant, who was a vassal of the great king, and was responsible for the payment to the local satrap of a fixed tribute, and for raising troops when required. During the boyhood of Herodotus, Halicarnassus was ruled by a queen, Artemisia, who took, as Herodotus tells us with evident pride, high position for her courage and sagacity in the counsels and esteem of Xerxes during the second Persian invasion.

The best evidence that we have of the date of Herodotus is afforded by the historian himself when he tells us that he had a conversation with Thersander of Orchomenus, who had been present at a banquet given by Mardonius during the second Persian war, and to whom on that occasion a Persian had confided his presentiment—destined to be fulfilled—that shortly the Persian host would be destroyed, and but few would survive. This is good though indefinite evidence. It shows that Herodotus was not old enough to tell the tale of the Persian wars from his own experience, but yet was old enough to meet people who had taken part in them. Thus, although we cannot regard Pamphila's Statement, which would make Herodotus to have been born B.C. 484, as anything more than a conjecture, we may take it as approximately correct, for the supposition that he was born some time between the first and the second Persian wars (i.e. between B.C. 490 and 480) accords with tradition, and with what little we know of his life.

According to Suidas, Herodotus belonged to a good Halicarnassian family. His most distinguished relative was Panyasis, a literary man, who must be supposed to have exercised some influence on his literary and mental development. Herodotus was doubtless by nature inclined to put much belief in omens, portents, and prodigies of all kinds; and an acquaintance with the epic poets was part of the education of his time; but it could not have been wholly without effect upon Herodotus that Panyasis applied the method of observation to portents, &c., and obtained some distinction as an epic writer. We know, further, that Panyasis wrote a poem on the adventures of Heracles, a Heracleiad; and Herodotus himself took so much interest in the myths connected with Heracles, that he voyaged to Tyre solely in order to investigate one of them. Finally, we find that Herodotus' taste for the antiquities of history, and probably to some extent his knowledge of the subject, were forestalled in a work by Panyasis on the colonisation of Ionia.

Of the life of Herodotus, all that we know practically is, that he undertook extensive travels over all the world then known. The result of these travels was the History of Herodotus which we now possess, divided by the grammarians of Alexandria into nine books, named after the nine Muses. Whether Herodotus from the beginning of his explorations entertained the design of writing the history of the long struggle between the Greeks and the barbarians which resulted in the Persian wars, there is no direct evidence to show. There is, however, nothing improbable in making the assumption, and the whole tone of the work is much more in harmony with the feelings which animated Hellas in the time of Herodotus' youth, than with those which were rife when, in his declining years, he was reducing to form at Thurii the materials which he had laboriously collected. The history of Herodotus is throughout national. It is the story, not of the struggle and success of some one Greek state, but of all the Hellenes against the barbarians; and this sentiment belongs to the time of the Persian wars and the time which immediately succeeded them—the period of Herodotus' youth—rather than to the time when the feeling of national unity had yielded before the divisions produced by the great struggle between Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian war. Further, the defeat of the barbarians is treated of by Herodotus as an historical verification of the religious theory that no mortal power can become exceeding great without incurring the disfavour of the gods, and eventually meeting destruction from them. This sentiment, again, is one which was much more dominant in the early than the late years of Herodotus, and was likely to influence his conception of his History from the time when he first thought of writing it, and not to have grown up during the writing of it. Finally, the history of his own native place, which, as we have already seen, went through every phase of the national conflict with the barbarian, was the thread round which all his later knowledge crystallised, and naturally determined the way in which he would regard the Persian wars, i.e. as the result of a long series of collisions between the Greek and the barbarian worlds. In other words, the view which Herodotus takes is that of the Greeks who lived on the eastern side of the Ægæan. This view he learned in his youth before he left Halicarnassus, not when he settled in Thurii; and it was this view which determined the information he would collect, not the information which he collected that determined his point of view.

Herodotus begins his History by declaring that his purpose is to tell the causes of the wars between the Greeks and the barbarians. The wrongs and reprisals on both sides, which belong to the domain of myth, he sets aside without giving an opinion on them; he prefers to begin with what he knows, and the first thing he can vouch for is, that Cræsus, the king of Lydia, attacked and subjugated the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. This leads him to give a history of the Lydian kings—including the wonderful story of Gyges and his magical ring, and the famous interview of Solon with Cræsus—and a description of the country of Lydia and its most noteworthy sights. The wrong Cræsus did to the Asiatic Greeks and the excessive wealth which he acquired brought down on him the wrath of Heaven, and he was overthrown by the Persian Cyrus. Then follows an account of the Medes and their history to the time of Astyages, of the birth and exposure of his grandson Cyrus, and of the way in which Cyrus at the head of the Persians overthrew the Median kingdom. We are thus brought into the domain of Persian history, and the growth of the Persian kingdom until it collided with Greece is the main subject of the first six books of Herodotus. He describes the customs of the Persians, their conquest under Cyrus of the Asiatic Greeks, of Babylon, and of the Massagetæ—in each case giving a description of the country and an account of the history of the conquered people. Cyrus was succeeded by Cambyses, who undertook the invasion of Egypt, and this gives Herodotus an opportunity for introducing his wonderful description of the land of Egypt, of the strange customs of its peoples, of its marvellous history and its astounding monuments. This fills the whole of the Second book, which is to us, as it was to the Greeks, the most enthralling of all the nine books.

In the Third book, he returns to the invasion of Egypt and its conquest by Cambyses. The death of Cambyses was followed by the appearance of a pretender to the throne, the pseudo-Smerdis. Herodotus relates his dethronement and the trick by which Darius contrived to obtain the crown for himself. At this point Herodotus introduces the history of the celebrated tyrant of Samos, Polycrates; the tale of his unsuccessful attempt to avert the Nemesis of the gods which his over-great prosperity was doomed to bring upon his head, and his fall. Darius organised the government of the now vast kingdom of Persia with a broad statesmanship and minute attention to detail which stamp him as the greatest of the Persian monarchs; and the review of the Persian kingdom and its resources thus introduced serves to impress the reader with the magnitude of the danger threatening Greece, and to heighten the interest of Herodotus' tale.

The Fourth book is occupied by Darius' attempt against the Scyths, which was unsuccessful, and by an account of their country and the countries bordering on it. The history of Cyrene is also introduced in this book, on the ground, which we may doubt, that Darius meditated an invasion in this direction also. But the plea serves as an excuse for the development of all the information about the tribes on the north coast of Africa between Cyrene and Egypt, which Herodotus had picked up from the traders along that coast. The invasion of Scythia, though unsuccessful, and all but the destruction of Darius and his army, paved the way for the invasion of Greece under Xerxes, inasmuch as it incidentally resulted in the conquest of the south of Thrace, through which Xerxes' army eventually marched. Accordingly the Fifth book opens with a description of Thrace; and then we come to the proximate causes of the first Persian invasion of Greece.

Histiæus, the tyrant of Miletus, who had once saved Darius, but was regarded by that monarch as too clever to be allowed entire liberty, was nominally a guest, and really an honoured prisoner at the Persian court. Growing weary of this, he secretly instigated the Ionian cities to revolt, in order that he might be sent to quell the insurrection and thus gain his liberty. In this revolt the Ionians were supported by the Athenians, but not by the Spartans, to whom they first applied for help. The revolt failed, and the attention of Darius was drawn to the necessity of crushing Greece. The first expedition which he sent for this purpose failed, and the second resulted in the glorious Athenian victory at Marathon, a victory which owes not a little of its immortal fame to the History of Herodotus. This closes the Sixth book.

The Seventh book opens with the preparations of Darius to take condign vengeance on Athens, and the opportune revolt of Egypt, which, by delaying the invasion of Greece until the death of Darius, left it in the hands of his unworthy successor, Xerxes, and thus probably saved Greece. The inception of the second Persian war is conceived by Herodotus in an epic spirit. Xerxes is loth to undertake the invasion of Greece, but the time is come for the wrath of the gods, provoked by the overweening greatness of the Persians, to descend upon this mighty empire, and false dreams are sent to Xerxes to drive him on destruction. War once resolved on, preparations of astounding magnitude were made. Magazines were prepared along the route in advance, and the neighbouring peoples engaged for months in filling them with stores. A canal was driven through Athos, that the fleet might escape the dangerous necessity of rounding this dangerous point. Bridges were built across the Hellespont, and all the many nations comprised in the Persian empire called upon to furnish contingents of troops. The dress and arms of all these peoples are described in the pages of Herodotus, and the advance of this army, numbering, according to Herodotus, over five million altogether, and probably the greatest the world has ever seen, traced from Sardis on. This prepares the reader to realise the dismay of the Greeks, the despair of their very oracles, which Herodotus pictures, and the valour of the handful of Greeks who, under Leonidas, waited for death and glory at Thermopylæ. The main incidents of the Eighth book are the battle of Salamis and the flight of Xerxes, as are the battle of Platæa and the flight of the Persian army of the Ninth book.

Herodotus is such simple and delightful reading, he is so unaffected and entertaining, his story flows so naturally and with such ease, that we have a difficulty in bearing in mind that, over and above the hard writing which goes to make easy reading, there is a perpetual marvel in the work of Herodotus. It is the first artistic work in prose that Greek literature produced. This prose work, which for pure literary merit no subsequent work has surpassed, than which later generations, after using the pen for centuries, have produced no prose more easy or more readable, this was the first of histories and of literary prose.

Without attempting to analyse the literary merit of Herodotus, it will be enough here to point out one or two of its constituent elements, a comprehension of which will throw light on the development of Greek literature and the position of Herodotus in that development. In the contemplation of any work of art, after the first period of enjoyment, the thought usually travels with reverence to the artist—what manner of man was he to whom it was granted to conceive and execute this? And whereas a picture or a statue conveys but little definite information about the artist as a man, and the imagination has to draw on its own stores for a likeness which may have but little resemblance to the original, it is the privilege of literature to convey information much more definite in kind and more extensive in range. The extent to which we thus become acquainted with the man through his writing may vary, from the marked and deliberate way in which Thucydides withdraws himself and his own views from the reader's gaze, to the delightful intimacy which in reading Charles Lamb we come to feel with the man. But even with Thucydides we come to be acquainted, for his very withdrawal from us gives us the man's character. Herodotus, however, belongs to the type, not of Thucydides, but of Charles Lamb. Even if the tale of how the Greeks fought well for liberty, and thus bequeathed to us the heritage of their art and literature, were not of interest to us, we still should read it for the sake of making the acquaintance of Herodotus, by listening to him as he tells the tale. Or again, if, forgetting the sack of Sardis, Herodotus says that the Athenians at Marathon were the first Greeks who dared to look the Persians in the face, or makes the total of Xerxes' army too great by a million, or some other conjectural sum, this lessens our affection for Herodotus as little as it lessens our admiration for the Greeks. They fought well, and he tells the tale well, and we are the better for the fight and for the tale. Dulce et decorum est. The charm of Herodotus is, then, that in him we are listening to one who has seen many cities and known many men, and is not writing a book, but telling in his fresh old age the brave deeds that were done in the days before him, and describing the marvels of the strange lands which in his youth he had himself seen. That Herodotus' narrative has the characteristics of a tale told rather than of a book written is no accident, nor is it to be explained solely by reference to the temper of the man. It is due to the fact that Herodotus wrote his work for oral delivery, and not for a reading public. The Greeks of his time were not in the habit of perusing literature, each man in the privacy of his own home. Epic poetry they were accustomed to hear recited in public. Lyric poetry they became acquainted with either by hearing choruses perform it at some sacred festival, or—as in the case of triumphal odes—on some public occasion, or by listening to some friend reciting an ode of Alcæus or Theognis after a banquet. Dramatic literature reached the Greek not in the form of books, but by being performed before him on the stage. A reading public can scarcely be said to have existed at this time; for although some public libraries were to be found, Euripides was the first private man who possessed a library. It was not, therefore, by spreading written copies of his work that an author could hope to gain much publicity. The prose writer at first naturally adopted the same means as the poet for bringing his work before the notice of the public; that is, he sought for some opportunity when large numbers of his fellow-countrymen were gathered together, and he would be able to read to them his productions. Such an opportunity was found in such a festival as the Panathenæa at Athens, or the national games of Greece. At the latter we know prose works were regularly read, and special provision made for their recitation. This, then, was the way in which Herodotus had to gain the ear of the public. The idea is so alien to the notions of the present day, with its printing-press, that at first we are inclined to doubt the possibility of any considerable portion of a prose work—to say nothing of the whole of Herodotus—being thus recited. But when we reflect that a speech such as that of Demosthenes On the Crown, or that On the Embassy, is longer than the longest book of Herodotus, and that the Greeks (like the Japanese of the present day) were accustomed to listen for a whole day to the performance of play after play, we shall have little difficulty in believing that Herodotus might easily read at a sitting, say, the whole of the Second book, describing the land, the manners and customs, and the history of Egypt. More than this we are not called upon to believe, for what evidence there is on the point seems to indicate that these recitations of lectures of Herodotus extended not to the whole, but only to parts of his work.

The well-known story that Thucydides, as a boy, being present at one of these recitations, burst into tears, and that Herodotus thereupon declared the boy's nature was ripening towards learning, has the appearance of being an invention due to the desire of grammarians to bring the two great historians into connection with each other, and, further, is hard to believe because of the chronological difficulties. If we suppose that the recitation took place when Thucydides was fifteen years old, B.C. 456, Herodotus can scarcely have been thirty years of age then, had probably not yet visited Egypt, and could hardly have composed any of his work. But although we may reject this story, there is no reason to doubt that Lucian is right in saying that Herodotus gave recitations at the Olympia, in Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. As far as Athens is concerned, the testimony of Lucian is amply confirmed by Eusebius, and by the author of the attack on Herodotus (De Malignitate Herodoti) which goes under the name of Plutarch. The latter (c. 26) states that the Athenians decreed a gift of ten talents to Herodotus, and the former states that Herodotus was "honoured" by the Boulê of the Athenians for reciting his works to them. These statements may be regarded as referring to the same circumstance, and as proving a recitation at Athens at least.

Taking it as proved that Herodotus did give readings of his History, we shall see that the work is not complete, and that therefore his readings were probably of selections from, and not the whole of his history. In the first place, the last chapter of the last book was presumably not meant to conclude the work. It contains no indication that it is the last chapter, does not sum up the work, nor does it present anything corresponding to the introduction at the beginning of the history. In the next place, the History does not comprise the last phases of the struggle between the Greeks and the barbarians, the battles at the Eurymedon and Salamis in Cyprus. It thus seems that Herodotus must have contemplated continuing his work down to a later date than it reaches as we have it. If, in objection to this, it is alleged that the division of the work into nine books, named after the Muses, excludes the possibility of a tenth having been added, it is only necessary to point out that there is no evidence in the work itself of any such division. When Herodotus wishes in any passage to refer to some other passage, he does not refer to the number of the book, as Josephus, for instance, does, but says "in the former" or "the latter part of my History." The first author who knows the division into books is Diodorus Siculus, and the first who knows them by the names of the Muses is Lucian. From this we may infer that it was by the Alexandrine grammarians that the names of the Muses were given to the books.

Not only does Herodotus seem to have broken off without bringing his History down to its proper termination, but he also seems not to have finished that which he did write. Thus he promises to say more about Ephialtes (who betrayed the Greeks at Thermopylæ) in a later part of the History, but never does say anything more. He also promises to give an account of the capture of Nineveh by the Medes, but he never redeems his promise. Again, he promises to say more about the Babylonian kings in his "Assyrian History," but we have no Assyrian history. Whether Herodotus ever wrote the Assyrian history which he promises, and whether, if he wrote it, he intended to publish it separately or as part of the work we have, are questions which do not seem to admit of being settled. Aristotle alludes to an account of the siege of Nineveh—by Herodotus according to some MSS., by Hesiod according to most MSS. It is difficult to imagine how Hesiod could come to be writing of the siege of Nineveh, and this difficulty, together with the fact that Herodotus, as we have seen, certainly intended, at least, to give an account of the siege, incline us rather to think that Herodotus did write his Assyrian history. In this case, it was not incorporated with the work which we possess, as Herodotus seems to have intended, and this is a fresh indication that the work is incomplete. Thus, although Herodotus gave various readings from his work before he finally settled down in Thurii, and evidently wrote or revised many passages of the last four books during his stay at Thurii, he yet neither brought the work to a conclusion nor completed his revision.

Unfinished though the work is, it is so far from being left in a disorderly state, that one of its charms, and of its points of superiority over previous prose, is its unity. This unity is due to its simplicity of conception. Herodotus' one theme is the conflict between the Greeks and the barbarians, and with this theme all the episodes have a direct connection. To this simple conception Herodotus was led by the sentiment of nationality, which nerved the better-minded Greeks to their successful resistance, but unfortunately was disappearing rapidly in the later years of Herodotus' own life. The Hellas of Herodotus includes Miletus and Cyrene, Sicily and Rhodes. He evidently has great sympathy with that state which made the greatest sacrifices for the national good in the Persian wars—Athens; and with a boldness which, in view of the envy and hatred that was rife against Athens at the time he wrote, deserves credit, he does not hesitate to show it. Thus he properly calls attention to the patriotism of the Athenians in resigning the command of the fleet to the Spartans (though, as they contributed the largest contingent, they had the best claim to take the maritime lead), rather than cause dissension among the allied Greeks; and he rather goes out of his way to declare that, however unpopular the opinion may be, he is convinced that the Athenians, when they abandoned Athens and took to their "wooden walls" in accordance with the oracle, saved Hellas. The democratic government of Athens also pleased him. He disapproved of tyranny and of oligarchy, and believed in equality; and he ascribes the rise of Athens to her escape from tyranny. But this liking for Athens does not make him a blind partisan. He has praise for Athens' great rival, Sparta, and even for the courage of the Bæotians, although they were traitors, and for the Corinthians.

Herodotus' breadth of view and his sentiment of nationality is due in part to his extensive travels, which tended to make him cosmopolitan, and feel his kinship with all Hellenes wheresoever planted; but it is still more due to his being an Asiatic Greek. The natural boundary of the Persian kingdom towards the west was the Ægæan, and farther than this Persian statesmen would have had little temptation to extend their rule but for the Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor. The relation of Greece to the Persian empire was in the time of Darius much like that of Britain to the Roman empire. The Channel might have remained the boundary of Roman rule but for the fact that the tribes of Gaul found a perpetual refuge and an everready assistance from their kinsfolk in Britain, and therefore peace could not be lasting in Gaul until Britain also was subdued. The Greek cities in Asia Minor, in the same way, could not be expected to become contented subjects of the great king so long as their brethren across the Ægaæn remained free. It was to the Greeks in Greece, without distinction, that the Greeks in Asia Minor looked for assistance in their struggles against the barbarians, whether Persian or Lydian, and this of itself served to make the Asiatic Greeks think little of minor divisions and much of their common nationality.

A strong national feeling, then, running all through Herodotus' work, is one thing which gives unity to his History. Another is the predominance of the religious feeling of Nemesis, a theory which the overthrow of the enormous power of Persia by a handful of Greeks is regarded by Herodotus as verifying. Nemesis, the visitation which lights from heaven on over-great prosperity, as the lightning strikes the tallest trees and the loftiest houses, does not appear in Homer, but is to be found in Hesiod, in Pindar, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The workings of Nemesis are seen by Herodotus not only in the defeat of Persia, but in the fall of Cræsus and of Apries, and in the tales of Polycrates, Orætes, Aryandes, Pheretime, Cleomenes, Talthybrus, and the death of Mardonius; in the result of Cyrus' expedition against the Massagetæ, that of Cambyses against the Ethiopians, and of Darius against the Scyths. Nemesis is incurred by conspicuous prosperity, but the absence of such prosperity is no safeguard, for no one may escape from the "envy" or "jealousy" of the gods. Short as life is, Herodotus says, there never yet was or will be a man who does not wish more than once that he were dead: Heaven gives man a taste, but grudges him more of the pleasure of life. Thus Nemesis and jealousy, together covering the whole of human experience, afford a universally applicable explanation of the vicissitudes through which individuals and countries go; and these vicissitudes it is the business of the historian to record. This is Herodotus' philosophy of history.

His God is not only a jealous God, but one who visits the sins of the fathers on the children. That Heaven punished offenders in their own persons and rewarded the righteous, Herodotus firmly believed, and he records many instances in which this happened. But there remained cases which Herodotus, like Solon and Æschylus, seemed to think found a satisfactory explanation in ancestral guilt. Thus Craesus paid the penalty for Gyges' crime.

Polytheism Herodotus practically abandons. He prefers not to commit himself, and, though he tells many stories of the gods, is careful not to guarantee them, when he does not deny them. In the spirit of toleration he allows that the effects of an earthquake might be regarded as the work of Poseidon. Strange to say, he speaks of the sun as a god. Perhaps this is a mere and natural inconsistency, or he may have deliberately used the expression to guard himself from the charge of atheism, which a denial of the sun's divinity brought on Anaxagoras, with whom he may have been, and with whose works he probably was, acquainted. But, although not a polytheist, Herodotus was not an atheist. He believes in a God and in fate. From fate neither man nor even god can escape. It is thus that many things, otherwise hard to understand, are to be explained; and Herodotus is never weary of pointing out how everything was ordained by Providence. Consistently with this belief in fate, Herodotus believes in oracles as a means of finding out what is fated. Instances of non-fulfilment of an oracle are, of course, explained away; either the inquirer was guilty in some way, or the oracle was a forgery, or due to bribery. It further harmonises with this belief in fate and oracles that Herodotus believed also in omens.

The belief of Herodotus in Nemesis and fate gives unity to his work, for the history which he relates is regarded by him as but the working out of a divine plan preordained from all time. But a theory is dangerous for a historian, who may unconsciously be drawn into adapting facts to suit his theory, and it thus becomes necessary to examine the credibility of Herodotus. The credibility of a writer depends on his capacity, his honesty, and his means of information. Under the head of capacity we have to distinguish between the capacity of a writer for stating the results of his own observation and his capacity for estimating the evidence of others: and in the case of Herodotus it is the more necessary to observe this distinction, because, in conformity with the custom of logographers, he regarded it quite as much part of his task to describe the land, monuments, habits, and customs of the peoples whose history he was writing, as to write their history. The historical events which Herodotus recorded happened before his time, and came to him from the lips of others; but the descriptions of countries and peoples are, to a great extent, the result of his own travels. With regard, then, to his capacity for this portion of his work, the essential conditions are that he should have been an accurate observer, and that he should be able to distinguish in his statements between what he himself observed and what he was told by others. But in forming our opinion we should be on our guard against applying the standard of modern times to an ancient author. Thus, naturalists of the present day—owing partly to the modern taste for sport and to modern weapons of precision—are accustomed to much closer study, both of specimens and of the habits of the living animal, than any Greek naturalists. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that the acquaintance of Herodotus with crocodiles and hippopotami was a distant one; that he has no accurate measurements of the latter, and little knowledge of the conformation of the jaws of the former; that he is apt to confound the poisonous asp with the equally venomous horned viper; that he makes mistakes about pisciculture; and accepts without close investigation what he was told by the natives. In this branch of knowledge, Herodotus falls below the modern, but not below the ancient, standard, and will compare favourably with Aristotle, who wrote on zoology. If we set aside this special department of inquiry, and consider him not as a naturalist, but as a general observer, we find, in the first place, that he recognises the difference between the evidence of his own eyes and hearsay, and that he is generally careful to inform us to which kind of testimony a statement belongs. In the next place, it is generally admitted that "what he saw himself he may be supposed to describe with fair accuracy." Everything, of course, he did not observe. He does not state, for instance, that the Egyptians used gold and glass as well as bronze for drinking vessels; that they ate wheaten as well as other bread; that women as well as men plied the loom in Egypt, and that they drove the woof upwards as well as downwards. But, nevertheless, he gives us a picture of Egypt as he saw it, the charm of which is indisputable, and which is as valuable as it is charming.

As an observer, then, Herodotus may be credited with capacity. In the historical portions of his work we must look for other qualities to establish his capacity. To begin with, he has the first great quality of a historian: he distinguishes between facts and his inferences from them. What was told to him he tells to us, and gives us his authority: he draws his own inferences, but also gives his reader the opportunity to draw other inferences. Further, he does not present us with that version alone of an event which he considers most likely, but lays before the reader all the versions with which he is acquainted, choosing one himself, but also leaving the reader liberty of choice. Again, he is free from the error of infallibility; if he cannot test the truth of a story, he admits his ignorance.

As Herodotus is so careful to distinguish between what he has heard and what he infers therefrom, and to give his authorities, his capacity for estimating evidence becomes a matter of less consequence. But he is fully aware of the importance of getting evidence at first hand, if possible, and naturally prefers that version of an event which has the best evidence to support it. It is, however, at this point that his theory of Nemesis and fate affects his credibility as a historian. When the evidence for two versions of an event was about equal, Herodotus cannot be blamed for choosing that version which accords with his theory. In such a case it is perfectly legitimate to take into account the tendency of a general law, and to give weight to general considerations. What is not legitimate is for the historian to imagine that conformity with his theory dispenses him from the necessity of further investigation: and there can be little doubt that his theory frequently led Herodotus into taking a superficial view of history, accepting fate as a sufficient explanation of an event, about the causes of which he might have found out and told us more. On the other hand, there is not the least reason to believe that he ever rejected the better-attested version because it did not harmonise with his theory. He believed his theory to be well enough established to dispense with such props, and has no hesitation in rejecting an application of the doctrine of Nemesis when the facts do not support it. Nor does his appetite for the marvellous—although it occasionally led him to record, if not to believe, some very extraordinary tales told him in the East, as, e.g. that about the cats in Egypt—prevent him from exercising a perpetual criticism on what he was told or from frequently rejecting the stories he heard.

Herodotus' capacity as a historical writer is marred by his tendency to overlook general causes and to see only personal motives, to substitute occasions for causes. Thus, he ascribes the revolt of the Persians from the Medes to personal motives on the part of Harpagus and Cyrus; the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses to an eye-doctor's desire for revenge; Darius' design of invading Greece to the intrigues of Democedes, the enslaved physician, who longed to return to Greece; the Ionian revolt to the pecuniary difficulties of Aristagoras; the Persian invasion of Samos under Darius to the monarch's gratitude to Syloson; and the effeminacy of the Lydians to Croesus' suggestion to Cyrus that they should be compelled to live luxuriously. But here, again, Herodotus is no worse than the greatest philosophers of Greece, who imagined, for instance, that the unnatural camplife of the Spartans was, not the result of hostile pressure from without, exerted for centuries, but due to the fiat of a single lawgiver, and also believed that a similar state of things could be brought about elsewhere by the mere command of a philosophical king.

Another defect which Herodotus shared in common with other Greek writers, and which, though in a different way, marred the philosophy as well as the history of Greek writers, was ignorance of foreign languages. In the course of his travels he picked up about a score of foreign words; but when he says that Persian proper names express always some bodily or mental excellence, and that they invariably end in s, he betrays his ignorance of the language. So, too, his remark that the language of the Troglodytes, of the Egyptians, and of foreigners generally was like the chirping of birds, shows that he had learnt no language but his own.

The result of this ignorance of foreign languages was that Herodotus had to depend for much of his information about the foreign countries he visited on interpreters; and this brings us to the second point we have to consider in connection with the credibility of Herodotus—his means of information. In the case of public monuments or documents, of which there existed authentic translations from the original into Greek, Herodotus' linguistic ignorance would not vitiate his statements, and it is probable that it was on such translations that his accounts of Darius' cadastral system, the itinerary to Sardis, and the description of Xerxes' army rested. But in the case of inscriptions which he had to get translated by his interpreter, e.g. the inscriptions about the amount of onions consumed during the building of a pyramid, or about the method of building a pyramid, or the pillars in Palestine commemorating the conquests, whether of Sesostris or Rameses III. or the Hittites, obviously the translation depended on the capacity of the translator, not of Herodotus, and is of uncertain value. Considerations of this sort apply to the whole of Herodotus' Persian and Egyptian history. He depended entirely on his interpreter or dragoman, and the result is that we have rather folk-lore than history, the tale of Rhampsinitus, and not the real history of the Egyptian dynasties; and we are the gainers. The monuments will reveal to us in course of time the history of the kings of Egypt, but Herodotus has given us what the monuments cannot reveal, and what would have otherwise utterly perished—a faithful and charming version of the popular stories current in the streets of Memphis in his day.

With Herodotus' Greek history the case is different. Some of the inscriptions which he consulted were undoubtedly forgeries, e.g. the Cadmeian inscriptions at Thebes, and were known by himself to be forgeries, e.g. the offerings of Croesus at Delphi falsely inscribed as offerings from Sparta. But many were genuine and valuable, e.g. those on the field of Thermopylae, the list at Delphi of the Greeks at Salamis and Platææ. and that of Mandrocles in the temple of Here at Samos. The value of his accounts of the various ancient works of art which he saw is less than that of the inscriptions. Thus what Herodotus tells us of Croesus, Alyattes, and Gyges may possibly have been the tales which clung to the offerings sent by those rulers to Delphi. But the myth which was told about Arion in connection with the erection on Taenarum, and that about Ladike and her offering at Cyrene, suffice to show that little confidence can be placed in this kind of evidence.

By far the larger part of Herodotus' information, however, was necessarily drawn from the lips of the people with whom he became acquainted. The history of the Persian wars had not been committed to writing, and Herodotus had, therefore, to rely on oral testimony. This is for the purposes of history generally inferior evidence, but its value is materially affected by the number of persons through whom it is transmitted. Next to the evidence of eye-witnesses, that of contemporaries ranks, and Herodotus could and did get information from both classes. This guarantees the substantial truth of his history, but does not allow us to put much faith in his statistics, or in any point in which minute accuracy is needed.

But although Herodotus depends mainly on oral testimony, he is not unacquainted with the literature of his country. He not only, being an educated man, possesses familiarity with the poets, e.g. Archilochus, the Cyclic poems, Sappho, Æschylus, Hesiod, Pindar, Olen, Alcæus, Solon, Simonides, and Phrynichus; but he has references to Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and possibly Anaximander. Whether Herodotus was acquainted with the logographers is hard to say, because we know so little of them. Hellanicus was later than, and therefore unknown to Herodotus, as was Damastes, the pupil of Hellanicus. Bion, Deiochus, Hippyas, Eugeon, Eudemus, Democles, Melesagoras, and Xenomedes are mere names to us, and there is no hint to be found anywhere that Herodotus either used or knew their works. The few fragments that go under the name of Dionysius are probably spurious, and the celebrated voyager Scylax probably did not write any account of his travels, certainly was not known as an author to Herodotus. What little we know about Charon seems to show that Herodotus was unacquainted with his works. Xanthus was said by the historian Ephorus to have given Herodotus the starting-point, but the few fragments left of Xanthus throw no light on the meaning of this statement. With Cadmus, Acusilaus, and Pherecydes, Herodotus may have been acquainted, but there is nothing to show that he was. With Hecatæus the case is different. We have the best of authority—that of Herodotus himself—for believing that he knew the works of Hecatæus. In two places he refers to him by name, and quotes his genealogies. Elsewhere he refers, in all probability, to him, but does not mention his name; as when he ridicules people who draw maps of the world and put a mathematically circular Oceanus round it, without knowing anything about it; or when he condemns the theory of the Nile flowing out of the Oceanus, as having no basis in facts. From these passages it seems clear that Herodotus had only a poor opinion of Hecatæus. But according to Porphyry, Herodotus was indebted to Hecatæus for a good deal of his book on Egypt; and this leads us to the third point which we have to consider in connection with the credibility of Herodotus—his honesty.

If Herodotus borrowed without acknowledgment from Hecatæus, he was, according to modern notions, guilty of literary dishonesty; and if he tried to pass off the matter thus borrowed as the result of his own observation or inquiry, he is an untrustworthy historian. The passages specified by Porphyry as borrowed are those about the phœnix, the hippopotamus, and the method of hunting crocodiles. These passages apparently are intended by Herodotus to be regarded as the result of his own observation and of his own inquiries from the natives; as therefore, we have not a single fragment by Hecatæus bearing on these passages, and as Porphyry is our only authority—and we do not even know him at first hand—for this plagiarism, it becomes necessary to inquire what Porphyry could know about it. We learn from Eusebius that Porphyry, in discussing the question of plagiarism, accused Herodotus, along with Menander, Hyperides, Ephorus, Theopompous, Hellanicus, and others, and quoted in support of his accusation a work on the "thefts" of Herodotus by a certain Pollio. Now Porphyry himself is of very late date; he flourished about A.D. 270, and Pollio probably was very little earlier than Porphyry. In the next place, in the time of Athenæus, about A.D. 180, and of Arrian, about A.D. 100, there were spurious works in circulation under the name of Hecatæus. Further, we learn from Athenæus that in the time of Callimachus, about B.C. 250, these spurious works were already in circulation. It becomes therefore probable that Pollio, like Arrian and Athenæus, had the spurious works of Hecatæus before him, and we may suppose that between Herodotus and the spurious Hecatæus there was sufficient resemblance to make it probable that the later author copied from his predecessor; but we have no ground for believing that the spurious Hecatæus is the earlier author. On the contrary, it seems more probable that the spurious Hecatæus was partly made out of materials taken from Herodotus. We may, therefore, reasonably on the whole say, although there is no certainty to be attained either way, Porphyry's charge of plagiarism rests on unsatisfactory testimony.

The speeches, e.g. those of Artabanus and Xerxes, or of the Persian conspirators, are not historically true; but no one would think of accusing Herodotus therefore of dishonesty in inserting them. It was natural to the Greek to throw into the lively form of dialogue or debate the considerations which moved, or were supposed to have moved, the agents in historical events; and it was as unnecessary for the historian to warn his fellowy-Greeks that the speeches were his own inferences from what facts he knew, as it is for a modern historian to give a similar warning as to the motives which—in the confidence of knowledge—he feels justified in ascribing, though they are but inferences, to historical personages. And when Herodotus repeats with asseveration that the speech he ascribed to Otanes was, whatever some Greeks might think, actually delivered, he means that the grounds he has for inferring the delivery of some such speech were quite convincing to his mind. In one or two places in the book on Egypt, Herodotus says that he went to Thebes, and even as far as Elephantine. But it seems quite clear that in reality he never went to either place. As, therefore, in one passage the MS. authority for the statement in question is doubtful, and in the other the statement seems to have little connection with the context; and as both statements are in ludicrous contradiction to what Herodotus himself says, we seem justified in following Professor Sayce in striking them out.

To sum up, then, the argument for the credibility of Herodotus: his impartiality and honesty in the matter of Greek history seem beyond doubt. With regard to his journeys, a suspicion has been cast upon him, but not successfully, that he was more than liable to the infirmity which is often imputed to travellers when telling their tales. In capacity he was rather above than below the standard of his age. But his means of information were poor. In the case of his Greek history, his information, though the best at his command, was only oral testimony. In the case of his Oriental history, even when he met trustworthy informants, as the priest of Neith at Sais, or Zopyrus the son of Megabyzus, he was entirely at the mercy of his interpreter, and his Oriental history therefore is that of the dragoman, not of the monuments.