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.
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