George H. Chase

“ His was still the age of faith, when men saw the hand of the gods revealed in all human affairs, and Herodotus was deeply imbued with this belief. In the History, therefore, much attention is paid to oracles and signs, and the chapters that treat of foreign lands are filled with attempts to correlate the gods of the barbarians with the gods of Greece. The Second Book, with its constant striving to prove an Egyptian origin for many of the Greek divinities, is only the most striking example of a general tendency. ”

“ The defects which his work betrays are defects of his race and his time; and to offset them he has many merits. Few Greeks of any age showed themselves so fair-minded in dealing with barabarian nations. He is as ready to praise what seems good in the customs of foreign races as he is to praise the customs of the Greeks. If he is too fond of stories to be a good historian, at least he is a prince of story-tellers. ”

“ Even in antiquity the History was violently assailed. Plutarch wrote an essay "On the Malignity of Herodotus," and a late grammarian, Aelius Harpocration, is said to have written a book entitled "The Lies in the History of Herodotus." In modern times, the judgments passed upon the work have often been severe, and even the greatest admirers of the historian are forced to admit that it shows many serious defects. Like most of his contemporaries, Herodotus knew no language but his own, and he was therefore forced to rely on interpreters or on natives who spoke Greek. ”

“ His style is lucid, simple, and straightforward, showing everywhere the "art which conceals art"—a wonderful achievement, when one considers that this is the first literary prose that was written in Europe. ”