and on hearing the composition of Herodotus, discovered the seeds of those exalted talents which afterwards made his name immortal. After listening to the father of history with the most composed and serious attention, he burst into tears. He was then no more than fifteen years old; and Herodotus, observing his emotion, exclaimed to Olorus, og Quσis TE DIS TY προς τα μαθηματα-Your son burns with an adour for science. This is said to have happened in the eightyfirst Olympiad. Twelve years afterwards, the Historian read a continuation, or second portion of his work, to the Athenians, at the feast of the Panathenæa. The citizens of Athens, not satisfied with heaping praises upon him, presented him with ten talents, which gift was solemnly ratified by a decree of the people. The following account of this memorable incident is taken from Lucian, who has a long and curious dissertation on the subject of Herodotus." Herodotus, having left Caria to go into Greece, employed his thoughts in contriving methods, by which in a small time, without much trouble, he might acquire a large stock of glory and reputation for his person and works. He foresaw that it would be a tedious and fatiguing task to go to the respective places, and recite them to the Athenians, Corinthians, Argives, and Lacedæmonians. He imagined that it would be more expedient to find them all assembled together. It happened very luckily that they were then all going to celebrate the Olympian games: he concluded this time very proper for the execution of his design, and that he had met with the opportunity which he was in quest of, for he should now find a vast concourse of the principal and most select people of all Greece. He appeared then on the theatre, not as a bare spectator, but in order to commence an actor in the Olympic games. None were ignorant of the name of Herodotus, nor was there a single person in Greece who had not either seen him at the Olympics, or heard those speak of him that came from thence: so that in what place soever he came, the inhabitants pointed with their finger, saying, this is that Herodotus who has written the Persian wars in the Ionic dialect; this is he who has celebrated our victories. Thus the harvest which he reaped from his histories was, the receiving in one assembly the general applause of all Greece, and the sounding his fame, not only in one place, and by a single trumpet, but in all the cities of Greece, by as many mouths as there had been spectators in that assembly." The next incident of this author's life of which we have to speak, may at first sight appear inconsistent and extraordinary. Honoured as all illustrious strangers were at Athens, and favourable as the opportunity must there have been, to have prosecuted his studies, and to have indulged his ardour for science, he might reasonably have been expected to fix his residence at Athens; but this we find was not the case. In the beginning of the following Olympiad, during the magistracy of Callimachus, he joined himself to a colony sent by the Athenians to form a settlement in Magna Græcia: whether he was prompted on this occasion by that fondness for travelling, which always distinguished him, or whether he was induced to take this step from motives of private connection and attachment, is totally unknown. It is certain that Lysias, who afterwards became so famous as an orator, was one of those who accompanied him. At Thurium3, which was the place then colonized, it is more than probable that he spent the remainder of his days, though there are some who assert that he died at Pella in Macedonia. Pella however gave no name to Herodotus, but became afterwards famous for being long the residence of Euripides, who from this circumstance has frequently been called the Bard of Pella: an appellation which our poet Collins happily introduces in his beautiful Ode to Pity: By Pella's bard, a magic name, By all the griefs his thought could frame, Long, Pity, let the nations view Thy sky-worn robes of tenderest hue, Herodotus, in like manner, from his long continuance at Thurium, obtained the epithet of the Thurian. This appellation is no where to be found more early than in the works of Aristotle. Avienus, Julian, Pliny, and others, call him the Thurian; while Strabo, of greater antiquity than any of these, Aristotle excepted, in his fourteenth book, expressly calls him the Halicarnassian, adding however, that he was afterwards named the Thurian, because he removed with a colony to that place. The passage in Strabo is this: "Herodotus, the Historian, was of Halicarnassus, but afterwards he was called the Thurian, because he accom 3 Written also Thurii and Thuriæ; it is situated in the Tarentine Gulph, in Italy, and almost upon the spot where formerly stood Sybaris, so infamous for effeminate manners. panied the colony which went to establish themselves at Thurium." Strabo, book 14. Pliny has an expression relating to Herodotus, which many have misinterpreted. "Auctor," says he, "ille Herodotus historiam condidit, Thuriis in Italiâ;" which has been understood as asserting that he wrote his history at Thurium. But this is impossible in fact, because I have shewn, that many years before he went to Thurium at all, he had publicly recited his work, or certain portions of it, on two very memorable occasions; at the Olympic games, and at Athens. It is therefore more reasonable and consistent to understand by this expression of Pliny, that he revised, corrected, and perhaps enlarged his history at Thurium. Suidas positively declares, that Herodotus died at Thurium; and though he mentions, as I have before intimated, that some affirmed him to have died at Pella, he produces no authority, which he would probably have done, if there had been any that deserved much notice. This assertion therefore appears not to claim any great degree of confidence. But an argument against his having died at Thurium rests on a passage which occurs in the life of Thucydides, by Marcellinus, who affirms, that the tomb of Herodotus was to be seen at Athens, amongst the monuments of Cimon. The president Bouhier has from this concluded and asserted that he died at Athens. Of this the question of M. Larcher, as he has applied it from Dodwell, seems a sufficient and satisfactory refutation. How can it be proved, says the learned Frenchman, that this was not a cenotaph, one of those marks of honour frequently paid to illustrious characters, without regarding the place where they might happen to die? Stephen of Byzantium gives an inscrip tion, said to have been found at Thurium, which asserts unequivocally, "This earth contains in its bosom, "Herodotus, son of Lyxes, a Dorian by birth, but "the most illustrious of the Ionian historians." Of the works of Herodotus we have remaining those nine books, to which the names of The Nine Muses have been respectively annexed; upon which subject I have spoken in a note at the beginning of the third book'. Whether he ever wrote any thing else, has been a matter of much controversy among scholars. Certain allusions and expressions, to be found in the Nine Muses, seem at first sight to justify the opinion, that we do not possess all his works. But this must ever remain a matter of extreme uncertainty; yet it becomes me to add, that there are no references pointed out by the learned, to any other of his works, in any ancient author. Aristotle, in his History of Animals, book viii. chap. 18, 4 Whether Herodotus conferred this name on his works himself, or whether it was given by any other, succeeding writers have followed the example. Eschines composed nine epistles and three orations, which were distinguished by the appellation of the Nine Muses, and the Three Graces. Photius also observes, that Cephaleon gave the name of the Nine Muses to his nine books of Abridgment of General History. Diogenes Laertius informs us, that Bion called his performance of nine books by the same title. But the reader must not confound this Bion with him whose life is given by Laertius. At the conclusion of that life the biographer tells us there were ten eminent men of the name of Bion. The sixth was a rhetorician, of whose writings there are nine books, each book under the appellation of a particular Muse. Aulus Gellius also, book i. chap. 25, informs us, that among the Latin writers, Publius Aurelius Opilius called his works by the name of the Nine Muses. |