Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/446

Rh 432 HERODOTUS. the disputes at Athens between Pericles and his opponents, and we therefore conchide that Hero- dotus did not go out with the first settlers to Thurii, but followed them many years after, per- haps about the time of the death of Pericles. This account is mainly based upon the confused article of Suidas, who makes no mention of the travels of Herodotus, which must have occupied a consider- able period of his life ; but before we consider this point, we shall endeavour to fix the time and place where he composed his work. According to Lu- cian {Hei-od. s. Act. 1, &c.) he wrote at Halicar- nassus, according to Suidas in Samos, and accord- ing to Pliny (//. N. xii. 4. § 8) at Thurii. These contradictions are rendered still more perplexing by the statement of Lucian, that Plerodotus read his work to the assembled Greeks at Olympia, with the greatest applause of his hearers, in consequence of which the nine books of the work were honoured with the names of the nine muses. It is further stated that young Thucydides was present at this recitation and was moved to tears. (Lucian, I. e. ; Suid. s. w. ©ouKuSf Stjs, opydu ; Marcellinus, Fit Thucyd. § 54 ; Phot. Blhl Cod. 60. p. 1 9, Bekk. ; Tzetz. Chil. i. 19.) It should be remarked that Lucian is the first writer that relates the story, and that the others repeat it after him. As Thucy- dides is called a boy at the time when he heard the recitation, he cannot have been more than about 15 or 16 years of age ; and further, as it is com- monly supposed that the Olympic festival at which Thucydides heard the recitation was that of B. c. 456 (01. 81.), Herodotus himself would have been no more than 32 years old. Now it seems scarcely credible that Herodotus should have completed his travels and written his work at so early an age. Some critics therefore have recourse to the suppo- sition, that what he recited at Olympia was only a sketch or a portion of the work ; but this is in direct contradiction to the statement of Lucian, who asserts that he read the whole of the nine books, which on that occasion received the names of the muses. The work itself contains numerous allusions which belong to a much later date than the pretended recitation at Olympia ; of these we need only mention the latest, viz. the revolt of the Medes against Dareius Nothus and the death of Amyrtaeus, events which belong to the years b. c. 409 and 408. (Herod, i. 130, iii. 15 ; comp. Dahl- mann, Il&rodot. p. 38, &c., and an extract from his work in the Classical Museum, vol, i. p. 188, &c.) This difficulty again is got over by the supposition, that Herodotus, who had written his work before B. c. 456, afterwards revised it and made additions to it during his stay at Thurii, But this hypo- thesis is not supported by the slightest evidence ; no ancient writer knows anything of a first and second edition of the work. Dahlmann has most ably shown that the reputed recitation at Olympia is a mere invention of Lucian, and that there are innumerable external circumstances which render such a recitation utterly impossible : no man could have read or rather chanted such a work as that of Herodotus, in the open air and in the burning sun of the month of July, not to mention that of all the assembled Greeks, only a very small number could have heard the reader. If the story had been known at all in the time of Plutarch, thid writer surely could not have passed it over in silence, where he tells us of Herodotus having calumniated all the Greeks except the Athenians, who had HERODOTUS, bribed him. Heyse, Baehr, and others labour to maintain the credibility of the story about the Olympic recitation, but their arguments in favour of it are of no weight. There is one tradition which mentions that Herodotus read his work at the Piinathenaea at Athens in b. c. 445 or 446, and that there existed at Athens a psephisma granting to the historian a reward of ten talents from the pub- lic treasury. (Plut. de Maliyn. Herod. 26, on whose authority it is repeated by Eusebius, Chron. p. 169.) This tradition is not only in contradiction with the time at which he must have written his work, but is evidently nothing but part and parcel ot the charge which the author of that contemptible trea- tise makes against Herodotus, viz, that he was bribed by the Athenians. The source of all this calumnious scandal is nothing but the petty vanity of the Thebans which was hurt by the truthful de- scription of their conduct during the war against Persia. Whether there is any more authority for the statement that Herodotus read his history to the Corinthians, it is not easy to say ; it is men- tioned only by Dion Chrysostomus {Oral, xxxvii. p. 103 ed. Reiske), and probably has no more foun- dation than the story of the Olympic or Athenian recitation. Had Herodotus really read his history before any such assembly, his work would surely have been noticed by some of those writers who flourished soon after his time ; but such is not the case, and nearly a century elapses after the time of Herodotus, before he and his work emerge from their obscurity. As, therefore, these traditions on the one hand do not enable us to fix the time in which the father of history wrote his work, and cannot, on the other, have any negative weight, if we should be led to other conclusions, we shall endeavour to ascertain from the work itself the time which we must assign for its composition. The history of the Persian war, which forms the main substance of the whole work, breaks off with the victorious return of the Greek fleet from the coast of Asia, and the taking of Sestos by the Athenians in b. c, 479. But nu- merous events, which belong to a much later period, are alluded to or mentioned incidentally (see their list in the Classical Museum, I. c), and the latest of them refers, as already remarked, to the year b. c. 408, when Herodotus was at least 77 years old. Hence it follows that, with Pliny, we must believe that Herodotus wrote his work in his old age during his stay at Thurii, where, according to Suidas, he also died and was buried,for no one mentions that he ever returned to Greece, or that he made two editions of his work, as some modern critics assume, who sup- pose that at Thurii he revised his work, and among other things introduced those parts which refer to later events. The whole work makes the impres- sion of a fresh composition ; there is no trace of labour or revision ; it has all the appearance of having been written by a man at an advanced period of his life. Its abrupt termination, and the fact that the author does not tell us what in an earlier part of his work he distinctly promises, (e. g, vii. 213), prove almost beyond a doubt that his work was the production of the last years of his life, and that death prevented his completing it. Had he not written it at Thurii, he would scarcely have been called a Thurian or the Thurian histo- rian, a name by which he is sometimes distinguished by the ancients (Aristot. Rliet. iii. 9 ; Plut. de Exit, 1 3, de Malign. H'nod. 35 ; Strab. xiv. p. 657), aiul