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600094192V
1
THE
HISTORY
OF
HERODOTUS
A NEW ENGLISH VERSION, EDITED WITH OOPIOUS NOTES AND APPENDICES,
ILLUSTIU-TING THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF HERODOTUS, FROM THE
MOST RECENT SOURCES OF INFORMATION; AND EMBODYING
THE CHIEF RESULTS, HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHICAL,
WHICH HAVE BEEN OBTAINED IN THE PROGIUISS
OF CUN£IiX)RM AND HIEROGLYPHICAL
DISCOVERY.
BY
GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A.,
LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF EXETEIl COLLEGE, OXFORD.
ASSISTED BY
COL. SIR HENRY RAWLINSON, K.C.B., and SIR J. G. AVILKINSON, F.R.S.
IN FOUR VOLUMES.— Vol. I.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1858.
7n€ riahtd/
^iffht of Traiitlation it rcsen
TO THE lUOIlT UONOURABLK
WILLIAM EWAET GLADSTONE, M.P.,
4'c. 4'c, 4^,
WHO, AMID THE CAUES OK PUBLIC LIFE,
HAS CONTINUED TO FEEL "AND SHOW
AN INTEREST IN CLASSICAL STUDIES,
THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED,
AS A TOKEN OF WARM [iE(JARl),
BY THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
Seven years have elapsed since this work was first promised to the public. It was then stated that its object would be at once to present the English reader with a correct yet free translation, and to collect and methodise for the student the chief illustrations of the author, which modem learning and research had up to that time accumulated. The promise thus made might without much difficulty have been redeemed within the space. of two or three years. Parallel however with the progress of the work, which was commenced at once, a series of fresh discoveries continued for several years to be made — more especially on points connected with the ethnography of the East, and the history, geography, and religion of Babylonia and Assyria — the results of which it seemed desirable to incorporate, at whatever cost of time and labour. Great portions of the present volume had thus, from time to time, to be rewritten. This circumstance, and the unavoidable absence of Sir Henry Rawlinson from England during three years out of the seven, will, it is hoped, be deemed sufficient apology for the delay that has occurred in the publication.
Some apology may also seem to be required for the project of a new translation. When this work was designed, Herodotus already existed in our language in
VI PREFACE.
five or six different versions. Besides literal transla-
0
tions intended merely for the use of students, Littlebury in 1737, Beloe in 1791, and Mr. Isaac Taylor in 1829, had given " the Father of History " an English dress designed to recommend him to the general reader. The defects of the two former of these works — defects arising in part from the low state of Greek scholarship at the time when they were written, in part from the in- competency of the writers — precluded of necessity their adoption, even as the basis of a new English Herodotus. The translation of Mr. Isaac Taylor is of a higher order, and had it been more accurate would have left little to desiderate. The present translator was not however aware of its existence until after he had completed his task, or he would have been inclined, if permitted, to have adopted, with certain changes, Mr. Taylor's version. It is hoped that the public may derive some degree of advantage from this redundancy of labour in the same field, and may find the present work a more exact, if not a more spirited, representation of the Greek author.
There are, however, one or two respects in which the present translation does not lay claim to strict accuracy. Occasional passages offensive to modern delicacy have been retrenched, and others have been modified by the alteration of a few phrases. In the orthography of names, moreover, and in the rendering of the appella- tions of the Greek deities, the Latinised forms, with which our ear is most familiar, have been adopted in preference to the closer and more literal representation of the words, which has recently obtained the sanction of some very eminent writers. In a work intended for
PREFACE. vij
general reading, it was thought that unfamiliar forms were to be eschewed ; and that accuracy in such matters, although perhaps more scholar-like, would be dearly purchased at the expense of harshness and repulsive- ness.
It has not been considered desirable to encumber the text with a great multitude of foot-notes. The prin- cipal lines of inquiry opened up by the historian have been followed out in " Essays," which are placed sepa- rately at the end of the several " Books " into which the history is divided. In the running comment upon the text which the foot-notes furnish, while it is hoped that no really important illustration of the narrative of Herodotus from classical writers of authority has been omitted, the main endeavour has been to confine such comment within reasonable compass, and to avoid the mistake into which Larcher and Bahr have fallen, of overlaying the text with the commentary. If the prin- ciple here indicated is anywhere infringed, it will be found that the infringement arises from a press of modem matter not previously brought to bear upon the author, and of a character which seemed to require juxtaposition with his statements.
The Editor cannot lay this instalment of his work before the public without at once recording his obliga- tions to the kindness of several friends. His grateful acknowledgments are due to the Kector and Fellows of Exeter College for the free use of their valuable library ; to Dr. Bandinel, librarian of the Bodleian, and the Rev. H. 0. Coxe, sub-librarian of the same, for much attention and courtesy; to Professor Lassen of Bonn, for kind directions as to German sources of illus-
VUi PREFACE.
tration ; to Dr. Scott, Master of Balliol, for assistance on diflScult points of scliolarship ; and to Professor Max MuUer, of this University, for many useful hints upon subjects connected with ethnology and compara- tive philology. Chiefly, however, he has to thank his two colleagues, Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, for their invaluable assistance. The share which these writers have taken in the work is very insufficiently represented by the attachment of their initials to the notes and essays actually contributed by them. Sir Henry Rawlinson especially has exercised a general supervision over the Oriental portion of the comment ; and although he is of course not to be re- garded as responsible for any statements but those to which his initials are affixed, he has in fact lent his aid throughout in all that concerns the geography, ethno- graphy, and history of the Eastern nations. It was the promise of this assistance which alone emboldened the Editor to undertake a work of such pretension as the fiiU illustration from the best sources, ancient and modem, of so discursive a writer as Herodotus. It will be, he feels, the advantage derived from the free be- stowal of the assistance which will lend to the work itself its principal and most permanent interest.
Oxford, January' Ist, 1868.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
ON THE LIFE AND WTRITINGS OF HERODOTUS.
CHAPTEB I.
OIJTLINE OF THK LUTB OP HEBODOTUS.
Impossibility of writing a complete life of Herodotus. His time, as determined from his History. Date of his birth, as fixed by ancient writers, B.C. 484. His birthplace — Halicarnassus. His parents, Lyxes and Rhoeo — their means and station. A branch of his family settled in Chios, probably. His educa- tion, and acquaintance with Qreek literature. His travels, their extent and completeness. Their probable date and starting-point. Circumstances of his life, according to Suidas and other writers. Political adventures — ^their truth questioned. Residence at Samos— doubtful. Removal to Athens. Recita- tion of his work there. Reward assigned him. Alleged recitations in other Greek cities. The pretended recitation at Olympia. Thucydides and Hero- dotus. Herodotus and Sophocles. Men of note whom Herodotus would meet at Athens. Reasons for his leaving it. Colonisation of Thurium. Men of note among the early colonists. The History of Herodotus retouched, but not originally composed, at Thurium. Some large portions may have been written there ; and his History of Assyria. State of Thurium during his residence. Time and place of his death. Herodotus probably unmarried: his heir Plesirrhoiis. His great work left unfinished at his decease . . Page 1
CHAPTER II.
ON THE SOURCES FROM WHICH HERODOTUS COMPILED HIS HISTORY.
Iinp^irtance of the question. Historical materials already existing in Greece. Works of three kinds : 1. Mythological; 2. Geographical; 3. Strictly histori- cal. How far used as materials by Herodotus. Xanthus. Charon. Diony- Hiiis. The geographers : Hecatseus, Scylax, Aristeas. The poets. Chief source of the History of Herodotus, personal observation and inquiry. How fiu* authenticated by monumental records: 1. In Greece; 2. In foreign coun- tries— Egypt, Babylon, Persia. General result .'^7
CONTENTS OP VOL. L
CHAPTEB m,
ON THE HEBTTS AND DEFECTS OF HEB0D0TU8 AS A HISTORIAN.
Merits of Herodotus as a historian: 1. Diligence. 2. Honesty — Failure of all attacks on his veracity. 3. Impartiality — Chaises of prejudice — Remarkable instances of candour. 4. Political dispassionateness. 5. Freedom from
national vanity. Defects as a historian: 1. Credidity — ^Belief in omens,
oracles, dreams, &c. — Theory of Divine Nemesis — Marvels in Nature. 2. Spirit of exaggeration — Anecdotes. 3. Want of Accuracy — Discrepancies — Repetitions — Loose chronology, &c. 4. Want of historical insight — Confusion of occasions with causes — Defective geography — Absurd meteorology —
Mythology — Philology.- Merits as a tor iter: 1. Unity — Scope of the work.
2. Clever management of the episodes — Question of their relevancy. 3. Skill in character-drawing — The Persians — The Spartans — The Athenians — Persian and Spartan kings : Themistocles — Aristides — Greek Tyrants : Crcesus — Amasis — Nitocris — Tomyris, &c. 4. Dramatic power. 5. Pathos. 6. Humour. 7. Variety. 8. Pictorial description. 9. Simplicity. 10. Beauty of style. Conclusion Page 74
THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS.
THE FIB8T BOOK, ENTITLED CLIO.
Causes of the war between Qreece and Persia — 1. Mythic (1-5). 2. Historic — Aggressions of Croesus — Previous Lydian History (6-25). Conquests of CroBsus (26-28). Visit of Solon to the court of Croesus (29-33). Story of AdrastuB and Atys (34-45). Prepejiations of Croosus against Cyrus — Con- sultation of the oracles (46-55). Croesus seeks a Greek alliance — Hellenes and Pelasgi (56-58). State of Athens under Pisistratus (59-64). Early History of Sparta (65-68). Alliance of Croesus with Sparta (69-70). Croesus warned (71). Croesus invades Cappadocia — His war with Cyrus (72-85). Danger and deliverance of Croesus (86-87). His advice to Cyrus (88-89). His message to the Delphic oracle (90-91). His offerings (92). Wonders of Lydia (93). Manners and customs of the Lydians (94). History of Cyrus — Old Assyrian Empire— Revolt of Media (95). Early Median History (96-107). Birth and bringing-up of Cyrus (108-122). Incitements to revolt (123-4). He sounds the feelings of the Persians — their Ten Tribes (125-6). Revolt and struggle (127-130). Customs of the Persians (131-140). Cyrus threatens the Ionian Qreeks (141 ). Account of the Greek settlements in Aiua ( 1 42-1 51 ). Sparta interferes to protect the Greeks (152). Sardis revolts and is reduced (153-7). Fate of Pactyas (158-160;. Reduction of the Asiatic Greeks (161-170). The Carians, Caunians, and Lycians attacked — their customs — Uiey submit to the Persians (171-6). Conquests of Cyrus in Upper Asia (177). Description of Babylon (178-187). Cyrus marches on Babylon (188-190). Fall of Babylon (191). DescripUon of Babylonia (192-3). Customs of the Babylonians (194-200). Expedition of Cyrus against the Massageta (201). The River Araxes (202). The Caspian (203-4). Tomyris — her offer to Cyrus (205-6). Advice given by Croesus, adopted by Cyrus (207-8). Dream of Cyrus (209-210). Two battles with the Massagetae — Defeat and death of Cyrus (211-4). Manners and customs of the Massagetffi (215) : 153
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xi
APPENDIX TO BOOK I.
ESSAY I.
ON THE EARLY OHBONOLOGY AND HI8T0BT OF LYDIA.
1. Date of the taking of Sardis by Cyrus — according to the common account, B.C. 546. 2. According to Yolney and Heeren, b.c. 557. 3. Probable actual date, B.C. 554. 4. First or mythic period of Lydian history — dynasty of the Atyadse. 5. Colonisation of Etruria. 6. Conquest of the Mseonians by the Lydians — Torrhebia. 7. Second period — dynasty of the HeraclidaB, B.C. 1229 to B.C. 724 — descent of Agron. 8. Scantiness of the historical data for this period. 9. Lydiaca of Xanthus. 10. Insignificance of Lydia before Gyges. 11. Third period, B.O. 724-554 — legend of Qyges — he obtains the throne by favour of the Delphic oracle. 12. Reign of Qyges, B.C. 724-686 — his wars with the Qreeks of the coast. 13. Reign of Ardys, B.C. 686-637. 14. In- ▼asion of the Cinmierians. 15. Reign of Sadyattes, b.c. 637-625. 16. Reign of Alyattes, b.c. 625^568 — war with Miletus. 17. Great war between Alyattes and Cyaxares, king of Media — eclipse of Thales, B.C. 610 (?). 18. Peaceful close of his reign — employment of the population in the construction of his tomb. 19. Supposed association of Croosus in the government by Alyattes. 20. Reign of Croesus, b.c. 568-554 — his enormous wealth. ' 21. Powerful effect on the Greek mind of his reverse of fortune — his history becomes a favourite theme with romance writers, who continually embellish it . . Page 353
ESSAY n.
CM THE PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ASIA MINOR.
1. Physical Geography of Asia Minor — Shape, dimensions, and boundaries. 2. Great central Plateau. 3. Division of Plateau — Lake region — Northern flat — Rivers which drain the latter — (i.) The yechil-Irmak, or Iris — (ii.) The Kizil-lnwik, or Halys — (iii.) The iStiMariaA, or Sangarius. 4. Coast tracts outside the Plateau: (i.) Southern — (ii.) Northern — (iii.) Western.
5. Its rivers. 6. Its general character. 7. Political Geography. 8. Fifteen nations: (i.) Phrygians— (ii.) Matieni — (iii.) Cilicians — (iv.) Pamphylians — (v.) Lycians — (vi.) Caunians — (vii.) Carians — (viii.) Lydians — (ix.) Greeks — (x.) Mysians — (xi.) Thracians — (xiL) Mariandyuians — (xiii.) Paphlagonians — (xiv.) Chalybes — (xv.) Cappadocians. 9. Comparison of Herodotus with Ephorus 388
ESSAY III.
OF THE CHRONOLOGY AND HISTORY OF THE GREAT MEDIAN EMPIRE.
1. Arian origin of the Medes. 2. Close connexion with the Persians. 3. Original migration from beyond the Sutlej. 4. Medes occupy the tract south of the Caspian. 5. First contact between Media and Assyria — Conquest of Sargon.
6. Media under the Assyrians. 7. Establishment of the independence : (i.) Account of Ctesias— (ii.) Account of Herodotus. 8. Cyaxares the real
xu CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
founder of the monarchy. 9. Events of hiB reign: (i.) His war with the Scyths — (ii.) Conquest of Assyria — (iii.) Conquest of the tract between Media and the river Halys— (iv.) War with Alyattes - (v.) Aid given to Nebuchadnezzar. 10. Reign of Astyages —uneventful. 11. His supposed identity with "Darius the Mede." 12. Media becomes a Persian satrapy. 13. Median chronology of Herodotiis — its difficulties. 14. Attempted solution Page 401
ESSAY IV.
ON THE TEN TRIBES OF TDE PERSIANS. — [h.C.R.J
1 . Eminence of the Pasargada) — modem parallel. 2. The Maraphians and Mas- pians. 3. The Panthialesans, Derusians, and Gkrmanians. 4. The nomade tribes — the Dahi mentioned in Scripture — the Mardi, or " heroes " — the Dropici, or Derbices — the Sagartii 424
ESSAY V.
ON THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT PERSIANS.
1. Difficulties of the common view. 2. DuaUsrn and elemental worship two different systems. 3. Worship of the elements not the original Persian religion. 4. Their most ancient belief pure Dualism. 5. Elemental worship the religion of the Magi, who were Scyths. 6. Gradual amalgamation of the two religions 426
ESSAY VI.
ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF BABYLONIA. — [h.C.R.]
1. Obscurity of the subject till a recent date — contradictory accoimts of Berosus and Ctesias. 2. The progpress of Cimeiform discovery confirms Berosus. 3. The Babylonian date for the great Chaldscan Empire which preceded the Assyrian, viz. B.C. 2234, is probably historic. 4. The earliest known kings, Urukh and /A/i. 5. Kxtdnr-mnpula the Chedor-laomer of Scripture? 6. Ismi" dcujon extended the Chaldeean power over Assyria. 7. Son and grandson of Ismi-dagon, 8. Uncertainty of the order of succession among the later names — Naram-Sin — Sin-shada, 9. if<^ocfacA-namnna, first " King of Babylon." 10. Rim-Sin ond Zur-Sin. 11. Durri-galazu. 12. Puma-puriyits, 13. Khctmmurabi said Samshuriluna. 14. Table of kings. Incompleteness of the list. 15. Urukh and Ilgi belong probably to the second historical dynasty of Berosus — the other kings to the third. 16. Ceneral sketch. Rise of the first Cushite dynasty. 17. Cimeiform writing. 18. Nimrod — UhJih — Hgi. 19. Babylon conquered by immigrants from Susiana. 20. Second dynasty established by Kndiir^mapula, B.C. 1976. 21. Activity of Semitic colonisation at this time. PhoDnicians — Hebrews— settlements in Arabia, Assyria, and Syria. 22. Kings of the 2nd dynasty — variety in their titles. Condition of Assyria at this period. 23. Condition of Susiana. 24. Arabian dynasty of Berosus, b.c. 1518-1273 — possible trace in the inscriptions. Large Arabian element in the population of Mesopotamia 432
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xiii
ESSAY vn.
ON THE CHBONOLOQT AND H18T0BT OF THE GREAT A8STBIAN EHPIBB.
1. Chronology of the Empire. Views of Ctedas. 2. Opinion of Herodotus. 3. Of Beroeua. 4. Probable duration, from b.c. 1273 to b.c. 747. 5. Origin of Assyrian independence. 6. Earliest kings — Bel4ush, PudU^ Iva-lush, and Shal- fna-6ar. 7. Series of kings from the Tiglath-Pileser Cylinder. 8. Tiglath- Pileser I. 9. His son, Asshwr-hani-pal. 10. Break in the line of kings. Later monarchs of this dynasty, Axskar-odan-akhi and his descendants. 11. Sarda- napalus the conqueror. 12. His palace and temples. 13. Shalmanu-hart the Black ObeUsk king. 14. Qeneral view of the state of Asia between b.c. 900 and B.a 860. 15. Syrian campaigns of Shdlmanurbar, 16. His palace at Nineveh. 17. Shamas-iva, 18. Campaigns of 8hama&-iwx. 19. Iva-lush III. the Pul of Scripture (?), married to Semiramis. 20. General table of the kings of the upper dynasty. 21. Lower dynasty of Assyria — B.C. 747 to B.C. 625. 22. Reign of Tiglath-Pileser II. 23. Shalmaneser — ^his siege of Samaria. 24. Sargon — his extensive conquests. 25. His great palace at Elhorsabad. 26. Beign of Sennacherib — his great palace at Koyunjik. 27. His military expeditions. 28. Probable length of his reign. 29. Second expedition of Sennacherib into Syria — miraculous destruction of bis army. 30. Senna- cherib murdered by his sons. 31. Reign of Esar-haddon. 32. His magni- ficent palaces. 33. Asshur-bani-pal IT, — his hunting palace. 34. Asshur- emitHli, the Saracus of Berosus, and Sardanapalus of the Greek writer8(?) — his character. 35. Fall of Nineveh. 36. Chronological Table of the kings of the lower dynasty. 37. Duration and extent of the empire. 38. General nature of the dominion. 39. Frequency of disorders — remedies. 40. Assyria the best specimen of a kingdom-empire. 41. Peculiar features of the dominion : (i.) Religious character of the wars. — (ii.) Incipient centralisation. 42. Cha- racter of the civilisation — Literature — Art — Manufactures . . . . Page 451
ESSAY VIII.
ON THE HIBTOBY OP THE LATEB BABYLONIANS.
1. Subordinate poBition of Babylonia from B.C. 1273 to B.C. 747. 2. Era of Nabonassar, B.C. 747 — connexion of Nabonassar with Semiramis. 3. Suc- cessors of Nabouassar — Merodach-Baladan conquered by Sargon — Arceanus — Merodach-Baladan's second reign — invasion of Sennacherib. 4. Reign of Belibus. 5. Of Asshiiriiadin-adin, Regibdlus, and Mesesimordachua— obscure period. 6. Esar-haddon assumes the crown of Babylon — his successors, Saosduchinus and Ciniladanus. 7. Nabopolassar— his revolt, and alliance with Cyaxares. Commencement of the Babylonian empire. 8. Duration of the empire — three great monarchs. 9. Nabopolaasar-r-extent of his domi- nions. 10. Increase of the population. 11. Chief events of his reign — the Lydian war — the Egyptian war. 12. Accession of Nebuchadnezzar — his triumphant return from Egypt. 13. His great works. 14. His conquests. Final captivity of Judah. Siege and capture of Tyre. ir>. Invasion of Egypt and war with Apries. 10. His seven years' lycanthropy. 17. Short reign of Evil-Merodach. 18. Reigu of Neriglissar, the ** Kab-Mag." 19. Change in the relations of Media and Babylon. 20. Reign of Laborosoarchod. 2 1 . Ac- cession of Nabonadius, n.c. 555. — his alliance with Croesus, king of Lydia — his defensive works, ascribed to Nitocris. 22. Sequel of the Lydian alliance. 23. Babylon attacked by Cyrus. 24. Siege and fall of Babylon. 25. Conduct iff Belsliazzar duiing the siege — his death. 20. Siureuder and treatment of Nabonadius. 27. Revolts of Babylon from Darius. 28. Final decay and ruin. Babylonian Chronology 500
XIV CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
ESSAY rx.
ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF MESOPOTAMIA AND THE ADJACENT COUNTRIES.
1. Outline of the Physical Qeography — Contrast of the plain and the highlands. 2. Division of the plain — ^Syrian or Arabian Desert — Qreat Mesopotamian valley. 3. Features of the mountain region — Parallel chains — Salt lakes. 4. Qreat plateau of Iran. 5. Mountains enclosing the plateau — Zagros — Elburz — Southern or coast chain — Hala and Suliman ranges. 6. Low coun- tries outside the plateau : (i.) Southern — (ii.) Northern — (iii.) Eastern. 7. River-system of Western Asia : (i.) Continental rivers — Syhun — Jyhvn— Hclmendf &c. — Kur — Aras — Sefid-Rvd — Aji-Su — JagKetu, &c. — Barada — Jordan — (ii.) Oceanic rivers — Euphrates — Tigris — their affluents, viz. Greater Zab, Lesser Zab, Diyaleh, KerkKuhf and Karun — Lidus — Affluents of Indus, Sutlej, Chenab, &c. — Bion — Litany and Orontes. 8. Changes in the Physical Geography : (i.) in the low country east of the Caspian — (ii.) in the valley of the Indus — (iii.) in Lower Mesopotamia. 9. Political Geography — Coimtries of the Mesopotamian plain : (i.) Assjrria — position and boundaries — Districts — Adiabdn^, &c. — (ii) Susiana or Elymais — (iii.) Babylonia — Position— Districts — Chalds^ &c. — (iv.) Mesopotamia Proper. 10. Coun- tries of the mountain region: (i.) Armenia — Divisions — (ii.) Media — (iii.) Persia Proper — ^Panetacen^, Mardycn^, &o.— (iv.) Lesser mountain countries — Gordisea — Uxia, &c. 11. Countries west of the Mesopotamian plain: (i.) Arabia — (ii.) Syria — Divisions — Commagdnd, Ccele-Syria, Palestine — (iii.) Phcenicia — Cities. 12. Condusion Page 531
ESSAY X.
ON THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS. — [h.C.R.]
1. General character of the Mythology. 2. Babylonian and Assyrian Pantheons not identical. 3. Thirteen chief deities : (i.) Asahw^ the supreme God of Assyria — the Asshur of Genesis — his emblem the winged circle. — (ii.) Amt, first God of the First Triad — his resemblance to Dis or Hades — his temples
— gods connected with him. — (iii.) Bel-Nimrod (?), second God of the Triad
— his wife, Mylitta or Beltis — his right to the name of Nimrod — his titles, temples, &c. — (iv.) Hea, third God of the Triad — his correspondence with Neptune — his titles — extent of his worship. — (v.) Bilta (Beltis), the Great Goddess — confusion between her and Ishtar — her titles, temples, &c. — (vi.) Gods of the Second Triad — Iva (or PhuT) — uncertainty about his name — Lord of the sky or air — an old god in Babylonia — his numerical symbol — (vii.) Shamas or Sarij the Sun-God — his titles — antiquity of his worship in Babylonia — associated with Gvla^ the Sun-Goddess — their emblems on the monuments. — (viii.) Sin^ the Moon-God — his titles — his temple at Ur — his high rank, at the head of the Second Triad. — (ix.) Nmip or Nin, his various titles and emblems — his stellar character doubtful — the Mjeoi-BuII his emblem — his name of Bar or Bar'shem — Nm, the Assyrian Hercules — his temples — his relationship to Bel-Nimrod — Beltis both his mother and his wife — his names BarzH and Sanda. — (x.) Bel-Merodach — his worship ori- ginally Babylonian — his temple in Babylon called that of Jupiter-Belus — his wife, Zirbamt^ or Suocoth-Benoth.— (xi.) Ntrgal — his titles — his con- nexion with Nin — his special worship at Cutha — his symbol, the Man-Lion
— his temples, &c. — (xiL) Ishtar or Astarte — called Nana at Babylon — her worship. — (xiii.) Nebo — his temples — the God of Learning — his name, 7Vr, &o. 4. Other gods besides the thirteen — Athia, Bel-Zirpu, &c. 5. Vast number of local deities 584
CONTENTS OP VOL. I. xv
ESSAY XI.
ON THB BTHinC AFTOflTIBS OF THE NATIONS OF WEBTEBN ASIA.
1. Intermixture of races in Western Asia. 2. Earliest population Turanian. 3. Deyelopment of HamitiBm and Semitism. 4. Indo-European family. 5. Turanian races: (L) Fftrthians — (ii.) Asiatic Ethiopians — (iiL) Colchians — (iv.) Sapeiri — (v.) Moschi and Tibareni — (vi.) Early Armenians — (vii.) Cap- padocians — (viiL) Susianians — (ix.) Chaldaoans — (x.) Nations probably Turanian. 6. Semitic races: (L) Cilicians — (ii.) Solymi— (iii.) Lydians not Semitic — (iv.) Cappadocians and Himyaritic Arabs not Semitic — (v.). Other Semitic races. 7. Division of the Semitic races into groups: (a) Eastern, or Assyro-Babylonian group — (6) Westem, or Hebrso-Phconician group — (c) Centrd, or Aiubian group. 8. Small extent of Semitism. 9. Late appearance of the Lido-Europeans, historically. 10. Spread of the race from Armenia, threefold. 11. Northern migration, into Europe. 12. Nations of the Western migration: (i.) Pelasgi— (ii.) Phrygians — (iii.) Lydians — (iv.) Carians--(v.) Hysians — (vi.) Lycians and Caunians — (vii.) Matienians (?) 13. Eastern, or Arian migration. 14. Nations belonging to it: (i.) Persians — (iL) Modes — (iii.) Carmanians — (iv.) Bactrians — (v.) Sogdians — (vi.) Arians of Herat — (viL) Hyrcanians— (viii.) Sagartians — (ix.) Chorasmians — (x.) Sarangians — (zL) Qandarians, &c. 15. Tabular view PSge 643
ADDITIONAL NOTES.
Note A. On the various titles of Jupiter— [Q. W.] 680
Note B. On the Invention of Coining and the earliest specimens of Coined
Money 683
( XT> )
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
Bust of Herodotus To face page 1
Map of Western Asia At the end of the Volume,
WOODCUTS.
Pa«c
Sepulcliral Chamber in the Barrow of Aljattes 232
Ground-plan, showing excavations 233
Plan of ruins at Takhti-Suleiman (the northern Echatana) 241
The Birs-Nimrud, or great Temple of Borsippa - 242
Assyrian emblem of the winged circle 270
Egyptian head-dress 270
Persian head-dress at Persepolis 271
Figure of MyUtta, the "Great Goddess" 271
Median and Persian figures from Persepolis 276
Chart of the coast about Miletus in ancient times 282
Chart of the same coast at the present day 283
Plan of Cnidus and chart of the adjoining coast 284
Kreme from the palace of Sennacherib 291
Plan of the Temple of Apollo at Branchid» 295
Greek warrior with shield 306
Lydan coin showing the Triquetra 312
Indian hound from a Babylonian Tablet 330
Hand-swipe from a slab of Somacherib 332
Ku&, or wicker boat in use on the Euphrates 334
Costumes of the Babylonians from the Cylinders 335
Babylonian Cylinder and seal-impression 336
Babylonian CofHn and lid 339
Tomb in Lower Chaldaia 340
Ditto ditto 341
Tomb of Cyrus at Murg-Aub 351
Obverse of on early Lydian coin 686
Lydian and other coins . . 687
I
ON THE
;
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HERODOTUS.
CHAPTER L
OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF HERODOTUS.
Impoflsibility of writing a complete life of HerodotuB. HiB time, as determined from bis History. Date of his birth, as fixed by ancient writers, b.c. 484. His birthplace— HalicamassuB. His parents, Lyxes and Rhooo— their means and station. A branch of his family settled in Chios, probably. His educa- tion, and acquaintance with Qreek literature. His travels, their extent and completeness. Their probable date and starting-point. Circumstanoes of his life, according to Snidas and other writers. Political adventuree — ^their truth questioned. Raaidflnoe at Samos— doubtful. Removal to Athens. Reoita- tion of his woric there. Reward assigned him. Alleged recitations in other Gre^ dties. The pretended recitation at Olympia. Thucydides and Hero- dotus. Herodotus and Sophocles. Men of note whom Herodotus would meet at Athena. Reasons for his leaying it. Colonisation of Thurium. Men of note among the early colonists. The History of Herodotus retouched, but not originally composed, at Thurium. Some large portions may have been written there ; and his History of Assyria. State of Thurium during his residence. Time aad place of his death. Herodotus probably unmarried: his heir Pleairrhofis. His great work left unfinished at his decease.
A RECENT writer has truly observed, that to attempt a complete or connected life of Herodotus from the in- sufficient stock of materials at our disposal, is merely to indulge the imagination, and to construct in lieu of history "a pleasant form of biographical romance."^ The data are so few — they rest upon such late and slight authority; they are so improbable or so con- tradictory, that to compile them into a biography is like building a house of cards, which the first breath of criticism will blow to the ground. Still certain points
> See Colonel Mine's " Critical His- tory of the Language and Literature of Greece," vol. iv. p. 243. The romance
VOL. I. B
has since been written, in two volumes^ by Mr. Wheeler.
TIME OP HERODOTUS.
Chap. I.
may be approximately fixed ; and the interest attaching to the person of our author is such, that all would feel the present work incomplete, if it omitted to bring together the few facts which may be gathered, either from the writings of Herodotus himself or from other authorities of weight, concerning the individual history of the man with whose productions we are about to be engaged. The subjoined sketch is therefore given, not as sufficient to satisfy the curiosity concerning the author which the work of Herodotus naturally excites, but as preferable to absolute silence upon a subject of so much interest.
The time at which Herodotus lived and wrote may be determined within certain limits from his history. On the one hand it appears that he conversed with at least one person who had been an eye-witness of some of the great events of the Persian war ;* on the other, that he outlived the commencement of the Peloponnesian struggle, and was acquainted with several circumstances which happened in the earlier portion of it.^ He must therefore have flourished in the fifth century B.C., and must have written portions of his history at least as late as B.C. 430.* His birth would thus fall naturally into the earlier portion of the century, and he would have
* See Book ix. ch. 16.
' He mentions the Peloponnesian war by name in two places (vii. 137, ix. 73), and notices distinctly the fol- lowing events in it : —
1. The attack on Platsea by the
Thebans, with which it com- menced (vii. 233\
2. The betrayal of Nicolaus and
Aneristus, the Spartan ambas- sadors, and of Aristens, the Co- rinthian, into the hands of the Athenians by Sitalces(vii.l37).
3. The ravaging of Attica by the
Feloponnesians in one of the
earlier years of the war (ix. 73).
He may also covertly allude to the
war in the following places : v. 93,
and vi. 98.
* Herodotus mentions one or two events the probable date of which is about B.G. 425, as the desertion of Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus, to the Athenians (iv. 160); and a cruel deed committed by Amestris in her old age (vii. 114). He also speaks in one place (vi. 98^ of the reign of Artaxerxes, who diea B.o. 425, ap- parently as if it was over. He may therefore have given touches to his history as late as b.o. 424. The pas- sages which have been imagined to point to a still later date (i. 130, iii. 15, and ix. 73) have been misunder- stood or misapplied. Their true meaning is considered in the foot- notes upon them.
Chap. I.
HIS BIRTH-PLACE.
S
belonged to the generation which came next in suc- cession to that of the conquerors of Salamis.*
These conclusions, drawn from the writings of Hero- dotus himself, are in close accordance with those more minute and definite statements which the earliest and best authorities make with regard to the exact time at which he was bom. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who as an antiquarian of great research and a fellow-country- man of our author, is entitled to be heard with special attention on such a point, tells us that his birth took place " a little before the Persian war." • Pamphila, the only ancient writer who ventures to fix the exact year of his nativity, confirms Dionysius, and makes a state- ment from which it would appear that the birth of Hero- dotus preceded the invasion of Xerxes by four years.* The value of this testimony has been called in question, but even those who do not regard it as authoritative admit, that it may well be adopted as in harmony with all that is known upon the subject, and " at least a* near approximation to the truth." ® It may be concluded therefore that Herodotus was born in or about the year B.C. 484.
Concerning the birth-place of the historian no rea-
* Many incidental notices confirm this. Herodotus conversed in Sparta with a certain Archias, a grandson of an Archias who fell in Samos about B.C. 525 (iii. 55). He was also acquainted with a steward of Aria- pcithes, the Scythian king, who was a contemporary of Sitalces, the ally of Athens in the year B.C. 430. He travelled in Egypt later than B.C. 462 (iii. 12).
• Judicium de Thucyd. (c. 5, vol. vi. p. 820). The words used are — *Hp6^€Tos y€v6fj,€vo9 6\iy<j^ irp&rtpov
' Ap. Aul. Gell. Noct. Attic, xv. 23. " Hellanicus initio belli Pelo- ponnesiaci fuisse quinquc et sexaginta annos natus videtur ; Herodotus trca et quinqttaginta ; Thucydidcs quadra-
ginta." (See Miiller, Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. iii. p. 521.)
* See Mure, p. 254. Pamphila seems spoken of somewhat too slight- ingly when she is called " an obscure female writer of the Roman period." The frequent quotation of her writ- ings by Aulus Gellius and Diogenes Laertius is a proof that she was far from obscure. Photius, too, whose extensive reading adds a value to liis criticism, speaks favourably of her work, and especially as containing " several necessary points of historical information." {rav laropiK&v ovk 6\iya dvayKoia, Bibl. Cod. 175, p. 389.) That Pamphila was a careful and laborious student of history seems certain from her having made an Epitome of Ctcsias (sec Suidas).
b2
4 PARENTS AND FAMILY. Chap. I.
Bonable doubt has ever been entertained either in ancient or modern times. The Pseudo-Plutarch indeed, in the tract wherein he has raked together every charge that malice and folly combined could contrive against our author, intimates a suspicion that he had falsely claimed the honour of having Halicarnassus for his birth-place,* But Plutarch himself is a witness against the writer who has filched his name/ and his testimony is confirmed by Dionysius,^ by Strabo,^ by Lucian,* and by Suidas.* The testimony of Herodotus, which would of itself be conclusive were it certain, is rendered doubtful by the quotation of Aristotle, which substitutes at the commencement of the history the word " Thurian '* for " Halicamassian."* Apart, however, from this, the all but universal testimony of ancient writers, the har- mony of their witness with the attention given to Halicarnassus and its afiairs in the history, and the epitaph which appears to have been engraved upon the historian's tomb at Thurium,' form a body of proof the weight of which is irresistible.
Of the parents and family of Herodotus but little can be said to be known. We are here reduced almost entirely to the authority of Suidas, a learned but not very careful compiler of the eleventh century, to whose unconfirmed assertions the least possible weight must be considered to attach. He tells us in the brief sketch which he has left of our author, that he was bom of "illustrious" parents® in the city of Halicarnassus, his
• De Malign. Herod, vol. ii. p. 868 A. The writers who^ like Dnris (Fr. 57), and the Emperor Julian (ap. Suid.), simply call Herodotus **a Thurian/* need not mean to question his Halicamassian origin.
* De Exilio, ii. p. 604 f.
■ Jud. de ITiucyd. 1. s. c.
■ xiv. p. 939. * Vol. iv. p. 116.
Khet. iii. p. See note ^ to Book i.
■' The epitaph, which is given both by Stephen (ad voc. Qovpios) and by the Scholiast on Aristophanes (Nub, 331), did not indeed mention Hali- carnassus, but implied it by speaking of the historian as "sprung from a Dorian land " — AtopUav frarpris pXaa^ T6vr* arro,
* *llp6doros, Av^ov Kal Apvovs^
* S. v. *Hp6doros, ' AXiKapvaaa-fifs, r £>v €iri<bav&¥y
Kai dif\<f)6v fo-xfjicais Qf66c»pov, Sui-
ch. i. I das ad voc. *Hpddoro£.
Chap. I. RELATIONS IN THE ISLE OF CHIOS. 6
father's name being Lyxes, and his mother s, Dryo, or Bhoeo ;• that he had a brother Theodore ; and that he was cousin or nephew of Panyasis, the epic poet. To the last of these statements very little credit is due, since Suidas confesses that his authorities were not agreed through which of the parents of Herodotus the connexion was to be traced,* and the temptation to create such a relationship must have been great to the writers of fictitious letters and biographies imder the empire. But the name of his father is confirmed by the epitaph preserved in Stephen,^ and the station of his parents by the indioations of wealth which the high education of our author, and his abundant means for frequent and distant travel, manifestly furnish. The other statements of Suidas acquire, by their connexion with these, some degree of credibility ; and th6 very obscurity and unimportance of the names may induce us to accept them as real, since no motive can be assigned for their invention. Herodotus may therefore be re- garded as the son of Lyxes and Rhceo,^ persons of good means and station in the city of Halicarnassus. That he had a brother Theodore is also probable.
It has been thought that Herodotus must have had relations of rank and importance settled in the island of Chios.* In speaking of an embassy sent by a portion of the Chians to the Greeks about the time of the battle of
* See Suidas ad voc. Uavvatris,
* Some said that the father of Panyasis, whom they called Poly- archus, was brother to Lyxes, the father of Herodotus ; others that lihceo, our author's mother, was the epic poet's sister. (Suid. I. s. c.)
* llie epitaph, which Brunck has placed in the third volume of his Aiialccta (Epig. 533, p. 263), consists of four lines of elegiac verse, and runs as follows :-~
'It seems certain that the double form of the name arises from a corrup- tion of the text of Suidas. Bahr (Comment, de Vita et Scriptis Herod. § 2) proposes to regard the form Drj-o as the true one. But since Dryo is an unknown name, whereas Rhopo be- longed certainly to the mythic history of tiie neighbourhood (see Apoll. Khod. ap. Parthen. Erot. c. 1), the latter has clearly the better claim to be pre- ferred.
* Col. Mure accidentally says " Samos " for Chios, and speaks of
' HpoSoroy Avfcw Kp/varn kovxs rfit Ba.v6vra, 'lo&K apxaiffi IcmtfMf^ vpvrayiv'
MitfUiP vir<Kirfio^>vyi»y Bovpuiv i<r\€ narptiv. ' hdtnUXil (VOl. IV. p. Zooj.
A.^^r^0C^'XirX«p'i'rAnTx,.. i Hcrodotus thc SOU of Basilcidcs as a
EDUCATION.
Chap. I.
Salamis, lie mentions, without any apparent necessity, and with special emphasis, a single name — that of a certain " Herodotus, the son of Basileides."* This man, it is supposed, must have been a relative, whom family affection or family pride induced the historian to com- memorate ; and if so, it is certain from his position as one of the chiefs of a conspiracy, and afterwards as ambassador from his countrymen, that he must have been a personage of distinction — a conclusion which is confirmed by the way in which Herodotus introduces his name, as if he were previously not unknown to his readers.* *
This is a point, however, of minor consequence, since it is not needed to prove what is really important — ^the wealth and consideration of the family to which our author belonged.
The education of Herodotus is to be judged of from his work. No particulars of it have come down to us. Indeed, the whole subject of Greek education before the first appearance of the Sophists is involved in a good deal of obscurity. That the three standard branches of instruction recognised among the Athenians of the time of Socrates — grammar, gymnastic training, and music — were regarded throughout all Greece, and from a very early date, as the essential elements of a liberal education is likely enough ;* but it can scarcely be said to have been demonstrated. Herodotus, it may, however, be
» Horod. viii. 132. .
* T&¥ fcol 'Hp6doTO£ 6 Ba(rcXi;c8ctt ^v. When a new character is intro- dnoed, and Herodotus does not con- sider him already known, ho commonly omits the article. (See vi. 127, where none of the suitors of Agarista have the article except Megacles, the son of Alcmason.)
' Some writers have maintained that in Dorian states the first branch (ypafifwra) was wholly, or almost wholly, omitted (Miiller, Dorians,
vol. ii. p. 328, E. T. ; Grote's Hist of Greece, vol. ii. p. 626). But Colonel Mure has shown that this im- putation is unfounded (Remarks on two Appendices to Grote's History, p. 1 et se<}q.). The three branches are recognised by Ephorus as obtain- ing from an early time in Crete (Fr. 64, Muller, vol. i. p. 251), and Plato seems to regard them as universally agreed upon (Alcib. i. p. 106 s ; Amat. p. 132 ; Theag. p. 122 ; Protag. pp. 25 b and 26 a.b).
Chap. L
HOMERIC STUDIES.
supposed, followed the course cx)mmon in later times — attended the grammarHSchool, where he learnt to read and write, frequented the palaestra where he went through the exercises, and received instruction from the professional harper or flute-player, who conveyed to him the rudiments of music. But these things formed a very slight part of that education, which was necessary to place a Greek of the upper ranks on a level, intel- lectually, with those who in Athens and elsewhere gave the tone to society, and were- regarded as finished gen- tlemen. A knowledge of literature, and especially of poetry — above all an intimate acquaintance with the dassic writings of Homer, was the one great requisite ; ® to which might be added a familiarity with philosophical systems, and a certain amoimt of rhetorical dexterity. Herodotus, as his writings show, was most thoroughly accomplished in the first and most important of these three things. He has drunk at the Homeric cistern till his whole being is impregnated with the influence thence derived. In the scheme and plan of his work, in the arrangement and order of its parts, in the tone and cha* racter of the thoughts, in ten thousand little expressions and words, the Homeric student appears;* and it is manifest that the two great poems of ancient Greece are at least as familiar to him as Shakspeare to the modem educated Englishman. Nor has this intimate know- ledge been gained by the sacrifice of other reading. There is scarcely a poet of any eminence anterior to his day with whose works he has not shown himself ac- quainted. Hesiod, Olen, Musaeus, Archilochus, the authors of the Cypria and the Epigoni, Alcaeus, Sappho, Solon, jEsop, Aristeas, Simonides of Ceos, Phrynichus,
' See Flat. Bep. Books ii. and iii., Protag. 1. 8. c
• See Jager. Disp. Herod, p. 5; B'ahr, De Via et Script. Herod. § 3 ; Mure, vol. iv. pp. 515-6, and espe-
cially the valuable collection of pas- sages in his Appendix, pp. 551-2. D^lmann has, curiously enough, omitted this point.
EXTENT OF fflS TRAVELS.
Chap. I.
-^schylus, Pindar/ are quoted, or referred to, in sucli a way as to indicate that he possessed a close acquaintance with their writings. Prose composition had but com- menced a very short time before the date of his history.^ Yet even here we find an acquaintance indicated with a niunber of writers, seldom distinctly named, but the contents of whose works are well known and familiarly dealt with.^ HecatsDus especially, who must be con- sidered as his special predecessor in the literary com- monwealth, is quoted openly, or tacitly glanced at in several passages;* and it may be questioned whether there was a single work of importance in the whole range of Greek literature accessible to him, with the contents of which he was not fairly acquainted.
Such an amount of literary knowledge implies a prolonged and careful self-education, and is the more remarkable in the case of one whose active and inquisi- tive turn of mind seems to have led him at an early age to engage in travels, the extent of which, combined with their leisurely character, clearly shows that a long term of years must have been so occupied. The quantum of travel has indeed been generally exaggerated,* but
^
* Hesiod, ii. 53, iv. 32 ; Glen, iv. 35 ; Musseus, vii. 6, viii. 96, ix. 43 ; Archilochus, 1. 12 ; the author of the Cypria, ii. 117 (compare i. 155) ; of the Epigpni, iv. 32 ; Alcaeiis, v. 95 ; Sappho, ii. 135 ; Solon, v. 113 ; ^sop, ii. 134; Aristeas, iv. 13 ; Simonides, V. 102, vii. 228 ; Phrynichua, vi. 21 ; ^schylus, ii. 156; Pindar, iii. 38. Note also the quotations from less well-known poets, as Bacis, viii. 20, 77, 96, ix, 43, and Lysistratus, viii. 96. With regard to the passages supposed to be plagiarisms from So- phocles (i. 32, ii. 35, and iii. 119), see notes ad loc» The only poets of eminence anterior to his time, with whom Herodotus does not show any acquaintance, are Callinus of Ephesus, Tyrtaeus, Simonides of Amorgus, Ste- sichorus, Epimenides, and Epichar- mus. He notices Anacreon (iii. 121)
and Lasus of Hermion^ (vii. 6), but without any mention of their writ- ings. Expressions like that at the beginning of vi. 52 (Acuccdoifictyioi 6fi6koy€ovT€s ov^€vl TToiijrJ) in- dicate the confidence which he feels in his complete acquaintance at least with all the cyclic and genealogical poets. (Compare ii. 53 and 120.)
■ With Pherecydes of Syros (ab. B.C. 550), according to the common tradition ; but at any rate not earlier than the beginning of the sixth cen- tury. (See Mure, vol, iv. p. 51.)
" See the following passages: — ii. 15, 16, 20, 22, and vi. 55.
* Openly, ii. 143, and vi. 137 ; tacitly, ii. 21, 23, and iv. 36.
^ It is no doubt difiBcult to draw a distinct line between the manner of speaking which shows Herodotus to have seen what he describes, and that
Chap. I.
KNOWLEDGE OP EGYPT.
after every deduction is made that judicious criticism suggests as proper, there still remains, in the distance between the extreme limits reached, and in the fulness of the information gained, unmistakeable evidence of a vast amount of time spent in the occupation. Herodotus undoubtedly visited Babylon,* Ardericca near Susa,* the remoter parts of Egypt,^ Scythia,^ Colchis,^^ Thrace," Cyrene," Zante,*^ Dodona,^* and Magna Graecia ;" — thus covering with his travels a space of thirty-one degrees of longitude (above 1700 miles) from east to west, and of twenty-four of latitude (1660 miles) from north to south. Within these limits moreover his knowledge is for the most part close and accurate. He has not merely paid a hasty visit to the countries, but has examined them leisurely, and is familiar with their scenery, their cities small and large, their various won- ders, their temples and other buildings, and with the manners and customs of their inhabitants. The fulness and minuteness of his information is even more remark- able than its wide range, though it has attracted less observation. In Egypt, for instance, he has not con- tented himself with a single voyage up and down the Nile, like the modern tourist, but has evidently passed months, if not years, in examining the various objects
which merely iudicates that he had heard what he relates from professed eve-witnesses. Most writers on the subject have accepted as proof of the presence of Herodotus on the spot a mention of anything as "continuing to his time." Hence it has been sup- posed that he visited Camicus in Sicily (Dahlmann, p. 40, E. T. ; Heyse de Herod. Vit. et Itin. p. 139 ; Baiir, vol. iv. p. 397) ; and by some that he reachea Bactria (Mure, iv. p. 247; Jiiger. Disput. Herod, p. 20). But the expression relied on does not in itself imply presence, and no writer has ventured to regard it in this light in every place where it occurs. It has never been supposed, for instance, that Herodotus reached the banks of
the Oarus, and saw the forts, said to have been erected by Darius, " whose ruins were still remaining in his day " (iv. 124). Something more then is recjuired than this expression. I have regarded as necessary to prove pre- sence either a distinct assertion to that effect, or the mention of somo little point, which only an eye-witness would have noticed, and which one who received the account from an eye-witness would, even if told, not bo likely to liave remembered, — as the position of Ladic^s statue in the temple of Venus at Cvrfin^ (ii. 181).
•» i. 181-3. ^ vi. il9. ^ ii. 29.
» iv. 81. »° ii. 104. " iv. 90.
" ii. 181. »* iv. 195. " ii. 52.
'* iv. 15, V. 45.
10
TRAVELS IN ASIA MINOB.
Chap. L
of interest He has personally inspected, besides the great capital cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, where his materials for the history of Egypt were chiefly collected,^ the comparatively unimportant towns of Sais,* Bubastis,* Buto,* Papremis,* Chemmis,' Croco- dilopolis,* and Elephantine/ He has explored the lake Moeris,* the labyrinth/® the line of the canal leading into the Arabian gulf from the Nile," the borders of Egypt towards the Sinaitic desert,^" and portions of the tract, which he calls Arabia, between the valley of the Nile and the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea." He is completely famihar with the various branches into which the Nile divides before reaching the sea," and with the course followed by the traveller at different seasons/** He knows intimately the entire broad region of the Delta,^' as well as the extreme limits of Egypt beyond it, both eastward ^* and westward." Again, in Asia Minor, his native country, he knows well, besides Caria,^* where he was bom, Lydia, with its rich plains^ and great capital city, Sardis ;^^ Mysia,^* the Troas,^ the cities upon the Hellespont,^* Proconnesus," Cyzicus,^' the mouth of the Thracian Bosphorus,*^ the north coast ;** and again, on the south, Cilicia, with its two regions, the flat,^andthe mountainous;^® Lycia,^^ Caunus,** Ephesus,^ the mouths of the Maeander, Scamander, and Caystrus rivers,^ and something of the interior, at least along the line of the royal road from Sardis to Susa," which he
" ii. 3. ■ ii. 28, 130, 169, &c.
» ii. 137. * ii. 75, 156.
» iii. 12. • ii. 91. ' ii. 148.
• ii. 29. • ii. 149. >• ii. 148.
" u. 158, 159. " iii. 5, 12.
" ii. 75 ; oomp. 8 and 12.
»* ii. 17. »* ii. 97.
»• ii. 5, 15, 92-98, &o.
•^ ii. 6, iii, 5. » ii. 6, 18.
»• i. 171, 172, 174, 175, &c.
«• i. 80. « i. 80, 84, 93, &c.
" vii. 42. • ii. 10, vii. 43.
•* i. 67. » iv. 14. " Ibid.
"^ iv. 86.
» Ibid. Comp. i. 76, ii. 104, &c. On his visit to Colchis, Herodotus would neoessarily pass along the whole of this coast. He appears to have gone ashore occasionally — at the mouth of the Parthenius, ii. 104 ; at Themiscyra, iv. 86.
■ vi. 95. •• ii. 34. •> i. 176.
* i. 172. » i. 92, ii. 10, &c.
^ ii. 10.
" The description of the route (v. 52) appears to me that of an eye-wit« ncss. If Herodotus visited Babylon, which I regard as certain, he would
Chap, I. IN GREECE PROPBB, THE LEVANT, &c.
11
most probably followed in his journey to and from Babylon. In Greece Proper he has visited, besides the great cities of Athens/ Sparta,* and Thebes,^ the sanc- tuaries at Delphi,* Dod6na,* and Abae in Phocis ;• the battle-fields of Thermopylae,^ Plataea,® and Marathon ;• Arcadia,*® Elis," Argolis,** the promontory of Tsenarum,*^ the isthmus of Corinth,** the pass of Tempe,** Creston in Chalcidice,*' Byzantiimi," Athos,*^ and (apparently) the entire route followed by the army of Xerxes on its march from Sestos to Athens." In the Levant he has evidently made himself acquainted with almost all the more important islands. With Samos he is completely familiar,'® and he has visited besides, Rhodes,** Cyprus,^ Delos,® Paros,^ Thasos,** Samothrace,*® and probably Crete,^ Cythera,^ and jEgina.*® Elsewhere his travels have, no doubt, less of this character of completeness. He knows little more of Scythia than its coast between the mouths of the Danube and Dnieper ; he has not penetrated very far into Thrace; his knowledge of Syria and Phoenicia may have been gained from once or twice coasting along their shores ;^ east of the Halys his observations are confined to a single route ; in Africa, setting aside Egypt, he shows no personal ac- quaintance with any place but Gyrene; and west of
naturally follow it as far as the cross- road which led fVom Agbatana to that city, issuing undoubtedly from Mount Zagros by the pass of Hoi wan. ITie Greeks of his time sometimes reached Babylon by crossing from the Medi- terranean to the Euphrates, and then descending the river in a boat (i. 185), but Herodotus does not appear to have taken this route.
» V. 77. « iii. 65. • i. 52.
• i. 14, 19, 25, 50, &c. * ii. 52.
• viii. 27.
7 viii. 198-200, 218, 225, &c. » ix. 15, 19, 25, 51, &c.
• vi. 102, 111, 112. »• i. 66, vi. 74, 127.
" iv. 30, vii. 170. " vi. 77.
»^ i. 24. " viii. 121. »* vii. 129.
>• i. 57. »' iv. 87. » vii. 22.
^ This appears from the manner of his descriptions, as well as from their general fidelity. It has been j)er- ceived by almost all the commen- tators (Bahr, iv. p. 396 ; Dahlmann, p. 43 ; Mure, iv. p. 246, &c.).
«» ii. 182, iii. 47, 54, 60, 142, iv. 88, 152, vi. 14, &c.
" ii. 182, iii. 47. " v. 114.
» ii. 170, vi. 98. •» vi. 134.
» ii. 44. » ii. 51. "^ iii. 59.
« i. 105. ■ V. 83, 88.
^ Landing of course from time to time, as at Tyre (ii. 44), at the Nahr el Kelb (ii. 106), and perhai)s at Gaza or Cadytis (iii. 5).
12
CENTRAL STARTING-POINT.
Chap. I.
Greece, he can only be proved to have visited the cities of Crotona, Thurii, and Metapontum.^
It is not possible to determine absolutely the ques- tions, which have been mooted, concerning the time when, and the centre, or centres, from which these travels were undertaken. An opinion, however, has been already expressed that they were commenced at an early age. The vigour and freshness of youth is the time when travel is best enjoyed and most easily accomplished ; and the only hints derivable from Hero- dotus himself concerniiig the date of any of his journeys, are in accordance with the notion, that at least the more distant and important of them belong to his earlier rather than his later years. If anything is cer- tain with respect to the events of our author's career, it is that his home during the first half of his life was in Asia Minor, during the last in Magna Graecia. Now the slightest glance at the map will show that the former place, and not the latter, Halicarnassus (or pos- sibly Samos), and not Thurium, is the natural centre whence his various lines of travel radiate. One of the most curious facts patent upon the face of his history is the absence of any personal acquaintance, or indeed of any exact knowledge, of upper Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, Carthage — the countries most accessible to a traveller whose starting-point was Thurium. It seems as if, on taking up his residence at that town in about his fortieth year, the enterprising traveller had subsided into the
* Heyse is the writer who has ex- aj^gerated most grossly the extent of our author's travels. He regards him as having visited not only Agbatana (which is a common opinion), but Acamania and iEtolia, the Illyrian ApoUonia, the Veneti, Thera, Siph- nus, Eulxpa, Sicyon, and most i>arts of Sicily (see his inaugural disserta- tion * De Herodoti Vita et Itineribus/ Berlin, 1827). The grounds which
he deems sufficient are often absurdly slight. Bahr adopts Heyse's views, except where they are most extrava- gant (vol. iv. pp. 391-7). Dahlmann IS somewhat more moderate. Col. Mure's summary (vol. iv. pp. 246-8) is judicious, though scanty. The only points in it from which I should dissent, are the statements that Hero- dotus " penetrated to Ecbatana," and ** possibly to jiarts of Bactria" (p. 247).
Chap. L
TIME OF THE TRAVELS.
13
quiet student and recluse writer.* To descend to par- ticulars, it is clear that his visit to Egypt,^ with which some of his other journeys are necessarily connected,* took place after the revolt of Inarus (b.c. 460) ; for he states, that he saw the skulls of those who were slain in the great battle of Papremis by which Inarus established himself ; * and yet it could not have been long after, or he would scarcely have been received with so much cordiality and allowed such free access to the Egyptian temples and records. There is every reason to conclude that his visit fell within the period — six years, from B.C. 460 to B.C. 455, inclusively — during which the Athenian armies were in possession of the country ,• when grati- tude to their deliverers would have led the Egyptians to receive any Greek who visited them with open arms, and to treat him with a friendliness and familiarity very unlike their ordinary jealousy of foreigners. His Egyp- tian travels would thus fall between his twenty-fourth and his twenty-ninth year, occupying perhaps nearly the whole of that period ; while his journeys to Tyre and Thasos would follow shortly after. A single touch in the Scythian researches indicates a period but little re- moved from this, for the visit of our author to Scythia. He speaks of having gathered certain facts from the mouth of Timnes, " the steward of Ariapeithes." ^ This expression indicates that Ariapeithes was then living. But if Ariapeithes immediately succeeded Idanthyrsus, as is probable,^ he can scarcely have outlived B.C. 450,
' It is not meant that he did not write before this time, or travel after it, but that after he came to Thuriiim he travelled very little, probably only in Magna Grsecia, and once to Athens, occupying himself almost entirely in literature.
■ Col. Mure supposes (vol. iv. p. 247) that he may have visited Egypt repeatedly, but of this there is no trace in the History. Rather the per- petual use of the aorist tense (cX^a>i/ —
€Tpcm6fiTjVy ii. 3 ; lBo>v, ii. 12 ; cdu- vdaBrjv — €y€v6fir}Vfn.ld ; €\Ba)P, ii. 29 ; et j)assim) gives the contrary impres- sion.
* Those to Tyre and Tliasos, which ho undertook in order to investigate the age of Hercules (ii. 44).
* iii. 12.
« ITiucyd. i. 109 : iKparovv t^j AiyvTTTov ' AOrjvaioi, ^ iv. 76. ® See note to Book iv. ch.-80.
14
POLinOAL EPISODE.
Chap. I.
sixty years at least from the accession of his predecessor. Probably therefore Herodotus was in Scythia before that date.
We may now consider briefly the few facts which have come down to us, on better or worse authority, with regard to the vicissitudes of our author's life. Suidas relates/ that he was forced to fly from Hali- camassus to Samos by the tyranny of Lygdamis, the grandson of Artemisia, who had put his imcle (or cousin) Panyasis, to death ; that in Samos he adopted the Ionic dialect, and wrote his history ; that after a time he returned and took the lead in an insurrec- tion whereby Halicamassus obtained her freedom, and Lygdamis w^s driven out ; that then, finding himself disliked by the other citizens, he quitted his country, and joined in the Athenian colonisation of Thurium, at which place he died and was buried. Of these state- ments the only ones confirmed by other writers are the removal of our author to Thurium at the time of its first settlement or soon afterwards, and his death and burial at the same place. The former is a point on which all are fully agreed ;* but the latter is much controverted.^
With regard to the political episode, which, if true, would be the most notable adventure in our author's whole career, the slender authority of Suidas cannot be held to establish it against the absolute silence on so remarkable a matter of all former writers. Undoubtedly it may be true, but this is the utmost that can be said in its favour. Probability leans decidedly the other way. If Herodotus had been a tyrannicide, it is very unlikely that no orator or panegyrist should ever have noticed the fact. If he had lived on terms of such deadly hostility with the royal family of his native town, it is scarcely to be imagined that he would have expressed
• Sub voc. 'Hp<$doror. » See Strab. xiv. p. 939 ; Plut. dc Exil. II. p. 604 P. ; Steph. Byz. arl
voc. Qovpioi ; Plin. H. N. xii. 4 ; Schdl. Aristoph. Nub. 331. • Vide inf A, p. 23.
Chap. L
ADOPTION OF IONIC DIALECT.
15
himself quite so warmly* towards the chief glory of that family, Artemisia. The tale seems blunderingly con- trived to account for certain circumstances connected with our author which were thought to require explana- tion, namely, why he wrote in the Ionic dialect ; why he treated at such disproportionate length of the aflFairs of Samos ; * why he spoke so strongly on the advantages of constitutionsd over despotic government ; * and why he quitted his native land and retired to Thurium. The foundation for the tale was found in the last line of his epitaph, and, possibly, in the facts of Halicamassian history ; but the epitaph was misconstrued, and the his- tory garbled by the intrusion into it without warrant of our author's name. We may gather from the epitaph, which may well be received as genuine, that no poKtical motive caused his retirement from Halicamassus, but that he fled from ndicule • — ^ridicule drawn down, it may be conjectured, by the over-credulous tone of his history, which would httle suit the rising generation of shrewd and practical free-thinkers. The transfer of residence to Samos is most likely a fiction. It is not required to account for his adoption of the Ionic dialect, since that was the form of language already consecrated to prose composition,^ and if he wrote at all he could not fail to use the character of speech which the prose writers of his day had one and all preferred as best adapted to their branch of Kterature. Neither is it implied in any- thing which he himself says of the island, for his acquaintance with its buildings and localities is not greater than might have been acquired by one or two
* See especially Book vii. ch. 99, and Book viii. chs. 87 and 101.
* Book iii. chs. 39-59, 120-128, 139-149.
* V. 66, 78.
* Mttftoff (which is the word used in the epitaph) is not mere " ill-will," *' dislike," or ** envy," but distinctly
** ridicule." It is a rare word in the early writers, and would not have been used where /xc/x^tr suited the verse equally well, unless intended in its peculiar signification.
^ Sec Mure s Literature of Greece, vol. iv. p. 114.
16
ABODE AT ATHENS.
Chap. T.
leisurely visits, and the length at which he treats the history may be accounted for on moral gromids.®
Herodotus * probably continued to reside at Hali- carnassus, taking long journeys for the purpose of his- torical and geographical inquiry, till towards the year B,o, 447, when, being about thirty-seven years of age, and having brought his work to a certain degree of completeness, though one far short of that which it reached finally, he removed to Greece Proper, and took up his abode at Athens. Halicarnassus, it would ap- pear, had shortly before cast off her tyrants and joined the Athenian confederacy,* so that the young author would be welcomed for his country's sake no less than for his own, Athens had just begun to decline from the zenith of her prosperity. After having been for ten years sole mistress of central Greece from the isthmus of Corinth to the borders of Thessaly, she had, not without certain preliminary disasters, received at Co- ronea a blow, which at once reduced her to her former limits, and threatened to have yet more serious conse- quences. The year B.C. 446 was one of gloom and sad ex- pectation. Revolt threatened from various quarters, and in the ensuing spring the five years' truce would expire, and a Peloponnesian invasion might be expected. It was in this year, if we may believe Eusebius,^ that a decree passed the Athenian assembly, whereby a reward was assigned to Herodotus on account of his great his- torical work, which he had read publicly to the Athe- nians.^ The Pseudo-Plutarch,^ though himself dis- crediting the story, adds some further particulars, which
• Vide infra, page 99.
" See Dahlmann's Life of Herodo- tus, oh. i. § 3. We are not obliged to reject either the fact or the date of Lygdainis*8 overthrow, because we question the part assigned to Hero- dotus in the transaction.
' Chron. Can. Pars n. p. 339 ; 01. 83.4.
■ The reading may have been, as Scaliger (ad Euseb.) suggested, a single sustained recitation at the great Panathenaic festival, but I should rather suppose a series of more pri- vate exhibitions.
• De Malign. Herod, n. p. 862 a.
Chap. I. RECITATION OP HIS WORK. 1 7
he quotes from Dyillus, an Athenian historian of good repute towards the end of the fourth century B.C. This writer declared that the decree on the occasion was moved by Anytus, and that the sum voted as a gift was ten talents (above 2,400/.).
According to the common report, it was not at Athens alone that Herodotus made his work known by recitation. He is represented by some writers as a sort of prose rhapsodist travelling from place to place, and offering to each state at a price a niche in the temple of Fame, The Pseudo-Plutarch brings him to Thebes,* and Dio Chrysostom to Corinth,* in this capacity ; but the latter tale is apparently unknown to the great collector of slanders. It is scarcely necessary to observe that these calumnious fictions, invented by those whose self-love was wounded by our author's candour, deserve no maimer of credit. It is certainly not impossible that Herodotus may have recited his work at other places besides Athens ; but there is no evidence that he did so. His work was not one to gain him reward or good-will generally, and Thebes, a place fixed upon by the Pseudo-Plutarch, was one of the last where he could expect to be received with favour.
In addition to these tales there has come down to us a circumstantial account of another, and more important, recital, which Herodotus is supposed to have made before collected Greece at the great Olympian festival. This story, which has attracted more attention than it merits, rests upon the two low authorities of Lucian and Suidas.* It is full of inconsistencies and improbabili-
* De Malign. Herod, ii. p. 864 d.
* Orat. xxxvii. p. 456. Marcellinus (Vit. Thucyd. p. x.) has evidently heard the same story.
* Lucian, who lived six centuries after Herodotus, and is the first writer that mentions the Olympian recita- tion, was a freethiuking rhetorician and philosopher, very ignorant of his-
tory, and quite alx)ve feeling any scrui)le about perverting or inventing it. Hia disregard of truth has l>een copiously exhibited by Dahlmann (Life of Herod, ch. ii. § 4). His piece entitled * Action or Herodotus ' was written for a Macedonian au- dience, not likely to be very critical, on whom he might expect to ]>alm
VOL. I. C
18
PRETENDED RECITATION AT OLYMPIA.
Chap. I.
ties,' was unknown to the earKer writers,* and is even contradicted by another version of the matter which obtained sufficient currency to give rise to a proverb. According to an ancient grammarian, men who failed to accomplish their designs were likened in ordinary speech to " Herodotus and his shade ;" the explanation being that Herodotus had wished to recite his history at Olympia, but had delayed from day to day in hopes of a cloudy sky, till the assembly dispersed without his having effected his purpose.* This version of the story has at once more internal probability and more external support than the other, for the proverb must certainly have been in common use ; but it may well be doubted whether Herodotus can ever have seriously contem- plated such an exhibition, for the whole tone of the work — its candour, its calmness, its unsparing expo- sure of the weakness, pettiness, and want of patriotism generally prevalent through Greece at the time of the Persian war — unfitted it for recitation before a mixed audience, like that at Olympia, composed of Greeks gathered from all quarters. The reasons which render improbable a recitation at Thebes or Corinth, tell with tenfold force against an Olympian reading, which might have pleased the Athenians, Eginetans, and Plataeans present, but would have infinitely disgusted all the other hearers.
With the pretended recitation at Olympia is usually
easily a tale so turned as to involve a compliment both to them and to their city. (See its conclusion, vol. iv. p. 123, ed. Hemsterhuis.)
' Herodotus is represented as com- ing straidit from Caria to Olympia, with his !Nine Muses all complete, as determining not to recite at Athens or anywhere else but at the Great Games, as reading his entire history at a stretch to the whole assemblage, and as carrying off unanimous applause I
■ As Pliny and the Pseudo-Plu-
tarch, who both make statements in- C(nnpatible with Lucian's story : Pliny, that the work was first composed at Thurium ; the Pseudo-Plutarch, that its whole object was detraction, and that it was written not to gain £Eime, but to gratify a mali^ant spirit.
• In Montfaucon*sBibliothcaCoisl. Cknl. cLxxvii. p. 609, as I learn from a note of Col. Mure's (vol. iv. p. 261).
' By Suidas (sub voc. eovicvdtdi;;), Photius (Bibliothcc. Cod. Ix. ad fin. p, 69), and Tzetzes (Chil. i. 19).
Chap. I.
ACQUAINTANCE WITH SOPHOCLES.
19
connected another story, which need not, however, be discarded with it, since it has an independent basis. Olorus, with his young son Thucydides, is represented as present on the occasion, and the latter is said to have been moved to tears by the recital. Herodotus, remarking it, turned to Olorus, who was standing near his son, and said : " Olorus, thy son's soul yearns after knowledge." These details, it is plain, suit better a private reading to an audience of friends at Athens than a public recita- tion to the vast concourse at Olympia, where the emo- tion of an individual would scarcely have attracted notice. And it is remarkable that Marcellinus, who seems to be the original source from which later writers drew,^ neither fixes the scene of the event at Olympia, nor says anything of the age of Thucydides. The anecdote may, therefore, without violence be trans- ferred to the time when Herodotus was making his work known at Athens, and we may accept it, so far at least as to believe that Thucydides, then about twenty- four years of age,^ became acquainted with our author through his recitations at that place, and derived from that circumstance the impulse which led him to turn his own thoughts to historical composition.
It is probable that Herodotus about the same time made the acquaintance of the poet Sophocles. Six years later it seems certain that the great tragedian wrote a poem in his honour, the opening words of which have been preserved by Plutarch,* and three years before he wrote it Herodotus had quitted Athens for Thurium. The acquaintance is thus almost necessarily
' The date of Marcellinus is tmcer- tain, but from his style and from the authors he quotes, I should incline to regard him as anterior to Photius. Suidas copies Photius, with improve- ments ; Photius, I think, drew from Marcellinus.
■ If we accept the statement of Pamphila (Frag. 7).
* See his treatise, " An seni gcrenda sit republica ?" — Op., vol. ii. p. 785, B. The words quoted are :
Hdirr cirl vtim^Koyra — —
As Sophocles was bom in the year B.C. 495, the poem must have been written B.C. 440.
c 2
20
GALAXY OF TALENT AT ATHENS.
Chap. I.
determined to the space between b.c, 447, when Hero- dotus seems to have transferred his abode to Athens, and B.C. 443 when he removed to Italy. Sophocles was then at the zenith of his reputation. He had gained his first tragic prize twenty-one years earlier, in B.C. 468, and for ten years, since the death of ^schylus, had been almost without a rival. A little later than the departure of Herodotus for Thurium he exhibited his tragedy of the Antigone,** in which a thoughi occurs which seems borrowed from our author,* and almost immediately afterwards he held the highest office in the state, being chosen Strategus together with Pericles in the year of the Samian expedition (b.c. 440). If then an intimacy sprang up at this date between the poet and the historian, we may conclude that the latter was introduced during his stay at Athens to that remarkable galaxy of intellectual lights which was then assembled in that city. The stately Pericles, his clever rival — Thucydides, the son of Melesias, the fascinating Aspasia, the haughty and eloquent Antipho, the scientific musician Damon, the divine Phidias, Protagoras the subtle disputant, Zeno the inventor of logic, the jovial yet bitter Cratinus, the gay Crates, Euripides, the master of pathos, Sophocles; the most classic even of the ancients, with a host of minor worthies, formed a com- bination* which even at Athens was rarely, if ever, equalled. The rank of Herodotus in his own coimtry was perhaps enough to give him free access to the
• Probably in B.C. 441, as his elec- tion to the office of Strategus in the following year was considered to have been the consequence of the admiration which the play excited. (Aristoph. Byzant. ad Soph. Ant. praef.)
• See note to Herod, iii. 1 19.
' Anaxagoras left Athens in B.C. 450 (Diog. Laert. ii. 7), before I sup- pose the visit of Herodotus to have commenced. He returned some years afterwards, but it is uncertain when. Gorgias may have been in Athens
during our author's stay, at least if he really conversed with Pericles.
SPhilostrat. vit. Sophist, i. ix. § 1.) on of Chios, the tragedian Achseus, Euphorion the son of .^schylus, Ste- simbrotus the biographer, the architect Hippodamus, and the artists Alca- menes, Agoracritus, Callimachus, Cal- licrates, Ictinus, Mnesicles, would be among the lesser luminaries of the time and scene. Socrates was grown up, but perhaps scarcely known.
Chap. L EFFECT ON THE MIND OF HERODOTUS. 21
highest society which Athens could furnish ; but if not, as the friend of Sophocles and Olorus,® men of the most exalted position, he would be readily received into the first circles. Here then he would be brought into con- tact with the most cultivated minds, the highest intellects of his age. In Asia Minor he had perhaps known Pan- yasis, the epic poet (his relative, according to Suidas) ; Melissus the philosopher, who defended Samos against Pericles"J Choerilus,* who sang of the Persian war ; and possibly Hellanicus, Charon, Xanthus Lydus, and Da- mastes ; but these were none minds of the first order, and they were scattered among the Asiatic cities from Halicarnassus to Lampsacus. At Athens he would for the first time find congregated an intellectual world, and see genius of the highest kind in all its shapes and aspects. The effect would be like that which the young American author experiences when he comes with good introductions to London. He would feel that here was the real heart of the Hellenic body, — the true centre, at least, of literary Hellas, — the world whose taste he must consult, whose approval was fame, whose censure was condemnation, whose contempt was oblivion. He would find his spirit roused, and his whole nature braced, to strain every nerve, in order to maintain his place in the literary phalanx which had admitted him into its ranks. He would see imperfections in his work unobserved before, and would resolve to make it, so far as his powers went, perfect. He would look at the master- pieces in every kind which surrounded him, and say, "My work too shall be in its kind a masterpiece." To this perhaps we owe the wonderful elaboration, carried on for twenty years after his visit to Athens, which, as much as anything else, has given to the History of Herodotus its surpassing and never-failing charm.
" The anecdote concerning Thucy- | known to Herodotus. dides implies that Oiorus was already | • Siiidas ad voc. XoipCkoi,
22
SETTLES AT THUBIUM.
Chap. I.
It is not difficult to imagine the reasons whicli may have induced our author, in spite of the fascinations of its society, to quit Athens, and become a settler in one of her colonial dependencies. At Athens he could have no citizenship,^ and to the Greek not bent on money- making, or absorbed in philosophy, to be without political rights, to have no share in what formed the daily life and occupied the constant thoughts of all around him, was intolerable. "Man is not a man 'unless he is a citizen," said Aristotle ;* and the feeling thus expressed was common to the Greek nation. Besides, Athens, like every capital, was an expensive place to live in, and the wealth which had made a figure at Halicamassus would, even if it were not dissi- pated, have scarcely given a living there. The accept- ance by Herodotus of a sum of money from the Athenian people would seem to indicate that his means were now low. They may have been exhausted by the cost of his long journeys, or have suflFered from his leaving Hali- camassus. At any rate his circumstances may well have been such as to lead him gladly to embrace the invitation which Athens now offered to adventurers from all parts of Greece, whereby he would acquire at her hands a parcel of land (/c\?/oo)/), which would place him above want, and a new right of citizenship. Ac- cordingly, in the year B.C. 443, when he had just past his fortieth year, Herodotus, according to the unanimous testimony of ancient writers,^ joined the colonists whom Pericles was now sending out to Italy, and became one of the first settlers at Thurium.
The settlement was made under circumstances which
* In later times the citizenship was granted lavishly, not only to foreigners but to freedmen. (Andoc. de red. c. 22, p. 86, 30 ; Demosth. c. Aristocr. &c.) But the diflBculty of obtaining it was far greater in the time of Pericles. And the trouble andezpense (Demosth.
c. Neaer. p. 1349, 20) would deter many.
« Pol. i. 1.
■ See Strab. xiv. p. 939. Plutarch de exil. vol. ii. p. 604, F. Plin. H. N. zii. 4. Suidas ad voc. 'Upddorbs, Sec.
Cii^p. I.
FORMATION OP THE COLONY.
23
were somewhat peculiar. Sybaris, one of the Achaean colonies in Magna Grascia, after attaining to an unex- ampled pitch of prosperity,* had been taken and destroyed by the Crotoniats (b.o. 510). The inhabitants who escaped fled to Latis and Scidrus,* places previously belonging to them, and made no eflfort to recover their former home. But fifty-eight years afterwards (b.o. 452) their children and grandchildren, having obtained some foreign assistance, reoccupied the site of the old city, which soon rose from its ruins. Upon this the jealousy of Crotona was once more aroused, and again she took arms and expelled the Sybarites from their town. They did not however now submit, but sent ambassadors into Greece to beg for assistance against their enemies. Pericles received the envoys with warmth, procured a decree of the people in their favour, and sent out the colony in which Herodotus participated. It was com- posed of Greeks from all quarters, and placed under the direction of a certain Lampon, who was thought to possess prophetic powers.* The new colonists were to xmite with the old Sybarites, and a single city was to be built, in which all were to enjoy equal rights and privileges. The colony left Athens in the spring of B.C. 443,* and established itself without any opposition from the Crotoniats. A town was built near, but not on, the site of the ancient Sybaris, and was called Thurium, from a spring in the neighbourhood ; it seems to have been planned by Hippodamus, the architect of the Piraeus, who laid it out in a number of straight
* Strabo says that four of the Italian nations were subject to Sybaris ; that she ruled over twenty-five cities, and brought into the field against Crotona 300,000 men (vi. p. 378). Scymnus Chius gives the number of her full citizens as 100,000 (ver. 344). Dio- dorus agrees with Stralx> (xii. 9).
* See Herod, vi. 21.
* Scliol. Aristoph. Av. 521 ; Pbit. vit. Pericl. c. 6 ; Polit. Pranced, vol. ii.
p. 812, D. ; Suid. ad voc. BovpiofiavT€is. Diodorus (xii. 10) makes Lampon and Xenocritus joint leaders.
7 Diodorus places its establishment in the year B.C. 446 (xii. 9). The date commonly given is B.C. 444 ; but CUnton has shown satisfactorily that tlie colony was really sent out in the spring of B.C. 443. (F. U. vol. ii. p. 58, 01. 84. 2.)
21
OLD AND NEW SYBARITES.
Chap. I.
streets, with others crossing them at right angles, a style of building which afterwards went by his name.* It was scarcely finished when dissensions broke out between the new-comers and the ancient Sybarites, the latter of whom are accused of advancing absurd claims to a pre-eminence over the foreign colonists. An appeal was made to arms, with a result most disastrous to those whose arrogance had provoked it. The Sybarites were worsted, and, if we may believe Dio- dorus, well nigh exterminated ;• and the victorious foreigners, having strengthened themselves by receiving fresh immigrants, proceeded to order their polity on a plan copied apparently from the arrangements which prevailed at Athens. They divided themselves into ten tribes, named from the principal races of which the colony was composed,^ and while modelling in all pro- bability their political institutions on the Athenian type, adopted for the standard of their jurisprudence the legal code of Charondas.* Under these circum- stances they became rapidly a flourishing people, until in the year B.C. 412, after the failure of the Sicilian
" Cf. Hesych. Lex. in voc. 'Irnro- ddfiov v€fiTf(ns, SLud'PhotiuSy Ai^.lvvay, p. 111. For the application of the style to Thurium, see Diod. Sic. xii. 10, ad fin.
• Diod. Sic. xii. 11. The brief notice of Aristotle (Pol. v. 2, 2v/3a-
plTCU n\€OV€KT€lV d(lOVVT€S OX a<f>€'-
rtpas rris x'^pas i^inta-ov) agrees, except that he spes^ of expulsion rather than extermination. Diodonis allows that a certain number escaped
gii. 22, sub fin.), lliese are perhaps e Sybarites of whom Herodotus speaks (f. 44).
* The tribes were as follows : three Peloponnesian, named Areas, Achais, Elea ; three from central Greece, BoBOtia, Amphictyonis, Doris ; and
^jBMj^eom Athens and her dependen-
^^VBMy Athenais, Euboeis, Kesiotis.
^HUaatioQ of this kind, proceed-
ing upon ethnic difference, was more common in Dorian than in Ionian states. (See Herod, iv. 161, and v. 68.)
• Diodorus (1. s. c.) imagines that Charondas actually legislated for the Thurians, being one of the citizens : t6v &piaTov rhv (1. rw) iv irai^tiqi $avfjLaC6fA(vov (1. BavfiaCofUv^v) iroXi- r»v Xapavdav. So the Scholiast on Plato (p. 193, Ruhnk.), and Valerius Maximus (vi. 6, § 4). But he was really a native of Catana, and lived two centuries earlier. (See Hermann's Pol. Antiq. of Greece, § 89.) The Thurians only adopted his code, as did so many of the Italiot and Siceliot towns (Arist. Pol. ii. 9; Heraclid. Pont. XXV.), and even the remote city of Mazaca in Cappadocia (Strab. xii. p. 782).
Chap. I. INTELLECTUAL COMPANIONS. 25
expedition, they revolted from their mother city, and expelled all the Athenian colonists.*
Among the settlers who accompanied Herodotus from Athens are some names to which a special interest attaches. Hippodamus, the philosopher and the archi- tect of the Piraeus,* Lysias the orator, then only in his fifteenth year, with his brother Polemarchus,* the friend of Socrates,* are the most famous. The last two were sons of Cephalus, a native of Sjnracuse, whom Pericles had persuaded to settle at Athens,* the gentle old man in whose house Plato has laid the scene of his great dia- logue, the Republic. It is not impossible that Protagoras may have been, if not among the first settlers, yet among the early visitants, for some accounts made the Thurians derive their laws from him.® Empedocles, too, the philosopher of Agrigentum, is stated by a contemporary writer* to have visited Thurium very shortly after its foimdation, and it is not unlikely that he made it his abode until his death. Thus the new colony had its fair share of the intellect of Greece, and Herodotus would not be without some kindred spirits to admire and appreciate him.
At Thurium Herodotus would seem to have devoted himself almost entirely to the elaboration of his work. It has been asserted in ancient^ and strongly argued in
• Dionys. Hal. Lys. sub init. vol. v. p. 453, ed. Reiske ; Plutarch, vit. X. Orat. § 8. (Op. ii. p. 835, D.)
* See Photius and Hesychius, ad voce. Imrodafiov vifirjais, and 'Ifnro- da/i«ta ayopd. For his philosophy, compare Aristotle (Pol. ii. 5) and Stoheus (Florilegium, vol. iii. p. 338, T. 103, 26). Photius calls Hippo- damus ** a metereologer.*'
* Plutarch, vit. X. Orat. (1. s. c.) ; Phot. Bibl. Cod. 262, p. 1463. Dio- nysius (1. s. c.) makes him accom- panied by two of his brothers.
• Plat. Rep. book i. § 1., ct seqq.
^ So Lysias himself declares (Orat. c. Eratosth. p. 120, 26).
■ Heraclid. Pont. ap. Diog. Laert. ix. 50.
• Glaucus of Rhegium (Fragm. 6), reported by A i)ollodoru8 (Fr. 87). The anonymous life of Thucydidos, usually prefixed to his work, speaks of that writer as having been at Thurium — which is called Sybaris — between its foundation and B.C. 422. But this authority is of very little weight. Other celebrities among the early Thurians are Tisias, the Syracusan, the inventor of rhetoric (Phot. Bibl. loc. 8. cit. ; Cic. do Invent, ii. 2, &c.), and Cleandridas, the father of Gylip- •pus (Thucyd. vi. 104 ; Antioch. Fr. 12).
> Plin. H. N. xii. " Urbis nostne
26
HERODOTUS EMrLOYED ON HIS WORK.
Chap. 1.
modern^ times, that his history was there first composed and published. But the assertion, as it stands, is absurd;* and the arguments adduced in support of it are not such as to command assent. It is proved that there are por- tions of the work which seem written in southern Italy,* and that there are others which could not have been composed till long after the time when Herodotus is said to have settled at Thurium.* But those who urge these places as conclusive omit to remark, that from their parenthetic character they are exactly such passages as a writer employed for many years in finishing and retouch- ing his composition might conveniently have added to the original text. That this is in every case the appear- ance they present, a glance at the passages themselves will show.* They can always be omitted not only with- out detriment, but sometimes with manifest advantage,
I
troocntesimo decimo anno . • . auctor ille (Herodotus) historiam earn con- didit Thuriis in Italii."
' See Dahlmann's Life of Herodotus, ch. iii. § 2.
■ Sinc5e it makes Herodotus write his whole history in one year.
* As iv. 15, and 99, and vi. 127. Dahlmann adds iii. 136-8, and v. 44-5 ; but these passages may just as well have been written in Asia. It is ad- mitted tliat Herodotus *' may have comprehended Italy in the plan of his early travels," so that " accurate knowledge" of the localities, supposing that it appeared (which may be ques- tioned), would not prove the passages to have been written in Italy,
* The following are the only pas- sages of which this can be said ^ith any certainty : iii. 160, ad fin. ; v. 77, ad fin. ; vii. 114, ad fin. ; 133-7, and 233, ad fin. ; and ix. 73, ad fin. Dahl- mann would add iv. 80, where Sitalces is mentioned as a man already known ; v. 93, where Hippias is made to speak of the calamities which the Corintliians would suffer at the hands, of Athens ; vi. 98, where ho thinks the reign of Artaxerxcs is spoken of as past ; vii. 151, where there is a i'<efereuce to
the embassy of Callias ; iii. 15, where Amyrtaeus is spoken of as dead ; and i. 130, where there is a mention of a Median revolt, which he supposes to be that from Darius Kothus. With regard to the last two passages he is completely mistaken, as will be shown in the notes ad loc. The others are doubtfnl. Sitalces, who gradually built up a great power (Diod. Sic. xii. 50), may have been well known to the Greeks long before the break- ing out of the Peloponnesian war. Corinth had suffered considerably at the hands of Athens by B.C. 457 (see Thucyd. L 105-6). In vi. 98, it is not necessarily implied^that the reign of Artaxerxes is past. And the em- bassy of Callias was not in B.c. 431, but in B.C. 449. (See note ad loc,)
• In iii. 160, the parenthetic por- tion is from Ztonvpov dc rovrov to the end. In v. 77, from ^trovs de koL TovTiov to the end of the inscription. In vii. 114, from Utpa-iKhv to jtoro- pwraovaav. In vii. 133-7, from o t» 5c rouri ^ABrfvaiMCi to iwopetfu dc cirl t6v irpoTtpov Xoyov. In vii. 233, from Tov rov iracda to the end. And in ix. 73, from ovroi ^&<rrc to cnroc^ccr^at.
Chap. I. PLACES AND PERIODS OF COMPOSITION.
27
to the sense and connexion of the sentences.^ This fact is a strong indication that they are no part of the original work, but insertions made by the author as points bearing upon his history came to his knowledge. Dahlmann indeed rejects altogether the notion of two editions of Herodotus, because no ancient writer is found expressly to mention them f but it seems to be the view which best explains all the phenomena.* In the book itself, besides the indication already men- tioned, which is almost tantamount to a proof, there are various passages which, either singly, or in connexion with those clearly written in Italy, imply the existence of two forms of the work, an earlier and a later one, and from two of these passages we may even gather that the work was published in its earlier shape. The enumeration of the Ionian and jEolian cities in the first book is such as would be natural to a man writing at Halicarnassus, but not so to an inhabitant of Italy .^ The same may be said of the enumeration of the Satrapies.* Again, the description of the road between Olympia and Athens,^ as that wliich led " from Athens to Pisa," and not " from Pisa to Athens," is indicative of one who dwells east and not west of Greece. More- over, the declaration in the fourth book — "additions are what my work always from the very first affected"* — is only intelligible on the hypothesis above adopted.
' This is most striking in the kst- mentioned passage, where the nexus is peculiarly awkward.
• Life of Herodotus, page 34, E. T.
• It is allowed to some extent hy Col. Mure. (Lit. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 258.)
• Herodotus not only takes the Ionian cities in reji^ular order from south to north (i, 142), but proceeds from them to the southern ^Eolians (ch. 149), and from them to tlie JEoWaub of the Troas (ch. 151). Looking at Asia Minor from tlic west, a Greek, accustomed to coasting
voyages, would have followed the reverse order.
■ Of. iii. 90. Herodotus begins with the satrapy which contained louia and Caria ; a European Greek would havo commenced with the Hellespont.
» ii. 7.
* Cli. 30. UpoadiJKai has been ge- nerally translated " digressions,** or " episodes." But its most proper sense is " additions, su})plemeuts." It may even have this meaning in Arist. Rhet. i. 1, § 3 ; a passage wliich has been considered to justify the other rendering. (See LiddcU and Scott's Lexicon, ad voc. 7rpo<r^i)#crj.)
28
DOUBLE PUBLICATION.
Chap. I.
And, finally, we have in two passages a plain proof, not only of two periods and places of composition, but like- wise of a double publication. In describing the first expedition of Mardonius against Greece, Herodotus turns aside from his narrative to remark that at this point he " has a marvel to relate, which will greatly surprise those Greeks who cannot believe that Otanes advised the seven conspirators to make Persia a common- wealth ;"* whereby he shows, that on the first publica- tion of his work, the account given in the third book of a debate among the conspirators as to the proper form of government to establish in Persia, had provoked criticism, and that many had rejected it as incredible. He therefore seeks to remove their scruples by noticing a fact, which in his first edition he had probably omitted, as not very important, and quite unconnected with his main subject in the place — (which is the war- like expedition of Mardonius) — namely, that Mardonius at this time put down the Greek despots. He also in the third book, on beginning his narrative of the debate, makes a reference to the same objectors, which he does in a few words, inserted probably in lieu of what he had at first written.^ Such is the evidence of the book itself, and we may add to it the fact, that while some writers spoke confidently of the work as composed in Italy,^ others as distinctly asserted that it was written in Asia f and, further, a fact to be hereafter noticed,' that there were from very early times^ two readings of a most important passage in the book — namely, its opening sentence, which is best explained by supposing that both proceeded equally from the pen of the author.
i
» Herod, vi. 43.
• lb. iii. 80. In the first edition I should conjecture that the words ran : Koi €ktxOrf(rav \6yoi roioidt. ^Orcunje luv €K€\€v€y jcr.X. ^ Pliuy, 1. s. c.
" Suidas ad voc. 'Hp6dcTos. Lucian. Herod, vol. iv. p. 116.
• See note to book i. ch. 1,
* At least as early as the reign of Trajan. See Plutarch, de Exil. (p. 604, F.) : t6 Sc *Hoob6rov 'AXtJcap- vaaa-sas laroplrfs dir6o€i(is rjd€f iroXXot fi€Taypd<l}ovcriv, lipod6Tov Oovpiov,
Chap. I.
HISTOBY OF ASSYRIA.
29
It 18 not unlikely that, besides retouching his nar- rative from time to time, and interweiaving into it such subsequent events as seemed in any way to illustrate its course or tenor, Herodotus may have composed at Thurium some considerable portions of his work ; for instance, the second and fourth books, or the greater part of them.* He may likewise have considerably enlarged the other books, by the addition of those long parentheses which are for ever occurring, whereby the general line of the relation is broken in upon, not always in a manner that is quite agreeable. It is need- less to point out passages of this kind which every reader's memory will without difficulty supply ; they form in general from one-fourth to one-third of each book, and added to the second and fourth books would amount to not much less than one-half of the history.
At the same time he no doubt composed that separate work the existence of which it has been the fashion of late years to deny^ — his "History of Assyria." The grounds for believing that this book was written and published will be given in a note on the text,* and need not be anticipated here. That it was a treatise of some considerable size and pretension is probable from the very fact that it was detached from his main history, and pubhshed separately.* It must, one would think, at
" The whole of the second book, with the exception of the first chapter, may have been com|x>8ed at this time, the opening of the third book being re- modelled after the second was written. In the fourth book, the account of the expedition of Darius (chs. 1-4; 83-144) may have been original, and the rest added at Thurium.
* See Dahlmann's Life of Herodotus, pp. 166-8, E. T. ; Bahr. not. ad Herod, i. 106 ; Mure, Lit of Greece, vol. iv. p. 270.
* See note to book i. ch. 106.
* It has been questioned whether the 'Assyrian History' was ever in- tended for a separate work, and sug-
gested that it may have been meant only for one of the larger episodes in which our author was wont to indulge. (See Dahlniann, p. 1G8 ; Biihr, 1. s. c. ; Mure, p. 271.) But if so, where was it to have come in ? Bahr (following Jager, Disp. Herod, p. 229) suggests for its place the end of the third book, where the revolt and reduction of Babylon are related. But this is con- trary to the analogy of all the other lengthy episodes, and to the |)ervading idea of the work. The right by which such episodes come in at all, is their connexion with the increasing great- ness of the Persian empire ; ami they therefore occur at tlie point whero
30 SECOND VISIT TO ATHENS. Chap. L
least have exceeded in bulk the account of Egypt, which occupies the whole of the secoild book, or it would naturally have formed an episode to the main narrative, in the place where we instinctively look for it,* and where its omission causes a want of harmony in the general plan of the History. And it may have been very considerably longer than the Egyptian section. With these literary labours in hand, it is no wonder if Herodotus, having reached the period of middle life when the fatigues of travel begin to be more sensibly felt, and being moreover entangled in somewhat diffi- cult domestic politics, laid aside his wandering habits, and was contented to remain at Thurium without even exploring to any great extent the coimtries to which his new position gave him an easy access.' There is no trace of hifhaving journeyed further during these years than the neighbouring towns of Metapontum and Crotona, except in a single instance. He must have paid a visit to Athens at least as late as B.C. 436, and probably some years later ; for he saw the magnificent Propylaea,® one of the greatest of the constructions of Pericles, which was not commenced till B.C. 436, nor finished till five years afterwards.' Perhaps this visit was delayed till after the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, and it may have been by its means that Herodotus became so intimately acquainted with little events be- longing to the first and second years of the war,^ of
the Persian empire first absorbs or « The natural place, according to
attempts to absorb each country. (See the notions of Assyrian history enter-
i. 95, 142, 171, 178 ; ii. 2 ; iii. 20 ; , tained by our author, would have been
iv. 5 ; V. 3.) In the only two places ; book i. ch. 184, where he is forced to
where the * Assyrian History ' could I speak of certain persons who doubtless
properly have come into the extant '. figured in it conspicuously. He did
work of Herodotus — the absorption of ; not make any distinction between
Assyria by Media, and of Babylonia ' Assyrian and Babylonian history.
by Persia — the reader is referred to the 'Assjrrian History' for information. To me this is conclusive evidence that it was always intended to have been (as indeed I believe that in fact it was)
7 Supra, p. 12. ' Herod, v. 77.
' Harpocrat. ad voc. npofrvXcua ravra, Philoch. Fr. 98.
* As, 1. the attack upon Thebe«
a separate work. , (vii. 233), where he knows the num-
Ghap.L
FEUDS AT THURIUM.
31
wliich it is unlikely that more than vague rumours would have reached him at Thurium,
The state of Thurium, while it was the abode of Herodotus, appears to have been one of perpetual trouble and disquiet. The first years after tl^e founda- tion of the colony were spent, as has been already shown,* in a bloody feud between the new comers and the ancient inhabitants — the Sybarites. Soon after- wards a war broke out between the Thurians and the people of Tarentum, which was carried on both by land and sea, with varied success, and which probably con- tinued during a space of several years.' A little later, as the Peloponnesian struggle approached, an internal dispute seems to have arisen among the citizens them- selves as to the side which they should espouse in the approaching contest.* The true controversy was thinly veiled tmder the show of a doubt about the person and state entitled to be regarded as the real founders of the city. From the first the Peloponnesian element in the population had been considerable, and now this section of the inhabitants put forward pretensions to the first place in the colony. The horrors of civil war were for the present avoided by an appeal to the common oracle of both races, which skilfully eluded the difficulty, and staved oflf the threatened crisis, by declaring that Apollo himself, and none other, was to be accounted the
ber of the assailants, tho important part taken by Eurymachus, and his fate (compare Thucyd. ii. 2, and 5, ad fin.) ; 2. the betrayal of the Pelo- ponnesian ambassadors to the Athe- nians by Sitalces (vii. 137), where he has the names of three, the place where they were seized, and the fact of their being brought to Athens for punish- ment: with an allusion also to the cause of the exasperation of the Athe- nians against them {ts clXc dXUas roifs €K TipwBos; comp. Thucyd. ii. 67, ad fin.) ; and, 3. the sparing of Decelea, when the country between Brilessun and Fames was ravaged by
Archidamus (ix. 73 ; the fact is quite compatible with the statements of Thucydides, ii. 23, thou^^h not men- tioned by him). I should incline also to assign the flight of Zopynis (iii. 130, ad fin.^ to the same i^eriod (b.c. 431 or 430). No little events are related of a later date. « Page 24.
• Diod. Sic. xii. 23. The descrip- tion, although placed under one year, seems applicable to a longer period. (^diairo\€fiovvT€s — iir6p6ovv — troWas fiaxas Ka\ oxpo/SoXtcr/iioi/f.) Compare Antioch. Fr. 12.
* Ibid. xii. 35.
32
PERIOD OF HIS DECEASE.
Chap, I.
founder. But the struggle of parties, in however sub- dued a form, must have continued, and we find marked traces of it about the period of the Sicilian expedition, when Thurium first wavers between the two belli- gerents,* then joins Athens, banishing those who oppose the measure,^ and finally, after the Athenian disasters, expels three hundred of its citizens for the crime of Atticism^ and becomes an ally of the opposite side.*
It is uncertain whether Herodotus lived to see all these vicissitudes. The place and time of his death are matters of controversy. Some writers of great eminence have thought it plain from his work that he must not only have been alive, but have been still engaged in its composition, at least as late as his seventy-seventh year.® And one tradition prolongs his life to the year B.C. 394,' when his age would have been ninety. Of the place of his death three accounts are given ; accord- ing to one he died at Pella in Macedonia ;^ according to another, at Athens ;' while a third placed his decease at Thurium.' When the evidence is so conflicting, it is impossible that the conclusions drawn from it can be more than conjectural. There seems, however, to be great reason to doubt whether Herodotus really enjoyed the length of life which has been commonly assigned to him. There is no passage in his writings of which we can say that it must certainly have been written later than B.C. 430.* There are a few which may have been
* Thucyd. vi. 104. « Ibid. vii. 33.
^ Dionys. Hal. Lys. iv. p. 453.
• See Dahlmann's Life of Herodotus, ch. iii. § 1, ad fin. ; Mure's Literature of Greece, vol. iv. App. G. ; and Dr. Schmitz's article in Smith's Biogra- phical Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 432.
• Suidas (ad voc/EXXaviicor) makes Herodotus visit the court of Amyn- tas II., king of Macedon, who only mounted the throne in b.c. 394. ^See Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. App. ch. 4.)
* Suidas (ad voc. *Hp6doTos) reports
this tradition, but expresses his dis- belief of it.
* Marcellin. in vit. Thucyd. p. ix.
■ This was the view of Suidas, who says : 'Eis r6 Govpiov, oTrouei^d/tcvoir vTr6 * ABrivaiioVf iOtXovr^s ijX^c, jcaieei TeXivrrja'ae hrl rrjs dyopas riBanrat,
* It cannot be proved that any event recorded by Herodotus is more recent than the betrayal of the Spartan and Corinthian ambassadors into the hands of the Athenians (Herod, vii. 133-7), which took place in the autumn of b.c. 430. (Thucyd. ii. 67.)
Chap. I.
HIS PROBABLE AGE.
33
composed abont B.C. 425 or 424,* but none which, rightly understood, give the slightest indication of any- later date.* The work of Herodotus, therefore, con- tains no sign that he outlived his sixtieth year, and perhaps it may be said that the balance of evidence is in favour of his having died at Thurium when he was about sixty .^ His tomb was shown in the market-place of that city, and there probably was the epitaph quoted by ancient writers. The story of his having been buried with Thucydides at Athens is absurd upon its face. It might suit the romance writers to give the two great historians a single tomb, but nothing can be more unlikely than such a happy conjunction. Thucy- dides, moreover, was buried in the family burial-place of the Cimonidae, where " it was not lawful to inter a stranger."* How then should Herodotus have rested within its precincts ? unless it be said that he too was of the Cimonian family, which no ancient writer asserts. The legend of his death at Pella belongs to the very improbable tale of his having enjoyed, in company with Hellanicus and Euripides,' the hospitality of Amyntas II.
* As the cruel deed committed by Amestris in her old age (vii. 114), which, however, cannot be determined ¥rithin a space of 10 or 15 years ; the desertion of Zopyrus to the Athenians (iii. 160, ad fin.), which was towards tiie close of the reign of Artaxerxes (Ctes. Exc. § 43) ; and the apparent mention of that reign as past (vi. 98), which would be decisive, if it distinctly asserted what it is supposed to imply.
* The passages alleged by Dahlmann (L 130 ; iii. 15 ; and ix. 73) are ex- plained in the notes ad loc,
' The negative evidence derived fn>m the absence from his great work of touches clearly marking a later date, is an argument of great importance, when it is observed how frequent and continuous such touches are up to a particular period. The complete silence with regard to the Sicilian expedition, which, if it had passed before his eyes, must have appeared
VOL. 1.
to him the most important event of his time, seems to show that at least he did not outlive B.C. 415. Had he witnessed the struggle, he would almost certainly have made some allusion to it. Had he seen its close, he could not have made the assertion in book vii. ch. 170, that a certain slaughter of Tarentines and Rhegines was the greatest which ever befell the Greeks. Had he been still \\\mg when Thurium joined the Pelo|X)nnesian side in B.C. 412, he would have been banished with Lysias, and would then probably never have been known as " the Thurian."
' Marcellinus proves the family connexion of Thucydides with the CimonidfB by the fact of his tomb being among the /xi^/xara Kifia>i/ca (Vit. Thucyd. p. ix.) : — fcVoj yhp ovh€\iy he says, (Ktl BdrrrcTaL.
• Suidas ad voc. 'EWdviKot.
M
DOMESTIC LIFE.
Chap. I.
king of Macedon, who ascended the throne B.C. 394, when Herodotus would have been ninety ! On the whole it seems most probable that the historian died at Thurimn (shortly after his return from a visit paid to Athens in about the year B.C. 430 or 429), at an age little, if at all, exceeding sixty.^ He would thus have escaped the troubles which afflicted his adopted coimtry during the later portion of the Peloponnesian war, and have been spared the pain of seeing the state of which he was a citizen enrol herself among the enemies of his loved and admired Athens.
No author tells us anything of the domestic life of Herodotus. If we may be allowed to form a con- jecture from this silence, it seems fair to suppose that he was immarried. His estimate of the female character is not high,^ and his roving propensities in his earlier days would have interposed a bar to matrimony at the time of life when men commonly enter on it. That he died childless seems to be indicated by the position in which he is made to stand to a certain Plesirrhous, who is said to have inherited all his property, and to have brought out his work after his death.^ These state- ments rest, it piust be admitted, on authority of the least trustworthy kind, but it seems rash to reject them
* It has been argued that the general tone and character of our author's work prove him to have composed it in old SL^e (Oahlmann, p. 37, E. T. ; Jager, Disp. Herod, p. 16 ; Bahr. de Vit. et Script. Herod. § 4) ; but Col. Mure judiciously re- marks that the peculiarities insisted on may " with better reason be re- garded as reflecting the mind of the man than the time of life at which he wrote. ITie author of a narrative treating at similar length, and in equally popular vein, the more in- teresting vicissitudes of a national history, will usually be foimd,** he observes, "where the notices of his life are scanty or fabulous, taking his
place in the traditions of his country, and in the fancy of his readers, as an aged man." (Literature of Greece, vol. iv. p. 517.)
* Compare i. 4 and 8; ii. Ill, ^^c
• These particulars are reported by Hephsestion (ap. Phot. Bibliothec. Cod. 190, p. 478), a late writer of small authority, who moreover throws discredit on his own anecdotes by al- lowing them to contradict one another, llie same Plesirrhous, who in two of his tales is made to be our author^s heir, in another is said to have com- mitted suicide while Herodotus was still engaged upon his work. (Ibid, p. 483.)
Chap. L
.WANT OF FINISH IN HIS WORK.
35
as worthless. They have no internal improbability, and it is in their favour that they are not such as it would have been worth any man's while to invent.
The great work of Herodotus, to which he had devoted so many years, was not perhaps regarded by him as altogether complete at his decease. He was continually adding touches to it, as events came to his knowledge which seemed to him in any way to illus- trate or confirm his narrative. In one place, itself per- haps among the latest additions to the history,* he promises to relate an occurrence, for which we look in vain through the remaining pages. This may be a mere inadvertence, parallel to that which has permitted the repetition of a foolish tale about the priestesses of Pedasa, with a variation in the story which reads like a contradiction.* But it has generally been regarded as a trace of incompleteness, which is not unlikely to be the true account, the author having designed to introduce the sequel of the narrative at a later point in his history, but having died before proceeding so far. If his decease occurred when he was about sixty, this would be far more probable than if we were bound to accept the common notion of his longevity. Dahlmann's sup- position* that Herodotus, writing at the age of seventy- seven, was still contemplating not only small improve- ments, but a lengthy digression on a most important subject, if not an entirely new work, is as unlikely as anything that can well be imagined on such a subject. If the History of Herodotus strikes us as wanting finish, both in some points of detail and in the awkwardness and abruptness of its close, we may fairly ascribe the defect to the untimely death of the writer, who was
* Book vii. ch. 213.
» See i. 175, and viii. 104. The miracle, which in the first passage is said to have occurred three times, in the last is mentioned as having only
been witnessed twice.
• Life of Herodotus, ch. ix. § 2. Col. Mure adopts the same view. (Lit. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 270-1.)
D 2
36 CAUSES OF ITS INCOMPLETENESS, Chap. I.
probably not older than sixty, and perbaps not more than fifty-five at his decease. Had his life been lengthened to the term ordinarily allotted to man, the little blemishes which modem criticism discerns might have been removed, and the work have shown through- out the finished grace which the master's hand is wont to impart when it consciously gives the last touches.
^
€iiAP. IL SOUBGES OF THE HISTORT. 37
CHAPTER II.
ON THE SOURCES FROM WHICH HERODOTUS COMPILED HIS HISTORY.
Importance of the question. HiBiorical materials already existing in Greece. Works of three kinds : 1. Mythological; 2. Qeographical; 3. Strictly histori- caL How tar used as materiaU by Herodotus. Xanthus. Charon. Diony- siuB. The geographers: Hecatceus, Scylax, Aristeas. The poets. Chief source of the History of Herodotus, personal observation and inquiry. How &r authenticated by monumental records: 1. In Greece; 2. In foreign coun- triee— Egypt, Babylon, Persia. General result.
In order to estimate aright, either the historical value of the great work of our author, or the credit that is due to him for its composition, it is necessary to make some inquiry as to the materials which he possessed and the sources from which he drew his narrative. " The value of every history, as a work of utility, must pri- marily depend on the copiousness and authenticity of the materials at the authors disposal."^ And the merit of the author as a historian must be judged from the sagacity which he shows in the comparative esti- mate of the various sources of his information, and the use which he makes of the stock of materials, be it scanty or abundant, to which circumstances give him access. To judge, then, either of the writer or his work, we must inquire what the sources of informa- tion were from which Herodotus had it in his power to draw, and to what extent he availed himself of them.
Now it seems certain that a considerable store of written historical information already existed in the native language of Herodotus at the time when he commenced his history. Historical composition had
* See Mure's Literature of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 294-5.
38
EXISTING HISTOEIOAL MATERIALS.
Chap. IL
not, indeed, begun at a very distant date ; but from the middle of the sixth century B.C., there had been a rapid succession of writers in this department, more especially among the fellow-countrymen of our author in Asiatic Greece. Setting aside Cadmus of Miletus as a personage whose existence is at least doubtful,^ there may certainly be enumerated as labourers in the his* torical field during this and the first half of the ensuing century, Eugaeon of Samos, Bion and Deiochus of Proconnesus, Eudemus of Paros, Amelesagoras of Chalcedon, Democles of Phygela, Hecataeus and Dio- nysius of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, Damastes of Sigeum, Xanthus of Sardis, and Pherecydes of Leros — all natives of Asia Minor, or the islands in its imme- diate vicinity, and the authors of books on historical subiects before or about the time when Herodotus read the'first draft of his work at Athens. Besides these writers there were others of considerable reputation in more distant parts of Greece, as Acusilaiis of Argos, Theagenes and Hippys of Rhegium, Polyz^lus of Mes- senia,^ &c., whose productions belong to the same period. The works of these historians, so far as can be gathered from the notices of ancient authors,* and the fragments we possess of many of them,* are divi- sible into three classes, of very different importance and authority. The earlier writers, who are fairly represented by Acusilaiis, seem to have devoted them- selves exclusively to the ancient Greek legends, be- longing to the mythical period before the return of the Heracleids. They wrote works which they called
' The argnments against Cadmus are well condensed by Muller in his second volume of the Fragmenta Hist. Grajc. pp. 3-4.
" For a detailed account of these writers and their productions, see MUller's Fr. H. G. vols. i. and ii. Comp. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii. Apjiendix, ch. 2J, and Mure, vol. iv. ch. 3. Matthi(e*8 Manual of the
History of Greek and Roman Litera- ture, though scanty, is useful.
* Particularly from Suidas.
* Sturz and Creuzer were the first to begin the collection of these valu- able remains of antiquity, which has at last been accomplished, so as to leave nothing to desire, by C. MizUcr, in the work already so often quoted.
Chap.il
GEOGRAPHICAL MATEEULS.
39
generally "Genealogies" or " Theogonies," • imitated closely from the old genealogical poets, such as Hesiod, whose poem entitled " Theogonia ** is said to have been the model followed by some of them.' No complete production of the kind by a writer of this early age has come down to us ; but the Bibliotheca of the gram- marian Apollodorus * is perhaps a tolerable representa- tion of their usual character.
The next subject which engaged the attention of the prose writers, and on which works were composed by some of the authors above-mentioned, was geography. At all times an important element in historical research, this study, in the earlier period of Greek literature, was scarcely distinguished from that nobler science ojf which it is properly the handmaid. Scy lax of Caryanda,* HecataBUs,^ Dionysius, according to one account,' Charon,' Damastes,* and perhaps Democles,' wrote treatises on
' As the works of Acusilaiis and Hecatams, entitled TfutdkoyUu (Suid. ad voc. Acusilaiis, Steph. Byz., &c.), and that of Pherecydes, which was called Q€oyovia (Suid.).
^ Clemeut says of Acusilaiis and Euraelus (Endemus?) — ra 'Hcrtodou /Acr^XXa^av ftr irtC^v \6yov (IStrom. vi. p. 752-6). The fragments of Acusilaiis show the statement to he trae.
• Printed in the first volume of MUller's Fragm. U. Gr., and edited in a separate form hy Tanaquil Faher (Saumur, 1611), Heyne (Gottingen, 1782\ and Clavier (Paris, 1805).
• llie work which has come down to us under the name of this writer is tiudoubtedly spurious, but still it is a sign that a genuine work had once existed. There is further evidence in the passages quoted by Aristotle (Polit. vii. 13) and others, which do not occur in the fictitious Scylax.
• The great work of Hecataeus was entitled * The Circuit of the Earth ' (yrit n€piodos). It contained a de- scription of the known world, which he divided into two parts, Euro^x) and
Asia, including in the latter Africa. The coasts of the Mediterranean were described in detail, but only scanty knowledge was shown of the more in- land tracts. For a complete account see Klausen's Fragments of Hecatjeus, and Mure's Literature of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 144-158.
' Suidas (ad voc. Atoyva-ios MtXi}- a-tos^ ascribes to him a work entitled * nf^iriyrja-is olKovfievrjs,^ or a Descrii>- tion of the Inhabited World ; but it is doubted whether the book intended is not that of the Augustan geographer commonly known as Dionysius Perio- getes (Bernhardy ad Dion. Per. p. 489 ; Miiller ad Fragm. U. G. vol. ii. p. 6).
* Charon wrote a Peri plus of the parts lying beyond the pillars of Her- cules (Suidas).
* Damastes is quoted by Strabo on the geof^rayihy of the Troas, and of Cyprus (xiii. p. 842, and xiv. p. 973). Agathenier says (i. 1) that he wrote a Periplus. Ilia ^eo^aphy was fol- lowed to a coiisidcrjO)le extent by Eratosthenes (Strab. i. p. 68).
* Democles treated of the ** Volcanic
V
40
CHRONOLOGICAL TREATISES.
Chap. II.
general or special geography, into which they inter- wove occasional notices belonging to the history of the country whose features they were engaged in describing. These labours led the way to history proper. Dionysius of Miletus, a contemporary and countryman of Hecataeus,* seems to have set the example by the composition of a work entitled * Persica,' or Persian History, which pro- bably traced the progress of that nation from the time of Cyrus to a period which cannot be fixed in the reign of Xerxes.* This work would seem to have been written in the early part of the fifth century B.C.* The example thus set was soon followed by others. Charon of Lampsacus, and Xanthus of Sardis, towards the middle of the century, composed treatises partly on the special history of their own countries, partly on more general subjects. Charon, in his "Hellenica" and " Persica," went over most of the ground which is traversed by Herodotus,^ while in his " Prytanes," or " Chief Rulers of Sparta," he laid perhaps the first foimda- tion among the Greeks of a practical system of chrono- logy.^ He was likewise the author of a work or works ^ on the annals of his native city, Lampsacus, of which
k
phenomena in Asia Minor" (Strab. 1. p. 85), probably in a geographical work.
' Suidas ad voc. 'Exarator.
7 Since he is said to have written a work 'On events subsequent to the reien of Darius ' (Suidas).
■ Suidas says that Dionysius flou- rished contemporaneously with Heca- tasus. It is not likely, therefore, that he outlived Darius many years. He- cataeus seems to have died soon after B.O. 480 (Suidas ad voc. *EXXayiieof).
* Charon related the dream of As- tyages with regard to his daughter Mandan^; the revolt and flight of Pactyas the Lydian, first to Mytilfin^, and then to Chios, with his final cap- ture by the Persians ; the aid lent by Athens to the revolted lonians, the sack of Sardis except the citadel, and
the retreat following closely upon it ; also the disasters which Mi^onius experienced about Mount Athos. He likewise noticed the flight of Themis- tocles to Asia, which he placed in the reign of Artaxerxes. Thus his narra- tive would seem to have come down to a later date than that of Herodotus.
^ Suidas, who alone mentions this work, notices that it was chrono- logical.
* Suidas mentions two books of Gharon*s on this subject, and the ex« tracts from his writings concerning Lampsacus, which have come down to us, furnish three distinct titles, but it may be doubted whether all the references are not really to a single treatise. (See Miiller's Frag. H, Ur. vol. i. pp. xix.-xx.)
Chap.il
LEGEND-WMTERS*
41
several fragments have come down to us* Xanthus treated at length of the history of Lydia, not only during the recent dynasty of the Memmadae,^ but also during the remoter times of the Heraclidae, and even of the Atyadae. He indulged in ethnological, linguistic, and geological dissertations ;* and must have written a history, in the general character of its matter not very unlike that of our author. A book upon the Magian priest caste is also assigned to him ; but it is so seldom quoted ' that some doubt may be considered to attach to it. About the same time probably, Hippys of Rhegium composed an account of the colonisation of Italy and Sicily, and also a chro- nological work, the exact nature of which cannot be determined.* It is likely that besides these authors there may have been many others, who, under the general name of Logographers or legend-writers, de- voted themselves to historical subjects, and especially to that which could not fail to exercise a particular attraction, the history of the war with Persia.'
This brief review is perhaps enough to indicate the general character of the materials which existed in the historical Uterature of his country at the time when Herodotus may be presimied to have written.® It is.
• Col. Mnre doubte whether Xan- thus treated of this period, because " not one of the successors of Gyges is noticed in his Fragments " (Lit. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 173), but it has with mi^ch reason been conjectured (Miiller, vol. i. p. 40) that the work of Xanthus furnished Nicholas of Da- mascus with his materials for the history of the kings in question.
• See his Fragments, Frs*. 1, 3, 4, and 8.
• Twice only, by Diogene^ldLAertius (Proem. § 2), and by Clemens Alex- andrinus (Strom, iii. p. 515). The former passage has been doubted (Mtiller, p. 44), but without sufficient reason.
• Suidas merely calls this work Xpwuca, The few fragments which
remain of it seem to show that its compass was great and its affectation of accuracy remarkable Tsee Frag- ments 1, 2, 3, and 5). The conjec- ture that the other works ascribed to Hippys were portions of his XpoviKa (which Col. Mure approves, p. 178), is not borne out by the citations. (See MUUer's Fr. H. G. vol. ii. pp. 13-15.)
7 That several of the early writers had treated this subject is plain from Thucydides (i. 97).
' Hellanicus of Lesbos, Stesimbro- tus of Thasos, and Antiochus of Syra- cuse, who are enumerated by Col. Mure among the authors "whose works were, or may have been, pub- lished before that of Herodotus," have been purposely omitted from the fore-
42
SCARCITY OF BOOKS.
Chap. II.
however, quite a distinct question how far they may be regarded as materials really at our author's disposal. Moderns, accustomed to the ready multiplication of hooks which the art of printing has introduced, and living in times when every writer who makes any pretence to learning is the owner of a library, are apt to imagine that the facilities of reference common in their own day, were enjoyed equally by the ancients ; but such a view is altogether mistaken. Books, till long after the time of Herodotus, were multiplied with difficulty, and were published more by being read to audiences than by the tedious and costly process of copying. Herodotus, it is probable, possessed but few of those cumbrous collections of papyrus-rolls which were required in his day to contain a work of even moderate dimensions.* The only prose writer from whom he quotes is Hecataeus, and we have no direct evi- dence that he had it in his power to consult the works of any other Greek historian. No public libraries are known to have existed at the time,^ and had he possessed a familiar knowledge of other authors, it is difficult to suppose that his book would not have borne evident
going review as writers of too late a date to come proi)erly within it. Hel- lanicus was indeed, if we may trust Pamphila, some years older than our author, but he must be regarded as a later writer; since, 1. in his great work (the Atthis) he alluded to the battle of Arginusai, which was fought in B.C. 406, nearly 20 years after the time when Herodotus seems to have died ; and, 2. it is related of him that he read (Schol. ad Soph. Phil. 201) and copietl Herodotus (Porphyr. ap. Euseb. Pr. Ev. x. p. 466 b). Ste- simbrotus was as nearly as possible contemjwrary with our author, but his only historical work, the * Memoirs of Themistocles, Thucydides, and Pericles,' could not have been \vritten before B.C. 430 (cf. Frag. Hist. Gr. vol. ii. p. 56, Fr. 11), and probably several years later. Antio-
chus was also a contemporary, but as he continued his Italian history down to the year B.C. 423, Herodotus can scarcely have profited by him.
• Books consisted of a number of sheets of papyrus (a coarse material) pasted together, with writing on one side only, rolled round a thickish staff. So small a work as the Meta- morphoses of Ovid required fifteen such cumbrous rolls (Ov. Trist. i. 117).
* Polycrates had formed a public library at Samos (Athena?us, i. i. p. 9, Schw.), and Pisistratus at Athens (ibid.) ; but the latter had certainly been carried to Susa by Xerxes (Aul. Gell. vi. 17), and it is very unlikely that the former had escaped the gene- ral ruin consequent uix)u the treachery of Maiandrius (Heroa. iii. 146-9).
Chap, IL OBSCURITY OP WRITERS. 43
traces of it. It is not his practice purposely to withhold names, or to avoid reference to his authorities ; on the contrary he continually lets us see in the most artless manner whence his relations are derived, and notliing is more clear than that he drew them in the main, not from the books of writers, but from the lips of those whom he thought to have the best information. It is possible that he was wholly imacquainted with the compositions of those previous authors, who had treated of subjects of real history coming within the scope of his work. The fame of such persons was often local, and the very knowledge of their writings may in early times have been confined within narrow limits. It was the doing of a later age — an age of book-collectors and antiquaries — to draw forth these authors from their obscurity, and invest them with au importance to which they had little claim, except as tmread and ancient.
The authors from whom, if from any, Herodotus might have been expected to draw, are three of those most recently mentioned — Dionysius of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, and Xanthus Lydus. All were, ko to speak, his neighbours; and while the former two wrote at length upon Persian aflfairs, the last-uieii- tioned composed an elaborate treatise on the history of his native country, — one of the subjects which Herodotus regarded as coming distinctly within tlie scope of his great work. It is hardly possible that he would have neglected these books, especially the last, had they been known to him. Yet, from a com- parison of the fragments, which are tolerably ex- tensive, both of Charon and of Xanthus with the work of our author, it becomes apparent that, whether he knew the histories of these writers or no, at any rate he made no use of them. His Lydian history shows not the slightest trace of any acquaintance with the labours of Xanthus, whom he not merely
44.
HERODOTUS NOT INDEBTED TO XANTHUS, Chap. H.
ignores,* but from whom he diflFers in some of the most important points of his narrative, as the colonisation of Etniria,^ and the circumstances under which the Merm- naddB became possessed of the throne/ His custom of mentioning different versions of a story when he is aware of them, makes it ahnost certain that he did not know the tale which in the Lydian author took the place of his own story of Tyrs^nus, or the long narra- tive, probably from the same source, • which traced the hereditary feuds of the Heraclide and Mermnade families. Again, his remark that the land of Lydia has few natural phenomena deserving notice,* is indicative of an ignorance of those interesting accounts — so entirely accordant with truth and fact * — which the native writer had given of certain most peculiar physical appear- ances in the interior of Lydia.* Herodotus, whom geological phenomena always interest,* would cer- tainly not have omitted, had his knowledge extended so far, a description of that extraordinary region, the Catakecaumenfe, which even to the modem traveller, with his far more extensive knowledge of the earth's surface, appears so remarkable. It seems, therefore, to be beyond a doubt that Ephorus was mistaken when he talked of Xanthus as " having served as a starting- point to Herodotus." ^ He was an older man, having
• Dablmann has remarked (Life of Herod, p. 91) that the mere omission of all mention on the part of Hero- dotus of the Lydian kings Alcimus, Ascalus, Gambles, &c., whom Xan- thus celebrated, is not conclusive ; since " one sees from his occasional observations that he knew more than his connected narrative implies." Still it is, at least, a suspicious circum- stance.
■ See Xanthus, Fr. 1.
* The certainty of this depends on theextent to which it may be regarded
* led that Xantlius furnished
of Damascus with the mate-
Lydian history. I agree
with C. Miiller, that little doubt can reasonably be entertained on the sub- ject. (Frag. Hist. Gr. vol. i. p. 40, and vol. iii. p. 370 ; note to Pr. 22.)
• Nic. Damasc. Fr. 49.
• Book i. ch. 93.
7 See Mr. Hamilton's Travels in Asia Minor (vol. i. pp. 136-144), where the striking features of this curious volcanic tract are fully and graphically portrayed.
• Fragments 3 and 4.
• See ii. 10-12 ; iv. 23 and 191 ; vii. 129. ,
• Fragment 102. 'HpoB^i^ riis d<f)opiias d(d«»K6Tos.
Chap. II.
KOR TO CHARON.
45
been bom B.C. 499,* and probably an earlier writer (though, as he mentioned an event in the reign of Artaxerxes,' he could not have been greatly earlier) ; but Herodotus had not seen, perhaps had not heard, of his compositions. Apparently, they were first brought to the knowledge of the Gbreeks by Ephorus, a native of the neighbouring Cym^, who floiu-ished during the reign of Philip of Macedon. It is not even certain that they were written at the time when Herodotus first compost hi listo.7.-
Modem critics have rarely* failed to see our author's entire independence of the works of Xanthus ; but it has sometimes been argued that there are immistake- able traces of his having known and used the writings of Charon.* Undoubtedly he mentions a variety of matters, some of them matters that may be called trivial, which were likewise reported by Charon ; but as the two writers went over exactly the same ground, they could not but have many points of contact, and therefore, probably, of coincidence. The question is, whether the points are really so trivial and the coinci- dences at once so numerous and so exact and minute, as to indicate the use by one writer of the other, or to imply naturally anything more than mere common truthfulness. Now the points of coincidence do not really exceed four. Charon and Herodotus alike related, — 1. A certain dream of Astyages, concerning his daughter Mandan^ : 2. The revolt of Pactyas, and his capture : 3. The taking of Sardis by the lonians :
* Suidas ad voc. SdvOos,
* Fragment 3. Artaxerxes did not ascend the throne till B.C. 4G4, when Herodotus was twenty years of age.
* If Herodotus wrote the first draft of his work in Asia Minor, about b.c. 450, he would have composed it at the time when Xanthus was only fifty-one, so that it is quite possil)le the Lydian history of that author may have been published afterwards. Dio-
nysius spoke of Xanthus as only a little earlier than Thucydides. (Jud. de Thuc. p. 818.)
* Creuzer is, I believe, the only modem critic who has maintained that Herodotus made use of Xanthus. (Creuz. ad Xanth. Fragm.) His ar- guments are well refuted by Dahl- mann (Life of Herod, p. 91, E. T.).
' See Col. Murc's Literature of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 305-7.
46 POINTS OF CONTACT BEWEEN HIM AND CHAHON. Chap. II.
and 4. The destruction of the fleet of Mardonius off Mount Athos. Of these four events, one only — the dream of Astyages — is really trivial; the others are such as every writer who gave an account of the struggle between Greece and Persia, would have felt himself called upon to mention, and of which, there- fore, both Charon and Herodotus must necessarily have given a description. With regard to the dream, we do not know in what words Charon related it, or whether his relation really coincided closely with the account given by Herodotus. TertulKan, who alone reports the agreement, speaks of it in general terms ;' and if it should be admitted that he means a close agreement, still it must be remembered that TertuUian, as a historical authority, is weak and of little credit. With regard to the other cases of agreement, it is certain that they were not either minute or exact. The Pseudo-Plutarch, indeed, overstates the difference between the writers when he represents Charon as in two of the passages contradicting Herodotus.* There is in neither case any real contradiction,* though the two writers certainly leave a different impression ; but what deserves particularly to be remarked is, that Herodotus on each occasion furnishes a number of additional details; so that although the narrative of Charon might (conceivably) have been drawn from his, it is impossible that his narrative should have been teken from that of Charon. With regard to the remaining passage, there is still further indication of disagreement. Charon must have made pigeons occupy a prominent place in his description of the destruction of the Persian armament, for his account of it led him to remark that " then first did white pigeons appear in
' TertuUian, after relating the dream from Herodotus, merely says, "Hoc etiam Charon Lampsacenus, Hcjodoto prior, tradit." (De Anim. c. 46.)
• Cf. Plut. de Malign. Herod, p. 859 A, and p. 861 c.d.
' See the notes on the passages in question, i. 160, and v. 102.
Chap. II. THEIR DIFFERENCES. 47
Greece, which had been quite unknown previously." ^ It is needless to observe that in the narrative of Herodotus there is nothing upon which such a remark could hang. The circumstance, whatever it was, which led Charon to introduce such a notice, would seem to have been unknown to our author, whose love of marvels, whether natural or supernatural, would have prompted him to seize eagerly on an occasion of men- tioning so curious a fact of natural history. Further, it must be observed as tending at least to throw doubt on the supposed use of the great work of Charon by our author, that he was certainly unacquainted with Charon's "Annals of Lampsacus;" for, had he been aware that Pityusa (Fir-town) was the ancient name of that city — a fact put forward prominently by the Lampsacene writer ^ — he could not have failed to see the real point of the famous threat against the Lamp- sacenes made by Croesus, " that he would destroy their city like a JirJ" ^ It seems, therefore, to have been concluded on very insufficient grounds that Herodotus was indebted for a portion of his materials to Charon : he was certainly ignorant of some of that author's labours, and most probably had no knowledge of any of them.* It is even possible that Charon, no less than
* Ft. 3 — preserved by Athenaeus (Deipn. ix. p. 394 e). Col. Mure strangely views this passage as one of those which most distinctly prove Herodotus to have been indebted to Charon, comparing it with Herod, i. 138, and regarding both writers as bearing testimony to the " supersti- tious aversion of the Persians to wliite pigeons." But how does Charon's statement that "white pigeons first appeared in Greece at the time of Mardonius' failure," imply that the Persians looked on them with " su- perstitious aversion " ?
* See the fragment, preserved by
ment of MUller (Fr. Hist. Gr. vol. i. p. 33).
• "ntrvorrpoTFoi/." Herod, vi. 37.
* Col. Mure thinks that the work of Herodotus contains an allusion (vi. 55) to Charon's * Si)artan Magistrates' (Lit. of Greece, vol. Iv. p. 306). Charon is, he observes, " the only author who is recorded to have treated of the subjects" which Herodotus there passes over as already considered by others. But even granting — what is not at all certain — that Charon's work contained an account of the ante-Dorian period, it is clear that he was not the only writer who had
Plutarch (De Virt. Mulier. p. 255 a), treated of the subject, since Herodotus wluch is placed sixth in the arrange- in the passage itself refers to several.
48
DI0NYSIU8 OF MILETUS.
Chap. n.
Xanthus, may have published his works subsequently to the time when Herodotus, with the first draft of his history completed, left Asia for Attica.*
With regard to Dionysius of Miletus, the remaining author, whose works may be supposed to have been used largely by Herodotus, it is impossible to come to a conclusion by the aid of any such analysis as that which has served to negative the claims of Charon and Xanthus, since of Dionysius we do not possess any fragments.* His age is certainly such as to make it likely that Herodotus would have known of his writ- ings ;' but the absolute silence observed by our author with regard to him, and the probable bareness and scantiness of his narrative, contravene the notion that his historical works, however great an advance upon those of his predecessors, were found by Herodotus to be very valuable, either as materials for history or as models of style. As the earliest of the prose writers who turned his attention to the relation of actual facts,
Col. Mure mistranslates Herodotus, when he represents him as saying '' he ahstains from tracing in detail the ori- gin or lineage of tiie Lacedaemonian kings, as that had been fully done by Others." What Herodotus abstains from tracing is not ** the origin and lineage of the Lacedaemonian kings," but &e establishment of the kingdom of Danaiis in the Peloponnese. This was a favourite subject with the my- thologers, whether ^ts or prose writers. See note to Book vi. ch. 55. * The age of Charon is very uncer- tain. The passage in Suidas which should fix his birth is corrupt, and this leaves us without any exact data for his period of writing. He is gene- rally said to have been earlier than Herodotus (Dionys. Hal. de Thuc. Jud. p. 769 ; Plut. de Malign. Her. p. 859 A ; Tertull. de An. c. 46), and Suidas makes his acme synchronise with the Persian war. But there is evidence that he composed history later than b.c. 465, since he spoke of
the fiight of Themistocles to the court of Artaxerxes in that year. (Plut. Vit. Themistocl. c. 27.) Dionysius (1. s. c.) couples him with Hellanicus, who outlived the battle of Arginusas, B.C. 406, and according to one account resided at the court of Amyntas ILf who ascended the throne in B.C. 894. As Hellanicus was certainly a later writer than Herodotus, so Charon mAy have been.
* Only two references to matters contained in the works of Dionysius have been discovered: one mentions him among the writers who considered Danaiis to have brought the alphabet to Greece, rather than Cadmus, and the other notices that he made the name of Mount Ha?mus neuter. (See Miiller's Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. ii. p. 5.) Nothing is to be gathered from such scanty and insignificant data.
' He was contemporary with Hcca- t«us (Suidas ad voc. 'E/coraloff),, with whom he is usually coupled.
Chap. n. WRITINGS OP HECATiEUSL 49
we may be sure that he fully shared in that dryness and jejuneness of composition, that Laconic curtness of narration, and that preference of the trivial over the important, which characterise the productions of the period.® Still Herodotus may have used this writer for the events wherewith he was contemporary, espe- cially for those of which Ionia was the scene, and of which Dionysius must have been an eye-witness ; and there is at any rate more likelihood of his having been under important obligations to this author than to any of those other historical writers from whom he has been thought to have borrowed.
The only prose works with which Herodotus distinctly shows himself familiar are the " Grenealogies " and ** Greography " of HecataBus, and the treatises of the mythologers. From these sources he may undoubtedly have drawn to some considerable extent ; but it is re- markable that he refers to Hecataeus chiefly in disparage- ment,* and to the mythological writers as relieving him from the necessity of entering upon a subject which had been discussed by them/ It must, therefore, on the whole be pronoimced that he probably owed but little to the historical literature of his country, which was indeed in its infancy, and can scarcely have contained much information of an authentic character which was not accessible to him in another manner. With the single exception of Dionysius, the Greek writers of history proper were so little removed from his own date, that the sources from which they drew were as accessible to him as to them. To the geographers he may have been more largely indebted. A writer of weak authority* accuses him of having copied word for word from Hecataeus his long descriptions of the
' Soe the specimens given below, pi^es 148, 149. • See ii. 21, 23, 143, iv. 36.
» Herod, vi. 55.
' Porphyry, quoted by Eusebius (Praep. Ev. X. 3, vol. ii. p. 459).
VOL. L E
60
SCYLAX,
Chap. II.
phoenix, the hippopotamus, and the mode of taking the crocodile. It seems, however, improbahle that he should have had recourse to another author for descriptions of objects and occurrences with which he was likely to have been well acquainted himself; and with regard to the phcBnix, his own words declare that his description is taken from a picture.' Still the (Geography of Hecataeus may probably have been of use to him in his accounts of places which he had not himself visited, as in his enumeration of the tribes inhabiting Northern Africa, which may have been drawn to some extent from that writer.* He also, it is evident, knew intimately the works of certain other geogra- phers, for whom however he does not express much respect.* It has been maintained that the genuine work of Scylax was, almost beyond a doubt, among the number ;• if so, Herodotus certainly evinced his judgment in contemptuously discarding the wonderful tales told by that writer concerning various strange races of men in remote parts of the world, which reduce his credibility below that of almost any other traveller.*
• Herod, ii. 73.
* Hecataeus roentioiied the Psylli, the Mazyes or Maxyes, the Zaneces, and the Zygantes as nations inhahiting these parts (see Fragments 303, 304, 306, and 307), all of whom appear in Herodotus (iv. 173, 191, 193, and 194).
» See a. 15, 17, iv. 36, 42, 45.
' See Mure's Literature of Greece, vol. iv. p. 309. Col. Mure says, that *' as several notices of Southern Africa and Asia, transmitted by later geo- graphers on the authority of Scylax, are identical in Substance with the accounts given by Herodotus of the same region, there is the less reason to doubt his having been acquainted with the original work of that enter- prising mariner." I do not under- stand to what notices he alludes. The onl^ passages, so far as I am aware, which can be referred with any degree
of probability to the genuine Scylax, are Arist. FoL vii. 14 ; Harpocrat. ad voc. xm6 yrjs olKovyr€f ; rhilostrat. Vit Apoll. Tyan. iiL 47 ; and TzetBefl, Chil. vii. 144. To one only of tiiese, that in Harpocration (which speaks of Troglodytes), can Herodotus by any possibility allude. And even here £ should understand in Scylax, the Troglodytes of the Arabian Gulf (cf. Strab. xvi. p. 1103, 1107), in Hero- dotus (iv. 183) those of the interior (Strab. xvii. p. 1173). From the age of Scylax, and the near vicinity of his birthplace to Halicamassus, it seems likely that Herodotus would have known his works, if he wrote any. Perhaps it has not yet h&en quite satisfactorily established that the real Scylax left behind him any writings.
7 Scylax, or the writer upon India who assumed his name, asserted that
coAP.n.
ABISTEAS.
61
There is more direct evidence* that Herodotus made use of Aristeas, an author who had written, under the name of " Arimaspea," a poem containing a good deal of geographical information concerning the countries towards the north of Europe, partly the result of his own personal ohservation. Undoubtedly he also profited from the maps whose construction he ridiculed ;• but which, rude and incorrect in detail as they may have been, could not have failed to be of immense service to him in clearing his views, and giving him the truejiotion of geographical description.
In enumerating the sources from which Herodotus drew the materials of his work, it would be wrong to conjQne ourselves to a consideration of the early prose writers. It has been just noticed that one of the geographers to whom he was certainly beholden — Aristeas, the author of the Arimaspea — was a poet ; and there is reason to suspect that considerable portions of his historical narrative may have likewise had a poetical origin. Not to dwell on the poetic cast of BO much that he has written, which might perhaps be ascribed to the character of his own mind and to the fact that he modelled his style mainly on that of the poets — there are distinct grounds for believing that certain portions of his history, which are strongly marked by this character, had been previously made the subjects of their poetry by writers with whose compositions he was acquainted ; and in such cases it is but reasonable to suppose that he drew, to a greater
there dwelt 5n that country men with feet of so large a size that they were in the hahit of using them as parasols (Philostr. 1. B. c.), and spoke of others whose ears were like winnowing-fans (Tzetzes, 1. s. c.). To the same writer are to be traced the fables, repeated afterwards by IMmachus and Megas- thenes (Strab. i. p. 105), concerning men in India who had only one eye,
and others whose ears were so big that they slept in them (Tzetz. 1. s.c).
» Herod, iv. 13.
• Ibid. iv. 36. The first map known to the Greeks is said to have been con- structed by Anaximander (Apathem. i. 1), who lived about b.c. 600-530. Hecata^us greatly improved on it. Herodotus speaks of maps as common in his day (1. s. c).
K 2
52 NARRATIVE, RESULT OP PERSONAL INQUIRY. Chaf. H.
or less extent, from them. The mention of Archi- lochus in connexion with the poetic legend of Gjges and Candaules cannot but raise a suspicion that the whole story, as given in Herodotus, may have come from him ;* while the notices of Solon,* Pindar,' Alcseus,^ and Simonides,* who all celebrated contemporary per- sons and events, seem to show that he made some use of their writings in compiling his narrative. Further, it may be conjectured that the Persian authors to whom he refers in several places as authorities on the subject of their early national history,* were poets, the composers of those national songs of which Xenophon,* Strabo,* and other writers • speak, wherein were celebrated the deeds of the ancient kings and heroes, and particularly those of the hero-founder of the Empire, Cyrus.
Upon the whole, however, it must be pronounced that the real source of almost all that Herodotus has delivered down to us, whether in the shape of his- torical narrative or geographical description, was personal observation and inquiry. His accounts of countries are, in the great majority of cases, drawn from his own experience, and are full or scanty, according to the time which he had spent in the countries, in making acquaintance with their general character and special phenomena. Where he has not travelled himself, he trusts to the reports of others, but only, to all appearance, of eye-witnesses.^ If in any
> Bahr supposes Herodotus to refer only to the single iambic line of Ar- chiiochus — oC fUH rh Tvytm rov iroXv- Xftvtrov ficXfft — which has come down to us through Aristotle and Plutarch.
(Heo his note on Book i.ch. 12.) And >rs. LiddcU and Scott assign the same ififanfrif^ to the word ta/lpof in the liMsago (ldix\o, p. 680). But it ap- iMirN ir> me that Hchwcighffiuser, tMrchnf, Mu\ the translators generally *f« r\ii,Ui 111 u,\y\un the wprd here the iMffiM- ritrtiilMly lionie by it in later M«iM'« vf Hit Uiiiblo jHjetn,
• Herod, v. 113.
• Ibid. iii. 38.
• Ibid. V. 95.
» Ibid. V. 102, vii. 228.
• Ibid. i. 1-6, 95, 214 ad fin. ' Cyrop. I. ii. § 1.
• Book XV. p. 1041.
• As Athenseus, who quotes Dino to the same effect. (Deipoosoph. xiv, p. 633 D.)
• This is not always expressed, but it appears from his refusal to accept of any statements or descriptions as certain, unless reoeiyed from an eye-
Chap. IL
LIVING TESTIMONY.
53
case lie gives mere rumours which have come to him
at second-hand, he is careful to distinguish them from
his ordinary statements and descriptions.^ He seems
to have heen indefatigable in laying under contribution
all those with whom his active and varied Ufe brought
him in contact,^ and deriving from them information
concerning any regions un visited by himself, with which
they professed themselves acquainted. And as it was
by these means that he gathered the materials for the
geographical portion of his work, so by a very similar
method he obtained the facts which he has worked up
into his history. Herodotus, it must be remembered,
Hved and wrote within a century of the time when hi^
direct narrative may be said to commence, viz., the
first year of Cyrus. The true subject of his history—
the Persian War of Invasion — ^was yet more recent,
its commencement falling less than fifty years from
the time of his writing. He would thus stand in
regard to his main subject somewhat in the position
of a writer at the present day who should determine
to compose an original history of the last war with
Napoleon, while, in respect of the earlier portion of his
direct narrative, he would resemble one who should
make his starting-point the accession of George III. to
the throne. Abundant living testimony would thus, it
is plain, be accessible to him for the later and more
important portion of his history, while for the middle
portion he would be able to get a certain amount of
such evidence, which would fail him entirely for the
witness. Hence his reluctance to allow of a sea to the north of Europe (iii. 115, ou^ci/off ttvToiTTco) ytvo- fifvov ov dwafuu oKovaai ; compare iv. 45), and his refusal to describe the coTintries above Scythia (iv. 10, ov-
tvyafuu irvBifrBat), or those above the Argippapans (iv. 25), and Tsaedo- niaus (ibid.). Certain knowledge (r6
arptKti) seems to mean knowledge thus derived. (See iii. 98, 116; iv. 16 25 • V. 9.)
i See ii.' 32, 33 ; Iv. 16, 24, 26-27, 32.
* Marked indications of this prac- tice of inquiry will be found in the following passages : ii. 19, 28, 29, 34, 104 ; iii. 115 ; iv. 16.
64f MONUMENTAL BEGOBDS IN GREECE. Chap. II.
early period. Even then, however, he might obtain from living persons the accomits which they had received from those who took active part in the trans- actions. This, accordingly, is what Herodotus seems to have done. Travelling over Europe and Asia, he every- where made inquiries from the various parties concerned in the matters about which he was writing ; and from the accounts which he thus received, compared and balanced against each other, he composed his narra- tive. Where contemporary evidence failed him, or even where it was scanty, he extended his inquiries, endeavouring in each case to arrive at the truth by sifting and comparing the different reports,* and often deriving his information from the sons or grandsons of those who had been personally engaged in the transactions. The stories of Thersander* and of Archias* are respectively specimens of the maimer in which he gained his knowledge of the more recent and the earlier facts which enter into his narrative. Of course the more remote the events the more depend- ent he became upon mere general tradition and belief, which, imless in the bare outline of matters of great public concern^ or in cases where the popular belief is checked and supported by documentary evidence of some kind or other, is an authority of the least trustworthy character. Before dismissing this subject it will, therefore, be desirable to consider what amount of such evidence existed among the various nations into whose earlier history Herodotus pushed his in- quiries, and how far it was accessible to himself or to those from whom he derived his information.
In Greece itself it is certain that there existed monu- mental records of two different kinds, containing un-
* See i. 1-5, 20, 70, 75, 95, 1 vii. 150, 213, 214 ; viii. 94, 117-120 ; 214; ii. 3. 147; iii. 1-3, 9, 32, ' "' '" 66, 120-121; iv. 5-13, 150- y. 44, 67, 85, 86; vi. 53;
J^6,
ix. 74.
• Book ix. chs. 15, 16.
• Book iii. ch. 55.
Cbap. U.
DEDICATOBY INSCBIPTIONS.
£5
doubtedly but few details, yet still of great importance, as furnishing fixed points about which the national traditions might cluster, and as checks upon the inven- tiveness of fabulists. The earliest were the lists of kings, priests, and victors at the games, preserved in some of the principal cities and sanctuaries,' which formed in after times a basis for the labours of chrono- logers,^ and carried up a skeleton of authentic history to the return of the HeraclidsB. Besides these, there were to be found in the various temples, agorae, and other public places throughout Greece, particularly in the fireat national sanctuaries of Delphi and Olympia, a vaTBumber of inscribed oflFerings-lmany of them of great antiquiiy — containing in their dedicatory inscrip- tions curious and in some instances detailed notices of historical events, of the utmost value to the historian. Of the latter class of moniunents Herodotus shows him*- self to have been a diligent observer, and considerable portions of his history are authenticated in this satisfac- tory manner. To instance in a single book — the in- dependence of Phrygia under a royal line affecting the names of Midas and Grordias, the wealth and order of succession of the last or Mermnade dynasty of Lydian
7 As the public registers (dva- ypa(l>aX) at Sparta (Plut. Vit. Ages. c. li)), containing the names of all the kings, and (prolibly) the number of years they reigned — ^the ancient chro- nicles {dpvaia ypafJLfutra) at Elis (Pausan. V. iv. § 4)---the registers at Sicyon and Argos (Plut de Mus. p. 1134 A. B.)— the list of the Olympian victors from the time of Coraebus, pre- senred in the sanctuary of Jupiter at Olympia (Pausan. V. viii. § 3 ; Euseb. Chron. Can. Pars 1. c. zxxii.) — that of the Camean victors at Sparta (Athen. xiv. p. 635 E.)— and that of the archons at Athens (Polyb. xii. xii. § 1).
• Charon's work on the 'Qiief
Rulers of Sparta * was probably taken from the ancient registers of the Lacc- dasmonians (see 0. MUUer's Dorians, vol. i. p. 160, E. T. ; and C. Muller*s Fr. Hist. Gr., vol. i. p. xviii.). Hel- lanicus in his * Priestesses of Juno,' and his * Camean Victors,* followed no doubt the authentic catalogues at Sparta and Argos. Timaeus compared Uie lists of archons at Athens, kings and ephors at Sparta, and priestesses at Argos, with the catalogue of the Olympic victors (Polyb. 1. s. c). Eratosthenes and Apollodorus seem to have founded their early Greek chronology, first on the list of Spartan kings, and then on the Olympic cata- logue. (Mdller*s Dorians, I. s. c.)
56
HISTORICAL PAINTINGS,
GiiAP. IL
kings, the enormous riches of Croesus, the friendly terms on which he stood with Sparta, and his great devotion to the Greek shrines ; the escape of Arion from ship- wreck, the filial devotion of Cleobis and Bito, and the re- pulse of the Spartans by the Tegeans on their first attempt to conquer Arcadia, are all supported by this kind of tertimo^y within the sp^ of «ven,y chapte™ alter the history opens.* More important than any of these instances is that of the two pillars of Darius, which contained an a<5Count, both in Greek and in Persian, of the forces wherewith that monarch crossed the Bos- phorus, and which were seen by Herodotus, in detached pieces, at Byzantium.^ Of equal consequence was the famous tripod, part gold and part bronze, which the confederate Greeks dedicated after the victory of Plataea to Apollo at Delphi, whereon were inscribed the names of the various states who took part against the Persians in the great struggle, from which Herodotus was able to authenticate his lists of the combatants.* Other monu- ments of the same kind are known to have existed,* and in addition to them, historical paintings, whether in the shape of votive tablets, as that dedicated by Mandrocles the Samian in the temple of Juno. at Samos,* or of mere ornaments, as those wherewith Pericles adorned the Poecile," would serve as striking memorials of particu- larly important occurrences. From these and similar sources of information Herodotus would be able to check the accoimts orally delivered to him, and in some cases to fill them up with accuracy. It haa been said that he " was by no means so zealous an investigator of this
• See i. 14, 24, 25, 31, 50-2, 66, 69. Further instances of the careful observance by Herodotus of such me- morials will be found i. 92 ; ii. 181, 182 ; iii. 47 ; iv. 15, 152 ; v. 59-61, 77 ; vi. 14 ; vii. 228 ; and in the passages noted below.
» Cf. iv. 87.
• This inscription has been recently recovered. See notes on viii. 82, and
ix. 84.
' As the colossal statue of Jupiter at Olympia, on the base of which were also engraved the names of the Greeks who combated the Persians. Sec Pausan. V. xxiii. § 1, and compare note to book ix. ch. 28.
* Herod, iv. 88.
* Pausan. I. xv.
CHiLF. IL
PUBLIC REGISTERS-'
67
class of monuments as might have been desired ;" • and undoubtedly it would have been highly interesting to ourselves had his work contained fuller and more exact descriptions of them. But it may be questioned whether his history would not have been injured as a composi- tion by a larger infusion of the element of antiquarian- ism. We are not to conclude that his inquiries were limited to the monuments of the contents of which he makes distinct mention, since he does not go on the general plan of parading the authorities for his state- ments ; and, with regard to some of the most important of the monumental records which he cites, it is only casually and as it were by accident that he lets us see he was acquainted with them.^ His practice of ob- serving is sufficiently apparent, and it is but fair to presume that he carried it to a far greater extent than can be exactly proved from his writings. It is certain that he visited all the most important of the Greek shrines,® and when there, his inquisitive turn of mind would naturally lead him to make a general examina- tion of the offerings. If we view his references to these objects, not as intended for an enumeration of all that he had seen, but as a set of specimens, indicating the range and general character of his inquiries, we shall probably form a far truer estimate of his labours in this respect than if we regarded his investigations as only extending just so far as we can distinctly trace them. So too with respect to the other class of monu- ments— the public registers, containing the lists of
• Mare's Literature of Greece, vol. iv. p. 312.
' If Herodotus had not happened, in speaking of the desertion to the GrecK side of a Tenian vessel before ttie battle of Salamis (viii. 82), to no- tice the inscription of the Tenians upon the Delphic tripod on that ac- count, it might have been doubtful whether he had seen, or noticed, that most important monument. In his '
direct account of the dedication of the tripod (ix. 81) he says nothing of its having borne any inscription.
• As Delphi (i. 14, 19, 25. &c.). Do- dona (ii. 62), Aba) Mii. 27), Tajna- mra (i. 24), Apollo Ismenius at Thebes (i. 52 ; v. 59), Juno at Samoa ii. 182 ; iii. 60), Diana at Ephesus i. 92), Venus at Cyrene (ii. 181), Erechtheus at Athens (viii. 55 ; comp. V. 77), Apollo at Thornax (i. 09), &c.
{
58
ASIATIC AND EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS. Chap. U.
kings, priests, archons, &c. — it would be a mistake to suppose that he had not seen them because he nowhere quotes them as authorities. It is impossible that they should have been unknown to him, or when known have failed to attract his attention; and we might therefore conclude, even without any evidence direct or indirect, that he must have made use of them to some extent. As the case stands, we may go a step further, and regard it as in the highest degree pro- bable that in tracing the royal descent of the Spartan kings to Hercules,* Herodotus followed the authority of the Lacedaemonian anagraphs; and if so, we may perhaps refer to the same source his general notions of Greek chronology.^
The foreign countries whose history Herodotus em- braced in his general scheme, present in regard to their monumental records all possible varieties, from entire defect to the most copious abundance. Egypt, Baby- lonia, and Persia, the most important of them, possessed in their inscriptions upon rocks, temples, palaces, papyrus-rolls, bricks, and cylinders, a series of con- temporary documents, extending, in the case of the last-mentioned, to the foundation of the monarchy, and in the other two going back to a far higher actual date, though not to a period so early in the lives of the nations. The recent discoveries in Mesopotamia, which have so completely authenticated the historical scheme of Berosus both in its outline and its details,* prove that
• Herod, vii. 204 ; viu. 131.
^ It is evident that Herodotus did not obtain his dates for the times of Hercules and of the Trojan war from a mere computation by generations ; for the 21 generations from Leonidas to Hercules (vii. 204), reckoned accord- ing to his own estimate of three gene- rations to the century (ii. 142), would give for the time of the hero little more than 700 years before Herodotus, instead of 900, which is his calculation
(ii. 146). He must therefore have possessed some more definite cdirono- logical basis, which may have been furnished by the Spartan registers, if (as 0. Miiller conjectures, Dor. vdL i. p. 150) they contained not merely the names of the kings, but the length of their reigns.
' See the Essays on Babylonian and Assyrian History, appended to book i. Essays vi. and vii.
Ghap.il
WRITINGS ON SKINS.
59
to the Babylonians the history of their country as written upon its monuments was open, and could be traced back with accuracy for 2000 years before it merged into mere myth and fable. In Egypt a still earlier date is said to have been reached, and — ^what- ever may be thought of the historical character of the more ancient kings — at least from the time of the eighteenth dynasty, which is anterior to the Exodus of the Jews, the monuments contained contemporary records of the several monarchs, and abundant mate- rials for an exact and copious history.* In Persia, which, on starting into life, succeeded to the inherit- ance of Assyrian and Babylonian civilisation, writing seems to have been in use from the first, and the sculp- tured memorials, which still exist, of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes are evidences of the fact witnessed by Herodotus in several places,* that monumental records were in common use imder the early Achaemenian kings. These seem to have consisted not only of grand public inscriptions upon pillars, rocks, tombs, and palaces,* but also of more private and more copious documents, pre- served in the treasuries of the empire, at Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, &c.,* and written upon skins or parch- ment,' which contained a variety of details concerning
* See the Historical Notice of Egyi^t in the Appendix to book ii.
* Book iii. 136; book iv. chs. 87 and 91 ; book vii. ch. 100 ; book viii. eh. 90.
* Rock inscriptions of Darius re- main at Behistuu and at Elwand, near Hamadan ; similar memorials of Xerxes are found at Elwand, and at Van in Armenia. The tomb of Da- rius at Nakhsh-i-Rustam has one per- fect and one imperfect inscription — neither however, apparently, tnat re- corded by Strabo ^xv. p. 1036). The tomb of Cyrus had an inscription, as we learn both from Strabo (I. s. c.) and Arrian (vi. 29 ; see note on book i. ch. 214), and the area which en- cloeed it is still marked by pillars on
which we read the words, "I am Cyrus the king — the Achfemenian." The great palace at Persepolis contains no fewer than four inscrii)tions of Darius and four of Xerxes, as well as others belonging to later kings. Pillar inscriptions are mentioned by Herodotus (iv. 87 and 91), but their more perishable nature has caused them generally to disappear.
• See Ezra, v. 17 ; vi. 1-2. These records or chronicles are frequently mentioned by the Jewish historians. See, besides the above passages, Ezra iv. 15, 19 ; Esther ii. 23 ; vi. 1 ; Apoc. Esdr. vi. 23.
^ AKJiBtpaX ^aiXiKoi is the name under which Ctesias spoke of them (ap. Diod. Sic. ii. 32). He says they
60
INSCRIPTIONS IN WESTERN ASIA.
Chap. II.
the court and empire, of the greatest interest to the historian.^ In Scjthia, on the other hand, and among the rude tribes who inhabited Northern Africa, writing of any kind was probably unknown, and the traditions of the natives were altogether destitute of confirmation from monumental sourcea Other nations occupied an intermediate position between these extremes of abun- dance and want. Media from the time of Cyaxares,* Lydia,* Phrygia,* and the kingdoms of Western Asia generally,* were undoubtedly acquainted with letters ;
oontdned a regalar digest of the an- cient Persian history (riis nakatas npd(€it amrrerayfUvasX and that the keeping of them was enforced by law.
" AmcHig the contents of the Royal Chronicles may be confidently enu- merated all decrees made by any king (Ezr. V. 17 ; vi. 2-3), all signal ser- vices of any subject (Esth. vi. 1-2 ; comp. Herod, viii. 85 and 90), cata- logues of the troops brought into the field on great occasions (Herod, vii. 100), statements of the amount of revenue to be drawn from each of the provinces (comp. Herod, iii. 90-94), &c. Heeren (As. Nat. i. p. 86) sup- poses, that *' all the king's words and actions** were placed upon record, and calls the Chronicles "Diaries," but this view is not supported by his authorities. The royal scribes (ypafi- fiaTurrai) seem certainly to have been in constant attendance upon the king (sec, besides Herod, vii. 100, and viii. 90, Esther iii. 12, and viii. 9), and were ready ijo record any remarkable occurrence, but it is not probable that they were bound to enter the events of each day.
• No strictly Median records have come down to us, nor have we posi- tive proof of any acquaintance on the part of the Medes with letters. ITie ancient portions of the Zendavesta, which belonged to them in common with other nations of the Arian stock, were certainly handed down by niomorv. lUit it can hardly be sup- posed that after the conquest of As- ">yCyaxares, the Medes would
remain witboat an alphabet. Pro- bably the Persian alphabet is that framed by the Arian Medes on com- ing in contact with the Assyrians. The Persians would naturally adopt it from them on their oonc^uest of Media.
' No Lydian inscriptions have been as yet discovered, though the tomb of Alyattes, which had inscriptions in the time of Herodotus (i. 93), has been carefully explored (see note ^ to book i. ch. 93). The Lydians, how- ever, are likely to have used letters at least as early as the Asiatic Greeks.
■ Several rhrygian inscriptions, chiefly epitaphs, have been discovered in the country. They are all pro- bably more ancient than the Persian conquest of Asia Minor. The only one of much importance is the in- scription on the tomb of king Midas at Dogardn. (See note ' on book i. cb. 14, and compare the last Essay in this volume.)
' As Lycia, Cilicia, and Armenia. The Lycian writing appears on coins and inscriptions, which are abundant, but which seem to be none earlier than the time of Croesus (Fellows's Lycian Coins ; Chronolog. Table). Ci- lician writing is found on coins only. Armenia has some important rock in- scriptions. They are found in the neighbourhood of Van, and belong to a dynasty of native kings, who ap- pear to have reigned during the seventh and eighth centuries B. c. (See Col. Kawlinson's Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of I&bylonia and Assyria, p. 75.)
Chap. II.
INFORMATION RESPECTING EGYPT.
61
but there is no reason to believe that they were in pos- fiession of any very ancient or very important written records. Monumental remains of an early date in these countries are either entirely deficient, or at best ex- tremely scanty, and such of them as possessed a native literature betrayed, by the absurdity and mythic cha- racter of their annals, a lamentable Want of authentic materials for their early history.* Our chief inquiry in the present place will therefore be how far Herodotus, or those from whom he derived his information, may be presumed to have had access to the monumental stores which existed in such abundance in Egypt, Babylon, and in various parts of the Persian empire, and fit)m which, in two cases out of the three, authentic histories were actually composed more than a centuiy later by natives of the countries in question.*
With regard to Egypt, Herodotus has distinctly stated that his informants were the priests.* The sacerdotal body attached to the service of the temple of Phtha at Memphis furnished him with the bulk of his early Egyptian history; and he was further at the pains to test the accounts which he received from this quarter by seeking information on the same points from the priests of Amun at Thebes, and of Ra at Heliopolis. It may perhaps be questioned whether he obtained access to the ecclesiastics of the highest rank and greatest learning in Egypt, or only to certain subordinates and underlings; but even in the latter case he would draw his narrative from persons to whom the monumental history of their country was open, for this history was recorded without concealment upon the temples and other public edifices. What prevented his
* The fragments of Xanthus Lydus prove the Lydian annals to have run np into myth at a time not much preceding Gyges. The Armenian his- tories of Moees of Chordn^ and others, are yet more completely fahulous.
• By Manetho the Sehennyte, and Berosus the Babylonian, both con- temporaries of Alexander.
• Herod, ii. 3, 99, 118, 136, 142, &c.
62
SOURCE OF HIS EGYPTIAN ERROBS.
Chap.II,
Egyptian history from having a great-er character of authenticity waa, not the ignorance, but the dishonesty of his informants, who purposely exaggerated the glories of their nation, and concealed its disgraces and defeats. It is perhaps on the whole more likely that he had his historical information from the highest than from any inferior quarter. His own rank and station, the cir- cumstances under which he visited Egypt,* his entire satisfaction with his information,^ and the harmony which he found in the accoimts given him in remote places,* all seem to favour the supposition that he ob- tained access to the chief persons in the Egyptian hierarchy, who however took advantage of his sim- plicity and ignorance of the language, whether spoken or written,^ to impose upon him such a history of their country as they wished to pass current among the Greeks. Accordingly they magnified their antiquity beyond even their own notions of it,* reading him long
7 Supra, p. 13.
' Herodotus calls his informants throughout " the priests" — not ** cer- tain priests." It belongs to his sim- plicity to use no exaggeration in such a matter. Again, he goes to Helio- polis because the priests there were Alyvnrimp XoyiSraroi^ and receives information from those whom he so characterises (ii. 3).
• See ii. 4. ItdflfXtyop iSfioXo- ytovT^s a" <f> iari. As this har- mony was not the natural agreement of truth, it could only be the artificial agreement of concerted falsehood. The priests of Memphis must have pre- pared their brethren of Thebes and Heliopolis for the inquiries of the curious Greek, and have instructed them as to the answers which they should give. Such communications would most naturally take place be- tween the leading members of the sacerdotal colleges.
* That Herodotus did not under- the written character, is evident
mentioning tlmt the inscrip-
tion on the pyramid of Cheops was translated to him by his interpreter (ii. 125). His ignorance of the Bpoken language appears from his mistrans- lations of particular words, as of Pi- romis, which he renders "gentle- man'' (KaK6s Kaya069)f whereas it meant simply ** man " or *' human beinff."
* See Herod, ii. 100 and 142-3. By representing their priests as equally numerous with their kings, and declaring the priesthood to have descended in ^he direct line from father to son, the Memphite inform- ants of Herodotus gave him the no- tion that a settled monarchy had en- dured in Egypt for above 11,000 years. Their own records, even making no allowance for contem- porary kings or dynasties, gave a total of little more than 5000 years ; and (according to Syncellus) Mane- tho, n^aking some allowance on both scores, reduced the time between Menes and Herodotus to less than 3500 years.
Chap. 11.
IMPOSITIONS BY THE PRIESTS.
63
lists of monarchs whom they represented as consecutive, whereas they knew them to have been often contem- porary. They concealed from him altogether the dark period in their history — ^the time of their oppression mider the Hyksos, or shepherd-kings — of which he obtained but a single dim and indistinct glimpse,^ not furnished him apparently by the priests, but by the memory of the people. They knowingly falsified their monuments by assigning a late date to the pyramid- kings,^ whom they disliked, by which they flattered themselves that they degraded them. They distorted the true narrative of Sennacherib's miraculous discom- fiture, and made it tend to the glorification of one of their own body.* They succeeded in concealing all other invasions of their territory by the kings of Assyria and Babylon, even when subsequent to the settlement of the Greeks in their country.* Again, they were willing, in order to flatter their Greek allies, to bend their history into accordance with the mytho- logy of the Hellenic race, and submitted even to manu- facture a monarch for the express purpose of accommo- dating their inquisitive friends.' Thus in spite of the abundance of monumental records from which the Egyptian informants of our author had it in their power to draw, his Egyptian history is full of error.
* In the tradition, noticed in book ii. ch. 128, that the pyramids were the work of *' the shepherd Philition " (see note ad loc.). This tradition, which conflicted with the account re- ceived from the priests, is ascribed by Herodotos to ** the Egyptians.*'
♦Herod, ii. 124-9. The priests seem to have placed the pyramid- kings — who really intervened between Menea and Nitocris — as late as they ooald venture to do without incurriug a great riak of detection. As a re- markable inscription of Asychis (Herod, ii. 136) made express men- tion of the Bt(me pyramids, it would
have been rash to state that their builders lived later than that monarch.
» Sethos (Herod, ii. 141).
' As that of Nebuchadnezzar in the reign of Apries (Joseph. Ant. Jud. x. 10 ; Beros. Fr. 14 ; compare Jercm. xlvi, 25-6 ; Ezek. xxix. 19 ; xxx. 24- 5). Several of the Assyrian mon- archs, besides Sennacherib, attacked or received tribute from Egypt, as Shalmanu-bara (the black obelisk king) and Sargon.
7 Proteus, a name which bears no resemblance to auy of those in Ma- netho's lists.
61
THE HISTORY CORRECT IN OUTLINE.
Chap. IL
because they intentionally garbled and falsified their own annals, while he, from his ignorance of their language, was unable to detect the imposture.® Still, where national vanity or other special causes did not interfere, the history will be found to be fairly au- thentic. The kings themselves appear, with but one or two exceptions,* in the lists of Manetho, and upon the monuments ; the chronological order of their reigns is preserved with a single dislocation ; * the periods of prosperity and oppression are truly marked ; * the great works are assigned for the most part to their real authors; even the extravagance of the chronology is not without a historic basis, marking as it does the fact, confirmed by Manetho, that the Egyptians could pro- duce a catalogue of several hundred persons who had borne the title of king in their country between Menes and the Ramesside monarchs,' Hence, when the mo- numents are silent, and the statements of Herodotus are not incompatible with those of Manetho, they possess considerable weight, and may fairly be accept^ as having at least a basis of truth. They come from persons who had means of knowing the real history of their country, and who did not falsify it wantonly or unless to serve a purpose ; they may therefore be taken to be correct in their general outline except where they
' It may be doubted whether even the interpreters could read the hiero- glyphics. Most probably they only understood the demotic character.
* Proteus, Anysis, and Sethos are the only monarchs whose names can- not be recognised among Manetho^s kings. One of these (Anysis) can be otherwise identified. He is cer- tainly Bocchoris.
' That of the Pyramid-Kings. See note * on the last page.
■ The glory of the I^amesside dy- nasties (19th and 20th of Manetho) is distinctly indicated by the expeditions I of Sesostris and the wealth of Rhamp- I
sinitus. The sufferings at the time of the Exodus seem to be mythically expressed by the blindness of Phero. The oppression endured under the py- ramid builders is undoubtedly a fact. The decline of the empire tmder the Tanite kings is marked by the general poverty in the reign of Asychis.
' Manetho has between four and five hundred kings during this inter- val. With a deduction on account of two peculiarly suspicious cases (Dyn. 7. 70 kings, in 70 days ; and Dyn. 17. 43 kings, shepherds, and 43 kings, The- bans), the number remaining is 354, a near approach to the 330 of Herodotus.
C^AP. IT.
BABYLONIAN HISTORY.
6&
subserve national vanity or have otherwise a suspicious appearance. On these grounds the reign of Sethos in some part of Egypt, and the dodecarchy, for which Herodotus is the sole authority, may perhaps be entitled to rank as historic facts, though unconfirmed by other writers.
In Babylon Herodotus appears to have obtained some of his information from the Chaldaeans attached to the temple of Belus,* who were persons to whom the real history of their native land must undoubtedly have been familiar. It is however very doubtful whether he derived much of his information from this quarter.^ His Babylonian history may be said to be correct in outline,* and tolerably exact in certain important par- ticulars.' Still it contains some most remarkable mis- takes,^ which seem to show either that the persons from whom he derived his materials were not well versed in their country's annals, or that he misunderstood their communications. The mistakes in question, it is worthy of special remark, imlike those which disfigure his
* See Herod. L 181, suh Jin, and 183.
* The only information expressly ascribed to the Chaldaeans consists of details respecting the temple of Belus. Herodotus does not say whence he de- rived his historical materials.
' Carrying back Babylonian his- tory for some seven hundred years, he noticed, in the first place, two pe- riods; one — the first — during which it was under Assyria, yet had sove- reigns of its own, like Semiramis (i. 184) ; the other, during which it was independent (i. 106, 178). The pe- riod of independence he knew to be little more than two generations (com- pare i. 74 and 188) ; — that of sub- jection he was aware exceeded six centuries. This latter he also divided (as Berosos does) into two portions, a lonper, and a shorter one ; while As- syria was a great empire, and while she was only a powerful kingdom. This division appears to correspond to the
VOL. L
Upper and Lower Assyrian dynasties of Berosus.
f As in the duration of the first Assyrian dynasty — where his 520 years (i. 95) manifestly represent the (more exact) 526 years of Berosus (ap. Euseb. Chron. Can. pars I. cap. iv.) ; in the commencement of the independence on the destruction of Nineveh (i. 178) ; in the name of the last king (Labynetus = Nabu-nit), and the circumstances of the capture of Babylon (i. 191) ; in the time of Semiramis (i. 184), &c.
* Particularly the following: — 1. That Labynetus (^Nabunit) was the son of a former king, and of a queen (Nitocris) ; 2. That he immediately succeeded the latter ; 3. That the Ba- bylonian monarch, contemporary with Cyaxares, was also named Labynetus ; 4. That he was the father of the last king ; and'5. That queens ever ruled at Babylon in their own name.
66
AUTHENTICITY OF BBBOSUS.
Chap. n.
Egyptian history, occur in the most recent portion of the narrative, where conscious falsification would have heen most easy of detection, and therefore least likely to have heen adventured on. It seems prohahle that Herodotus paid but a single hasty visit to the Mesopo- tamian capital, and when there he may have found a diflSculty in obtaining a qualified interpreter/ He would also, as a Greeks be destitute of any particular claim on the attention of the Babylonian savansy and he would therefore naturally be left to pick up the bulk of his information from those who made a living by show- ing the town and its remarkable buildings to strangers. The quality of the historical information possessed by such informants may be judged by the reader's expe- rience of this class of persons at the present ietj. Herodotus no doubt endeavoured to penetrate into a more learned circle, but the Babylonians of the time would have been destitute of any of those motives^ whether of gratitude or of self-interest, which induced the Egyptian priests to lay aside their reserve, and consent to gratify the curiosity of their Greek auxiliaries. It must be confessed, at any rate, that in the Babylonian history of our author we find but few traces of that exact and extensive knowledge of their past condition which the Chaldaean priest-caste certainly possessed^ and which enabled Berosus, more than a century later, to produce a narrative, extending over a space of above fifteen hundred years, which has been lately confirmed in numerous instances by contemporary documents, and which appears to have been most completely authentic.
* The Greek refligees in Persia would study Persiaa, the ofiScial lan- guaee» rather than any other. The ChaTdfBuis on the other hand would speak the Semitic dialect of the in- seriptionsy and understand the ancient Boythio language of their country, hut would have little knowledge of Per- sian. The communications hetwcen
Herodotus and the Chaldaean priests would he much like those whicn take ^ace now-a-days hetween inquisitive European travellers and grave Pekin Mandarins, through the intorention of some foreign settler at Canton, who has picked up a slight smattering of the local colloquial dialect.
Chaf. U. PERSIAN INFORMATION OF HERODOTUS.
67
The Persian informants of Herodotus seem to have consisted of the soldiers and officials of various ranks, with whom he necessarily came in contact at Sardis and other places, where strong bodies of the dominant people were maintained constantly. He was born and bred up a Persian subject ; and though in his own city Persians might be rare visitants, everywhere beyond the limits of the Grecian states they formed the official class, and in the great towns they were even a con- siderable section of the population.* This would be the case not only in Asia Minor, but still more in Babylon and Susa, where the court passed the greater portion of the year — ^both which cities Herodotus seems to have visited.' There is no reason to believe that he ever set foot in Persia Proper, or was in a country where the Arian element preponderated. Hence his mistakes with regard to the Persian religion,' which he con- founded with the Scythic worship of Susiana, Armenia, and Cappadocia. Still he would enjoy abundant op- portunities of making himself acquainted with the views entertained on the subject of their previous his- tory by the Persians themselves — from his ready access to them in his earlier years, from the number of Greeks who understood their language, and, above all, from the existence of native historians to whose works he
* See Herod, v. 100-1 ; vi. 4 and 20.
■ The visit of Herodotus to Baby- lon, althongh doubted by some, is (I think) certain, not merely from the minuteness of his descriptions (i. 178- 183), but from several little touches ; e. g, 1. The expression in oh. 183, '' as the Chaldeans 9aid ** (&r ?X c y o v tl XaXdaibc), which can only mean " as they told me when I was there,^* 2. The remark in the same chapter with regard to the colossal statue of Bel, made of solid gold (comp. Dan. iii. 1), which once stood in the sacred enclo- sure of the great temple of Belus — " I did not see it " (cyo>/i(V lup wk tldov).
which has no force nor fitness except in contrast to the other tilings i)re- viously described, which he must mean to say that he did see ; and 3. The statement in ch. 193, that he re- frained from mentioning the size of the millet and sesame plants, because he knew that those who had not visited the country would not believe what he had previously related of the produce. The visit to Susa rests mainly on vi. 119 ; it receives, however, some con- firmation from the account of the royal road as far as that capital in v. 52.
■ See the Essay " On the Religion of the Ancient Persians."
f2
68
TENDENCY OF THE PERSIANS TO ROMANCE. Chap. H.
had access.* The Persians, from the date of their conquest of the Medes, possessed (as has been already- shown *) a variety of authentic documents, increasing in number and copiousness with the descent to more recent times, and capable of serving as a solid basis for history. Moreover, their entire annals at the time when Herodotus wrote were comprised within a space of little more than a century — about the same distance which separates the Englishman of the present day from the rebellion of 1745 — a period for which even oral tradition is a tolerably safe guide. We might have expected under these circumstances a more purely historic narrative of the events in question, and a greater correctness, if not a greater amplitude of detail,* than the work of Herodotus is foimd in fact to supply. The deficiency is traceable to two causes. Among the Persians, then as now, the critical judgment was far less developed than the imagination, and their histo- rians, or rather chroniclers (Xoyioi), delighted to diversify with all manner of romantic circumstances the history of their earlier kings. This was especially the case with Cyrus, the hero-founder of the empire, whose adventures were narrated with vast exaggeration and immense variety.'' Herodotus too was by natural temperament inclined to look with favour on the poetical and the marvellous, and where he had to
^ See especially book i. ch. 1 ; and compare i. 95, and 214 sttb fin. See also p. 52 of this chapter.
* Supra, p. 59.
• The early history of Cyrus in He- rodotus is purely romance — ^his treat- ment of Crcesus, and the manner of his own death, seem to be fabulous ; —in the history of Cambyses and of the Pseudo-Smerdis are several im- portant errors ; — the debate among the conspirators as to the best form of government, and the story of (Ebares are most certainly fictions ; so pro- bably are the stories of S^loson and
Zopyrus ; — the circumstances of the expedition of Darius against Scythia are probably exaggerated. It is not till the time of the Ionian revolt that the Persian history becomes fully tnistworthy. Among the omissions which most surprise us are those of the Sacan and Bactrian wars of Cyrus, the reduction of Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Cilicia by Cambyses; the revolt of the Medes from Darius ; and his conquest of a part of India.
^ As Herodotus himself indicates. See i. 95 and 214.
Chap.il
CONTRADICTIONS.
69
choose between a number of conflicting stories would be disposed to reject the prosaic and commonplace for the romantic and extraordinary. Thus he may often have accepted an accoimt which to modems seems pal- pably untrue when the authentic version of the story came actually under his cognisance. In other cases he may have pieced together the sober relations of writers who drew from the monuments, and, the hvely inven- tions of romancers, not perceiving the superiority of the former.® Thus his narrative, where it can be compared with the Persian monumental records, presents the curious contrast of minute and exact agreement in some parts with broad and striking diversity in others — the diversity being chiefly in those points where there is the most of graphic colouring and highly-wrought description — ^the agreement being in names, dates, and the general outline of the results attained as distin- guished from the mode in which they were accom- plished.* Unfortunately a direct comparison of this
* Hence arise contradictions, as that in the Scythian war of Darius, where the time during which the Persians are actually in the country, and the time which such a march as that as- signed them must have occupied, are -widely at variance. See note to book iv. ch. 133.
• The period of Persian history for which alone this comparison is at pre- sent possible, is that intervening be- tween the death of Smerdis and tlie (second) recovery of Babylon by Da- rius, where the Behistun inscription furnishes a running comment upon the third book of Herodotus. Here the name of Smerdis, his secret exe- cution by his brother, the expedition into Egypt, the bursting out of the Magian revolution while he was there, the death of Cambyses on hearing of the revolt, the quiet enjoyment of the crown for a while by the Pseudo- Smerdis, his personation of the sou of Cyrus, the sudden arrival of Darius, his six companions, their names with
one exception, the violent death of the pretender, the period of trouble which followed, the revolt and reduction of Babylon within a few years, are all correctly stated by our author, whose principal misstatements are the fol- lowing : — 1. The execution of Smer- dis (Bardius) after the commence- ment of the Egyptian expedition, which connects with the story of his drawing the Ethiopian bow (Herod, iii. 30) ; 2. The attack of the con- spirators upon the Magi in the palace at Susttf and the struggle there (chs. 76-9) ; 3. The debate on the form of government, and the question who should be king (chs. 80-7) ; 4. The Median character of the revolution ; and 5. The whole story of the mode in which Babylon was recovered. He also mistakes the real name of the Magus, which he supiwses to have been Smerdis. The full value and extent of our author's correctness is best estimated by contrast with the writer who, having had every oppor-
70
PERSIAN RECOBDS IN HERODOTUS.
Chap. II.
kind can but rarely be made, owing to the scantiness of the Persian records at present discovered ; but we are justified in assuming from the coincidences actually observable, that at least some of his authorities drew their histories from the monuments ; and it even seems as if Herodotus had himself had access to certain of the most important of those documents which were pre- served in the archives of the empire. It is not alto- gether easy to understand how this could have been brought about, but perhaps it is possible that either at Babylon or at Susa he may have obtained Greek tran- scripts of the records in question, or copies may have existed in the satrapial treasury of Sardis, in which case his acquaintance with them would ceaso to be surprising. The instances to which reference is especially intended are the account of the satrapies of Darius and the re- venue drawn from them in the third book, and the catalogue of the army of Xerxes in the seventh. These are exactly such documents as the royal archives would contain, and they have a character of minuteness and completeness which makes it evident that they are not the mere result of such desultory inquiries as Herodotus might have been able to make in the different coimtries where he travelled. If then these are actual Persian documents,^ we may conclude that the Persian history of Herodotus, at least from the accession of Darius, is
tunity of gaining exact information, professed to correct the errors of one whom he did not scruple to call ** a lying chronicler** (ap. Phot, Bibl. God. Lxxn. ad init.). Gtesias names the brother of Cambyses, Tanyox- aroes ; does not allow that Gambyses went into Egypt ; makes him die at Babylon of an accidental hurt which he had given himself; places the Ma- gian revolution after his death ; cor- rupts the names of two out of the six conspirators, and entirely changes the names of the other four ; follows He- rodotus in his account of the death of
the Mac^ and of the mode in which Darius became king ; gives the name of the Magus as Sphendadates ; and regards the whole struggle as one purely personal. On one point only does Gtesias improve upon his prede- cessor—in denying that the Zopyrus story belongs to the capture of Baby- lon by Darius. Even here, however, it may be doubted whether, in refer- ring it to the capture by Xerxes, he does not replace one fable by another. * See Heeren's As. Nat vol. i. pp. 97 and 441. E. T.
Chap. IL
HIS LINGUISTIC IGNOBAKGE.
71
based in the main upon authentic national records ; and tills conclusion is borne out as well by the general pro* babilitj of the narrative as by its agreement in certain minute points with monumental and other evidence.'
It results from this entire review that in all the countries with which the history of Herodotus was at all vitally concerned there existed monumental records, accessible to himself or his informants, of an authentic and trustworthy character.' These were of course less plentiful for the earlier times, and in Greece especially such records were but scanty ; enough however existed everywhere to serve as a considerable check upon the wanderings of mere oral tradition, and prevent it for the most part from straying very &r from the truth« These documents were in the case of foreign countries sealed books to Herodotus, who had no power of read- ing any language but his own ; ^ his informants, how- ever, were acquainted with them, and thus a great portion of their contents found their way into his pages.
' The length of the reign of Gam- bysos is confirmed by the Canon of Ptolemy — the fact that Darius became king in hie fathcr^s lifetime (iii. 72), by the Behistnn inscription — the re- volt of the Medes from Darius (i. 130X by the same document-— the conquest of India in the reign