Herodotus

“ It is true indeed that Herodotus introduces us to a world that is not Hellenic, and brings us into some sort of relation with men whose habits and art and religion had a character of their own; but then these nations were not as we, and not as men even of our race could ever become. We never seem to be in touch with Egypt or Assyria, and when he prattles on about these nations it is less as a historian than as an observant traveller that Herodotus delights and allures. ”

“ Herodotus lived in a story-telling age, and he is himself an inimitable story-teller. To him we are indebted for a large part of the tales of antiquity—stories of men and events which we never tire of repeating. ”

“ Herodotus was a deeply religious man, and he lived before the disturbing days when men began to {386} question the existence of the gods. To him history was a great drama, the plot of which was the triumph of the Greek over the Barbarian, which he saw as the will of the gods, and to him, as to all devout Greeks of his day, all wrong-doing, all disobedience to the will of the gods brought its own punishment, its retribution, what the Greeks called its Nemesis. ”

“ Herodotus himself merely states that his History was written "that the deeds of men may not be forgotten, and that the great and wondrous works of Greek and barbarian may not lose their name." In any case, the fact remains that he did at last put his materials into the form in which we have them and thus established his fame as the first writer of history. ”

“ The atmosphere of Herodotus is the unchanging East of the Bible, inscrutable Egypt, prehistoric Russia, barbarous Thrace, as well as civilised Greece, Africa, India; had he never written, much information would have been irretrievably lost, for example, the account of one of the "Fifteen decisive battles" in history. Let him be judged not as a candidate for some Chair of Ancient History in some modern University, but as the greatest writer of the greatest prose-epic in the greatest literature of antiquity. ”

“ Herodotus is a man of deep and anxious religious feeling; he often recognizes the special judgments of the gods as determining historical events: his piety is also partly tinged with that mystical vein which the last two centuries had gradually infused into the religion of the Greeks—for he is apprehensive of giving offence to the gods by reciting publicly what he has heard respecting them ”

“ It is time, perhaps, that a common error should be exploded, into which, however, it would be impossible for any attentive reader of Herodotus to fall. No schoolboy believes now, as elderly men did when they were boys, that the French are a nation of cowards. But it is possible for careless readers of Greek history to believe that the Persians were cowards; else, they might say, how should they have been beaten by so small a number of Greeks? ”

“ Thou art about, O king! to attack a people far superior to the Scyths, a people distinguished above others both by land and sea. 'Tis fit therefore that I should tell thee what danger thou incurrest hereby. Thou sayest that thou wilt bridge the Hellespont, and lead thy troops through Europe against Greece. Now suppose some disaster befall thee by land or sea, or by both. It may be even so; for the men are reputed valiant. Indeed one may measure their prowess from what they have already done; for when Datis and Artaphernes led their huge army against Attica, the Athenians singly defeated them. ”

“ If it were alleged that Herodotus discovers an inclination on every occasion to place the conduct of the Athenians in the most advantageous light, it may be replied that, if such a disposition is charged upon him, then his substantial impartiality, and the authenticity of the narrative are convincingly proved, by his allowing to the Spartans the undivided and enviable glory of having first encountered the invaders at the pass of Thermopylæ. ”

“ The former does not indeed want a sense of the dramatic grandeur of a situation; his narrative of the later part of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse is like a 150 piece of Æschylus in prose. So too Herodotus is by no means without a philosophical view of things, nor without a critical instinct, although his generalisations are sometimes vague or fanciful, and his critical apparatus rudimentary. Each is so splendid because each is wide, with the great gifts largely, although not equally, developed.
Green was an historian of the Herodotean type. ”

“ Quite apart from its value as a record of facts, the History of Herodotus is intensely interesting as a human document, as a record of the beliefs and the impressions of a remarkable member of a remarkable race at the period of its highest development. ”

“ See also Vol. ii. of “A History of Classical Greek Literature,” by J. P. Mahaffy.
The following abridged opinions on Herodotus are interesting. Macaulay says of him: Of the romantic historians, Herodotus is the earliest and the best. His animation, his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure, sweet flow of his language place him at the head of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child.... But he has not written a good history.... The faults of Herodotus are the faults of a simple and imaginative mind. ”

“ Herodotus. In the earliest times Herodotus may be cited as one of the most distinguished names in the former of the two groups, and Lucretius in the latter. The writings of Herodotus (circa 480-425 B.C.) are a veritable storehouse of information, from the highest civilisations down to the veriest savagery, and his work has lost none of its freshness or value through lapse of time. As a matter of fact, modern investigations carried out in the areas treated of by him more frequently confirm and exemplify than refute his statements. ”

“ Herodotus lastly shows his awe of the divine Nemesis by his moderation and the firmness with which he keeps down the ebullitions of national pride. For, if the eastern princes by their own rashness bring destruction upon themselves, and the Greeks remain the victors, yet he describes the East, with its early civilization, as highly worthy of respect and admiration; he even points out traits of greatness of character in the hostile kings of Persia; shows his countrymen how they often owed their successes to divine providence and external advantages, rather than to their own valour and ability ”

“ Herodotus gives a striking instance of its high standard of morality when, in answer to an inquirer who asked whether by repudiating his oath he might claim a large sum of money which had been deposited with him, the prophetess declared that to tempt the god as he had done and to commit the crime was the same thing, and that the divine judgment would descend on him and on his house. For “there is a nameless son of Perjury, who has neither hands nor feet; he pursues swiftly, until he seizes and destroys the whole race and all the house.” ”

“ The plan of the work of Herodotus is formed upon a notion which, though it cannot in strictness be called true, was very current in his time, and had even been developed, after their fashion, by the learned of Persia and Phœnicia, who were not unacquainted with Greek mythology. The notion is that of an ancient enmity between the Greeks and the nations of Asia. The learned of the East considered the rapes of Io, Medea, and Helen, and the wars which grew out of those events, as single acts of this great conflict ”

“ It has been questioned, both in ancient and in modern times, whether the history of Herodotus possesses the essential requisite of trustworthiness. Several ancient writers accuse him of intentional untruthfulness. Moderns generally acquit him of this charge; but his severer critics still urge that, from the inherent defects of his character, his credulity, his love of effect and his loose and inaccurate habits of thought, he was unfitted for the historian’s office, and has produced a work of but small historical value. ”

“ Herodotus was born in the Dorian colony of Halicarnassus in Caria, in the year 484 B.C., and accordingly about the time of the Persian expeditions into Greece. He resided some years in Samos, and also undertook extensive travels, of which he speaks in his work. There was scarcely a town in Greece or on the coasts of Asia Minor with which he was not acquainted; he had explored Thrace and the coasts of the Black Sea; in Egypt he had penetrated as far south as Elephantine; and in Asia he had visited the cities of Babylon, Ecbatana, and Susa. ”

“ It is however very questionable whether Herodotus lived into the second period of the Peloponnesian war [9] . At all events, he must have been occupied with his work till his death, for it seems to be in an unfinished state. There is no obvious reason why Herodotus should have carried down the war between the Greeks and Persians to the taking of Sestos, without mentioning any subsequent event of it [10] . ”

“ By Salamis and Platæa the world may have escaped being orientalised for ever, and bound in the immobility of China. These battles, by saving freedom and securing progress, anticipated the overthrow of the Saracens before Tours, and of the Turks before Vienna. Herodotus, indeed, could not see all this, when the plan of his great history dawned on his mind, but the salvation of his beloved Greece was to him a sufficient inspiration. ”

“ The admiration and applause which his [Pg 27] work now elicited was even greater than before. In deciding upon the passages to be read, Herodotus selected such as would be most likely to excite the interest of his Grecian hearers, and many of them were glowing accounts of Grecian exploits in former wars which had been waged in the countries which he had visited. To expect that, under such circumstances, Herodotus should have made his history wholly impartial, would be to suppose the historian not human. ”

“ And whom, moreover, what man or what woman, hast thou slain?" "Oh! king," replied the Phrygian, "I am the son of Gordias, son of Midas. I am named Adrastus. The man I unintentionally slew was my own brother. For this my father drove me from the land, and I lost all. Then fled I here to thee." "Thou art the offspring," Croesus rejoined, "of a house friendly to mine, and thou art come to friends. Thou shalt want for nothing so long as thou abidest in my dominions. Bear thy misfortune as easily as thou mayest, so will it go best with thee." Thenceforth Adrastus lived in the palace of the king. ”

“ The energy of Athens at this time struck Herodotus forcibly. It was like that of the French Jacobins when they had enemies on every frontier, and the Vendée and the Federals of the South on their hands besides. Great political changes give a nation a present sense of life and happiness, which is too often ultimately wrecked by selfishness, but which seems for a time to inspire superhuman strength. The worsted Thebans stirred up the little island of Ægina, which was always a thorn in the side of Athens till she had become mistress of the sea. ”

“ Master, it is right that I set forth the opinion which I really have, and say that which I happen to think best for thy cause: and this I say,—spare thy ships and do not make a sea-fight; for the men are as much stronger than thy men by sea, as men are stronger than women. And why must thou needs run the risk of sea-battles? Hast thou not Athens in thy possession, for the sake of which thou didst set forth on thy march, and also the rest of Hellas? and no man stands in thy way to resist, but those who did stand against thee came off as it was fitting that they should. ”

“ A casual notice of the founding of Cyrene leads Herodotus into Libya, whither we have no space to follow him. He touches on the known North African tribes, arid glances at the unknown, relating many marvellous stories; in fact, his love for anthropology and geography makes him seize any excuse for imparting information. He wellnigh exhausts the world as known to the ancients, and might have wept, as Alexander did that he had no more worlds to conquer, that he had no more to describe. ”

“ O king! since thou biddest me at all risks speak the truth, and not say what will one day prove me to have lied to thee, thus I answer. Want has at all times been a fellow-dweller with us in our land, while Valour is an ally whom we have gained by dint of wisdom and strict laws. Her aid enables us to drive out want and escape thraldom. Brave are all the Greeks who dwell in any Dorian land; but what I am about to say does not concern all, but only the Lacedaemonians. First then, come what may, they will never accept thy terms, which would reduce Greece to slavery ”

“ Here the Persian army awaited the mustering of the Athenians. Why they did not push on at once into the country is a mystery.
It so chanced that, just before the Persians came, a heaven-sent commander dropped, as it were, from the clouds into the fortunate city of Athens. The spirits of men rose when it was rumoured that Miltiades, the son of Cimon, had come home. Herodotus gives us his family history, which was curious enough. ”

“ The immediate government of the world by God, the nemesis and punishment which sin and pride invariably bring with them, the revealing of God’s purpose to His people by signs and omens, by miracles and by prophecy; these are to Herodotus the laws which govern the phenomena of history. He is essentially the type of supernatural historian; his eyes are ever strained to discern the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters of life; he is more concerned with final than with efficient causes. ”

“ The personal character of Herodotus, reflected from every page that he wrote, renders his vivid story all the more happily suited to the reading and study of boys and girls. He is as honest as the sun; equally impartial to friends and foes ”