246 
before our era, cm account of the marvel related by the voyagers, 
that as they sailed “ they had the sun on their right,” which is 
the strongest possible confirmation of the truth of the account. 
He cautiously doubts the existence of an amber-yielding district 
on the Northern Sea, and of any islands called Cassiterides, 
from which tin was said to be brought. But we know that 
amber is found on the shores of the Baltic, and that the Cassi- 
terides were our own Scilly Islands. Some of his statements, 
which were formerly regarded as impossible or incredible 
marvels, have, by the progress of later discovery, been proved to 
be true. Such are his accounts of a race of men dwelling 
upon scaffoldings in Lake Prasias and living upon fish (v. 16), 
in fact, Lacustrians; of a breed of sheep in Arabia with such 
long tails that they were supported on trucks to preserve them 
from injury (iii. 13), as is the case in North Africa, and, I 
believe, in some parts of Spain at the present day. And to 
show that he is by no means the gobemouche that he is some- 
times represented, I may instance what he says of the Arim- 
aspians, a one-eyed race, who stole gold from the griffins, whom 
Milton thus mentions : — 
“As when a gryfon in the wilderness, 
With winged course o’er hill or moory dale, 
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth, 
And from his wakeful custody purloined 
The guarded gold.” 
Herodotus says that he cannot persuade himself to believe the 
story, giving the sensible reason that there cannot be araceof men 
with one eye, who in all things else resemble the rest of mankind. 
The value of Thucydides as a historian depends first on 
our faith in his honesty, and secondly on the fact that he had 
access to contemporary testimony both oral and monumental. 
He was born about twenty-five years before the outbreak of the 
Peloponnesian war, and he took part in some of its events ; but 
he most chiefly relied for information on the statements of 
others who had themselves been actors in the scenes that they 
described He sometimes quotes inscriptions on monuments 
(i. 132-134), and letters, and despatches (iv. 50; vii. 8; viii. 50), 
of which he had no doubt seen the originals or copies. He clearly 
was a man of sound judgment and great intelligence. Upon 
the whole we have as good reason for believing the history of 
Thucydides as we have for believing any other profane author ; 
but, as I have before observed, we are not to suppose that the 
long speeches which he puts into the mouths of Pericles and 
others were spoken as he reports them. They are rather forms 
of stating the arguments on both sides, such as Thucydides 
understood them. 
