The Histories of Herodotus Translated by Henry Cary With a Critical and Biographical Introduction HERODOTUS O F the life of Herodotus, the Father of History, little is known. The date commonly accepted for his birth is 484 B. C., and he is supposed not to have survived the year 424. Both dates rest on combinations. He was a native of Halicarnassus, a Dorian city of Caria, and was proud of his Doric blood. But the Doric speech of Halicarnassus was in time supplanted by the Ionic, which was the prevalent Asiatic type of Greek, and in a Halicarnassian inscription of 455 B. C. only the opening formula is Doric. Halicarnassus was thrust out of the Dorian league because of a sin which one of the citizens had committed against the majesty of Apollo, and fell first under Lydian and then under Persian sway. At the time of Herodotus's birth it was held as a fief of the Persian Empire by Artemisia, the high-hearted heroine of Salamis. Herodotus was of a noble family, the son of Lyxes and Dryo, or Rhoio, and a kinsman of Panyassis, the diviner, the poet, the reviver of the epic. What the relation was is not clear. Intermarriage among the Greeks was often complex, and Panyassis, his mother's brother, may readily have been his father's nephew. At all events, the connection with Panyassis lends especial significance to the Herodotean weakness for dreams and omens, signs and wonders, and makes still more intelligible the historian's familiarity with epic poetry, and the epic cast and colouring of his narrative; and when we read that Herodotus undertook a long voyage in order to investigate the origin of the worship of Tyrian Heracles, we recollect that Panyassis composed a Heracleïs. More im portant still was the political work of Panyassis, who perished in an unsuccessful revolt against Lygdamis, grandson or haply younger son of Artemisia. After the death of Panyassis, Herodotus, who may have been implicated in the affair, is supposed to have withdrawn to Samos, and it is recorded that he bore a conspicuous part in the revolution that unseated Lygdamis in 455. In 454 the name of Halicarnassus appears on the roll of the Athenian allies who paid their quota to the fund levied for resistance to Persia. But faction begets faction, and Herodotus, who had ousted Lygdamis, was himself forced to withdraw, and we find him registered among those who joined the Athenian colony of Thurii, in Lower Italy, founded in 444. Hence he is sometimes called a Thurian. His tomb was there, but another tomb was shown in Athens, the city he loved so well. Shortly before going to Thurii he is said to have read a portion of his histories at Athens-which portion is much disputed-and to have received a public reward of ten talents for his praise of the violet-wreathed city. The amount is extravagant; the story reminds one of the old tale about Pindar, but a public recitation is not at all improbable, nor a public recognition of some kind. Much of his time was spent in travel. What the modern historian finds useful for giving vividness and exactness to his narrative the ancient historian found indispensable for the collection of material. The day of the bookworm historians, whose journeys were limited to papyrus and to parchment, had not yet come. In point of fact, the geographer and the historian were one in the early time, and the differentiation did not take place until a comparatively late period. History (ioropía) means investigation, and the information sought had often to be gathered on the spot. Attempts have been made to trace the travels of Herodotus in his work, not always with signal success. Continental Greece he knew, Athens beyond a doubt, and the traveller of to-day who stands in Sparta and looks out toward Therapne feels that he is on Herodotean ground. Some of the Cyclades he must have visited, but how many is open to question. His birthplace was on the coast of Asia Minor, and the coast of Asia Minor he must have known, and the greater islands in those waters, notably Samos, where he is said to have resided. Sardis he discusses as one who had seen the capital of Lydia. His voyage along the northern coast of Asia Minor seems to have extended to the mouth of the Phasis, but there is no cogent evidence of his personal knowledge of Scythia, and it has been suggested that he went no farther than Byzantium and gathered his material there for the regions beyond. But if he is as honest as we take him to be, his description of Exampæus (iv, 81) is based on actual vision, and it is desirable that he should have visited Olbia, a famous outpost of Greekdom, which he calls Borysthenes. Tyre he sought, as he tells us expressly. Of Babylon he writes as one that had seen with his own eyes. In Palestine he beheld the monuments of the triumphal march of Sesostris. Perhaps he saw them on his way to Egypt, where he must have sojourned for some time. But the extent of his actual vision of Egypt is much mooted. Of Upper Egypt he makes scant mention, but then he makes scant mention of Phoenicia. That he never reached Elephantine is supposed to be proved by his calling Elephantine a city and not an island; but it was both then, as Rhodes became both afterward. Cyrene he most probably visited, and Lower Italy he knew-Thurii, at least, which he helped to colonize, and Metapontum. Sicily was near, and it seems likely that he knew Sicily. Likelihood and probability can not be excluded, but we may boldly say that Herodotus was qualified for membership even in an exigent Travellers' Club. On these travels, on these researches, rests the great work which heads the long line of Greek prose classics, and a brief summary of the contents of the nine books that compose the Setting Forth of Investigation" may fitly precede the characteristic of this great achievement. 66 An Alexandrian scholar of some note denied that Herodotus wrote the preface of his work, but every word in it is significant, and, if properly studied, the preface gives the key |