Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/290

268 Egypt, Persia, and Scythia given in his history; and he would, no doubt, have done so, if he had been content to tread in the footsteps of the logographers who preceded him.

§3. It is stated that Herodotus recited his history at different festivals. This statement is, in itself, perfectly credible, as the Greeks of this time, when they had finished a composition with care, and had given it an attractive form, reckoned more upon oral delivery than upon solitary reading. Thucydides, blaming the historians who preceded him, describes them as courting the transient applause of an audience. The ancient chronologists have also preserved the exact date of a recitation, which took place at the great Panathenæa at Athens, in Olymp. 83. 3. B. C. 446 (when Herodotus was 38 years old). The collections of Athenian decrees contained a decree proposed by Anytus, from which it appeared that Herodotus received a reward of ten talents from the public treasury. There is less authority for the story of a recitation at Olympia; and least authority of all for the well-known anecdote, that Thucydides was present at it as a boy, and that he shed tears, drawn forth by his own intense desire for knowledge, and his deep interest in the narrative. To say nothing of the many intrinsic improbabilities of this story, so many anecdotes were invented by the ancients in order to bring eminent men of the same pursuits into connexion with each other, that it is impossible to give any faith to it, without the testimony of more trustworthy witnesses.

The public readings of Herodotus (such as that at the Panathenaic festival) must have been confined to detached portions of his subject, which he afterwards introduced into his work; for example, the history and description of Egypt, or the accounts concerning Persia. His great historical work could not have been composed till the time of the Peloponnesian war. Indeed, his history, and particularly the four last books, are so full of references and allusions to events which occurred in the first period of the war, that he appears to have been diligently occupied with the composition or final revision of it at this time. It is however very questionable whether Herodotus lived into the second period of the Peloponnesian war. At all events, he must have been occupied with his work till his death, for it seems to be in