Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/149

 RISE OF THE PERSONAL AUTHOR 125 ing words must have rung like a trumpet call in men's ears : " HecatcBiis of Miletus thus speaks. I write as I deem true, for the traditions of the Greeks seem to me manifold and laughable." 'HISTORIE' Hecat^us Hecat^us was a man of high rank ; descendant of a god in the sixteenth generation, he had always been told, till the priests at Egyptian Thebes confuted him ^ ; a traveller of a rare type, like his contemporary Skylax, who sailed down the Indus to the Erythraean Sea, like Eudoxus of Cyzicus under Ptolemy II., in a certain degree like Columbus, men whose great daring was the servant of their greater intellect. He travelled all about the Medi- terranean coasts, in the Persian Empire, and in Egypt, perhaps in the Pontus and Libya and Iberia, always la-Topewv, 'seeking after knowledge.' We know him chiefly from the criticisms and anecdotes of Herodotus, who differs from him about the rise of the Nile (ii. 21) and the existence of the river Oceanus (ii. 23), and states with reserve his account of the expulsion of the Pelasgians from Attica (vi. 137), but invests his general story of the man with a suggestion of greatness. In the first brewing of the Ionian revolt (v. 36) Miletus sought its Wise Man's counsel ; not, however, to follow it. He urged them not to rebel, "telling them all the nations that Darius ruled and the power of him!' The Wise Man was cold and spoke above their heads ! Then, if they must revolt, he urged them to seize at once the 1 Hdt. ii. 143. 10