PRELUDE. 59 



some limited empirical maxim of weather-wisdom taken from the 

 climate of Greece. " Libya," he said, " has neither rain nor ice, and 

 therefore no snow ; for, in five days after a fall of snow there must be 

 a fall of rain; so that if it snowed in those regions it must rain too." 

 I need not observe that Herodotus was not aware of the difference 

 between the climate of high mountains and plains in a torrid region ; 

 but it is impossible not to be struck both with the activity and the 

 coherency of thought displayed by the Greek mind in this primitive 

 physical inquiry. 



But I must not omit the hypothesis which Herodotus himself pro- 

 poses, after rejecting those which have been already given. It does 

 not appear to me easy to catch his exact meaning, but the statement 

 will still be curious. " If," he says, " one who has condemned opinions 

 previously promulgated may put forward his own opinion concerning 

 so obscure a matter, I will state why it seems to me that the Nile is 

 flooded in summer." This opinion he propounds at first with an 

 oracular brevity, which it is difficult to suppose that he did not intend 

 to be impressive. " In winter the sun is carried by the seasons away 

 from his former course, and goes to the upper parts of Libya. And 

 there, in short, is the whole account ; for that region to which this 

 divinity (the sun) is nearest, must naturally be most scant of water, 

 and the river-sources of that country must be dried up." 



But the lively and garrulous Ionian immediately relaxes from this 

 apparent reserve. " To explain the matter more at length," he pro- 

 ceeds, " it is thus. The sun when he traverses the upper parts of 

 Libya, does what he commonly does in summer; — he draws the water 

 to him (£Xx£i i~' iuurov to £!<tap), and having thus drawn it, he pushes 

 it to the upper regions (of the air probably), and then the winds take 

 it and disperse it till they dissolve in moisture. And thus the winds 

 which blow from those countries, Libs and Notus, are the most moist 

 of all winds. Now when the winter relaxes and the sun returns to 

 the north, he still draws water from all the rivers, but they are in- 

 creased by showers and rain torrents so that they are in flood till the 

 summer comes ; and then, the rain failing and the sun still drawing 

 them, they become small. But the Nile, not being fed by rains, yet 

 being drawn by the sun, is, alone of all rivers, much more scanty in 

 the winter than in the summer. For in summer it is drawn like all 

 other rivers, but in winter it alone has its supplies shut up. And in this 

 way, I have been led to think the sun is the cause of the occurrence 

 in question." We may remark that the historian here appears to 



