fluences, the solid impersonal Egyptian hierarchy or the
dazzling circle of great individuals at Athens ; yet all the
time shrewd, cool, gentle in judgment, deeply and un-
consciously convinced of the weakness of human nature,
the flaws of its heroism and the excusableness of its
apparent villainy. His book bears for good and ill the
stamp of this character and this profession.
He was a native of Halicarnassus, in the far south of
Asia Minor, a mixed state, where a Dorian strain had
first overlaid the native Carian, and then itself yielded
to the higher culture of Ionian neighbours, while all
alike were subjects of Persia : a good nursery for a
historian who was to be remarkable for his freedom
from prejudices of race. He was born about 484 B.C.
amid the echoes of the great conflict. Artemisia, queen
of Halicarnassus, fought for Xerxes at Salamis, and her
grandson Lygdamis still held the place as tyrant under
Artaxerxes after 460. Herodotus's first years of man-
hood were spent in fighting under the lead of his rela-
tive, the poet and prophet Panyasis, to free his city
from the tyrant and the Persian alike. He never men-
tions these wars in his book, but they must have marked
his character somewhat. Panyasis fell into the tyrant's
134 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE
hands and was put to death, Herodotus fled to Samos.
At last, in what way we know not, Lygdamis fell and
Herodotus returned ; but the party in power was for
some reason hostile to him — possibly they were 'auto-
nomists,' while he stood for the Athenian League — and
Herodotus entered upon his life of wandering. He
found a second home in Athens, where he had a friend
in Sophocles, and probably in Pericles and Lampon.
He was finally provided for by a grant of citizenship
in Thurii, the model international colony which Athens
founded in South Italy, in 443, on the site of the twice-
ruined Sybaris. Of his later life and travels we know
little definite. He travelled in Egypt as far as Elephan-
tine at some time when the country was in the hands
of Persia, and of course when Persia was at peace with
Athens — after 447, that is. He had then already finished
his great Asiatic journey (ii. 150) past Babylon to the
neighbourhoods of Susa and Ecbatana. At some time
he made a journey in the Black Sea to the mouths of
the Ister, the Crimea, and the land of the Colchians.
Pericles went through the Black Sea with a large fleet
in 444 ; perhaps Herodotus had been employed before-
hand to examine the resources of the region. Besides
this, he went by ship to Tyre, and seems to have travelled
down the Syrian coast to the boundary of Egypt. He
went to Cyrene and saw something of Libya. He knew
the coast of Thrace, and traversed Greece itself in all
directions, seeing Dodona, Acarnania, Delphi, Thebes,
and Athens, and, in the Peloponnese, Tegea, Sparta,
and Olympia.
What was the object of all this travelling ; and how
was a man who had lost his country, and presumably
could not draw on his estate, able to pay for it ? It is a
LIFE OF HERODOTUS 13S
tantalising question, and the true answer would probably
tell us much that is now unknown about Greek life in
the fifth century B.C. Herodotus may have travelled
partly as a merchant ; yet he certainly speaks of mer-
chants in an external way ; and he not only mentions —
as is natural considering the aim of his book — but seems
really to have visited, places of intellectual interest
rather than trade-centres. In one place (ii. ^) he says
explicitly that he sailed to Tyre in order to find out a
fact about Heracles. The truth seems to be that he was
a professional ' Logopoios,' a maker and reciter of * Logoi,'
' Things to tell I just as Kynaithos, perhaps as Panyasis,
was a maker and reciter of ' Epe,' ' Verses.' The anecdotic
tradition which speaks of his public readings at Athens,
Thebes, Corinth, and Olympia, certainly has some sub-
stratum of truth. He travelled as the bards and the
sophists travelled ; like the Homeridse, like Pindar, like
Hellanicus, like Gorgias. In Greek communities he
was sure of remunerative audiences ; beyond the Greek
world he at least collected fresh ' Logoi.' One may get
a little further light from the fact attested by Diyllus the
Aristotelian (end of 4th cent. B.C.), that Herodotus was
awarded ten talents (;^240o) on the motion of Anytus by
a decree of the Athenian Demos. That is not a payment
for a series of readings : it is the reward of some serious
public service. And it seems better to interpret that
service as the systematic collection of knowledge about
the regions that were politically important to Athens-
Persia, Egypt, Thrace, and Scythia, to say nothing of
states like Argos — than as the historical defence of Athens
as the ' saviour of Hellas,' at the opening of the Pelopon-
nesian War. Even the published book, as we have it,
is full of information which must have been invaluable
136 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE
to an Athenian politician of the time of Pericles ; and
it stands to reason that Herodotus must have had masses
of further knowledge which he could impart to the
Athenian ' Foreign Office/ but decidedly not publish for
the use of all Hellas.
The histories of Herodotus are ordinarily divided into
nine books, named after the nine Muses. The division
is of course utterly post-classic ; Herodotus knew nothing
of his ' Muses/ but simply headed his work, " This is the
account of the research of Herodotus of Thurii!' In our
editions it is " Herodotus of Halicarnassus," but he must
have written ''of Thurii" by all analogy, and Aristotle
read " of Thuriiy The Athenian or Eastern book-trade,
appealing to a public which knew the man as a Hali-
carnassian, was naturally tempted to head its scrolls
accordingly. It is like the case of the Anabasis, which
appeared pseudonymously as the work of Themisto-
genes of Syracuse (see p. 319) ; but it was known to
be really Xenophon's, and the book-trade preferred to
head it with the better-known name.
The last three books of Herodotus give the history of
the invasion of Xerxes and its repulse ; the first six form
a sort of introduction to them, an account of the gradual
gathering up of all the forces of the world under Persia,
the restive kicking of Ionia against the irresistible, and
the bursting of the storm upon Greece. The connection
is at first loose, scarcely visible ; only as we go on we
begin to feel the growing intensity of the theme — the
concentration of all the powers and nations to which
we have been gradually introduced, upon the one great
conflict.
Starting from the mythical and primeval enmity be-
tween Asia and Europe, Herodotus takes up his history
ANALYSIS OF HERODOTUS'S HISTORIES 137
with Croesus of Lydia, the first Asiatic who enslaved
Greek cities. The Lydian * Logoi,' rich and imagina-
tive, saturated with Delphic tradition, lead up to the
conquest of Lydia by Cyrus, and the rise of Persia to
the empire of Asia. The past history and subjugation
of Media and Babylon come as explanations of the
greatness of Persia, and the story goes on to the con-
quest of Egypt by Cambyses. Book II. is all occupied
with the Egyptian 'Logoi.' Book III. returns to the
narrative, Cambyses' wild reign over Egypt, the false
Smerdis, the conspiracy and rise of Darius, and his
elaborate organisation of the Empire. In Book IV.,
Darius, looking for further conquests, marches against
the Scythians, and the hand of Persia is thus first laid
upon Europe in the north — here come the Scythian
* Logoi ' ; while meantime at the far south the queen of
Cyrene has called in the Persian army against Barca, and
the terrible power advances over Libya as well — here
is a place for the Libyan ' Logoi.' In Book V., while
a division of the Scythian army is left behind under
Megabazos, to reduce Thrace — here come the Thracian
' Logoi ' — Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, prompted by
his father-in-law the ex-tyrant, harassed with debt, and
fearing the consequences of certain military failures,
plunges all Ionia into a desperate revolt against the
Persian. He seeks help from the chief power of Greece,
and from the mother-city of the lonians. Sparta refuses ;
Athens consents. Eretria, the old ally of Miletus, goes
with Athens ; and in the first heat of the rising the two
strike deep into the Persian dominion and burn Sardis,
only to beat forthwith an inevitable retreat, and to
make their own destruction a necessity for Persian
honour. Book VI. gives the steady reduction of Ionia,
138 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE
the end of Aristagoras, the rbmantic and terrible
flights of whole communities from the Persian ven-
geance ; the hand of the king is uplifted over Greece.
In the north the great Mardonius advances, persistently
successful, recovering Thrace and the islands, and
receivmg the submission of Macedonia ; in the south,
Datis comes by sea direct upon Eretria and Athens.
And at the same time heralds are sent to the Greek
states demanding 'earth and water,' the token of sub-
mission to the king's will.
Through all these books, but in VI. more than any,
the history of the Greek states has been gathered up in
digressions and notes, historically on a higher plane than
the main current of the narrative in Asia. Datis lands in
Euboea and discharges the first part of his orders by
sweeping Eretria from the face of the earth, then pro-
ceeds to Marathon to fulfil the remaining part. He is
met, not by the united Greeks, not even by the great
Dorian cities, only by the Athenians and a band of
heroic volunteers from Platrea— met, and by God's help,
to man's amazement, defeated. After this the progress
of the narrative is steady. Book VII. indeed moves
slowly : there is the death of Darius and the succession
of Xerxes ; the long massing of an invincible army,
the preparations which ' shake Asia ' for three years.
There are the heart-searchings and waverings of various
states, the terror, and the hardly-sustained heroism ;
the eager inquiries of men who find the plain facts to
be vaster than their fears ; the awful voice of the
God in whom they trust at Delphi, bidding them only
despair, fly, " make their minds familiar with horrors!'
" Athens, who had offended the king, was lost. Argos
and other towns might buy life by submission, by
HERODOTUS'S METHOD OF COMPOSITION 139
not joining the fools who dared fight their betters."
Then comes the rising of the greater part of Greece
above its rehgion, the gathering of " them that were
better minded" and thus at last the tremendous narrative
of battle.
Much has been written about the composition of the
histories of Herodotus. They fall apart very easily,
they contain repetitions and contradictions in detail,
and the references to events and places outside the
course of the story raise problems in the mind of an
interested reader. Bauer worked at this question on
the hypothesis that the book was made up of separate
* Logoi ' inorganically strung together. Kirchoff held
that the work was originally conceived as a whole, and
composed gradually. Books I.-III. 119, which show
no reference to the West, were written before 447, and
before the author went to Thurii ; some time later he
worked on to the end of Book IV. ; lastly, at the
beginning of the Peloponnesian War he returned to
Athens, and in that stirring time wrote all the second
half of his work, Books V.-IX. He had meant to go
much further; but the troubles of 431 interrupted the
work, and his death left it unfinished. Mr. Macan sup-
poses that the last three books were the first written,
and that the rest of the work is a proem, " composed
of more or less independent parts, of which II. is the
most obvious, while the fourth book contains two other
parts, only one degree less obvious " ; but that internal
evidence can never decide whether any of these parts
were composed or published independently.
Some little seems certain : the last events he mentions
are the attack on Plataea in 431 B.C., the subsequent
invasion of Attica by the Lacedasmonians, and the
I40 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE
execution of the Spartan ambassadors to Persia in 430.^
We know he was in Athens after 432, because he had seen
the Propylaea finished. His book must have been fresh
in people's memory at Athens in 425, when Aristophanes
parodied the opening of Book I.^ Arguing from what he
does not mention, it is probable that he was not writing
after 424, when Nikias took Cythera (vii. 235), and almost
certain that he did not know of the Sicilian expedition
of 415 or the occupation of Dekeleia in 413. His theme
was the deliverance of Greece and the rise of the
Athenian Empire, and he died before that Empire began
to totter.
For it is clear that he did not live to finish his work.
Kirchoff argues that he meant to carry the story down
to the Battle of Eurymedon, to the definite point where
the liberated lonians swore their oath of union under
the hegemony of Athens. That, Kirchoff holds, is
the real finish of the 'Medika' ; not the siege of Sestos,
which is the last event given in our narrative.^ And
does not Herodotus himself show that he intended to
go further when he promises (vii. 213) to tell Mater'
the cause of the feud in which the traitor Ephialtes
was murdered, an event which occurred some time after
476 ? Kirchoff says, Yes ; but the conclusion is not
convincing. The cause of the feud may have come
long before the murder, and it is perfectly clear from a
number of passages that Herodotus regards all events
later than 479-8 as not in the sphere of his history. He
dismisses them with the words, ^^ But these things happened
afterwardsy Thus he does, it seems, reach his last date ;
but he has not finished the revising and fitting. He leaves
1 vii. 233 ; ix. 73 ; vii. 137 ; cf. vi. 91.
2 Acharnians, 524 ff. * Meyer, Rh. Mus. xlii. 146.
DID HERODOTUS FINISH HIS HISTORY? 141
unfulfilled the promise about Ephialtes ; he mentions
twice in language very similar, but not identical (i. 175 ;
viii. 104), the fact, not worthy of such signal prominence,
that when any untoward event threatened the city of
Pedasus, the priestess of Athena there was liable to grow
a beard. More remarkable still, he refers in two places
to what he will say in his 'Assyrian Logoi' (i. 106; i.
184), which are not to be found. The actual end of the
work is hotly fought over. Can it, a mere anecdote about
Cyrus, tacked on to an unimpressive miracle of Protesi-
laus's tomb, be the close of the great life-work of an
artist in language ? It is a question of taste. A love for
episodes and anecdotes is Herodotus's chief weakness,
and Greek literary art liked to loosen the tension at the
end of a work, rather than to finish in a climax.
As to the 'Assyrian Logoi,' the most notable fact is
that Aristotle seems to have read them. In the Natural
History (viii. 18) he says that " crook-clawed birds do
not drink. Herodotus^ did not know this, for he has
fabled his ominous eagle drinking in his account of the
siege of Nineveh." That must be in the 'Assyrian
Logoi.' *
This clue helps us to a rough theory of the composition
of the whole work, which may throw some light on
ancient writings in general. If Herodotus was telling
and writing his ' Historiai' most of his life, he must have
had far more material than he has given us, and parts of
that material doubtless in different forms. It is " against
nature" to suppose that a ' Logographos ' would only
utilise a particular ' Logos ' once, or never alter the form
of it. The treatment of the Pedasus story shows how
the anecdote unintentionally varies and gets inserted in
^ Some MSS. 'Ho-ioSos, which is hardly possible.
II
142 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE
different contexts. Our work clearly seems based on
a great mass of material collected and written down in
the course of a life-time ; and, on the other hand, it is
certainly a unity, the diverse strands being firmly held
and woven eventually into the main thread. This view
makes it difficult to lay stress on references to later
events as proving the late composition of any particular
passage. The work as it stands is the composition of
the man's last years, though large masses of the material
of it may be taken, with hardly a word altered, from
manuscripts he has had by him for lustres.
In one important point Meyer and Busolt appear to
be right, as against Mr. Macan and most Herodotean
authorities — in placing the Egyptian ' Logoi ' quite late,
after the historian's return from Thurii, rather than before
his first settlement there. Book II. stands very much
apart from the rest of the work ; it shows signs of a deep
inward impression on the mind of the writer made by
the antiquity of Egyptian history and culture ; and, with
all its helpless credulity on the unarmed side of Hero-
dotus's mind, it shows a freer attitude towards the Greek
religion than any other part. If this impression had
been early made, it would surely have left more mark
upon the general run of the work than is now visible.
There is, however, another hypothesis quite probable : he
may have utilised a youthful work which he intended to
revise. Diels attributes the peculiar tone of Book II. to
the author's close dependence upon Hecataeus; he thinks
that the plagiarism is too strong for ordinary ancient
practice, unless we suppose that these ' Logoi ' were in-
tended only for use in public readings, and never received
the revision necessary for a permanent book-form.
Our judgments about Herodotus are generally affected
RELIGION OF HERODOTUS 143
by an implied comparison, not with his precursors and
contemporaries, nor even with his average successors,
w^hich would be fair, but with one later writer of peculiar
and almost eccentric genius, Thucydides. Thus in re-
ligious matters Herodotus is sometimes taken as a type
of simple piety, even of credulity. An odd judgment.
It is true that he seldom expresses doubt on any point
connected with the gods, while he constantly does so in
matters of human history. He veers with alacrity away
from dangerous subjects, takes no liberty with divine
names, and refrains from repeatmg stories which he
called * holy.' Of course he does so ; it is a condition of
his profession ; the rhapsode or ' Logopoios ' who acted
otherwise, would soon have learnt ' wisdom by suffering.'
Herodotus was not a philosopher in religion ; he has no
theory to preach ; in this, as in every other department
of intellect, it is part of his greatness to be inconsistent.
But there were probably few high-minded Greeks on
whom the trammels of their local worships and their
conventional polytheism sat less hamperingly. He has
been called a monotheist ; that of course he is not. But
his language implies a certain background of monotheism,
a moral God behind the nature-powers and heroes, almost
as definitely as does that of ^schylus or even of Plato. -
Travel was a great breaker of the barriers of belief when
the vital creeds of men were still really national, or can-
tonal, or even parochial. It is surely a man above his
country's polytheism who says (ii. 53) that it cannot be
more than four centuries since Homer and Hesiod in-
vented the Greek theology, and gave the gods their names,
offices, and shapes ! A dangerous saying for the public ;
but he is interested in his own speculation, and has not
his audience before him. And we may surely combine
144 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE
this with his passing comment on the Egyptian theo-
logies, that (ii. 3) ^^ about the gods one man knows as
much as another." There is evident sympathy in his
account of the Persian religion as opposed to the Greek :
** Images and temples and altars it is not in their law to
set up — nay^ they count them fools who make such, as I
judge, because they do not hold the gods to be man-shaped,
as the Greeks do. Their habit is to sacrifice to Zeus, going
up to the tops of the highest mountains, holding all the round
qf the sky to be Zeus!' " They sacrifice^' he goes on, ^^ to
sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and the winds!' The feeling
of that passage (i. 131) expresses the true Greek poly-
theism, freed from the accidents of local traditions and
/ anthropomorphism. If you press Herodotus or the
average unsacerdotal Greek, he falls back on a One
behind the variety of nature and history ; but what
comes to him naturally is to feel a divine element
here, there, and everywhere, in winds and waters and
sunlight and all that appeals to his heart — to single
out each manifestation of it, and to worship it there
and then.
It is fair to lay stress on these passages rather than on
those where Herodotus identifies various foreign deities
with known Greek ones under the conventional names
(Neith-Athena, Alilat-Ourania, Chem-Pan), or where, after
a little excursus into the truth about the life of Heracles,
and a conclusion that there were two people of the same
name, he prays " the gods and heroes " to take no offence
(ii. 43). In those cases he is speaking the language of
his audience ; and perhaps, also, the ' safe ' professional
attitude has become a second nature to him.
With prophecies and omens and the special workings
of Providence, the case is different. He is personally
PROPHETS AND ORACLES 145
interested in prophets, and that for at least two good
reasons. The age hked to make the prophets into its
heroes of romance, its knights-errant, its troubadours.
The mantle of Melampus had fallen in more senses than
one on the Acarnanian and Elean seers who passed
from army to army, of whom Herodotus ''might tell
deeds most wonderful of might and courage" (v. 72). And
besides, as we can see from his marked interest in
Heracles, Panyasis' hero, Herodotus had not forgotten
the prophet and patriot who had fought at his side and
died for their common freedom in Halicarnassus.
With regard to the oracles and signs, we must always
remember his own repeated caveat. He relates what
he hears, he does not by any means profess always to
believe it ; and with regard to the great series of oracles
about the war (Book VII.), it is clear that though they
w^ere capable of a technical defence — what conceivable
oracle was not ? — those who gave them would have pre-
ferred to have them forgotten. For the rest, they go
with the actions of providence. They greatly heighten
the interest of the story, a point which Herodotus would
never undervalue ; and without doubt, in looking back on
their wonderful victories, all Greeks in their more solemn
moments would have the feeling which Herodotus makes
Themistocles express in the moment of triumph : '' It is
not we who have done this I " " The gods and heroes " — a
vague gathering up of all the divine, not really different
from Herodotus's favourite phrases 'God' or 'the divine
power' — "grudged that one man should be king both of
Europe and Asia, and that a man impious and proud" (viii.
109). What Englishman did not feel the same at the
news of the wreck of the Armada ? What Russian, after
the retreat from Moscow ? Nay, in treating the storm
146 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE
that shattered Xerxes' armada (vii. 189, 191), though the
Athenians had actually prayed to Boreas to send it,
Herodotus refuses to assign it positively to that cause,
pointing out that the Magi were praying in the opposite
sense for three days, at the end of which time the storm
stopped. Herodotus's Godhead is ^^ jealous and fraught
with trouble," and ^^ falls like lightning" upon human
pride — upon the sin, that is, of man making himself
equal to God. Aristotle is one of the few theologians
who have explained that 'jealousy' is inconsistent with
the idea of God, and that in the true sense man should
make himself as near God as can be. In that point
Herodotus's deity seems to stoop ; but it is the Moral
Tribunal of the world, and all tribunals are apt to punish
wrong more than to reward right. It would be invidious,
though instructive, to quote parallels from modern his-
torians on the special workings of Providence upon the
weather and such matters, in favour of their own parties ;
and as for oracles, Herodotus's faith is approved by his
standard translator and commentator at the present day,
who shows reason to suppose that the Pythia was in-
spired by the devil ! ^
A certain rabies against the good faith of Herodotus
has attacked various eminent men in diilerent ages.
But neither Ktesias nor Manetho nor Plutarch nor Pan-
ovsky nor Sayce has succeeded in convincing many
persons of his bad faith. He professes to give the