Translated By
G. C. Macaulay
NOTE
HERODOTUS was born at Halicarnassus, on the southwest coast of Asia
Minor, in the early part of the fifth century, B. C. Of his life we
know almost nothing, except that he spent much of it traveling, to
collect the material for his writings, and that he finally settled
down at Thurii, in southern Italy, where his great work was composed.
He died in 424 B. C.
The subject of the history of Herodotus is the struggle between the
Greeks and the barbarians, which he brings down to the battle of
Mycale in 479 B. C. The work, as we have it, is divided into nine
books, named after the nine Muses, but this division is probably due
to the Alexandrine grammarians. His information he gathered mainly
from oral sources, as he traveled through Asia Minor, down into Egypt,
round the Black Sea, and into various parts of Greece and the
neighboring countries. The chronological narrative halts from time to
time to give opportunity for descriptions of the country, the people,
and their customs and previous history; and the political account is
constantly varied by rare tales and wonders.
Among these descriptions of countries the most fascinating to the
modern, as it was to the ancient, reader is his account of the marvels
of the land of Egypt. From the priests at Memphis, Heliopolis, and the
Egyptian Thebes he learned what he reports of the size of the country,
the wonders of the Nile, the ceremonies of their religion, the
sacredness of their animals. He tells also of the strange ways of the
crocodile and of that marvelous bird, the Phoenix; of dress and
funerals and embalming; of the eating of lotos and papyrus; of the
pyramids and the great labyrinth; of their kings and queens and
courtesans.
Yet Herodotus is not a mere teller of strange tales. However credulous
he may appear to a modern judgment, he takes care to keep separate
what he knows by his own observation from what he has merely inferred
and from what he has been told. He is candid about acknowledging
ignorance, and when versions differ he gives both. Thus the modern
scientific historian, with other means of corroboration, can sometimes
learn from Herodotus more than Herodotus himself knew.
There is abundant evidence, too, that Herodotus had a philosophy of
history. The unity which marks his work is due not only to the strong
Greek national feeling running through it, the feeling that rises to a
height in such passages as the descriptions of the battles of
Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, but also to his profound belief in
Fate and in Nemesis. To his belief in Fate is due the frequent quoting
of oracles and their fulfilment, the frequent references to things
foreordained by Providence. The working of Nemesis he finds in the
disasters that befall men and nations whose towering prosperity
awakens the jealousy of the gods. The final overthrow of the Persians,
which forms his main theme, is only one specially conspicuous example
of the operation of this force from which human life can never free
itself.
