690 



HERODAS 



HERODOTUS 



and received from the emperor nearly the whole of 

 his paternal possessions, which Avere subsequently 

 enlarged by Nero. Like his ancestor Herod the 

 Great, Agrippa was fond of building, and spent 

 great sums in adorning Jerusalem and other 

 cities ; but he failed to secure the good-will of 

 the Jews. He did all in his power to dissuade 

 them from rebelling against the Romans. When 

 Jerusalem was taken he went " with his sister to 

 live at Rome, where he was made praetor, and 

 where he died in the seventieth year of his age. It 

 was before him Paul made his memorable defence. 



Herodas, or HERONDAS, a Greek poet of the 

 3d century B.C., probably from the island of Cos, of 

 whose Mimiambi (mainly scenes of Greek life in 

 dialogue) only small fragments were known till 

 some 700 verses from eight different poems were re- 

 covered from an Egyptian MS. in the British Museum 

 and published by Kenyon (1891). They have since 

 been edited by Biicheler, Crusius, and Meister. 



lie rod fail, a Greek historian, who lived in 

 Rome. His History, in eight books, extends from 

 the death of Marcus Aurelius (180) to Gordian III. 

 (238), and is fairly trustworthy. See editions by 

 Bekker (1855) and Mendelssohn (1883). 



Herodotus, ' the father of history,' was born 

 between 490 and 480 B.C., between the first and the 

 second of those two Persian invasions of Greece of 

 which he was hereafter to write the history. He 

 was born at Halicarnassus, one of those Greek 

 colonies on the coast of Asia Minor which were 

 conquered by the Persians, and whose efforts to 

 recover liberty were the cause of the Persian wars. 

 Halicarnassus, originally founded by Dorian settlers, 

 had in course of time become an Ionic city, and 

 consequently Herodotus wrote in the Ionic dialect. 

 When the colonies were freed from the Persian 

 yoke the citi/ens of Halicarnassus differed as to 

 the form of government to adopt, and Herodotus 

 left his native town. His travels were of remark- 

 able extent : he travelled not only over Asia Minor 

 and the islands of the ^gean Sea, but over Greece 

 proper. He spent much time at Athens and at 

 Delphi, and paid visits also to Sparta, Corinth, 

 Thebes, Olympia, and Dodona. He also journeyed 

 to Macedonia, Thrace, and the coasts of the Black 

 Sea. Above all he penetrated to the interior of the 

 Persian empire, to Susa, Ecbatana, and Babylon ; 

 and he 'did' Egypt. On the journey thither he 

 visited Tyre, and from Egypt he reached Cyrene. 

 In 443 B.C. the colony of Thurii was founded by 

 Athens, and Herodotus joined it, whether in that 

 year or not is uncertain. From Thurii he visited 

 Sicily and Lower Italy. He lived to the beginning 

 of the Peloponnesian war, 432 B. C. , and perhaps not 

 later than 425 B.C., but when, where, or how he 

 died we do not know. Cuneiform inscriptions 

 prove that the revolt of the Medes referred to in 

 book i. 30 took place under Darius I., and not 

 Darius II. , so that we cannot infer from the pass- 

 age that Herodotus was alive at the latter date 

 (409 B.C.). 



Herodotus, then, spent a large part of his life in 

 travelling. These travels he undertook for the 

 purposes of his history, and his activity, mental as 

 well as physical, in collecting information and 

 making inquiries, historical, geographical, ethno- 

 logical, mythological, and archaeological, was ex- 

 traordinary. His history was designed to record 

 not only the wars but the causes of the wars 

 between Greece and the barbarians : thus, as to 

 the Greek the whole world was either Greek or 

 barbarian, he could have no difficulty in finding a 

 place for all his information. The way in which he 

 actually weaves it together is as follows. Beginning 

 with the conquest of the Greek colonies in Asia 

 Minor by the Lydian king Croesus, he has an oppor- 



tunity for giving a history of the kings of Lydia 

 and a description of the country. The Lydians 

 were conquered by the Persians, whose history and 

 empire have now to be described. Amongst the 

 conquests of Cyrus were Babylon and the Mas- 

 sagetae ; of Cambyses, Egypt, the account of which 

 fills book ii. In book iii. the organisation of the 

 Persian empire by its great statesman-king, Darius, 

 enables Herodotus to emphasise the contrast between 

 the might and magnitude of Persia on the one hand 

 and the inferiority of Greece on the other. The 

 invasion of the Scyths by Darius in book iv. allows 

 Herodotus to place the remarkably interesting 

 ethnological information he had gathered from the 

 emporiums on the coast of the Black Sea. And the 

 statement that Darius intended to invade the north 

 coast of Africa brings in what Herodotus had learned 

 at Cyrene and on the journey to it. In books v. to 

 ix. we have the history of the two Persian wars. 



Herodotus has been called ' the father of history,' 

 but, as we have seen, he has an equal right to be 

 called 'the father of geography." This combina- 

 tion of history and geography is not a feature which 

 distinguishes him from his predecessors, the ' logo- 

 graphers.' They not only composed chronological 

 lists, containing probably a brief account of the 

 events recorded, but they also composed topo- 

 graphical works, which, however, contained in many 

 cases a history of the places described. Thus 

 history and geography (scarcely discriminated) 

 existed before Herodotus' time, nor did he divide 

 them. But the work of Herodotus is to the bald, 

 brief, disconnected notes of his predecessors what 

 the work of Homer was to the poems of his prede- 

 cessors. It is the beginning or Greek prose, as is 

 Homer's of Greek verse ; but whereas we have no 

 fragment of any of the poets who lived before 

 Homer, we have of the prose-writers before Hero- 

 dotus, and the advance in point of form is remark- 

 able. In reading Herodotus we feel very strongly 

 that the style is the man, possibly because we know 

 so little of the man ; but in any case the character 

 revealed by the stvle is sympathetic in a high 

 degree, and probably few writers of any age or 

 country have so many devoted personal friends as 

 Herodotus counts amongst his readers. He is so 

 simple, so frank, so talkative, amiable, and respect- 

 worthy. He wrote indeed not to be read, but to be 

 heard, like all other classical Greek authors, and 

 he read his history in public at Athens and other 

 places. Thus we may account partly for the fact 

 that we seem to hear him talk rather than to be 

 reading an author. But, beyond the charm of style, 

 Herodotus had the knack of taking interest in the 

 right things i.e. things which have continued to 

 interest people for 2300 years. On the one hand, 

 he could write in a spirit worthy of the glorious 

 fight for liberty fought by the Greeks at Marathon, 

 Thermopylae, and elsewhere. On the other, he 

 delighted in the manners and customs of strange 

 peoples, and in things ancient and mysterious. As 

 to his honesty as a historian there is practically no 

 doubt the author of the De Malignitate and Pro- 

 fessor Sayce notwithstanding : he never says what 

 he does not believe. He does not apparently sup- 

 press alternative versions, and he distinguishes 

 between what he saw and what he was told. He 

 did not believe all that he was told, though he did 

 believe occasionally things which were not true. 

 He is not a scientific historian : what he tells is 

 frequently not history : it is something better 

 legend. Very possibly he wholly misconceives the 

 strategy of Mardonius, but he preserves the ethos of 

 the Greeks who fought which is of much more 

 moral importance. His story about Rhampsinitus 

 is altogether unhistorical, but it is not only more 

 interesting but more valuable for the history of 

 the people than hieroglyphic inscriptions recording 



