Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/171

 [147] prejudice. He admires freedom; he has a vivid horror of tyrants. But there is no visible difference in his treatment of the oligarchic and democratic states; and it is difficult to show any misrepresentation of particular tyrants due to the writer, though it is likely, on the whole, that the tradition he follows has been unfair to them. Herodotus is not more severe than Thucydides or Plato. As to the Persians, he takes evident pleasure in testifying not only to their courage, as shown, for instance, in fighting without armour against Greek hoplites, but to their chivalry, truthfulness, and high political organisation. He is shocked at the harem system, the oriental cruelties, the slave-soldiers driven with scourges, the sacking of towns, where the Asiatics behaved like modern Turks or like Europeans int he wars of religion. He is severe towards the Corinthians and Thebans; whose defence, however, it would be difficult to make convincing. to see really how fair he is, one needs but to look for a moment at the sort of language such writers as Froude and Motley use of the average active Catholic, especially if he be French or Spanish.

In the main, Herodotus is dependent for his mistakes upon his sources, and in all respects but one he is closer to the truth than his sources. He had read nearly all existing Greek literature; he not only quotes a great many writers, chiefly poets, but he employs phrases, "no poet has mentioned," and the like, which imply a control of all literature. He seems or some reaosn or other to have avoided using his professional colleagues, Charon and Xanthus; he mentions no logographer but Hecataeus. He refers in some fourteen passages to monuments or inscriptions, though he certainly did not employ them systematically. For [148]