Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/706

 (588 HERODOTUS clear and impartial. The best editions are those of Irmisch (5 vols., 1789-1805), F. A. Wolf (1792), and Bekker (1826). HERODOTUS, a Greek historian, styled the father of history, born in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, about 484 B. C., died probably in Thu- rii, Italy, about 420. The statement of Suidas that he belonged to an illustrious family is con- tinned by the indications of wealth furnished by his high education and abundant means for frequent and distant travel. Suidas states fur- ther that he was exiled from Halicarnassus by Lygdamis, grandson of Artemisia, and that he took up his residence at Samos. He returned, however, to Halicarnassus about 455, and took part in the political movements which ended in the expulsion of the tyrant. He removed soon after to Athens. He visited Babylon, Ar- dericca near Susa, the remoter parts of Egypt, Gyrene, Colchis, Scythia, Thrace, Zante, Do- dona, and Magna Grsecia, thus ranging over a space more than 1,700 m. from E. to W. and 1,600 m. from N. to S. Within these limits his knowledge of scenery, cities, temples, manners and customs, and various wonders, is generally BO minute and full that it could have been ac- quired only by a leisurely examination. In Egypt, for instance, he visited the great capitals Memphis and Heliopolis, the smaller towns, Sais, Bubastis, Buto, Papremis, Chemmis, Croco- dilopolis, and Elephantine, the labyrinth, Lake Moeris, the line of the canal from the Arabian gulf to the Nile, the borders toward the desert of Sinai, and the whole region of the Delta. It is. related on uncertain authority that in 446 the Athenian assembly decreed a reward to him for his history, which he had read public- ly; that he made known his work by recita- tion not only at Athens but in other cities, travelling from place to place as a sort of prose rhapsodist ; and that at the recital of it before the collected Greeks at the great Olympian festival the young Thucydides was moved to tears. Herodotus while at Athens was at least .acquainted with Thucydides, Sophocles, and some of the other intellectual lights that distin- guished the age of Pericles, and it was doubt- less from association with them in the centre of literary Hellas that he received the impulse to that wonderful elaboration of his work which he carried on for many years after his departure. Herodotus went about 440 to Thu- rii, a colony newly founded by the Athenians near the site of the former Sybaris, where he is said to have passed the remainder of his life. Suidas's statement that Herodotus lived for a while in Samos, and composed there some portions of his work, is quite probable ; and from several passages in the work it appears that he left Thurii several times and went out on short voyages. At Thurii he is sup- posed to have applied himself only to the per- fection of his history, retouching the narra- tive and interweaving parenthetical passages and accounts of later events. The abruptness of its close and occasional traces of incomplete- ness indicate that, notwithstanding he had been constantly improving it, it was not entire- ly finished at his death. Many critics believe that he composed also the separate treatise on Assyrian history, to which he twice refers in his general history, but which has not been preserved. The time and place of his death are not altogether certain, his life being pro- longed according to some to 394, and Pella and Athens, instead of Thurii, being made his abode in his latest years. It is a question whether there were Greek histories in the cen- tury before Herodotus. Niebuhr absolutely denies the existence of any such works. What is more certain is, that before the work of Herodotus was written, there was no writing in Greece which could properly be called his- torical. Herodotus is habitually minute in re- ferring to his authorities, but the only Greek with whose works he seems to have been fa- miliar is HecataBus, who, however, can lay no claim to the title of a historian. The main subject of Herodotus's history is the Persian war of invasion, the contest which began with the expedition of Mardonius and terminated with the discomfiture of Xerxes. Yet he not only relates as an introduction the growth of the Persian empire and the previous hostilities between Greece and Persia, but takes every opportunity of diverging from his principal subject in order to introduce his various histor- ical, geographical, and antiquarian knowledge. Thus he interweaves accounts of Croesus and of the Lydian kingdom, of the Babylonians and Assyrians, of the Egyptians, of the Greek colo- nies of northern Africa and the native Libyan races, of the Scythians and Hyperboreans, apropos of whom he gives an episode on uni- versal geography. For the later and more im- portant portion of his history, abundant living testimony was easily accessible to him, besides which there were in most of the countries monumental records of antiquity, and oral tra- ditions even in Scythia and Libya. Thus in Greece more or less accurate lists of the kings, priests, and victors at the games were preserved in cities and sanctuaries, and dedicatory inscrip- tions on offerings in the temples; the Babylo- nians had sculptured documents, many of which have recently been discovered, tracing their history back for more than 2,000 years; the monuments of the Egyptians reached to a still earlier date ; and in Persia there were not only memorials on pillars, tombs, and palaces, but more copious writings on parchment preserved in the archives of the empire. Herodotus was evidently unable to read or speak the Egyptian language, and was therefore dependent on his interpreters. In Egypt the priests took advan- tage of his ignorance to magnify the antiquity of their nation, to conceal from him their dark period of subjection under the invading shep- herd kings, and to modify other inglorious por- tions of their history. In Babylon he probably obtained but little of his information from the Chaldean priestly caste, who possessed the most