Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/150

 126 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE treasures of Apollo at Branchid;c — the Persians would take them if they did not — and to build a fleet that could command the yEgean. The Wise Man was flecked with impiety ! Aristagoras and the people preferred their own way, were routed everywhere, and saw the treasure fall, sure enough, into the hands of the enemy. One other counsel he gave when things seemed hopeless, urging Aristagoras not to fly altogether, but to fortify the island of Leros, hold the sea, and attempt to win Miletus again. That is, all the things which Ionia wished she had done, in looking back upon her bitter history, became in the story the neglected counsels of her great Hecata3us. And it was he, too, who mediated with Artaphernes for the sparing of the conquered towns — that, at least, successfully. Hecat^us was not a literary artist like Herodotus : he was a thinker and worker. His style, according to Her- mogenes (2nd cent. A.D.), who loved the archaic, was " pure and clear, and in some ways singularly pleasant " ; yet, on the whole, the book had '' much less charm than Herodotus — ever so much, though it was mostly myths and the like." One must not lay much stress on the last words ; history, to Hecataeus, lay in the ages which we have now abandoned as mythical, and, while he rejected the Greek traditions, he often followed the Egyptian. But we cannot in the face of his opening words talk of his 'credulity,' or make him responsible for the legend that Oineus's bitch gave birth to a vine-stump ^ ; he may have mentioned the story only to ridicule it. In his geo- graphical work he was the standard authority for many centuries ; and though he is not likely to have been quite consistent in his rationalism, he remains a great 1 Frag. 341.