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THE NEW SYSTEM OF THOUGHT 
 
 Which Dr. Snider has been engaged upon for some years, 
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THE FATHER 
 
 OF 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF 
 
 H E R O D O T US 
 
 BY 
 DENTON J. SNIDER 
 
 ST. LOUIS, MO. 
 
 SIGMA PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 210 PINE ST. 
 
 (For sale by A. C. M'Clurg & Co., Booksellers, Chicago, Ills.) 
 
^/.'* 
 
 (o 
 
 i L»a.-<ArtY of CONGRESS 
 I I wo vJooles Recelvecf 
 
 OCT 12 190r 
 
 Ccoynsrht Entjy 
 /h^ 3/ /^«7 
 CLASS A xxc, m. 
 
 COPY t>. 
 
 Copyright by D. J. Snider, 1907 
 
 Nixon-Jones Print. ng Co., 215 Pine Street, St Louis 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction V-LXXXVII 
 
 Book First 1-107 
 
 Preliminary 1-13 
 
 The Lydiad 13-62 
 
 The Persiad -. . 63- 84 
 
 Observations 85-107 
 
 Book Second 108-198 
 
 Physical Egypt 117-125 
 
 Spiritual Egypt 126-136 
 
 Historical Egypt 137-167 
 
 Observations 168-197 
 
 (iii) 
 
IV COyTEN'TS!. 
 
 Book Third 198-245 
 
 Cambyses and Polycrates . . . 202-217 
 
 Persia and Samos 218-239 
 
 Observations 240-245 
 
 Book Fourth 246-310 
 
 ScYTHiA ......... 253-280 
 
 Libya 281-301 
 
 Book Fifth 311-333 
 
 Ionic Eevolt 320-333 
 
 Book Sixth 334-370 
 
 Persian vs. Greek 337-354 
 
 Marathon 355-361 
 
 Book Seventh 371-413 
 
 Invasion of Xerxes 373-389 
 
 Mustering of the Greeks . . . 389-399 
 Thermopylae 400-410 
 
 Book Eighth 414-436 
 
 Movements on Both Sides . . . 419-424 
 Salamis 424-428 
 
 Book Ninth 437-451 
 
 Plat^a 438-446 
 
 Mycale 446-449 
 
INTB OD UO TWIT, 
 
 The most important fiict of History is its 
 birth. If this be accepted, the conclusion lies 
 not f;ir off that the most important historical 
 book is that of the Father of History, ancient 
 Herodotus. 
 
 Where, when, and under what circumstances 
 did such a birth take place? History has not 
 always been, man has had to evolve into the 
 same; at a certain epoch the race became his- 
 torical (or a part of it, the advanced or repre- 
 sentative part). Uncounted ages we have to 
 conceive of man as pre-historical, for he cannot 
 count his own years till he has come into a con- 
 sciousness of History. Then indeed he begins to 
 reckon time backward, not only the passing but 
 
vi IXTB OD TIC TION. 
 
 specially the past. In ti sense History is always 
 being born, or, as we say often, being made; the 
 act of birth is continually repeated, still the his- 
 toric consciousness arose at a definite, ascertain- 
 able period, and was an event of History, as we 
 think, its most important event — not so much an 
 occurrence in History as the occurrence of 
 History. 
 
 (J^ow the time and the place in which to wit- 
 ness and to study this birth of History are found 
 pre-eminently in the book of Herodotus. To be 
 sure a travail of the same sort can be traced else- 
 where and elsewhen ; but History picturing its 
 own genesis appears first supremely in the Father 
 of History, one of whose deepest strands is just 
 this: to set forth his own historic paternity. Not 
 directly indeed does he make any such claim ; we 
 alone, looking back through the ages, can see 
 him in his genetic character, can see him usher- 
 ing-in the sunrise of History, though before him 
 it had its twilight, yea its dark pre-natal epoch. 
 We call him the Father of History, not because 
 he happens to be the first chronicler of events in 
 Time — that indeed he is not; but because he is 
 primarily creative, he creates or rather re-creates 
 in adequate utterance the risen historic conscious- 
 ness of the race, particularly of the European 
 (Aryan) race. The sun indeed had to rise before 
 the sunrise could be produced and transmitted ; 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. Vll 
 
 the historic consciousness had to show its 
 activity ere its deeds could be portrayed. 
 
 What is the primal act of this historic con- 
 sciousness? A city, a people, perchance a race 
 becomes aware of the universal worth of what it 
 has done, aware of its world-historical achieve- 
 ment, for which it seeks naturally a commensu- 
 rate expression. Such a consciousness we may 
 well conceive the people of Athens to have had 
 after the deed of Marathon. Not a mere local or 
 temporary exploit they felt it to be, but some- 
 thing of universal import for all time, truly a 
 nodal action in the World's History. Where is 
 the man who can set it forth in a form worthy 
 of it and lasting? Here he comes at the call, the 
 one man seemingly capable of this new deed, also 
 heroic in its way and preservative of the heroic 
 deed. He does not sing like Homer, from whom 
 he is nevertheless spiritually descended, as we 
 shall see ; he talks prose, yet gives to the same an 
 artistic order which has a decided poetic effect. 
 Not so much the musical word or the rhythmical 
 sentence, but the ordered movement of the parts 
 win the mind as they bring forth the one great 
 totality of History. Herodotus writes not merely 
 a history, but the World's History of his 
 time, and he is the first to grasp and execute 
 such a theme, which has never ceased to be re- 
 produced after him. The Folk-Soul of Hellas, 
 especially of Athens, has become world-historical, 
 
viii INTBODUCTIONi 
 
 being filled with the Spirit of the Age, or with 
 'the World-Spirit, the Genius presiding over His- 
 tory and calling up nations to fulfil its behest. 
 From this point of view we may deem Herodotus 
 the scribe of the World-Spirit for a given period, 
 recording the grand Hellenic deed in the move- 
 ment of the State toward the end of History, 
 describing one most important stage in the long 
 line of historic evolution. 
 
 The Greco-Persian War may well be taken as 
 the period of the birth of History, or at least as 
 the most distinct manifestation of the same, even 
 if there was a long preparation with many pro- 
 phetic flashes and premonitions. This War was 
 expressly the theme of Herodotus, who stands as 
 the bridge from a pre-historical into an histori- 
 cal world, from a poetical conception of things to 
 prose, not merely in style but in thought. The 
 beauty as well as the significance of his work is, 
 that it represents both sides, and must be grasped 
 doubly; two world-views must be seen in it often 
 separating, often intermingling in a kind of kaleid- 
 oscopic dance of many-colored events. On the 
 whole Herodotus moves from the mythical into 
 the historical, but he often drops back from the 
 historical into the mythical, by an easy whirl 
 which is so natural to him that it seems wholly 
 naive. The Greco-Persian War preluded the 
 mighty conflict between two continents and two 
 civilizations, between Europe and Asia; it was 
 
THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. ix 
 
 the shock of the World being born into History, 
 whereof came the Herculean infant, whom we 
 call World's History, and who is definitely seen 
 and outlined, though as an infant, in our Herodo- 
 tus. Before him. History, that is, the World's 
 History was potential, almost though not quite 
 speechless, struggling to get to the upper air, 
 with occasional flashes which leap back into dark- 
 ness ; we may deem it one long pang of parturi- 
 tion, the mighty labor of History being born into 
 Time. 
 
 I. 
 
 Let us note the historic act of mind, which 
 each of us performs when we study the past. 
 Evidently all History is a going backward to 
 some beginning, if possible to the very begin- 
 ning, from which point we move through events 
 to the given end, even to our own time, to our- 
 selves. Thus our mental process is cyclical in 
 grasping History ; we whirl about to some start- 
 ing-point in the stream, and then swim down, 
 rounding-out the whole act. And History like- 
 wise, in its reality, takes on the same form, 
 which is that of Consciousness itself. It moves 
 in pycles, as an objective Mind in action, think- 
 ing and throwing out its thoughts into events of 
 Time, which are always circumnavigating their 
 globe little or large. The interesting fact just 
 
X INIBODUCTION. 
 
 here is that in this cyclical way Herodotus con- 
 ceives and writes his History. We shall see in 
 detail how he seeks to round-out his masses of 
 occurrences into a line of self-returning rings 
 small and great, till finally all of them form a 
 cyclical entirety. Moreover this procedure is 
 largely instinctive with him, or has such an 
 appearance, though this indeed is his art. 
 
 Herodotus starts with the small historical 
 round of events in Asia Minor, involving the 
 struggle between Croesus, the king of Lydia, and 
 the Greek cities of the Anatolian coast. But 
 this little circle of events is deftly unfolded into 
 the larger Persian one, which finally takes up all 
 West-Asia. Then this Persian circle sweeps out 
 of the Orient and seeks to embrace Greece and 
 possibly the Occident, calling forth the conflict 
 which is the theme of this total History of 
 Herodotus, who gives the rounds of events, in- 
 cluding both sides, the Orient and Hellas, 
 though the complete separation of these two 
 sides is the grand outcome of the war. The 
 point, however, which we wish to emphasize 
 here is that along with this separation between 
 the two continents. Orient and Occident, appears 
 the definite rise of the historic consciousness ; man 
 becomes aware of and calls for Historyj which 
 records for eternity the eternal worth of tlie 
 great human deed, like that of Marathon. 
 
 The foregoing outer separation, accordingly, 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. xi 
 
 runs parallel to the inner separation which all 
 consciousness involves ; the Ego has to divide 
 within itself in order to be conscious at all. But 
 now the historic Ego is definitely born with the 
 birth of History itself, that is, of the World's 
 History. The two are really counterparts and 
 beget each other ; there could be no historic Ego 
 without a corresponding World's History, and 
 there could be no World's History without an 
 historic Ego to make it, and to record it, and to 
 understand it when recorded. Mark, we are 
 speaking here of Ego or Self as historic, not 
 merely as psychical; as unfolding in History, 
 and at the same time unfolding History in due 
 correspondence. We repeat then that the sepa- 
 ration of Orient and Greece, the ground-theme 
 of Herodotus, is the birth of History as con- 
 scious, self -knowing and self-recording, is the 
 real sun-up of the historic Ego of man. 
 
 In this complete sense the Oriental man has 
 had no History, not in Egypt, Babylon, China. 
 The Orient lacks just this development of the 
 historic Ego, of which there are many glimmer- 
 ings, crepuscular flashes, separate events. At 
 most are found in the East some national 
 records, but no World's History. And yet the 
 Oriental stage of History cannot be left out, 
 though it gets its historic light from the West. 
 What a study Europe is now making of the long- 
 past civilizations of the Nile and Euphrates, seek- 
 
xu mTE OD UC TION. 
 
 ing to co-ordinate them with the World's His- 
 tory, seeking to do for them what they never did 
 or could do for themselves ! Persia in Herodo- 
 tus gets to be world-historical, not through 
 itself but through Hellas and its historian, namely 
 our Herodotus. If Persia had won in the great 
 war, it would have snuJffed out just this rising his- 
 toric Ego, and its own deed could never have 
 been recorded except possibly after the fashion 
 of the Behistun inscription, which must be taken 
 as a fair sample of Persian Historiography. 
 
 The history proper of Herodotus embraces 
 hardly more than the space of a single human 
 life. It lies between a few years before the 
 capture of Sardes (546 B. C), and the taking of 
 Sestos after the flight of Xerxes (478B. C). In 
 a little more than 68 years is embraced the his- 
 toric sweep of his work. To be sure he weaves 
 into it what are often named episodes (a bad 
 word for the thing). He himself calls them 
 additions {prosthehai,) which, however, are 
 made organic with his total plan, barring a few 
 exceptions. Now in this period of 68 years (let 
 us say) takes place the grand conflict of History, 
 which brings its birth. By means of his episodes 
 he traces all the various streams coming down 
 through the dark past, till they gather into two 
 great colliding heads, Persia and Greece, whose 
 struggle is his book. 
 
 The Historian was not contemporaneous with 
 
THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. Xlll 
 
 the period of the War, but lived in the next two 
 generations. His life of 60 years and perhaps 
 more, overlaps at the edge of the beforemen- 
 tioned 68 years directly. Thus he could hear 
 all about the war from living actors, and at the 
 same time look back at it with reflection. He is 
 Pan-Hellenic in spirit, and seeks to give to each 
 people and city theirjust dues. On this side (as 
 on others) he is like Homer who came from the 
 same general region as Herodotus, whose history 
 grew directly out of the hearts and mouths of 
 the Greek people. 
 
 At the same time he is not unfriendly to the 
 Persians. He devotes a large part of his history 
 to the formation of their Empire, which he deems 
 a great act. They, coming originally from the 
 small province of Persia, have by their unique 
 ability conquered, united, and are governing from 
 their capital city all West Asia as far as the 
 Indus. Three vast masses of different kinds of 
 humanity inhabit this enormous territory. First 
 are the mountain people, chiefly Iranians, to 
 which Aryan branch the Persians themselves be- 
 long ; then are the wholly different nations and 
 civilizations of the two great River- Valleys, the 
 Euphrates and the Nile ; finally are the sea-far- 
 ing cities of the Mediterranean, the Phenician 
 and the Grecian of Asia Minor. All these diverse 
 peoples the Persian consolidated and hurled 
 against continental Greece. After his repulse 
 
XIV INTBODUCTION. 
 
 from Europe, he ruled this same extensive 
 Empire for nearly 150 years till it was shattered 
 by Alexander at Issus and Gaugamela. 
 
 Our historian gives an ehiborate account of 
 Persia gradually forming her Empire, vrhich be- 
 gins with her great national hero Cyrus. Still 
 there are limits to his History. He never pene- 
 trated into the Iranian nations beyond the River- 
 Valley of the Euphrates; to him the Indus and 
 its people belong rather to Fableland, to that 
 peculiar Rim with which he surrounds the civil- 
 ized world. The other omission is more strik- 
 ing. He alludes to the Phenicians, but never 
 interweaves them or their history into his narra- 
 tive. His omission of the Carthaginians is 
 equally surprising. He leaves out the Semitic 
 contribution to History. Why? Only conjec- 
 ture can give an uncertain answer. 
 
 11. 
 
 Something about the life of the writer should 
 be set down in advance of the study of his book. 
 The main interest of that life is the stamp which 
 it bears of the World's History. If there is 
 anything about which all accounts concerning 
 Herodotus are agreed, it is that he was born and 
 passed his earlier years in Asiatic Hellas, that he 
 dwelt at Athens during middle life or a portion 
 of it. and that afterwards he settled in a Greek 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. XV 
 
 colony of Italy, where he is generally supposed 
 to have lived during his later days and to have 
 died there, after revising and completing his 
 work. Here the striking point is that there was 
 an Oriental, an Athenian (Continental or Euro- 
 pean), and an Occidental Herodotus, and that 
 his life moves through these three stages of the 
 total World's History, as we see this now in our 
 time and from our own country. To be sure, 
 Herodotus was still Hellenic in this life-sweep of 
 his, for the one Hellas had just these same three 
 parts or elements. There was the Oriental Hel- 
 las, comprising especially the cities of the Asiatic 
 Coast, and Continental or European Hellas, and 
 Occidental Hellas in Italy and Sicily„ Thus the 
 three Hellases in one were a kind of proto- 
 type, and indeed the primal historic germ of the 
 World's History in its three stages (Orient, 
 Europe, and Occident) as it lies before us quite 
 fully blossomed out to-day. 
 
 But the emphatic thought now is that this 
 universal process of the World's History was 
 stamped upon the very life of Herodotus in its 
 individual process. Not without significance is 
 this, nor is it to our mind a mere fortuitous cor- 
 respondence. Upon the Father of the World's 
 History is impressed the seal of his paternity. 
 To be sure he is but the voice, the scribe, the 
 recorder ; really the World's History fathers him, 
 and imparts to the child the very feature of its 
 
xvi INTB OD UC TIOJSF. 
 
 own deepest character. We can say, accord- 
 ingly, that Herodotus lived a world-historical 
 life, even in its external spatial setting, and fore- 
 shadowed in his own personal history the sweep 
 of Universal History. 
 
 Along with this outer movement of Herodotus 
 from the East, through Greece, to the West, 
 runs a line of corresponding inner changes which 
 Biography is specially to reveal. Thus it be- 
 comes the counterpart of History in the soul of 
 the individual, who always has his subjective 
 tendencies, limitations, peculiarities. These too 
 are present in our Historian and give color to his 
 narrative, and even determine his method of con- 
 ception and treatment. 
 
 The period in which Herodotus lived is fairly 
 definite and ascertainable, but it is difficult to 
 date in detail. It floats freely in a given 
 boundary of time, but the exact year from birth 
 to death can seldom, if ever, be stated o The 
 outlines of his career, yea of his inner develop- 
 ment are distinctly visible even if they cannot be 
 sharply timed. 
 
 Few are the facts about Herodotus which have 
 come down from antiquity. The real Mfo of the 
 man as well as his spiritual visage we are to 
 catch from his book. We become Intimate with 
 him and learn to love him through his written 
 self. He is one of those authors whose person- 
 ality comes out strongly, though not obtrusively, 
 
THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY, xvii 
 
 in his manner of expression. In part but not 
 wholly the periods of his career are reflected in 
 the divisions of his work. He had his domi- 
 nantly Oriental time and even mood ; then his 
 Greek nature would prevail. These are the two 
 elements which are woven both lengthwise and 
 crosswise, both successively and synchronously, 
 throuojh his work. 
 
 These epochs of his life we can discern, 
 though not definitely date. He has a time of 
 travel, of wandering, of gathering materials — a 
 time full of varied experience. This was followed 
 by a time of concentration on the one hand, yet 
 of inner struggle and separation on the other; we 
 may call it his Athenian time, in which he had 
 in a manner to reconstruct his life, his world- 
 view, and therewith his historic consciousness. 
 Finally he quits Athens, colonizes himself in the 
 new West at Thurium in Italy, where he elabo- 
 rates and finishes his History, going back to his 
 earlier career with its acquisitons through travel 
 and experience, and completely organizing his 
 work, which was previously more or less frag- 
 mentary. Hence we find in it many single por- 
 tions which the young Herodotus wrote with an 
 immediate freshnessof vision, but with the limita- 
 tions of youth. But the great organic totality, 
 the profoundly ordered cosmos of the book is the 
 product of age with its long stretches of thought, 
 
 2 
 
xviii JNTBOD UC TION. 
 
 which also require leisure and repose of feeling, 
 as well as maturity of mind. 
 
 III. 
 
 First, then we have to look at the period of 
 life which we have called the Oriental Herodotus, 
 or the Asiatic epoch of the Historian. This 
 embraces his preparatory education for his work, 
 his apprenticeship. We are to glimpse him in 
 his home, in his boyhood, as traveler and vora- 
 cious sight-seer. He is supremely the investi- 
 gator, the keen questioner of the Oracle of His- 
 tory, whose manifold answers throughout the 
 then civilized world we may see him putting down 
 in his noto-book, before the pyramids of Egypt, 
 on the walls of Babylon, with the caravan of the 
 desert, amid the wild tribes of the borderland. 
 Then this mass of recalcitrant material must be 
 whipped into order — but that is the task of an- 
 other period of life. 
 
 We are, accordingly, to put under one head 
 that portion of our Historian's life during which 
 he was chiefly occupied with matters Oriental. 
 We must not forget that there were Greeks in 
 Asia and that Herodotus was born an Oriental 
 Greek at the Dorian town of Halicarnassus. The 
 date of his birth is generally placed in 484 B. C, 
 but is sometimes assigned to 489 B. C. The 
 authority for the first date is Pamphih\, a female 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. xix 
 
 historian of Nero's time, who is cited by Aulus 
 Gellius ; the second date is derived from Eusebius 
 who lived in the reign of Constantine. We shall 
 follow the first with the bulk of authority, 
 thouofh the second has its advantaojes, and need 
 not be wholly neglected. 
 
 What was the environment surrounding the 
 child Herodotus, by which his historic bent may 
 have been fostered? The Greco-Persian War, 
 after lasting some two years was practically ended 
 by the battles of Platea andMycalein 479 B. C, 
 when our Historian was five years old (or ten it 
 might be). The air which the boy breathed was 
 laden with the great conflict. The battle of 
 Mycale took place not far from his birth-place. 
 The town of Halicarnassus was full of returned 
 sailors who did not fail to talk of Salamis. What 
 had it chiefly to converse about for years after- 
 ward except the incidents of the great War, in 
 which its queen Artemisia took a distinguished 
 part on the side of Persia? The youthful Herod- 
 otus must have heard the story dozens of times 
 from participators; he grew up in an atmos- 
 phere echoing everywhere with the occurrences 
 of that mighty struggle. Certainly, if he had a 
 native inclination to History, here was food 
 enough. Doubtless he heard different versions 
 of the same event, the memory of which led him 
 in riper years to sift his evidence. We may sup- 
 pose that the eager boy would beg for tales 
 
XX mXE OD UC TION. 
 
 of the war ; thus he has started to learn hy 
 inquiry {historein) and that new science of his, 
 which he calls Historia or knowledge gained b}^ 
 asking, has begun its career through Time, even 
 if it will widen its meaning (see the word in the 
 first line of his book). The two chief Greek 
 Historians after Herodotus, Thucydides and 
 Polybius, will to a large extent follow his con- 
 ception of History, as knowledge gotten through 
 inquiry, since they write mainly, though not 
 wholly, of their own time. 
 
 But young Herodotus did not need to confine 
 himself to the recent war. There were men of 
 middle age living in his town who had taken part 
 in the great Ionic revolt (see Book V) which had 
 started some twenty years before and had ended 
 in the capture and destruction of Miletus (494 
 B. C), a large city near Halicarnassus. The 
 lonsf line of Greek cities flaminsj with rebellion is 
 pictured by our Historian with a freshness and 
 distinctness which seem to spring from an imme- 
 diate personal participation in the events. It is 
 our opinion that the boy heard them told in the 
 market place, in the wine-shop, or at the hearth 
 by those who had seen the actors themselves, 
 notably Histiaeus and Aristagoras. One cannot 
 help thinking that the account of the Ionic revolt 
 was written by the author at an early period and 
 afterwards incorporated in his complete work. 
 
 And still further back in the past might the 
 
THE FATBEB OF HISTOBY. xxi 
 
 livino- informants of our Historian have reached. 
 Very old Halicarnassians could have fought in 
 the wars of Croesus and Cyrus, both of whom 
 subjected Greek cities of the Anatolian coast. 
 Herodotus says he knows who "began doing 
 wrong to the Greeks" — knows of course through 
 inquiry. With this first wrong-doer, who is 
 Croesus, History starts, the theme of which is the 
 collision between the Greeks and the Orientals. 
 Thus the living word in the ear of that boy was 
 borne back to the opening page of History, and 
 he heard its first Greek note, which has never 
 ceased recording itself from that day to this. 
 
 Such are the three layers of antecedent historic 
 struggles of which the young Herodotus could 
 learn by inquiry in his native town. The Persian 
 War, the Ionic Eevolt, the Taking of Sardes, to 
 which may be added the Scythian expedition of 
 Darius, though this was more remote in place and 
 interest — all lay within the memory of men still 
 alive and ready to talk about them with Greek 
 volubility. All of them were great crises, or 
 stages in the grand opening conflict of Universal 
 History, the conflict between East and West. As 
 a boy Herodotus gets his theme from his environ- 
 ment, which is in itself world-historical. 
 
 This we may deem his primal deepest educa- 
 tion, which he sucks-in as mother's-milk from the 
 social and institutional order around him. But 
 in his boyhood begins that other sort of educa- 
 
xxii INTBODUCTION, 
 
 tion, which is to give him the transmitted in- 
 strumentalities of culture, whereby he can put 
 into form and hand down to posterity his own 
 spiritual treasures. What branches did he study? 
 The school had been already established ; in his 
 book we read of a horrible fatality to a school- 
 house in Chios, by which many youths perished. 
 We conceive that the lad, like many an other, 
 never had much taste for arithmetic; certainly 
 the figures in his work are about the worst part 
 of it, they usually will not tally, the sum total 
 given by him is mostly, though not always, dif- 
 ferent from the result of the added items. His 
 rather unsympathetic account of Pj^thagoras may 
 have been influenced by his dislike of the Py- 
 thagorean stress upon number. Of geography 
 Herodotus was certainly fond, yea always eager 
 to learn more of it, as we see by his extensive 
 travels ; but whether he acquired much of this 
 branch in his Greek school, may be a question. 
 The first map had been already made by Anax- 
 imander of Miletus. To the study of language 
 he devoted himself, and he had a good oppor- 
 tunity, as we may catch out of traditions handed 
 down from antiquity. He lived in the after-bloom 
 of the Lyric Poets of Greece, many of whom he 
 cites or alludes to in his book. 
 
 But the work which above all others he studied 
 and appropriated was that of Homer. The Iliad 
 and Odyssey constituted a veritable breviary for 
 
THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. xxiil 
 
 our Historian. lu his language there are many 
 Homeric words and turns ; then his conception of 
 the My thus is largely epical. Very deeply he 
 has penetrated the organization of Homer, more 
 deeply than anj modern critic probably ; also he 
 has not failed to employ it in his own book, 
 whose Homeric structure can often be traced. 
 The chief bond however is that the ground-theme 
 of both Homer and Herodotus is the same ; Poet 
 and Historian, each in his own manner, portrays 
 the conflict overarching the Greek world, that 
 between Asia and Europe (see following pp. 9, 
 11, 14-18, etc.). 
 
 There is another item of import which has 
 come down about the Herodotean family : an 
 uncle (or cousin) of the Historian, by the name of 
 Panyasis, was a distinguished epic poet, a resus- 
 citator or more probably an imitator of Homer. 
 He was the author of an epos on Hercules in 
 fourteen books. Think of such a rhapsode in 
 the house reciting his hexameters after the 
 Homeric fashion, and winning the unbounded 
 admiration of all his relatives, among whom was 
 little Herodotus who could hardly help catching 
 the epic lilt and speech. Homer too has the 
 national Pan-Hellenic note, he is not narrowly 
 local or tribal : a trait which Herodotus also pos- 
 sesses in an eminent degree, and which he will 
 show in his coming function of recordinof the 
 great deed of the Greek race, greater than the 
 
xxiv INTU OD UC TION. 
 
 Trojan. So we may conceive the boy to have 
 o^otten a home-training for his future work from 
 uncle Panyasis. 
 
 Later our Herodotus will go to Athens and 
 there come upon a new kind of poetry — the dra- 
 matic, which his friend Sophocles cultivates with 
 great success. This will also deeply influence his 
 History — but let that be told later on ; here we 
 are to see that his culture embraces the three 
 kinds of poetry — epic, lyric and dramatic — all of 
 which were evolved in the spiritual development 
 of ancient Hellas, and which still remain our 
 fundamental divisions of the poetic world. 
 
 Still Herodotus in spite of all this poetic train- 
 ing and sympathy, will not employ verse as the 
 final form of his expression. Historian he must 
 be, and thus distinct from Homer, from Panyasis, 
 and all the shining host of poets ; he will take 
 not the measured speech of the poet, but the 
 prosaist's unfettered flow of words, now de- 
 manded and coming into vogue. Pherecydes of 
 Scyros (550 B. C.) is said to have been the first 
 Greek writer of prose, which arose not before 
 but after verse. A curious fact this is, not 
 merely in philology but in psychology : human 
 language turns back {versus) ere it goes forward 
 (prorsuSf prosa) continuously. Herodotus is the 
 first great prose-writer of Greece whose book 
 has been preserved as a whole, adjusting his nar- 
 rative to the forward course of Time itself in 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. xxv 
 
 which History has its elemental movement. 
 Poetry measures speech, therewith turning the 
 spirit back upon itself; History breaks loose 
 from this voiced whirling backward of line and 
 strophe, and follows the given stream of events 
 outwardly, but also (in Herodotus) shows them 
 inwardly moving in cycles. From this point of 
 view we can say that our Historian has preserved 
 the inner poetic soul of man's heroic deeds, even 
 if he rejects their formal outer vesture of verse. 
 The education at home being fairly completed, 
 Herodotus, now a young man, takes the next im- 
 I portant step in his career, which is to become a 
 traveler. Already (we may suppose) he has 
 seen'jthe neighboring cities along the coast of Asia 
 Minor, and has visited the adjacent islands. Pos- 
 sibly he has taken a flying trip to Athens, then 
 the central city of the Greek world. With 
 Samos he must have had some special connec- 
 tion ; possibly he has been entertained by his 
 namesake in Chios, Herodotus son of Basileides, 
 a supposed relative though an Ionian, whom our 
 Historian singles out for special mention from 
 seven otherwise nameless persons on an embassy 
 (Book VHI, 132). The aspiring young fellow 
 thus gets the desire to move outward from the 
 Greek center to periphery, and to see with his 
 own eyes the extremes of the known or civilized 
 world, as it appeared about the middle of the 
 fifth century B. C. 
 
XXVI INTB ODVG TION. 
 
 In regard to the travels of Herodotus, we are 
 quite in the dark about the order of the countries 
 visited, the length of his stay in each, his means 
 of transport, his companions, his hardships, his 
 expenses. The personal side, so prominent in 
 the modern book of travels, he has quite elimin- 
 ated in transforming his notes into History. 
 The knowledge of the object he gives often along 
 with its historic genesis. What is present he 
 tells, but it cannot be understood apart from its 
 past, which is also to be recounted. So he learns 
 by inquiry how these marvelous things before 
 him got to be, and then sets down the whole, 
 kneading it together into his form of expression. 
 Thus the traveler will metamorphose himself into 
 the historian. But first he has to be the traveler, 
 the simple chronicler, and the geographer, gath- 
 ering his materials very slightly out of books, 
 though these already existed and must have fur- 
 nished some points, especially his chief purpose, 
 which was a book. 
 
 In a general way the journeys of Herodotus 
 can be conceived as extending from Hellas or 
 perchance from Halicarnassus as a center, toward 
 the four quarters of his environing world. To 
 the East, South, North, and probably West he 
 travels as far as he can, till he comes to the Rim 
 which separates civilized antiquity from barbar- 
 ous. This Rim is not easy to draw to the 
 exact line, still it is a very real thing to Herodo- 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. xxvii 
 
 tus, and he marks it on all sides in his book. 
 Beyond it he does not travel, though we may see 
 him peering across it with a shy curiosity and 
 beholding all sorts of marvels. Indeed over the 
 Rim lies the land of wonders, such as India, 
 Ethiopia, Scythia, which can only be described 
 by the miracles of the fairy-tale. But inside 
 the Rim is the historic world, especially Persia 
 and Hellas ; between these Powers is the grand 
 conflict of History, to describe which is just the 
 function of our Historian. 
 
 One may conjecture that his first long trip may 
 have been eastward, to Babylon, the colossal city 
 of the Orient, and to Susa, the capital of Persia, 
 where he might have had some business, as he 
 was ostensibly a Persian subject. On the whole 
 this was an easy journey to take, since he had 
 only to ride along the excellent road made by 
 Darius and supplied with caravanseries at con- 
 venient stopping-places. The limit of this jour- 
 ney to the East was the valley of the Euphrates, 
 for Herodotus never penetrated the mountains of 
 Persia proper, the original seat of the Persians, 
 and he never saw their famous cities, Persepolis 
 and Pasargadse. The Indus lay far beyond his 
 horizon, and also the vast stretch of territory 
 inhabited by the Aryans from Bactria to Per- 
 sia — a territory which Alexander will traverse in 
 his later conquests. The huge fluvial cities, 
 Nineveh and Babvlon, with their lono^ antecedent 
 
xxviu IJSTTB OD UC TION. 
 
 History won the permanent interest of the 
 budding Historian, though his object was to 
 trace the rise of the Persian empire from its 
 first beginning till it had consolidated all the 
 peoples of West-Asia into a mighty mass, which 
 was. to be hurled against the little Greek City- 
 State in vain. 
 
 The journey to Egypt was a capital event in 
 the life of Herodotus, though the date of it is 
 uncertain. The plausible conjecture has been 
 made that he was there durinoj the revolt of 
 Inaros from the Persian king (460-55 B. C), 
 when "the Athenians controlled the country" 
 according to Thucyclides. But at any time he 
 would have found many Greeks in Egypt, inas- 
 much as for two centuries, since the ase of 
 Psammetichus, they had been located in the 
 valley of the Nile. Our traveler naturally went 
 first to the Greek town Naucratis founded by 
 Amasis, with its native speech, customs, wine- 
 shops, especially with its licensed guild of inter- 
 preters, half-breeds as Herodotus has told their 
 story. What did heget from Egypt, from its pyr- 
 amids, from its colossal works, from its long lapse 
 of centuries? That second Book of his (on 
 Egypt) has to our mind a peculiar style and 
 coloring; the clear Greek outline is seen evanish- 
 ing into an uncertain twilight of shapes. At any 
 rate the Historian here reaches quite back tQ the 
 beginning of History, to the first evidenced start 
 
THE FA THE B OF HIS TOBY. xxix 
 
 of human civilization. Now Herodotus is 
 destined to make a new historic beginning, very 
 different from thtit old Egyptian one; he will 
 portray the* start of European History in its con- 
 flict with the Orient, though the latter seems to 
 have its far-off primordial start in Egypt. Cer- 
 tainly Herodotus was thrown back to the 
 remotest reach of his science during his trip in 
 the Valley of the Nile. Thus it had its bearing 
 upon his life-task, which was to show the great 
 historic transition from the East to the West 
 (More about Herodotus in Egypt on following 
 pp. 179-85). 
 
 Along the Southern Rim of his travels, Herod- 
 otus sees the Greek colonies Cyrene and Barke, 
 with quite a little stretch of Northern Africa 
 embracing what seems to be a caravan route in 
 the Libyan desert. Beyond this Rim again he 
 places unnatural things, wonders recounted in 
 fabulous tales. As a counterpart of this South- 
 ern border, the North has also its Rim with the 
 corresponding marvels (in Book IV). It is 
 likely that our traveler did not fail to pay a visit 
 to the Greek world in the West, in Italy and 
 Sicily, during his first period, and note there also 
 the Rim of Barbary. But properly that Western 
 world belongs to his later life, in which it will 
 receive some notice, from his having gone to 
 Italy as a colonist. Thus on four sides, with 
 Greece as a center, he has delimited his environ- 
 
XXX lYTBOD UC TION. 
 
 ing earth, which he conceives as embraced in a 
 kind of border or Rim not easily passible, and 
 perilous at least for the ordinary man. 
 
 Such we may deem the itinerary of Herodotus 
 in his attempt to make the round of the known 
 territory of antiquity. In every direction he has 
 pushed to the belt which surrounds the civilized 
 nations, and separates them from the uncivilized 
 and even unhuman. This we have called the 
 Rim of Barbary, which civilization is to tran- 
 scend step by step through all coming History 
 till our own time, which likewise has its border- 
 land of savagery. It is for us orie of the merits 
 of the Father of History that he draws this peri- 
 pheral line with such distinctness, and thus in 
 his way marks out the problem of civilization, 
 of course unconsciously. After his time we shall 
 see Rome extendinoj this Rim, and Charlemagne 
 pushes it out still farther, beyond the old limit 
 in the North. 
 
 Finally the traveler returns home from his dis- 
 tant journeyings. This is the time when a 
 political adventure is ascribed to him. The 
 tyrant Lygdamis who has slain his uncle Panya- 
 sis, forces him to flee from Halicarnassus ; but 
 he returns with help and drives out the tyrant. 
 This story is first told by Suidas, a late and poor 
 authority; the result is that it has been genei ally 
 discredited by scholars. It may be deemed, 
 however, a tribute to the popularity of Herodotus 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. xxxi 
 
 that some Greek story-teller has put into his 
 career an heroic deed, and made him a tyrant- 
 expeller or a tyrant-slayer. This was a favorite 
 theme of Greek romance, as we see by the tale 
 of Harmodiu'S and Aristogiton and of many 
 others. On the whole, however, the heroism of 
 Herodotus lay in a different field, which is amply 
 illustrated by what we read of him in his book. 
 The year of his return to his native city can 
 not be told exactly, still its place in his life is 
 reasonably fixed. His first apprenticeship to 
 History he has faithfully served; he has pene- 
 trated, as far as was then possible, to the remote 
 past of the early civilizations found in the River 
 Valleys of the Nile and Euphrates. The later 
 rise of the great Oriental Empires in Media and 
 then in Persia he has traced. This knowledo^e 
 is somehow to be connected and organized with 
 the historic facts of the Greco-Persian wars, 
 about which he had heard in his younger days. 
 Very different are the two sets of occurrences, 
 but they have a unity, they show one grand 
 movement of History, which culminates in the 
 mighty blow which separates Orient and Occi- 
 dent. Now the pivotal question with Herodotus 
 at this time must have been, Can I portray this 
 unity? Can I organize these diverse materials 
 into a book which is itself a unity? We can 
 imagine him re-reading his Odyssey which is 
 also a return home (^iiostos) and delving into 
 
xxxii INTBODUCTION. 
 
 its subtle structure, in order that he too may be 
 a builder of the mighty Deed in words. Many 
 hints he gets from that Homeric source, but he 
 concludes that he cannot sing his theme in the 
 present age — which by the way was the mistake 
 of uncle Panjasis, whose work has totally 
 perished. He must have felt that the creative 
 period of the old Epos has gone, and that the 
 time for a new literary expression, that of His- 
 tory, has come. 
 
 Many signs of this new form of utterance, not 
 epical, not lyrical, not even poetic, have shown 
 themselves in the Greek cities along the coast of 
 Asia 'Minor, and in the adjacent islands. Par- 
 ticularly at Miletus, then lying in ruins from the 
 Persian conquest, but once the most flourishing 
 city, both commercially and intellectually, of the 
 whole Hellenic stock. History had already put 
 forth its earliest buds in Hecataeus and Dio- 
 nysius. Quite a list of the names of these pre- 
 Herodotean historians have come down to us, 
 with some few fragments of their works. 
 Charon of Lampsacus, Hellanicus of Lesbos and 
 Xanthus of Sardes are perhaps the best known 
 of these eclipsed lights ; we learn that Milesian 
 Dionysius had composed a History of Persia 
 before Herodotus. In general that whole Greco- 
 Asiatic border was already flowering with His- 
 tory, which was verily the new expression of the 
 time. Indeed we hear of an historian in the 
 
THE FATHER OF HI 8 TOBY. xxxiii 
 
 West, Hippys of Rhegion, who ^ave an account 
 of the Greek colonization of Sicily and Italy. 
 
 Here we should note a striking correspond- 
 ence. At Miletus Philosophy had already begun 
 in Thales, who was also a forerunner in Science. 
 Not in central or continental Hellas does Greek 
 culture send forth its first bloom, but in the 
 colonial borderland, especially that of Asia 
 Minor. From this periphery Art, Science, Phil- 
 osophy, and History also, will pass to the 
 European mother-country, concentrating finally 
 at Athens, which will unfold them to their 
 hiojhest ancient maturity. Greek culture, oriofi- 
 nating on the circumference of the Hellenic 
 world, is first centripetal, and then having per- 
 fected itself to its supreme manifestations in one 
 City-State, becomes centrifugal, raying forth 
 through the Macedonian and Roman Empires. 
 
 Now Herodotus is living at the time when the 
 great centripetal movement of Greek culture 
 from the Asiatic colonial borderland takes place. 
 There is no doubt that this flight of the free 
 Greek Spirit evolving itself into all the higher 
 disciplines, was caused by the curse of Persian 
 domination. The autonomous Hellenic City- 
 State was the institutional source as well as the 
 protecting environment of the supreme forms of 
 Greek civilization. Of course, in Asia Minor the 
 rule of the Persian extinguished this all-sided 
 development of the Hellenic Folk-Soul. Hence a 
 
 3 
 
XXXI V INTB OD UC TlOm 
 
 vast spiritual migration of the whole body of the 
 Arts and Sciences began to flow toward Athens, 
 the completely free City-State, which had freed 
 itself and the continental City-States of Greece 
 from the smothering domination of the Oriental. 
 Moreover Athens had won a large political 
 authority after the war with Persia, and was the 
 real capital of the total Helkis. 
 
 Our present interest is that Herodotus joins 
 this migration, has to join it in order to com- 
 plete that new discipline of his, not merely a 
 History but the World's History. It would 
 seem that the tyrant Lygdamis, under Persian 
 authority still ruled in his city, which fact was 
 deeply discordant with his theme. He had to 
 seek an harmonious institutional environment if 
 he would put the right spirit into his work. 
 
 We may likewise infer that the returned tra- 
 veler found the situation at home no longer pleas- 
 ant. He could hardly settle down into the nar- 
 row routine of a little household and of a little 
 town, after having expanded his life through the 
 known world, even to the Rim of Barbary. His 
 conflict with the tyrant Lygdamis may be mythi- 
 cal, still there was an inner conflict and probably 
 a hard one. Like every traveler, ancient or modern 
 who returns home after a long absence, he finds 
 his place filled, things have gone on without him 
 and do not need him ; he is a superfluity. Then 
 what could he do with his large acquisitions of 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. xxxv 
 
 knowledge in that small corner of Halicarnassus, 
 quite out of the way of the world's movement? 
 And eould he make there the grand transition of 
 his life from the traveler to the historian? Not 
 at all; so forth he must go. But whither? To 
 the intellectual center of the Greek world. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It is not known in what year Herodotus began 
 his permanent Athenian residence. In our opinion 
 the peace of Callias (450-499 B.C.) represents 
 about the time when he transferred his abode to 
 Athens. There is good reason for thinking that 
 this event had great significance in the life of 
 Herodotus. He makes an allusion to the embassy 
 of Callias and its presence at the court of the Per- 
 sian King Artaxerxes (VII, 151), though the 
 occurrence lies far outside of the scope of his 
 work. The grand fact about this embassy is that 
 it established peace between Greece or Athens 
 specially and Persia, and thus was the ac- 
 knowledged conclusion of the long Greco-Persian 
 conflict, which had really lasted from the time of 
 Cyrus wh© had subjugated the Greek cities of Asia 
 Minor. These cities were now recognized as au- 
 tonomous by the Persian king, and enrolled as 
 allies of the Athenian Confederaey. Among them 
 was doubtless, the native city of our Historian, 
 Halicarnassus. By the treaty no war-ship of 
 
xxxvi IN TBODUC TION. 
 
 I Persia was permitted in the waters of the Aegaean, 
 which thus became practically an Athenian sea, 
 and the whole Asiatic coast alonor this sea was 
 turned toward Athens as its center of defense and 
 of authority. Its people changed their poli- 
 tical look from the East to the West. We shall 
 find the same change in Herodotus, who now per- 
 sonally and spiritually moves out of Asia into 
 Europe — a transition reflecteil deeply in his book. 
 Nor are we to forget the Persian advantages 
 granted by the peace of Callias. Athens pledged 
 herself to keep out of Egypt, to quit Cyprus, in 
 fine to leave Persia alone in her assigned bounds. 
 This was a very important step in the policy of 
 Athens, who on account of her victories over the 
 Persians had begun to dream of Oriental con- 
 quest. Such a policy had been upheld by Cimon, 
 but he died and disasters came, especially the 
 terrible blow in Egypt. Then Pericles took the 
 helm of State, and recalled Athens from her 
 schemes of territorial conquest both in the East 
 and in Hellas, really recalled her to her true 
 destiny. Pericles foresaw the coming Pelopon- 
 nesian War, and proposed to be ready for it 
 through the one possible way, Athenian naval 
 supremacy. But he also had an internal policy 
 of developing his city, which thereby entered 
 upon what is known as the Periclean age, famous 
 ,for its Art, Science, Poetry and Philosophy — 
 
THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. xxxvii 
 
 spiritually the grandest creative epoch in the 
 World's History. 
 
 Now we are to see Herodotus plunged as it 
 were headforemost into this Athenian whirlpool 
 of intellectual activity. He was then somewhere 
 about thirty-five to forty years old. He brought 
 extensive notes of his travels in the East, essen- 
 tially the Oriental part of his work, together 
 with his explorations in the North and in the 
 South. He has been hitherto the wanderer, the 
 sight-seer, the diligent reporter. But now at 
 Athens he is to become the Historian and is to 
 transform his disjointed observations into an 
 organic History. The supreme interest at present 
 is to trace the influences which produced or 
 helped to produce this transformation. 
 
 First of all we are to note that in the Athenian 
 capital Herodotus came upon a new line of his- 
 toric events, those of continental Greece and 
 particularly those of Athens. Some forty years 
 before his arrival had occurred the victory of 
 Marathon, and he could converse with many men 
 still living who had been in that battle. Greater 
 yet was the number of Athenian survivors of the 
 war with Xerxes, ten years after Marathon. 
 Certainly here was a fine opportunity for Herod- 
 otus to "learn by inquiry." Athens was the 
 center of the victorious repulse of Persia, and 
 many of the victors were still on hand to give 
 their experience. The Historian could easily 
 
XXX vni INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 reach the famous battle-fields, see their monu- 
 ments and read their inscriptions. Marathon 
 was distant not more than a good day's walk; 
 Plataea was but a few hours further, while the 
 city overlooked Salamis. 
 
 The chief fact of the stay at Athens, however, 
 was that the Historian had to be transformed, 
 and then he could transform or rather create his 
 History. He must see the workings of the 
 democracy, which had done the heroic deeds of 
 the desperate war, and he must become sympa- 
 thetic with it; thissympathy he shows repeatedly 
 throughout his work. In the Orient he had 
 known only absolute monarchies, he was born a 
 Persian subject; moreover he was a Dorian by 
 birth and probably of an aristocratic family. Evi- 
 dently he had to get over quite a stock of 
 prejudices ere he could feel himself a congenial 
 Athenian democrat. Yet this he seems to have 
 done. Having become harmonious with the 
 institutional world around him, he is ready to give 
 its History with the sympathy and admiration 
 which its valorous action deserves. Detractors 
 have indeed charged him with excessive partialit}^ 
 for Athens, but the impression abides that he 
 was not more partial to her than History itself or 
 than the World-Spirit. 
 
 In this Athenian school Herodotus must have 
 learned other things necessary for his vocation. 
 Speeches indeed he could find in Homer; but 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY, xxxix 
 
 public oratory applied to historic events he could 
 only witness in the Assembly of the People. He 
 must have often seen and heard Pericles as well 
 as opposing orators ; thus he could get acquainted 
 with the spirit of Athens and learn much of her 
 past history in the allusions of the speakers. 
 From Plutarch is derived the statement that he 
 knew the poet Sophocles, who addressed to him 
 personally a poem. Herodotus was at Athens 
 during the bloom of Tragic Poetry and its influ- 
 ence upon him cannot be doubted. It may be 
 said that he shows prevailingly a tragic view of 
 the world, similar to that of the great Athenian 
 tragedians. He could have been present at the 
 first representation of Antigone^ which contains 
 a passage very similar to one in his History 
 (in, 119). The story of Adrastus has decidedly 
 a tragic pathos of the fateful Athenian sort 
 (I, 35-45). In fact the tragic Nemesis which 
 overshadows the whole work, was gotten by the 
 Historian from the Athenian consciousness of 
 the time, in whose greatest poetic conceptions 
 it finds expression. 
 
 The Periclean age is noted for its dominant 
 architectonic power : it produced the Parthenon 
 and the Propylsea, of their kind the supreme 
 edifices of the world. But this marvelous con- 
 structive character is found not merely in archi- 
 tecture, it belongs to other spiritual domains, to 
 Literature and Philosophy, and gives the chief 
 
Xl INTRODUCTION, 
 
 element of style to Classic Art. The dramas of 
 Sophocles owe much of their beauty and power 
 to their very simple yet very subtle structure. 
 Plato is a builder in his way quite as much as 
 Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, in whose 
 pediments Phidias gives the greatest example of 
 architectural sculpture. Athens having built her 
 empire, became a builder at home, and all her 
 spiritual products have this architectonic element. 
 Now we are to grasp fully the relation of this 
 phase of Athenian development to our His- 
 torian, we are to trace its effect upon his genius. 
 Herodotus became a builder too, a spiritual 
 builder, and nobody can get to the heart of his 
 work without penetrating and fully conceiving, 
 yea formulating the constructive principle of it 
 in the parts and in the whole. The profoundly 
 artistic element of Periclean Athens he studied 
 and appropriated till it became a portion of his 
 spiritual nature, and not only transformed but 
 transfigured his book, which is in the deepest sense 
 a work of art. The student is, therefore, to re- 
 build in his own soul the grand historic edifice of 
 Herodotus, as unique, as epoch-making, and we 
 hold, as beautiful in its way as the Parthenon. 
 Indeed both these structures, so we may call 
 them, rise up contemporaneously from the same 
 great movement of the city and the age. 
 
 There was another spiritual current for which 
 the time of Pericles has become famous: the 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY, xli 
 
 philosophic. It is highly probable that our his- 
 torian may have seen a strange personage, bare- 
 footed and snub-nosed, standing on the street- 
 corners or shuffling through the market-place, 
 in order to converse with the people upon the 
 topics of the day, though in a new and peculiar 
 manner, by question and answer. But in this 
 process he employed an inner method of his own, 
 which had the strange power of burning up all 
 mere caprices, opinions, individual views, and of 
 throwing the stress upon the creative thought of 
 the object, the true concept of it, that which was 
 universal. Herodotus, during his prolonged 
 residence at Athens could hardly help meeting 
 Socrates, and learning from him something by 
 inquiry, since the historian was fully as inquisi- 
 tive as the philosopher. We shall not try to 
 reproduce their dialogue (after the fashion of 
 Landor), only saying that our historian, though 
 not naturally philosophic, has caught some notion 
 of that elusive universal element and has in his 
 way put it into his History. Indeed Athens has 
 this universal element in all her deeds and words 
 at this time, for have these not lived through 
 Space and d4>wn Time? Her utterance has shown 
 itself universal in Literature, Art, and Philos- 
 ophy, being really for all ages and all countries. 
 In this universality of Athens Herodotus has par- 
 ticipated. Especially has he celebrated Athenian 
 Solon as a philosopher, having put into his 
 
xlii INTBODUCTION. 
 
 mouth the world-view which is distinctively 
 Herodoteanin a dialogue with Croesus (I. 29-33). 
 This dialogic form may have been caught up 
 from Socrates (though not necessarily) but its 
 full artistic development we find somewhat later 
 in Plato. The doctrine of Nemesis, who seems 
 to hover between a personal divinity and a philo- 
 sophic abstraction, we consider also to have 
 been a growth which the historian chiefly ob- 
 , tained from contemporary Athens. To our way 
 of looking, it contains a strand which connects it 
 with the J^ous of the philosopher Anaxagoras, 
 who was the friend of Pericles, and who lived at 
 Athens during the entire stay oi Herodotus. 
 Following the example of the great statesman, 
 the cultivated Athenian studied philosophy, and 
 supplanted Zetis with JSTous, The result was 
 that religion entered Athenian politics and the 
 enemies of Pericles preferred a charge of impiety 
 against Anaxagoras, who was cempelled to leave 
 the eity. It is to this s®urce that we are inclined 
 to trace the thread of free-thinking which our his- 
 torian shows woven through his religiosity. He 
 has a tinge of what may be called the Athenian 
 Aufkld7nmg, a skeptical turn which often curi- 
 ously colors his dominant credulity. 
 
 But there is one thing which Herodotus does 
 not seem to have fully acquired at Athens : the 
 complete mastery of the Attic dialect. It remains 
 a matter of uncertain conjecture why our his- 
 
THE FATBEB OF HISTOBll. xliii 
 
 toriaii did not employ Athenian speech for the 
 composition of his History. What he heard 
 around him and what he conversed in for many 
 years, what had already become the vehicle of 
 the highest poetic and literary expression, he 
 for some reason rejected. We can understand 
 why he, though a Dorian by birth rejected the 
 Doric. But why he should prefer a form of the 
 Asiatic Ionic, probably the Samian, to the 
 Athenian Ionic, f 5 far more of a problem. Ulti- 
 mately we have to think that he took the dialect 
 most natural to him, and we know fr®m his 
 History that he must have had some very inti- 
 mate and lasting relations with the island of 
 Samos (See Book III, passim and the following 
 commentary pp. 243-5). This was in his youth 
 when language weaves itself into the fibre of 
 the mind. He may have believed, too, that the 
 largest constituency for his book would be 
 the lonians of the Asiatic coast, with their 
 numerous cities and colonies. It is probable 
 that Ionic was the lingua franca for commercial 
 intercourse with the Mediterranean peoples of 
 the East. Thus his History might reach beyond 
 Greece. But the chief reason probably was that 
 he never felt himself quite master of the niceties 
 of Attic style, he always remained too much of 
 a provincial, not having reached Athens before 
 middle life when speech is no longer fluid in the 
 soul but has taken its fixed form. Undoubtedly 
 
xliv • INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the dialect is more naive and unreflective than 
 the cultivated tongue, and we feel a certain suit- 
 ableness of the vehicle to the manner and char- 
 acter of Herodotus. He is far more of a spon- 
 taneous artist than a thinker, in spite of his 
 philosophizing. 
 
 In this connection another question throbs up: 
 How does it come that Athens herself, so full of 
 all sorts of artistic expression, never produced 
 the historian of her greatest deeds? It is Herod- 
 otus, an Asiatic Greek, a Dorian of Halicar- 
 nassus, who has transmitted to all time the 
 account of Marathon, Salamis, Plataea, the 
 supreme glories, as far as heroic action of a 
 single community is concerned, of Athens, of 
 Greece, if not of the entire World's History. It 
 would seem that only an outsider, sympathetic 
 and far-traveled, who knew both Persia and 
 Greece, and in a way was of both, who had in 
 him the Oriental as well as the Hellenic strains, 
 could make the great historic synthesis required 
 for recording adequately the Greco-Persian War. 
 Athens was too one-sided to portray such a con- 
 flict, even if the World-Spirit breathed upon her 
 in doing the deed. Politically she was after 
 all merely an Ionic City-State, and one among 
 many of the kind. To be sure, she will later 
 build an empire of her own, but that lies not in 
 the theme of Herodotus. A transplanted Oriental 
 Greek embraces the three elemental conditions: 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. xlv 
 
 he must be an Oriental ; he must be a Greek — we 
 might say a Doric Greek, for the Dorians took a 
 strong part in the War, and even were (as 
 Spartans) the leaders highest in command; he 
 must finally be an Athenian, though an adopted 
 one, for nowhere except at Athens could he 
 drink of that World-Spirit, which was the over- 
 mastering presence in the struggle. Nowhere else 
 could he find the true information about Themis- 
 tocles the most heroic character which the War 
 brought to the surface. The Athenian, great in 
 art, poetry, philosophy, forms of uttering what 
 is universal, could not write his own history as 
 universal, but had to find a man who spanned all 
 the colliding elements of the age. Politically 
 Athens could not be universal, could not even be 
 mitional. 
 
 But when the City-States of Greece began to 
 fly asunder and assail one another, then Herodo- 
 tus turns away — for he lived to see the Pelopon- 
 nesian War — and another and very different 
 hand, though an Athenian one, grasps the pen of 
 History. Thucydides, born in Attica, can record 
 the long and bitter conflict of his city with other 
 Greek cities ; his theme is not that of united 
 Hellas against the invading Orient, but of separ- 
 ated Hellas against itself. He is the product of a 
 divisive, analytic, self-undoing world, to which 
 his mind and his style correspond. Intellectually 
 the two great Historians are very different, and 
 
xlvi INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 represent different tendencies. Historically 
 Herodotus is Pan-Hellenic, while Thucydides is 
 Athenian, though impartial and fair to all sides. 
 Hence the latter must write in the dialect of his 
 City-8tate, into whose institutional world he is so 
 decidedly cast. 
 
 Herodotus has, therefore, to pass through the 
 Athenian spirit in order to get the universality 
 of Athens, and to apply it to Historj^ — which 
 strangely no gifted son of that city, so prolific of 
 genius in other fields, seems able to do. It is 
 through this baptism that History itself becomes 
 universal, becomes the World's History. Other- 
 wise Herodotus would have remained merely a 
 collector of facts, a geographer, ethnographer, 
 at most a local historian, giving an account of 
 this or that couutrv durinor a certain time. He 
 would never have risen beyond the numerous in- 
 cipient historians of the Asiatic border, like 
 Hecat8eus, Dionysius, Hellanicus and the rest. 
 But his true destiny is to resume them all essen- 
 tially in his own work, to organize into unity 
 their fragments, to universalize that which is 
 indeed only particular. As he rendered them 
 complete, who were partial and incomplete, he 
 rendered them unnecessary. The result is they 
 have perished, while his grand totality has lived. 
 Time, not needing them for its record, has let 
 them drop quite into the sea of oblivion, 
 
THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. xlvii 
 
 with hardly more than their names still afloat 
 tied to a few fragments in some cases. 
 
 In one thing he did not follow the Athenians, 
 who had substantially eliminated woman from 
 their History, in contrast with the Orient and 
 even with the mythical aforetime of Hellas. 
 Herodotus seems to have had a fondness for 
 heroines, who retained in his mind their legend- 
 ary prominence. Queen Tomyris, glutting the 
 dead Cyrus with blood, shows the tragic intensity 
 of Medea. But his favorite evidently is Arte- 
 misia, queen of his own native Halicarnassus, 
 who actually fought at Salamis on the Persian 
 side and ran down and sank a ship in her way, 
 as she was fleeing from capture, whereby she 
 won the notice of Xerxes. The Athenians tried 
 to make her a prisoner, "for they thought it an 
 awful thing for a woman to dare make war upon 
 Athens." So they set a prize for her capture, 
 which she deftly eluded. In that word awful 
 (^deinon) one may still hear Herodotus bantering 
 his Athenian audience with a sly thrust of sar- 
 castic humor (VIII, 93). He glorifies her as a 
 kind of Amazonian Queen of old Greek legend, 
 who had a second time invaded their country. 
 For the mythical Amazons made an expedition 
 against Attica and laid it waste — an instance 
 which the Athenians themselves cite in their dis- 
 pute with the Tegeans before the battle of 
 Platsea (IX, 27). But one queries about Arte- 
 
xlviii INTB OB UC TION. 
 
 misia: What emancipated woman of to-day 
 would think of equaling her by taking command 
 of an army in the field or of a squadron of ships 
 in a sea-fight? Surely she is still far ahead of 
 our age on one line of progress. 
 
 In a degree, therefore, Herodotus restores the 
 woman of the Greek Mythus to Greek History, 
 going out of his way somewhat to do it, one 
 thinks. In this regard he again stands in strik- 
 ing contrast to Thucydides, who is narrowly an 
 Athenian of the historic era in respect to women, 
 not even mentioning Aspasia nor any other 
 prominent woman. The mythical heroine has 
 wholly vanished from his Hellenic world. 
 
 But Greek culture having migrated to Athens, 
 and undergone its transformation there, must 
 migrate out of Athens, bearing the impress of 
 her universality. Again our Historian plunges 
 into the stream, and is now borne outwards, yet 
 not back to the Orient but forward to the 
 Occident. Into, through, and out of the Athen- 
 ian discipline he passes, marking the main epochs 
 of his life. 
 
 V. 
 
 It is not doubted that Herodotus made a 
 change of abode and became a citizen or per- 
 chance a colonist of Thurium, a new city founded 
 in Italy upon the site of Sybaris (destroyed in 
 510 B. C, by the neighboring city of Crotona). 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY, xlix 
 
 The time when Herodotus is supposed to have 
 quit Athens for his new home in the West is 
 variously given; let us say 443 B. C, with good 
 authorities (Clinton and Rawlinson). This would 
 be some six years after the peace of Callias ; 
 about the time of that peace Herodotus appeared 
 at Athens as a permanent resident. But it is 
 very doubtful if our Historian remained continu- 
 ously at Thurium. He probably received his 
 allotment of land and his right of citizenship. 
 There are passages in his book which indicate 
 that he must have been present at Athens re- 
 peatedly after the given date of his settlement at 
 Thurium. He did not need to give up wholly 
 the central city for the colony, which turned out 
 a very turbulent, seditious community. 
 
 It is, however, a significant fact in the life of 
 Herodotus, that he becomes the Occidental Greek 
 after his Oriental and Athenian epochs. Thus 
 he spans the three chief divisions of the Hellenic 
 world, yea of all future History down to the 
 present. Still from his book we may gather 
 that he never fully identified himself with the 
 Hellenic Occident, and of course he showed no 
 indication of the coming Italy and Rome. He 
 was perchance too old, and he was too bent upon 
 setting forth the one great conflict, that between 
 Persia and Greece, upon which in his time lay 
 the stress of the World's History. 
 
 It has been handed down that he wrougjht out 
 
1 INTBODUCTION. 
 
 and completed his History at Thurium. The 
 materials which he had gathered at Athens and 
 in the Orient had to be put into artistic shape, 
 being kneaded over from a great variety of 
 notes, memories, investigations of many kinds 
 during an entire life. Some parts must have 
 been written out and possibly published before 
 others or the whole. Keen critical eyes have 
 claimed that they have seen the signs of several 
 different editions in his work. There are pas- 
 sages which seem to lack the author's final 
 revision. There are possibly one or two malad- 
 justments or even displacements ; still the whole 
 has come down to us in a remarkably complete 
 state. We see the finishing hand of the artist in the 
 grand totality as well as in its larger and smaller 
 details. In this respect we are acquainted with 
 no historical work in existence to be compared 
 with it. The modern historian is the victim of 
 Time, and is swept along in mere temporal suc- 
 cession. Undoubtedly the setting of History is 
 Time, but watch what the old Father did with his 
 child. In moving forward it is also to reveal the 
 process, the return upon itself; History is not 
 simply a line of events streaming outward to in- 
 finity, not simply a line starting here and cut off 
 there, even if it has a beginning and an end. His 
 entire work is the advance and the recoil of the 
 Orient back upon itself, in which recoil the great 
 historic separation takes place — the separation of 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. li 
 
 the Orient from Europe. That is his theme, the 
 most important and deepest of History. Also it 
 is universal, embracing both sides, Asiatic and 
 European. Here we can see that Herodotus has 
 written a World's History, while Thucydides is 
 Hellenic, and not wholly that, for he is confined 
 essentially to the civilized City-State of Greece 
 and its conflicts. Herodotus shows far more 
 interest in and appreciation of tribal Greece and 
 the barbarous world, which, though in themselves 
 unhistoric, will assert more and more a place in 
 the totality of History. 
 
 No biography of the Historian can neglect the 
 transmitted fact that he gave readings from his 
 work at Athens, and at various other cities of 
 Greece. Eusebius states that the Public Assem- 
 bly of the city decreed him a reward for History, 
 some of which he had read before the people. 
 Then he must have imparted his work privately 
 to many persons. As an author, he could not 
 help that. Indeed he must have tested his 
 account of Marathon upon many Marathonian 
 soldiers, not to speak of the thousands still living 
 who had taken part in Salamis and Platsea. His 
 narrative, as we read it to-daj^, has the flavor, 
 the interest, perchance somewhat of the bias 
 which comes of being taken directly from the 
 lips of the Athenian combatants. He must have 
 heard in the streets, at the banquet, and in the 
 market-place, the famous battles fought over 
 
lii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 again and ao^ain, with keen running comments 
 upon the Spartans, their own Athenian leaders, 
 and the Persian enemy. We can all judge of the 
 situation by our American experience. Herodo- 
 tus arrived in Athens about thirty years after the 
 war with Persia. In every hamlet and farm- 
 house of our land, North and South, the soldier 
 who was present is still ready to give his account 
 of battles and his opinion of the generals on both 
 sides. Upon such an ever-bubbling fountain of 
 History our eager reporter came, and of course 
 began to take notes, sift statements and eliminate 
 contradictions, seeking to get at the truth. Who 
 does not recognize the difference in style and 
 treatment between the first half and the second 
 half of his work? So striking is this difference 
 that the one half may be called Oriental, the 
 other Hellenic. The latter chiefly springs from 
 his stay at Athens, and takes color and concep- 
 tion largely from the talk of her soldiers and 
 sailors. 
 
 Of course Herodotus found a gratified audience 
 at Athens, since his work was in some of its 
 chief aspects an Athenian reflection. And it 
 had to be, if it were truly world-historical. For 
 there can be no doubt that the Genius of Univer- 
 sal History, otherwise called the World-Spirit, 
 was brooding over the Attic city during that 
 time, and bringing forth the pivotal events of 
 the age. Some such presence our Historian 
 
THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. liii 
 
 must have felt and soucjht to catch, harnessinsf 
 it in his narrative, where we may still recognize 
 it thousands of years later. Of course he read 
 extracts from his work in order to hear the 
 reverberations of the Athenian Folk-Soul to his 
 words, and to re-echo its voice, filled as it was 
 with the mighty destiny of the time which he 
 was to shpw forth in his History. In some of 
 his readings he may have met the young Thucy- 
 dides, though tradition has placed their meeting 
 at Olympia. 
 
 It is reported that he wentto other Greek cities, 
 Thebes and Corinth for instance, and to have 
 held readings. If he did actually go to Thebes, 
 he may have given an extract from his account 
 of Egypt, with which that city claimed some 
 mythical connection through its Egyptian name- 
 sake. He hardly recited to the Thebans their 
 conduct at Plata^a and the historic siege of their 
 city by the assembled Greeks, a striking counter- 
 part of its famous mythical sieges. If he read 
 at Corinth, he probably did not select the unpa- 
 triotic part which its admiral played before the 
 battle of Salamis. He may have recited there 
 the speech of the Corinthian Sosicles (V. 92) 
 against tyrants. Most welcome would he be in 
 the little town of Plateea, whose people shared 
 with Athens the glory of Marathon, and which he 
 must have repeatedly visited for the sake of the 
 neighboring battle-field and its monuments. 
 
liv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Where Herodotus died is not certain; there 
 are three different reports coming down from 
 ancient times. Most probable is the statement 
 of Suidas that he ended his days at Thurium, 
 and was buried in the market-place. The time 
 of his death is also unsettled. One improbable 
 report makes him outlast the Peloponnesian 
 War ten years, and carries his age up into the 
 nineties. We are inclined to think (with Grote, 
 Rawlinson and others) that he never lived to see 
 the Athenian expedition to Sicily (415 B. C), 
 which was the attempt of Athens to get possession 
 of Occidental Hellas. The transfer of Athenian 
 ambition from the East to the West would have 
 forced from him some interpolation even more 
 emphatic than the peace of Callias. 
 
 We have to infer that he was alive at the death 
 of Artaxerxes who died in 425 B. C. ; since he 
 alludes to that Persian king's reign as past. Sev- 
 eral years of the Peloponnesian War he lived 
 through ; he speaks of the evils which had befal. 
 len Greece not only from the Persians, but from 
 the Greek leaders themselves (men and cities) 
 warring with one another **for the supremacy" 
 (VI, 98). From such a spectacle he turns away his 
 eyes, leaving its record to a different Historian, 
 Thucydides, whose theme is the inner self-undo- 
 ing and dissolution of the Greek City-State, 
 whereas the theme of Herodotus is its triumph 
 over the Orient, which was indeed its culminat- 
 ing act. 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY, Iv 
 
 VI 
 
 We are next to inquire about the institutional 
 world which Herodotus portrays, and of which he 
 is the great historical protagonist. Primarily the 
 struggle between Asia and Greece is a political 
 one, and turns upon the form of government 
 under which man is to live. The Orient had its 
 way of authority, its kind of State, born of its 
 consciousness and adapted to its needs. But a 
 new governmental form had sprung up among 
 the Greeks, and manifested its first flowering 
 along the coast of Asia Minor. The same politi- 
 cal drift, however, was observable throughout 
 all Hellas, which was engaged in building and 
 bringing to completion the Hellenic City-State — 
 a unique phenomenon in the World's History, 
 and the herald of coming Europe. 
 
 The political History of Greece, then, pivots 
 upon the City-State as autonomous, exclusive, 
 self-sufficing and self-contained. The entire 
 Greek Nation has the tendency to break up into 
 communal atoms, each of which longs to have its 
 own law and life within itself, and to be connected 
 as little as possible with its neighbors. Such is the 
 fundamental fact of the Hellenic world, partic- 
 ularly in contrast with the Orient, which unites, 
 even if externally, cities, peoples, and races, 
 solidifying them at least on the surface. This 
 Oriental massification of humanity is shivered by 
 
Ivi INTBODUCTION. 
 
 Greece into its individual constituents, both as to 
 persons and institutions, each of which begins to 
 unfold within itself and to insist upon its own 
 separate career. The man and the community 
 now get possession of themselves, and flower 
 forth with an excellence which still remains 
 epoch-making in the World's History. Greece 
 starts to individualizing itself, and with it Europe 
 also, and the process will continue through 
 European civilization till the present. The colos- 
 sal overwhelming Orient, as we see it in the 
 Persian Empire, meets the small City-State of 
 Athens at Marathon, and is whirled back upon 
 itself with a mightiness and completeness which 
 means the dawn of a new institutional order. 
 
 At the same time the drawback must be acknowl- 
 edged : the Greek defect of associative power. 
 Such stress is put upon the individual community 
 that it cannot combine with other communities 
 for a great national purpose, or can combine but 
 partially and temporarily and with great diffi- 
 culty. The Greek people has no political unity 
 till this be forced upon it from the outside, first 
 by Macedonia and then by Kome. 
 
 With Greece then, the second great stage of 
 Universal History begins, the European, whose 
 deepest character is indicated by the foregoing 
 fact. Greece in separating from Asia, separates 
 within itself, takes up separation into its national 
 character, and remains separated and self- 
 
THE FATHEB OF HISTOEY. Mi 
 
 separated to the end of its political existence. 
 Now the manifestation of this trait is seen in the 
 multiplicity of autonomous City-States whose 
 aggregate is properly Hellas. Hence we call it a 
 Polyarchy, being made up of many separate 
 governments, like Europe of to-day. Hellas is 
 accordingly, a Polyarchy of autonomous City- 
 States, and will show, in its History the rise, 
 bloom, and decline of a People having such a 
 political organization. Thus it takes its place in 
 the world-historical movement of the European 
 State, being the first in line, the beautiful prelude 
 of the whole historic drama of the Occident. 
 
 Still we must remark that the Greek mind, 
 with all its bent toward separation, held within 
 itself an undercurrent of longing for unity. 
 Thus it had a common religion, common centers 
 of worship like Delphi, common festivals and 
 games like the Olympian. In fact the very thing 
 which originally separated the Greeks, the hate 
 of the Orient, finally united them in repelling the 
 Persian, and also in the expedition against Troy, 
 which even if m'ythical, shows the spirit of the 
 age. Then there was the common speech, the 
 common mythus, and the common poetry of 
 Homer. And there may be noted a deeper con- 
 nection which, though unconscious, will at last 
 burst up to the surface in action. That Greek 
 speech, and also that Greek mythus, as we now 
 know, had their roots far back in Asiatic lands, 
 
Iviii INTRODUCTION, 
 
 to which Alexander will penetrate as if driven by 
 the deepest instinct of his Aryan race to over- 
 come its separation. 
 
 How this undercurrent of Greek aspiration 
 for national unity, though unable to make itself 
 institutional in a State during its free historic 
 period, will realize itself to a degree in Macedon 
 and Rome, but most adequately in Byzantium, 
 is not to be set forth in this place. But at the 
 time of Herodotus, the Greek conception of free- 
 dom stands in the way. That freedom finds 
 itself possible only in the limited autonomous 
 City-State, which being small and easily con- 
 querable, is destined soon to be snuffed out. It 
 is true that with Greece freedom may be said to 
 have been born into History, which is to show 
 more and more complete forms of its realization 
 in the unfolding of political institutions. Greece 
 indeed shows the earliest, perchance the most 
 beautiful, yet the most fragile flower of freedom 
 which has ever bloomed in time. Such was the 
 political limitation of the Greek ; he could create 
 no great nation to safeo^uard that free individu- 
 ality of his, but only a little City-State, which 
 showed almost no power of combining with other 
 City-States for its own security. 
 
 Now it is this political institution whose 
 struggle with its supreme foe, the Orient, our 
 Historian records. Long and doubtful it was ; 
 indeed on the coast of Asia Minor the Greek 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. Hx 
 
 City-State could not maintain itself. But its 
 world-historical triumph took place in European 
 Hellas, notably through Athens, and that triumph 
 essentially means the historic birth of Europe, 
 which has now asserted and vindicated its own 
 political world, and henceforth is to have its own 
 History. 
 
 Greece has, accordingly, developed and upheld 
 that form of human association which we call 
 the City-State, in which each citizen has to be 
 and to live his life through his whole community 
 — the city. As he is associated in and through 
 all the rest of his fellow-citizens, he has 
 supremely the need of speech, which is called 
 forth by the need of association. This requires 
 that men communicate frequently, clearly, and 
 in a variety of ways. 
 
 Hence comes that wonderful Greek expression, 
 which has been far more lasting than the com- 
 munity from which it took its rise. First of all 
 these forms of expression is the Greek tongue, 
 which is the child of communal freedom. No 
 one man makes it, for even to ancient Homer it 
 <;;ame as a gift already existent, alon^ with his 
 My thus. Language is made by associated man, 
 and the Greek language by associated Greeks in 
 their communal intercourse. But from the same 
 source other forms of expression arose, such as 
 sculpture, painting, music. Now our Herodotus 
 it is who has given the first real expression to 
 
Ix INTBODUCTION. 
 
 History, that is, to the World's History, record- 
 ing the supreme deeds of the Greek City-State, 
 when these have become world-historical 
 
 Let it be said here that the Orient also ex- 
 presses itself, but inadequately when compared 
 with the Greek, who has made his expression 
 universal and hence lasting. Egypt's expressien, 
 Babylon's expression both in speech and art — 
 how undeveloped, confined, and concealed! The 
 human race first begins to burst out into 
 adequate utterance in Greece, which talks and 
 sings and chisels and paints, not only for itself 
 but for all futurity. The Oriental undoubtedly 
 associated himself in communities, in cities, and 
 in large ones; still he received his law from 
 above, from the monarch, who chiefly needed to 
 speak and not the people, as these are to obey 
 the God-sent man and word implicitly. This is 
 what the Greek was inclined to challenge ; the 
 City-State, in which he participated as citizen, 
 voiced the law for him, often after deliberation 
 and discussion. The associated Greek ultimately 
 expresses what associates him, and what keeps 
 him an associated Greek — the City-State. Into 
 this institution he seems to be cast as into a 
 mould. It is curious to see how completely fixed 
 in the City-State are even the philosophers, 
 Plato and Aristotle, who ought to transcend it, 
 if anybody. But their political writiiigs seek to 
 restore it when it has had its day, and when a new 
 
THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. Ixi 
 
 political order has already set in. Herodotus, 
 however, portrays its bloom and highest 
 triumph; though before he died, its disintegra- 
 tion had begun. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Our Historian does not give the origin of the 
 Greek City-State ; in fact he does not directly 
 propound the question of its origin. How could 
 he? It is his fundamental pre-supposition, the 
 thing taken for granted, of which he is not fully 
 conscious. He had not the historical perspec- 
 tive, he could not look back through a long 
 evolution of governmental forms, which later 
 History furnishes to the investigator of to-day. 
 To be sure, he had before him the Oriental 
 empire, which furnished a strong contrast to the 
 Greek City-State. Therewith, however, his ex- 
 perience with political institutions quite ended. 
 It is true that the various forms of the City- 
 State — democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy or 
 tyranny — were present to his mind and had to be 
 treated historically in his work. The well-known 
 discussion of these three forms in his Third Book 
 he projects out of Greece into Persia. Still in 
 them he is describing actual varieties of the 
 Greek City-State, not possible kinds of Persian 
 government. Undoubtedly, too, he mirrors 
 opinions which he heard in debates, private and 
 public, at Athens. 
 
Ixii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Herodotus, though he is unaware of the origin 
 of the basic Greek institution, furnishes many 
 materials for reaching back to its earlier stao^es. 
 The extraordinary interest which our Historian 
 took in barbarous peoples, and the large space 
 devoted in his work to their description, show 
 that he felt instinctively their importance in the 
 'World's History. The kinship of civilized and 
 uncivilized Hellas was hardly known to him, and 
 still more remote from his knowledge was the far 
 wider kinship of the Aryan race, through which 
 indeed the Greek and the Persian were related. 
 Comparative Philology had not yet unlocked these 
 racial secrets. Still he has left us the most complete 
 ethnographical j^ccount of ancient Europe. He. had 
 not the usual Greek narrowness and exclu- 
 siveness toward barbarians. What we have else- 
 where called the ethnic protoplasm of History he 
 has given quite fully, even if in its separative, 
 disconnected form. The dip back into this 
 primitive racial stuff, which both Greece and 
 Rome had afterwards to take, lay not of course 
 within the historic experience of Herodotus. Yet 
 he with a kind of premonitory instinct prepares 
 History long beforehand for such a dip into its 
 original creative sources by his extensive investi- 
 gation of barbarous peoples, who lie all around 
 and beyond that borderland of his which we call 
 the Rim of Barbary. Moreover out of these bar- 
 barous peoples unfolded the Hellenic City-State, 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. Ixiii 
 
 evolving from their primordial Village Community 
 into the stage in which Herodotus beheld it and 
 its achievements. 
 
 Still more decidedly does our Historian suggest 
 the movement from the older Oriental civilization 
 into the newer Hellenic culture. The continuity 
 of the line of City-States from the River- Valleys 
 of the East to Greece is certainly hinted, even 
 if not explicitly developed. The account of 
 Egypt and Babylonia, both of which contained 
 large cities, is a kind of preparation and prelude 
 to the heroic deeds of the far smaller Greek City- 
 States. There is always implied and sometimes 
 expressed a connection as well as a contrast be- 
 tween the two worlds. Oriental and Hellenic, as 
 well as their respective political and communal 
 forms. Very interesting too is the attempt at a 
 comparison of religions, notably that between 
 the Egyptian and Hellenic Gods. Herein we may 
 see the beginning of Comparative Religion, which 
 has been supposed to belong to our own time. 
 Of course the Greek Pantheon is the standard 
 of comparison, for what other standard could 
 Herodotus have? A line of evolution, therefore, 
 runs out of the Oriental City-State with its de- 
 veloped civilization into the Greek City-State, 
 and our Historian in his way draws that line. 
 
 He is also strongly geographical, but he is 
 hardly conscious of the unique physical feature 
 of Greece, namely its islands and peninsulas, 
 
Ixiv INTBODUCTION. 
 
 whereby it is more intimately connected with 
 the sea than any other part of the globe, receiv- 
 ing therefrom a powerful influence in moulding 
 its character. Insular and peninsular Hellas is 
 quite all Hellas. 
 
 Such, however, are the three constituents which 
 come together in order to form the Greek City- 
 State — an ethnical, a civilized, and a physical. 
 These we may set forth somewhat more fully. 
 
 We shall, accordingly, seek to trace briefly the 
 origin of the foregoing Hellenic City-State whose 
 importance in European History can hardly be 
 overestimated. In fact, we mav well deem it 
 the germ from which all later forms of govern- 
 ment in Europe have sprung. Still it too has its 
 antecedents, or elements from which it originated. 
 
 The first of these elements is the civilized one 
 coming to Greece from the huge cities of the 
 Orient situated usually in its great Kiver- 
 Valleys, as the Nile and the Euphrates. In them 
 civic organization started and was transmitted; 
 in them men began to associate under law which 
 was the will of the autocratic ruler. From the 
 River-Yalley the Oriental City-State passed to 
 Phoenicia on the Sea, the intermediate stopping- 
 place, where was developed the marine City- 
 State with its commerce to distant lands through 
 navigation. The heir of Phoenicia was chiefly 
 Hellas, even if Carthage was of its own blood. 
 With the Greek City-State on the ^gean a new 
 
TEE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY, Ixv 
 
 order begins, European History opens, as we see 
 in Herodotus, the first great Historian, himself a 
 product of that order, and native of a marine 
 City-State. Thus the huge massified civic com- 
 munity of the Oriental Kiver- Valley is broken up 
 into many independent small ones. 
 
 But whence did their people come ! Not from 
 civilized Babylon and Thebes, but from the 
 uncivilized Aryan migration which kept flowing 
 in pre-historic ages out of Asia into Europe. 
 This stream of migration at unknown times 
 turned down into the three Mediterranean penin- 
 sulas, Greek, Italic and Spanish, and remained 
 till the historic era. This background in later 
 Greece was known as the Pelasgic stpck, the 
 rearward element which lagged in the rapid 
 march of Greek civilization. Proto-Hellenic or 
 even Proto-European we may deem this element, 
 out of which the future peoples of Europe are to 
 be formed by a power in themselves, yet also 
 above themselves, moulding them gradually into 
 the civilized Nations. This artificer of Europe 
 begins with the rude and crude Aryan material, 
 and shapes it into Hellas first, institutionally into 
 the Hellenic City-State. He is the Prometheus 
 who transforms that given primordial clay into 
 the Greek man and his civilizati'on. This Aryan 
 clay we shall call the ethnic protoplasm, out of 
 which Europe is to be shaped, the process going 
 
Ixvi INTBODUGTION, 
 
 on from that day to this, and not yet being 
 ended by any means. 
 
 What did this old Aryan humanity bring along 
 in the way of institutions? The Family cer- 
 taiaily, and it may be added, the primitive Vil- 
 lage Community, which they bore with them as 
 their simple means of association. But descend- 
 ing into the Greek peninsula, they at an early 
 day came upon Oriental civilization, which flowed 
 in along the coasts over the sea, brought chiefly 
 by the Phoenician trader. The result was both 
 friction and fusion, by means of which that 
 primal institutional germ became wonderfully 
 developed into a totally new character. But why 
 was it not massified like the Orient in its River- 
 Valleys, whose original communities had been 
 united and solidified into enormous cities? Here 
 Nature enters with her help at the right moment. 
 
 The physical conformation of Greece has been 
 much emphasized, and with justice. But we 
 must not think, as some writers seem to have 
 done, that Greek Nature generated Greek Spirit. 
 If this were so, it ought to be productive still, 
 and to bring forth Greek Peoples with their art, 
 literature, with their sundry excellences and de- 
 fects. But it is the surprise of History how com- 
 pletely and how suddenly such productivity of 
 Nature stopped and never recovered its fertility 
 in generating genius. Still there can be no 
 doubt that natural conditions had a decided 
 
THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. Ixvii 
 
 effect upon the social and spiritual development 
 of Greece at a given time, when all was fully 
 prepared. 
 
 Already we have called Greece a peninsula, 
 and we may also note that this one peninsula is 
 split up into many peninsulas, running into the 
 sea and marrying the same to the land. It is 
 through this peninsular character that sea and 
 land are so closely interlocked and interrelated 
 in Greece. Moreover the territory becomes sepa- 
 rated into many small divisions shut in by sea- 
 walls as well as by mountain-walls. A glance at 
 the map shows how completely Nature has indi- 
 vidualized the Greek territory, making it 
 naturally the home of small, independent, quite 
 disconnected communities. To this physical fact 
 we must add another bearing even more strongly 
 in the same direction : the Greek sea is full of 
 islands, in which the separation by water is com- 
 plete. Thus Greece is quite as insular as penin- 
 sular (let us say again), having no great plains, 
 no great rivers like the Orient with their exten- 
 sive valleys. 
 
 Let us now conceive the waves of migratory 
 humanity, that original Aryan protoplasm of 
 peoples, sweeping into Europe and wheeling 
 down into the Greek peninsular and insular terri- 
 tory, and settling there. Necessarily the mass is 
 broken to fragments by the hand of Nature her- 
 self, thrusting them into these manifold divisions 
 
Ixviu INTBODUCTION. 
 
 of a small territory. Each fragment is not only 
 separated but protected by physical ramparts, to 
 which artificial walls are soon added. Thus there 
 starts an inner local development of each com- 
 munity, Nature cuts off external power over 
 them and remands them to themselves. Still 
 there comes across the sea near at hand a com 
 merce with a higher civilization, a knowledge of 
 other lands and peoples, as well as the grand fact 
 of navigation. Thus civilized Orient begins to 
 weave itself into these little communal units, 
 without subjecting them, however, or massifying 
 them. Aspiration is kindled in each of these 
 small centers; the Greeks become learners, 
 appropriating and transforming their Oriental 
 heritage in accord with their newly-developed in- 
 stitutional form, which grows with time into the 
 autonomous City-State . 
 
 Next we must notice another physical fact : 
 these islands and these peninsulas, though sepa- 
 rated, are in clusters, are grouped together 
 around some kind of a common center. We may 
 consider continental Greece to be three peninsulas 
 each rising over the other up to the Balkans. 
 The Peloponnesus rays out from its Arcadian 
 center into peninsular fingers reaching for the 
 sea and dallying with its waters. The islands 
 of the ^gean are mostly arranged in two 
 clusters: the Sporades near the Asiatic mainland 
 and the Cyclades which seem to be a continuation 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. Ixix 
 
 of the Greek peninsulas. Thus the separated 
 Nature of Greece has a tendency to associate its 
 members in an independent fashion, reflecting 
 therein another trait of these autonomous Greek 
 City-States, that of hegemony or of free 
 co-operation under a leading member of a group. 
 Such are the three strands which we can now 
 trace into the Greek City-State — a civilized 
 (coming from the Orient), an uncivilized (racial, 
 communal), a physical (chiefly insular and 
 peninsular). None of these can be left out of 
 that Greek political institution which starts 
 European History, and which is the underlying 
 foundation of our Historian's work. 
 
 vm. 
 
 Herodotus already sees that History does not 
 stop with him, or perchance with his City-State; 
 he places over it a God or a Power, which acts 
 through itself and brings forth historic events 
 according to a motive or end. The name which 
 our Historian gives to such a supremacy is 
 mainly Nemesis, who humbles a Da-rius or a 
 Xerxes, the most exalted of terrestrial rulers. In 
 such a conception lies faintly what we have 
 called the World-Spirit, the Genius presiding 
 over History, or the Spirit of the World's His- 
 tory, the latter being quite impossible without 
 such a Spirit directing it to its end. Herodotus, 
 we affirm, has glimpses of th^ World-Spirit and 
 
Ixx • IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 seeks repeatedly to formulate it in his way, other- 
 wise indeed he could not have written a world- 
 historical book. 
 
 Now the most significant act in the movement 
 of History, or of this World-Spirit, is the coming 
 and going of States, especially their coming or 
 their origin. In other words State-makinof is 
 the genetic, ever-renewing process of the World's 
 History. That ethnic protoplasm, of which we 
 have already given a brief account, is really the 
 orio:inal formable material out of which States 
 are made. Who makes them and causes them 
 to appear at the given time, or as we may well 
 say, at the right moment? In our view, that is 
 the chief, though not the only, function of the 
 World-Spirit. The Nemesis of Herodotus rather 
 presents the negative power in History, the 
 humiliation of great States, and their evanish- 
 ment. And it must be confessed that even the 
 Hegelian World-Spirit is more decidedly nega- 
 tive than positive, since it is not so distinctly 
 and impressively unfolded as State-builder, but 
 it is more emphatically the World-Judge con- 
 demning the particular State for its historic 
 shortcomings. 
 
 Still Herodotus has given, in his fashion, the 
 important process of State-making, as this de- 
 veloped in the Greek world. Of course that 
 which must be reproduced is the Greek political 
 form, the City-State. This State-producing act 
 
THE FATHER OF HI 8 TOBY. Ixxi 
 
 is called colonization, which plays a very con- 
 siderable, though somewhat disconnected, part 
 in our Historian's work. Each autonomous 
 City-State is seen bearing City-States which 'are 
 also autonomous, like the parent. Significant is 
 it that the Father of History dwells with so 
 much detail upon colonization, which is properly 
 the Greek State-making. To be sure it is given 
 as sporadic, instinctive, without conscious direc- 
 tion or supervision. Still it manifests mightily 
 the working of the World-Spirit of that age. 
 
 Such is the first historic form of the repro- 
 ductive act of the European State as recorded 
 by its earliest Historian. It is instructive to 
 compare Herodotus in this regard with the later 
 and latest modes of the fundamental process of 
 State-making. For the time has come when 
 this can no longer be left to mere impulse and 
 haphazard migration, which is that of barbarism ; 
 it must be rationally controlled in the interest of 
 the supreme end of History, the State universal. 
 And the modern Historian must begin to become 
 conscious of it and its place in his science — 
 which is hardly his mental condition as yet. 
 
 The History of Europe shows a continuous 
 line of States arising and ceasing, a row of 
 births and deaths of political forms. What is 
 behind this process or above it perchance, and 
 commanding it? If there be any purpose in this 
 grand historical pageant, we must invoke the 
 
Ixxii INTBODUCTION. 
 
 controlling agency which has such a purpose. 
 Here we place (we repeat) the world-historical 
 Spirit, which, as its name indicates, is the Spirit 
 which presides over History (shorter, the World- 
 Spirit). 
 
 But at this point we wish to take a general 
 survey of the manner of birth of European States. 
 They spring up by an unconscious instinct ; man 
 is a political animal, says Greek Aristotle; man 
 builds States naturally in Greece and in Europe, 
 as the beaver builds his dam. To be sure in 
 this instinct the World-Spirit is working ; Euro- 
 pean History therefore shows States bubbling 
 up, one after the other, and one beside the other 
 in a chaotic fashion. Yet on the other hand 
 they are controlled more or less externally for 
 the end of Civilization. The migratory impulse 
 is their first source moving in the main blindly 
 and driving tribes to strange lands. State-mak- 
 ing in Europe has, therefore, had no supervision, 
 no rational direction from the State, which is 
 both its origia and its end. 
 
 But it is certainly the outlook and the need of 
 the State-making process, that it be rescued 
 from caprice and chance. The State must rise 
 to be in itself the State-making State ; its genetic 
 function, the most important one, must no longer 
 take place in an uncertain random way. It 
 must formuhite this principle and embody it in 
 its constitution. Such a constitution the modern 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY, Ixxiii 
 
 European Nation-State has not yet made and 
 cannot, since it as imperial produces provinces, 
 not States. If the society of European Nation- 
 States ever unfolds from international Law or 
 from the Hague Tribunal to an iDternational 
 Constitution, the State-making provision will be 
 in order. 
 
 In this connection it may be said that the Con- 
 stitution of the North-American Union is the 
 first to regulate and determine legally the process 
 of State-making. From this point of view it is 
 the outcome of the European mevement, having 
 made the creation of States explicit and pur- 
 posed from the previous more or less implicit 
 condition. Provinces and colonies it no longer 
 strictly produces, but States which are equal 
 members of the Union, joining them into one 
 political organism. Thus arises in History the 
 State-making State constitutionally, which has 
 in its turn to be continually made or re-made by 
 the States which it has made. Each new State 
 sending its Senators and Representatives to the 
 Capital shares in the State-making process of 
 the whole, or it has an equal part as State in 
 governing not only itself but the rest of the 
 States. Another function the American Union 
 of States has now recently taken upon itself: to 
 train purposely and consciously backward 
 peoples into equality and unity with itself, 
 which means not to enslave or even to subject 
 
Ixxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 them — not to Hellenize or Romanize or even 
 Europeanize them, hy governing them from a 
 central State in whose government they have 
 no prospect of participation. Sooner or later 
 the people or race which does not fully share in 
 ■governing itself is going to make trouble. Self- 
 government realized in institutions is the aspira- 
 tion of mankind. The test of any form of State 
 will be: How far does it satisfy that aspiration. 
 To be sure, such an independent individual State 
 is not the supreme historic end, for it too must 
 be associated with other individual States in the 
 movement toward the realization of the State 
 universal. 
 
 Especially in the Nineteenth Century the his- 
 toric trend of the society of European States is 
 to endow with a Constitution each State of the 
 society. That is, the inner movement of Europe 
 is to constitutionalize itself through and through. 
 Autocracy is to come under law, the Executive 
 is not to be the one absolute power. The people 
 of the State by their representatives are to par- 
 ticipate in making the law which they obey, and 
 the Monarch also is to act legally. Thus Law 
 as universal is fast being enthroned in the Euro- 
 pean system of States. Russia,, properly the 
 most recent member of it, is seeking to establish 
 a little bit of Constitutional government in the 
 present year (1906-7). If she does. Consti- 
 tutionalism in one form or other will have nindc 
 
THE FATHEB OF HI 8 TOBY. Ixxv 
 
 the circuit of Christian Europe, though even 
 Turkey has been talking of it. 
 
 What is the model after which Europe has 
 sought to constitutionalize itself? No doubt it is 
 England. In one way or other the English 
 Constitution has been the type for the enormous 
 amount of Constitution-making which started 
 with such fecundity in the French Revolution, and 
 is destined not to cease for some time yet. To 
 be sure, these are all written Constitutions, like 
 the American, while the English boast that theirs 
 is unwritten, and they set forth the advantages 
 of such fact. Still we have to say that England 
 developed the political Norm for contemporary 
 Europe. This Norm was substantially completed 
 by the so-called Eevolution of 1688, and tested 
 at home during the following century, after which 
 it began to become European in the Nineteenth 
 Century, taking possession strongly of the pop- 
 ular mind and finally of the various States. 
 
 We cannot help thinking, however, that 
 Europe must in its political evolution transcend 
 the English constitutional Norm, and England 
 herself must too. For it has not the three 
 Powers of Government co-ordinated, but all 
 three subordinated to a subordinate power, that 
 of Paliament, which is properly but a branch of 
 the legislative Power. Certainly the more per- 
 fect governmental process is that of the three 
 essentially equal and co-operant Powers. Still 
 
Ixxvi INTB OD UC TION. 
 
 the English Norm is the easiest for a people who 
 are just starting to perform the act of self- 
 government, they must not undertake too much 
 at once, they cannot leap from absolutism to a 
 completely organized freedom at a single spring. 
 
 Nor has the Ens^lish Constitutional Norm a 
 provision for State-making, and cannot have 
 since it issues from and applies to the European 
 Nation-State, whose imperial character would be 
 destroyed by such a provision. Only the Federal 
 Union of the United States could formulate and 
 establish a true State-making process, could pro- 
 vide for the birth of autonomous and equal 
 States, as distinct from provinces and subject 
 States which belong to an imperial government 
 like the present Nation-States of Europe. For 
 even England rightly calls hers an Empire, and 
 her people and parliament rule distant nations 
 without these participating in such rule over 
 themselves, even if they have a quite full local 
 autonomy like Canada. Of course in such judg- 
 ments the American Constitution is taken as the 
 criterion of Europe ; the latest historic manifes- 
 tation of the State shows what they all have 
 brought forth. Hence they must be judged by 
 their fruits, particularly by the last fruit, which 
 is the American. 
 
 Naturally in present Europe the question comes 
 up. What next? We must take note that out of 
 this Aryan ethnic protoplasm of Peoples the 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY. Ixxvii 
 
 European States have been formed one after the 
 other and together, till the material is used up 
 practically, and the European group of States is 
 complete. Quite recently two great States, Ger- 
 many and Italy, have been nationalized. Europe 
 has started the same process with lesser peoples, 
 of which the Balkan group, partially at least, has 
 been made over into Nations, being wrested from 
 the crushing hand of Turkey, foe ®f European 
 nationalities. Thus Europe as a whole seems to 
 be taking a hand in State-making within itself ; 
 but outside of itself, in the Orient and elsewhere, 
 it hardly yet shows any such tendency. 
 
 Though this process of State-formation in 
 Europe has been blind, irregular, and wasteful 
 of its material, still there has been over it an 
 order, a forming power or demiurge we may call 
 it — which has led on the way toward realizing 
 the great end of History, the universal State. 
 This, however, we must again repeat, is the 
 World-Spirit, which thus has operated more or 
 less externally in the matter of European State- 
 making. But in the American government the 
 attempt is to put each outside power inside the 
 State, making the same an element of its work- 
 ing organism, which we therefore call from this 
 point of view, the State-making Slate. In other 
 words, the World-Spirit in the American Gov- 
 ernment has been constitutionalized, havings been 
 taken up into the process of the State itself. 
 
Ixxviii INTB ODUC TION. 
 
 In such fashion we cast back glimpses from 
 the latest History to the earliest as recorded by 
 the first Historian. We are to see in him the 
 historic germs which have unfolded into the 
 completer History of to-day. His explication is 
 his true explanation. The little Greek City-State 
 of his time has indeed had a wonderfal evolu- 
 tion. From this point of view one may well 
 affirm that the History of Herodotus is an orig- 
 inal document, the most original and originative 
 of all historic documents, having produced His- 
 tory itself as a human discipline. He cites little, 
 he refers to some books ; but for the main facts 
 of his narrative he is the voucher, and he is the 
 chief source not only of the recorded events but 
 of History itself, which without him, would not 
 be, at least not as it is. Marathon was indeed 
 anyhow, as an event, but what would it be to 
 us without the record of Herodotus? To be 
 sure, many writers after him copy him, Grote 
 copies him, but what a difference? In these 
 days we hear much about going back to original 
 authorities. But of all historic authorities Her- 
 odotus is, we repeat, the most original, being the 
 creator of the science which his successors can 
 at best but produce in a new garb of events. 
 Let the student take to heart that there is just 
 one and only one primal creative document of 
 History — our Herodotus. 
 
THE FATHEE OF HI 8 TOBY, Ixxix 
 
 IX. 
 
 In regard to the religious world-view of 
 Herodotus, we observe a decided change from 
 that of Homer. The Olympian Pantheon hardly 
 appears, except casually and quite in the back- 
 ground. Pallas was indeed visible in the battle 
 of Marathon, and Pan met the courier Phidip- 
 pides on his way to Sparta for help against the 
 Persians. Still the regular epiphany of the 
 Gods, so strikingly organized in the Iliad, is not 
 the method of Herodotus, who has made the 
 transition to the Oracle, particularly that of 
 Apollo at Delphi. The Homeric play of divini- 
 ties is largely gone, being supplanted by their 
 divine voice uttered through the prophet or 
 priestess. Apollo no longer appears and speaks 
 as he did at Troy (where he even fought), but 
 he inspires the Pythia to respond for him, as at 
 Delphi. This last is what Herodotus takes up 
 into his History, in contradistinction to the way 
 of the Epos. The religious heart of the Herodo- 
 tean world is the Delphic Oracle which pulses its 
 blood through his entire book from beojinninoj to 
 end. Moreo^er this oracular consciousness is 
 that of the Hellas of his age, namely of the 
 period of the Greco-Persian War. Delphi was 
 then the religious, yea the national center of the 
 Greek race. Still it could not organize this 
 sentiment of common blood and nationality into 
 
Ixxx INTBODVCTION. 
 
 one State. It could, however, defend itself 
 aojainst Persia and the Orient. 
 
 Olympian Zeus has, accordingly, passed in the 
 main the scepter to Delphic Apollo, whose his- 
 toric mouthpiece for all future time is just our 
 Herodotus. Not more decidedly is Homer the 
 eternal recorder of Zeus and his Olympian world, 
 than Herodotus is that of Apollo and his Delphic 
 world. It was at Delphi that Greece tapped the 
 stream of futurity, and interrogated her destiny, 
 as we see everywhere in our Historian. Upon 
 his pages we follow the Hellenic Folk-Soul trying 
 to uncover its own mystery, and to glimpse its 
 own task and fate in the mighty crisis at hand. 
 In other words Hellas sought to know the decree 
 of the World-Spirit through the response of the 
 Oracle, especially in reference to the grand con- 
 flict between itself and the Orient. 
 
 After Herodotus rises another religious world- 
 view which finds its highest expression at Athens 
 in the Goddess Pallas Athena, and in her temple, 
 the Parthenon. Self-conscious intelligence de- 
 thrones oracular wisdom. Herodotus during his 
 Athenian residence caught and appropriated 
 many a gleam of the new order with its critical 
 attitude toward the old view, still he as a whole 
 remained Delphic and oracular. In his work the 
 World's History opens with Croesus, yea with 
 Croesus consulting the Delphic Oracle (see Book 
 I and the following commentary). The historic 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTOBT. Ixxxi 
 
 record of this new Athenian world is not and 
 cannot be given by Herodotus, but by a very dif- 
 ferent historian, Thucydides, also the child of his 
 city and time. 
 
 Undoubtedly our Historian introduces other 
 ways of getting a revelation of the future — 
 dreams, visions, omens, floating prophecies and 
 oracles. These we cannot specially dwell upon, 
 in the present connection. But we must revert 
 to a view of his already mentioned, a view quite 
 beyond the oracular or even the Olympian con- 
 ception, namely that of Nemesis. In this view 
 Herodotus tries to define the inherent nature of 
 all divinity with two main predicates : first, the 
 ruling God of the world and of its events is in 
 action a leveler, abasing what is exalted ; sec- 
 ondly, the motive for such action is his envy. 
 The view is stated almost as an abstract principle, 
 yet also is tinged with a divine personality ; 
 moreover it is chiefly uttered by the two philos- 
 ophic characters, Solon and Artabanus (Book I 
 and yil). However unsatisfactory such an 
 opinion may be now, the chief interest remains 
 that the earliest Historian endeavors to formulate 
 the universal principle governing the World's 
 History. In other words he has his philosophy 
 of History, and takes pains to interweave it 
 . through his narrative of events, whereby it too 
 starts on its evolution down to the present. 
 His doctrine of Nemesis was derived from 
 
 6 
 
Ixxxii INTBODUCTION. 
 
 what he saw and read .of the colossal govern- 
 ments in the Orient. Xerxes above all others 
 is the grand example of the divine leveling of 
 the loftiest monarchs, among whom however are 
 also to be counted Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, 
 Oriental sovereigns, as well as the successful 
 Greek tyrant Poly crates, who tries to escape the 
 inevitable principle, The Historian's Nemesis 
 really manifests that Greek character which 
 shuns excess of all sorts, and is the divine power 
 which punishes the infraction of Greek modera- 
 tion on the stage of the World's History, In 
 Herodotus the autonomous City-State is hardly 
 subject to Nemesis, of which it is indeed the 
 executor upon the Oriental and Greek imperial 
 tyrannies of the age. The Nemesis of the City- 
 State, therefore, lies outside the historic ken of 
 Herodotus, still it will come (see Thucydides, 
 passim). 
 
 In sentiment our Historian is not simply com- 
 munal or tribal, but truly Pan-Hellenic. He 
 participates deeply in the national Folk-Soul, 
 sympathizing with it in its desperate struggle 
 with the Orient. AH its ways of utterance are 
 not only his but naively and naturally his — 
 story, myth, anecdote, proverb — which he 
 weaves into and through his total work. Espe- 
 cially does he respond to its probing into the 
 future for the purpose of finding out what is its 
 portion in the coming clash of two worlds, what 
 
THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. Ixxxiii 
 
 the Supreme Orderer intends to do with it in the 
 battle of principles. The Folk-Soul seeks to 
 commune with the World-Spirit, sometimes 
 through very inadequate means. Herodotus 
 does not fail to record them, and thus reflects 
 truly and vividly the consciousness of the time 
 in little as well as in large. 
 
 But the true and higest mediator between the 
 Folk-Soul and the World-Spirit is the Great Man 
 of the period, the Genius who embodies both 
 these ultimate elements of the World's History. 
 The mighty collision between Greece and Persia 
 produces such a Man, and Herodotus recognizes 
 him fully and portrays him in his exalted func- 
 tion. This Great Man of the Age was Themis- 
 tocles, the Athenian commander specially, but 
 universally the lord over all Greece, forcing it 
 even against its own will to obey and to fulfil the 
 decree of the World-Spirit, which he alone rightly 
 heard and adequately realized. In the Eighth 
 Book our Historian shows him in his supreme 
 deed and character: how he has prepared his 
 little City-State with a navy, how he persuades 
 its people to leave their old home on land and go 
 down into their new home on their ships, how he 
 compels his own side to battle at the right mo- 
 ment and in the right place, how he directs even 
 the movements of the hostile Persians. Limit- 
 transcending he is on all sides, surmounting ob- 
 stacles in every direction, he seems to be one with 
 
Ixxxiv INTB ODVC TION. 
 
 the all-controlling God; indeed he interprets the 
 ambiguous, if not dissuasive Delphic response for 
 his countrymen, and thus makes himself the real 
 Oracle of the grand crisis. 
 
 For this reason the Eighth Book with its battle 
 of Salamis may be regarded as the culmination 
 of the Historian's whole work, indeed of the whole 
 era which it depicts. On the other hand the 
 Seventh Book is deeply depressing, verily tragic ; 
 the death of Leonidas with his three hundred 
 Spartans at Thermopylae is the death of free 
 Greece, unless another City-State than the Spar- 
 tan, and a different leader from Leonidas get 
 control. The Eighth Book shows the grand 
 chano-e to Athens and Themistocles, which means 
 the victory of Greece, the triumph of the City- 
 State, and indeed the permanent separation be- 
 tween Europe and Asia, the deepest rift of 
 World's History. (See Walh in Hellas, pp. 
 419-425). 
 
 The division of the History of Herodotus into 
 nine books, called the Nine Muses, did not prob- 
 ably originate with the author. It is usually 
 ascribed to the Alexandrine grammarians. The 
 Ninth Book shows the completed victory over 
 the Persians at Platsea and Mycale. The ques- 
 tion has often been asked whether the History is 
 finished. There is no doubt that the conclusion 
 seems somewhat abrupt. Still the taking of Sestos 
 on the Hellespont may well be deemed the final 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY, Ixxxv 
 
 act of the great war. The total theme was 
 stated to be the conflict between Greece and 
 Asia, bringing about the separation between 
 Orient and Europe. In the Ninth Book the 
 reader misses Themistocles ; Aristides commands 
 the Athenian land forces at Platsea and Xanthip- 
 pus commands the fleet at Mycale. This Xan- 
 thippus was the father of Pericles, in whose time 
 Herodotus resided at Athens. 
 
 This fact leads to the reflection that a good 
 deal of our Historian's knowledge of Themis- 
 tocles may have been derived through the son 
 from the father, Xanthippus, who was the rival 
 of Themistocles and was doubtless an important 
 subordinate commander at Salamis. Some of 
 the secret designs ascribed by Herodotus to 
 Themistocles sound very much as if they had 
 come from a political opponent, who is com- 
 pelled to acknowledge the great deed of his 
 rival, but disparages it by assigning to the doer 
 a selfish motive. The next year after Salamis 
 we find that Xanthippos had supplanted Them- 
 istocles in the command of the fleet. The lat- 
 ter' s motive [in keeping open a way for fleeing 
 to the Persian king, while dealing to him the 
 hardest blows, has rather the appearance of an 
 after-thought derived from the later career of 
 Themistocles, and emphasizing his doubleness in 
 contrast with the honesty of Aristides. 
 
 The Greco-Persian conflict, however, did not 
 
Ixxxvi INTB OD UC TION. 
 
 end in a definite peace between the belligerents 
 till the convention of Callias (450-449 B. C.) 
 nearly thirty years after the capture of Sestos 
 by the Greeks, with w^hich the History of 
 Herodotus properly concludes. In this peace of 
 Callias the great separation between Greece and 
 Persia, or between Orient and Europe, is ac- 
 knowledged by both sides, and becomes a per- 
 manent element of the historic consciousness 
 from that day to this. The conflict between 
 these two powers, Greek and Persian, if we 
 reckon it from the time at which Cyrus appeared 
 in Asia Minor, taking Sardes (546 B. C.) and 
 subjecting Greek cities, had lasted nearly a cen- 
 tury. Of course the larger conflict, that be- 
 tween Europe and Asia, had begun much earlier 
 (Homer's Iliad is based upon it, when fully seen 
 into), and has lasted much longer, even unto the 
 present day. 
 
 One of the difficulties of Herodotus is that 
 Chronology, or the science of historic time, does 
 not yet exist, though it is dawning. He has a 
 tendency to reckon backward from his own time, 
 which promotes if it does not force his viewing 
 events in historic cycles. Still he has no com- 
 mon standard by which he can arrange occur- 
 rences synchronously. Indeed there were many 
 such standards in the Greece of his time; Sparta 
 had a public register of her kings, and probably 
 of the respective lengths of their reigns. Each 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. Ixxxvii 
 
 important temple had a list of its priestesses from 
 the beginning ; Athens had its line of yearly 
 Archons which became a kind of era. Of course 
 these diverse standards were confusing. Finally 
 the Olympiad, taken from the common Greek fes- 
 tival, became the common or chronological stand- 
 ard, being first employed, it is said, by the histor- 
 ian Timseus (flourished about 260 B. C). He 
 was a Sicilian residing at Athens, and wrote of 
 the Grecian affairs in the West (Sicily and Italy) 
 for an audience of Eastern Greeks, who nat- 
 urally demanded a common measurer of distant 
 events synchronous with their own. Thus the 
 era of the Olympiads arose and became general. 
 This was two centuries after the time of Herod- 
 otus. 
 
THE FATHER OF HISTORY 
 {HERODOTUS), 
 
 BOOK FIRST, 
 
 What rank does this Book hold among the 
 entire nine Books of the work? As a composi- 
 tion we are inclined to place it foremost of all. 
 It does not contain events as celebrated as some 
 in the last three books, such as Thermopylae, 
 Salamis, Platea ; still its artistic finish stands 
 paramount, as well as its great picturesque 
 variety, with hues ever shifting between Orient 
 and Occident. On the whole, it furnishes the 
 best field for studying the grand conflict por- 
 trayed in the total work, the conflict between 
 Hellas and Asia. It also gives the best material 
 for observing the most important psychological 
 fact in all History, namely, the rise of the his- 
 toric consciousness in the race, which now looks 
 at itself and records itself in its deeds. 
 
 (1) 
 
2 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 The Book falls into three main portions : — 
 
 I. The preliminar}'^ portion, which gives the 
 prehistoric, mythical account of the conflict, the 
 antecedents of the historical struggle. The 
 Trojan War is indicated as the first or mythical 
 counterpart to the Persian War (1-5). 
 
 II. The Lydiad, or the history of Lydia in its 
 conflict with the Greek cities of Asia Minor, 
 wherewith History, as conceived by Herodotus, 
 starts into existence. In the Lydiad the setting 
 as well as the fundamental conception are his- 
 torical, but the mythical stream keeps playing 
 into this historical movement and strangely 
 transforms it into a new kind of composition, 
 v\^hich we may call an epical History. The 
 Lydiad is undoubtedly the most highly wrought 
 portion of the Book, indeed of the entire work. 
 
 The difference between these two portions 
 may be designated in a general way as follows: 
 the Introduction is the mythical with the his- 
 torical playing into it and ordering it ; the 
 Lydiad is the historical with the mythical play- 
 ing into it and giving to it variety, relief, color. 
 
 III. The Persiad, into which the Lydiad un- 
 folds, as the lesser into the greater, the local 
 conflict into the universal one, with all Hellas on 
 one side and all Asia on the other. Thus the 
 two threads of which the whole is spun, are the 
 Greek and the Asiatic, each being unfolded in- 
 ternally and externally to the grand climax in 
 the Persian War. 
 
7. PBELIMINABY. 
 
 The first five chapters constituting a kind of 
 title page and prefjice, have a distinctive charac- 
 ter. They deal with the mythical events which 
 led up to the great historical war now to be 
 recounted. They connect Herodotus with 
 Homer. It is worth our while to look into their 
 meaning with some fullness. 
 
 1. Tlie title-page. Such we may designate the 
 first paragraph, consisting of five or six lines in 
 most texts and translations. The word History 
 is here used by our author, who has transmitted 
 it to succeeding ages. The primary sense of the 
 word in Greek is investigation or inquiry; the 
 corresponding verb means to ask^ and is con- 
 nected by its root with the verb to knoiv ; thus 
 we reach the first signification of History as 
 knowledge through inquiry. 
 
 Next we hear the author's motive for such an 
 investigation : ** that human events may not be- 
 come obliterated by time, and that great deeds, 
 
 (3) 
 
4 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 done by both Greeks and Barbarians, may obtain 
 their share of renown." He is filled with the 
 idea that he must preserve the memory of worthy 
 actions ; he gives the labor of a life to make them 
 eternal. Such is the spirit of the author, truly 
 historical. 
 
 We should also note that he is of Halicarnas- 
 sus, is a Greek born in Asia Minor. He belongs 
 to both Orient and Occident ; his birth tends to 
 make him sympathetic with both sides. This is 
 the reading of all the manuscripts, though a 
 passage of Aristotle designates him as a Thurian. 
 But only in the last years of his life did he have 
 his residence in Thurii, a town of Southern 
 Italy. 
 
 Manifestly the worth of the human deed, when 
 done by the free-acting individual or community, 
 has strongly impressed itself upon the mind of 
 Herodotus, and drives him to give it a lasting 
 record. Particularly that deed of the Persian 
 War is deserving to be handed down to all future 
 time; really it begat in the race the historic 
 consciousness, which feels that it must transmit 
 itself to the comino; ao^es. The Orient has no 
 such history, for it does not recognize the worth 
 of the individual ; how can it then recognize and 
 record the worth of his deed? The Oriental 
 subject is a slave ; who is going to record a 
 slave's doings? Not the slave himself nor the 
 master ; then servile deeds are not worthy of 
 
BOOK FIBST. 5 
 
 being recorded, not at least till they are done for 
 the sake of freedom. But now the great his- 
 toric deed has been done, the man with an 
 historic spirit is also present ; the result will be 
 a History. 
 
 Moreover it is hinted that a deep difference 
 has arisen in the race through its passage from 
 Asia into Europe, the difference between Greeks 
 and Barbarians, the latter here meaning the 
 Asiatics. A great war between the two sides is 
 the consequence, which war is the theme of the 
 present work. Still further, the cause of the 
 conflict is to be investiii^ated ; that is, we are to 
 get back to its inner ground. Thus already the 
 principle of causation begins to be applied to 
 History. 
 
 2. The preface. The first question pro- 
 pounded, then, is : Who are *' the causers of the 
 difference?" Whereupon the matter is carried 
 back to the prehistoric mythical time and traced 
 down into History. It is plain that the distinc- 
 tion between the mythical and the historical is 
 present to our author's mind, not well-defined to 
 be sure, still present and at work. Equally 
 plain is it that both Mythus and History shared 
 in this difference between the East and the 
 West. 
 
 Greek Mythology has, as one of its chief 
 themes, the conflict between Orient and Occi- 
 dent, the struggle between the Hellenic and the 
 
6 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Oriental spirit. Perseus and the sea-monster, 
 Theseus and the Minotaur, Oedipus and the 
 Sphinx, Belierophon and the Chiniaera are in- 
 stances of fierce combats between Greek heroes 
 and Oriental shapes, or monsters hostile to the 
 Hellenic ideal. But the greatest of all these 
 mythical deeds of Greece against Asia is that of 
 the capture and destruction of Troy. Herodotus 
 we shall find on many lines to be the successor 
 of Homer, certainly distinct from him, yet 
 growing out of him. 
 
 On the other hand, the greatest of the histori- 
 cal deeds of Greece against Asia was the defeat 
 of Xerxes, also a ]:)hase of the grand conflict 
 between Hellas and the Orient. The Greek 
 Mythus of Homer and the Greek History of 
 Herodotus have fundamentally the same theme, 
 though the one be poetry and the other 
 prose. Still we shall find that the Historian's 
 form of tieatment as well as his subject-matter, 
 is interlinked deei)ly with the poet's. In this 
 preface we may see a kind of biidge thrown over 
 from the Mythus to the beginning of History. 
 
 In early fable the conflict takes the form of 
 stealing high-born women — piincesses and even 
 queens. Each side seeks to possess the other's 
 beauty, or ideal, though doubtless there was 
 often a literal stealino^ of women in those rude 
 
 CD 
 
 ages. In our Historian's time the question 
 arose: Who was the first ago^ressor? Who is 
 
BOOK FIBST. 7 
 
 in the wrong? The matter was evidently de- 
 bated with no little intensity both in Greece and 
 in the Orient. 
 
 Now Herodotus cites and apparently adopts 
 the Persian view of this antecedent mythical 
 period, openly rejecting the Phoenician vi*ew and 
 silently passing over the Greek view. *' The 
 Persians learned in history affirm the Phoeni- 
 cians to have been the causers of the difference." 
 Some sailors belonging to this people, visiting 
 Argos for the sake of trade, stole lo, the king's 
 daughter. So reprisals take place, and the feud 
 begjins, continuin^jj in a kind of mvthical see-saw 
 between East and West. Three king's dauorh- 
 ters, those favorites of the fairy-tale, are seized 
 in succession, till finally the beautiful queen her- 
 self, Helen, is taken and carried to Asia. Then 
 the grand expedition to Troy takes place, in 
 which all Greece participates. 
 
 The followinsj list will show the movement as 
 set forth by the Historian : — • 
 
 1. The taking of lo by the Phoenicians from 
 Greece. 
 
 2. The taking of Europa by the Greeks from 
 Phoenicia. 
 
 3. The taking of Medea by the Greeks from 
 Colchis, 
 
 4. The taking of Helen by the Trojans from 
 Greece. 
 
8 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Such are the four mythical cases here given. 
 Note that they are arranged chronologically, and 
 connected together by the common thread of re- 
 taliation ; that is, they are arranged into a sys- 
 tem. It should also be observed how extensive 
 and how deep is the struggle; Medea belongs to 
 the northern belt of Asiatic Persia, and is prob- 
 ably Aryan, though there is some question con- 
 cerning the ethnic affinities of her people, the 
 Colchians; Europa belongs in the South to a 
 Semitic people; Helen is of Greece and is taken 
 to Troy, which lies in Asia Minor. This myth- 
 ical survey, accordingly, quite takes in the west- 
 ern boundary of Asia from North to South, and 
 includes its two leading races, Aryan and Semitic. 
 Thus the two sides, Hellas and the Orient, stand 
 arrayed against each other in fable. 
 
 This preface leads to many reflections, the 
 reader may well deem it an important document 
 in the genesis of the present History and of the 
 historic consciousness generally. He may profit- 
 ably dig out its main presuppositions, and bring 
 them up to daylight ; some of these we shall set 
 down as they have occurred to ourselves in med- 
 itating upon the work in hand. 
 
 1. It is manifest that Oriental peoples are 
 taking an interest in Greek Mythology, and trans- 
 forming it in accord with their own spirit. Per- 
 sians and Phoenicians are here cited, each giving 
 a peculiar turn to mythical incidents; later we shall 
 
BOOK FIRST. 9 
 
 find the Egyptians doing the same thing (Book 
 II). Especially Homer and tlae Trojan War they 
 interpret from tlieir own point of view, which is 
 antagonistic to the Greek conception. Thus 
 Greek Mythology is reacting upon its sources, 
 and is flowing back to the East whence it sprang. 
 
 2. The legend of lo is here alluded to ; it is 
 interesting to see how the three peoples, Greeks, 
 Persians, and Phoenicians have handled the same. 
 According to the Greek story, lo is a virgin 
 priestess beloved by Zeus and hated by Hera, 
 watched by the many-eyed Argus, transformed 
 into a cow which is driven by the gad-fly through 
 many lands, till at last she reaches the Nile where 
 she bears Epahus and becomes the mother of a 
 race of heroic kings, obtaining again her human 
 shape. A tale with a marvelous, divine element 
 interwoven into its fabric — such is the Greek 
 poetic conception ; but the Persians make her 
 simply a stolen woman, and the Phoenicians a 
 runaway woman, voluntarily quitting home on 
 account of an intrigue with a ship-captain. In 
 the last two cases, the su[)ernatural ideal element 
 is entirely eliminated, and the whole thing sinks 
 down into prose. Such is the Oriental treatment 
 of the beautiful Greek My thus of lo; so al^o the 
 Egyptians will treat fair Helen. 
 
 3. The meaning of the Trojan War is strongly 
 emphasized; it too was a conflict between Orient 
 and Occident. The Persians did not care for 
 
10 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 the capture of single women ; for what is the 
 individual to them? He has no rights, let him 
 go. But these pesky Greeks, when Helen was 
 stolen, raise a great pother, and " bringing to- 
 gether a mighty armament, go against Asia and 
 raze Troy, all for the sake of a Lacedemonian 
 woman." Such an act is indeed outside the 
 Oriental consciousness, which deems it to be 
 merely wanton violence. Accordingly '* in the 
 capture of Troy the Persians find the beginning 
 of their hatred for the Greeks." Here again 
 the key-note is touched; it is the worth of in- 
 dividuality over which the conflict between Hel- 
 las and the Orient takes place; for the Greek, 
 unless that one person Helen be restored, then 
 all the Greeks are lost. Moreover Persia rep- 
 resents Asia and the Orient: '* they consider 
 Asia and the peoples inhabiting it to be their 
 own, while Europe and Greece they hold to be 
 distinct." Homer, therefore, in the Iliad 
 records the first great conflict between Orient 
 and Occident. 
 
 4. The mythical wave of retaliation transmits 
 itself into Histor3^ Xerxes regards himself as 
 the punisher of the Greeks, and the avenger of 
 the Trojans; on his march from Sardes against 
 Greece he visited the citadel of Priam, made a 
 great sacrifice of a thousand oxen there, and 
 caused libations to be poured out in honor of the 
 heroes (VH. 43). 
 
BOOK FIRST, 11 
 
 On the other hand, Alexander the Great in his 
 expedition against Persia visited the Trojan local- 
 ity, and regarded himself as the avenger of the 
 Greeks and the pnnisher of the Persians. Thus 
 the Greek Mythus of Troy vibrates through all 
 Greek history even down to the present, in which 
 the Turk is the Oriental intruder in Europe. 
 The antagonism between Greek and Turk is the 
 old one, starting on the plains of Ilium, if not 
 farther back; it is the deepest dualism of the 
 World's History, in fact it is just that separa- 
 tion in the race which called forth the World's 
 History in its continuity. Herodotus is, there- 
 fore, the first true historian, veritably the Father 
 of History, inasmuch as he is the first writer who 
 has grasped and recorded this grand dualism in 
 its chief deed, which produced the historic 
 consciousness. 
 
 5. Homer's Iliad, accordingly, furnishes the 
 pulse-beat of the preface before us; but we can 
 also find in it traces of the Odyssey. Herodotus 
 may be regarded as a sort of Ulysses wandering 
 over the world in search of knowledije ; *' he saw 
 the habitations (asfea) of many men and knew 
 their mind" (Od. I. 3). The historian employs 
 hero that same Homeric word (asfea, habitations) 
 in reference to himself (5) : *' I, going over the 
 small and great habitations of men, shall move 
 forward with my narrative." Likewise the 
 Phoenician story of the captured Greek woman 
 
12 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 lo has a strong resemblance to a case told in the 
 Odyssey (Book XV.) ; in fact, the hist half of 
 the Odyssey gives a number of tales in which 
 occur abductions of men, women, and children 
 at the hands of sea-faring men, both Greeks and 
 Phoenicians. Eumaeus the swineherd is such 
 a stolen child. 
 
 The mythical account related in this preface is 
 put into a kind of system, with an ordering prin- 
 ciple, inasmuch as all these cases are not given 
 singly but are connected together in a series of 
 wrongs and retaliations. Moreover they are ar- 
 ranged in succession of time, in a chronological 
 order ; the deed of Paris is specially marked as 
 having taken place *' in the second generation 
 after " the stealing of Medea. 
 
 Thus the My thus begins to be divested of its 
 supernatural element, to be rationalized, systema- 
 tized, and chronologized; it is indeed becoming 
 historical. We may say of this preface of Hero- 
 dotus that it still has a mythical subject-matter 
 or content, but an historical form ; it shows that 
 the historic consciousness is penetrating the 
 Mythus and ordering the same after the pattern 
 of History. It is, therefore, an instructive doc- 
 ument indicatinor the transitional stao^e of the 
 mythical on its way into the historical, a half-way 
 station between the Trojan and the Persian time. 
 
 But our Historian has now furnished his pref- 
 ace, and is going to pass into his true field. He 
 
BOOK FIRST. 13 
 
 has let the OrientJils give their side; but he will 
 not vouch for its truth, though he probably 
 thinks that they have the best of the argument 
 in the mythical instances. He moves at once to 
 the historical instance: *' whom I myself know 
 to have begun doing wrong to the Greeks, him I 
 shall designate (5); " doubtless he has in mind 
 Croesus, ** who was the first of the Barbarians 
 that subjected Greek cities to tribute (6)." 
 
 This Introduction is a pretty good sample of 
 what is known in Greek Literature as mythogra- 
 phy, which seeks to arrange the persons and 
 events of mythology by some principle, ordering 
 them in time, and rationalizing them often ac- 
 cording to some theory. Before the age of Herod- 
 otus the mythographers had appeared, and 
 shown an historic sense springing up inside the 
 mythical sense. Our historian will never free 
 himself of the influence of this antecedent epoch. 
 
//. THE LYDIAD. 
 
 With Croesus, the Lydian king, the history of 
 Herodotus makes its start, going back about one 
 hundred years before the Historian's own time. 
 We call this portion of the first Book the Lydiad, 
 derived from Lydia, of which country the history 
 is here given. The name is intended to be anal- 
 ogous to and suojojestive of the word Iliad, 
 
 O DO ' 
 
 derived from Ilium, which was the seat of the 
 Trojan War. Moreover this entire account of 
 Lydia (embracing chapters 6-94), is manifestly 
 an evolution out of the Iliad; it is the epos going 
 over into history, it is poetry transmuting itself 
 into prose and not quite getting there. Already 
 we have noticed that, to the mind of Herodotus, 
 the Trojan conflict and the Persian conflict were 
 essentially one — the grand conflict between 
 Orient and Occident. And the struggle of the 
 Greeks with Croesus was another chapter of the 
 same story. We know also that Herodotus 
 was steeped in the Homeric poems, and he, a 
 (14) 
 
BOOK FIBST. 15 
 
 native of a Greek city which was subject to 
 an Oriental monarch, probably felt the con- 
 flict of the Iliad as we cannot feel it at 
 this distance of time. Nor should we for- 
 get that his uncle and educator, Panyasis, was 
 an imitator and resuscitator of Homer. This 
 History of Lydia we may well term an epical 
 History, partaking of the nature of both the 
 Epos and of History. It is, therefore, properly 
 placed at the beginning ; it is historical yet with 
 epical elements moving through it everywhere, 
 a grand metamorphosis of Homer into Herodo- 
 tus. Mark, we do not say that it is imitated or 
 copied from the Iliad; it is transformed there- 
 from, and thus becomes a new species of com- 
 position. 
 
 The reader probably wishes — or, if he does 
 not, he ought to wish — to penetrate more fully 
 into this genesis of the historian from the poet. 
 We have named the Lydiad an ejtical History; 
 what are its agreements and disagreements with 
 the Iliad, the Epos? Let us mark down a few 
 points. 
 
 (1) Both the Iliad and Lydiad have the same 
 theme, the conflict between East and West. (2) 
 Both have essentially the same locality — the 
 boundary line running North and South between 
 Asia and Europe, along which line the two 
 contestants have arrano^ed themselves throuo^h 
 all ages down to the present. There have been 
 
16 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 oscillations in each direction, forward and back- 
 ward over the line; but to-day it is drawn in the 
 same place essentially where we see it in the Iliad 
 and in the Lydiad. (3) Both have a central 
 figure, a hero — Achilles in the Iliad and Croesus 
 in the Lydiad. Yet into both are woven many 
 episodes and incidents pertaining to Troy and to 
 Lydia, making an elaborate environment in 
 which the central figure acts. (4) Both open 
 with short passages (prooemium ) which call 
 attention to this central figure and his pivotal 
 de (1 — the wrath of Achilles and the injury 
 of Croesus to the Greek cities. Both, too, 
 show the penalty coming home to the man for 
 his deed ; both, therefore, suggest a cycle of 
 action, and are rounded out to completeness ; 
 both, accordingly, leave an artistic impression. 
 
 Still the Iliad and Lydiad are very different ; 
 in the latter we can see the historical element 
 entering and dominating the epical. (1) 
 Chronology comes in and arranges the dynasties 
 and events of the Lydian kingdom according 
 their succession in time, ending in the capture 
 of the city, Sardes. But the Iliad is not a his- 
 tory of the Trojan War, not a chronicle of its 
 occurrences, though many are introduced, nor 
 is the city. Ilium, taken at the end of the 
 poem. In this fact can be seen that 
 the outer setting of the Lydiad is histori- 
 cal. (2) The Olympian world of the Gods, 
 
BOOK FIBST. 17 
 
 with their continued interference in the affairs 
 of men in the Iliad, quite vanishes out of 
 the Lydiad. There is still an overruling order, 
 but not so much by means of personal deities 
 as abstract princii)les, such as fate, nemesis, 
 divine envy, also divine justice. Different from 
 these as well as from Homer is the Oracle, 
 which pUiys such an important part in Herod- 
 otus. (3) In the Lydiad the stress is clearly 
 upon the free-acting individual, the infinite 
 worth of the human deed has begun to be 
 asserted and hence recorded. In the Iliad man 
 is also free, yet in his freedom he is still the 
 instrument of the Gods; over him and his deed 
 hovers the divine volition — ** the will of Zeus 
 was accomplished." (4) Herein lies the funda- 
 mental ground of the distinction inform — the 
 one is prose, the other poetry. The will of the 
 Supreme God is the cosmos or divine order in 
 the Iliad, which must be measured and sung, 
 while man must be attuned to it at last through 
 all his caprice and opposition. So we have in 
 Homer the rhythm of the Gods, the hexa- 
 metral attunement, which catches up the 
 mortal in his wildest . tumults and wan- 
 deringfs toward chaos and orders him to a 
 musical movement. On the other hand in 
 Herodotus this measured sweep breaks up into 
 prose, as it records man's free action, which can- 
 not be encumbered by the trammels of verse in 
 
 2 
 
18 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 its utterance, which causes the Gods and their 
 measured gait to recede into the background. 
 
 As already stated, man has now risen to the 
 consciousness that the fact is the great object of 
 research, and is what is worthy of being set down 
 in writ for all time. Prose thus begins, not 
 poetry, which is truth but not fact. The reality 
 with all its dissonance of free-acting individuals 
 enters with power, and its scribe is the sober his- 
 torian, not the musical bard, whose function 
 it is to bring all into the harmony of Zeus, as 
 well as into the rhythmic utterance of the same, 
 which is his verse. 
 
 ThisLydiad, therefore, is worthy of study not 
 simply for its historical value, but for its psycho- 
 logical purport, being an important document in 
 the psychology of the race as it makes the trans- 
 ition from myth to fact. We may see the epi- 
 cal consciousness moving into the historical, 
 Troy tranfusing itself into Sardes, Achilles into 
 Croesus, Homer into Herodotus. 
 
 I. Lydia. — This country is the western center 
 of Asia Minor, and doubtless had a mixed popu- 
 lation of Aryan and Semitic. Still almost 
 everything about the ethnic affinities of the 
 Lydians is a matter of dispute among the 
 learned. Not the least of the problems ])ertain- 
 ing to them is the question: Were they tht* 
 parent stock of the Etruscans in Italy? It is 
 our intention to shun this field of erudite ccn- 
 
BOOK FIRST. 19 
 
 jecture, and to o^rasp for the main fact at once. 
 And the main fact in the present case seems to 
 be that two great race-streams, the Aryan and 
 the Semitic, in their migrations toward Europe, 
 met each other with a considerable shock in 
 Lydia, both handing down strong indications of 
 themselves into the historic asre. 
 
 The course of this movement we may con- 
 ceive as foUows : The Semites, coming from the 
 Southeast, from the direction of Syria and 
 Arabia, dropped offshoots of themselves through 
 the lower and middle portions of Asia Minor 
 (such as the Cilicians, the Solymi and probably 
 the Cappadocians) and finally reached Lydia and 
 the sea; the Aryans coming from the Northeast 
 and East, from the direction of Armenia, drop- 
 ped offshoots of themselves (such as the Phry- 
 gians and Mysians) till they too reached Lydia, 
 finding the Semites there iiefore themselves, 
 probably. The two currents of migration swirl- 
 ing in together, met at first in strong opposition 
 doubtless, then they united and grew together as 
 one nation, which always bore traces of its 
 double origin. Compare the Saxon and the 
 Norman in England. 
 
 Lideed Asia Minor must have been in prehis- 
 toric times a mighty seething cauldron of strug- 
 gling peoples, which in their movements westward 
 had been forced in between the two seas, the 
 Euxine and the Eastern Mediterranean. The 
 
20 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 two main races of human culture, Aryan and 
 Semitic, were violently thrown together in Asia 
 Minor, as if in some preparatory training for the 
 World's History. The center of this ethnic 
 maelstrom seems to have been Lydia, which be- 
 came the most important nation of Asia Minor, 
 when its conflictins: elements had settled down 
 into harmony and coalesced into one people. In 
 Lydia Herodotus places the opening of his His- 
 tory, and starts there the great conflict between 
 Orient and Occident in its historical mani- 
 festation. Let us observe who are here the 
 contestants. 
 
 Lydia undertakes to subject the free Greek 
 cities which had sprung up along its coast. But 
 whence came the people of these cities? Across 
 the Aegean, from the continent of Europe chiefly ; 
 Greece had sent out colonies to the coast of Asia 
 Minor; these had some land, but their chief 
 possession was the sea with its commerce. 
 
 A very progressive set of people they were, 
 far more advanced and enterprising than their 
 mother cities. Colonization had sifted out, as it 
 often does, the strongest and most daring spirits 
 of the land, also those with new ideas in their 
 heads. The result was a line of Greek com- 
 munities along the eastern coast of the Aegean, 
 which led the civilization of the world in the 
 sixth century before Christ. Miletus was the 
 daughter of Athens, yet the daughter soon fir 
 
BOOK FIRST. 21 
 
 outstripped the mother both politically and 
 intellectually. It took Athens something like 
 one hundred years to overtake Miletus. Greek 
 ideas — philosophy, science, history — first rose 
 c'lnd flourished in these cities; especially the 
 Greak political idea, the autonomy of the civic 
 community, with strong leanings toward democ- 
 racy, was fostered and deeply cherished. Con- 
 tinental Hellas seemed backward, stolid, helpless, 
 while this marvelous new life was stirrins: in the 
 cities along the coast of Asia Minor. These 
 citizens were at that time the most Greek of the 
 Greeks. 
 
 Strongly opposed to the Greek political idea 
 of autonomy is the Asiatic idea, which is essen- 
 tially that of absolutism. Now comes the clash. 
 Lydia was evidently the most forward of the 
 Asiatic States of Asia Minor; she was also near- 
 est to the most forward of the Greek cities. 
 Such were the conditions; a border conflict 
 sprang up, which rose to be the conflict between 
 Greece and Persia, between Europe and Asia, 
 between Occident and Orient. But here was the 
 germ — the border war between Lydia and the 
 Greek towns of the coast, verily the most sig- 
 nificant of all border wars. And we may add 
 that here history came distinctively into being, 
 born of the struggle between Greek freedom and 
 Asiatic absolutism. For all History is essen- 
 tially the record of man's struggle into freedom, 
 
22 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 and this struggle first started for mankind along 
 the Lydian border. 
 
 Such are the two sides in opposition; yet, in 
 spite of themselves, a double process is taking 
 place, each is modifying the other. Lydia is 
 being Helleuized, it adopts Grecian customs, 
 especially it recognizes the Delphic Oracle, which 
 was the principle of unity in Greece, and for this 
 reason probably was more acceptable to the 
 Lydian consciousness. Lydia clearly rejected the 
 political, but was inclined to accept the religious 
 phase of Greek spirit. On the other hand, we 
 shall see the Greek cities of the coast affected by 
 their Asiatic environment, they will lose their 
 intense Hellenism, or at least the resolution to 
 defend it will wane, and they will become 
 Oriental subjects, though not willing subjects. 
 
 A further result will be that both the Lydians 
 and these Greek cities cannot be taken as the 
 final bearers of the great conflict ; the Lydians 
 are too Greek, and the Greeks too Oriental. 
 The conflict started between them will gradually 
 pass into other and mightier hands, till it finally 
 embraces two continents. 
 
 Such was the situation, such the combatants, 
 such the conflict. But why is History, that is 
 the World's History in its continuity, arising just 
 here and now from a petty border war? It is the 
 primal effort of a free community of free men 
 asserting their freedom against servitude 5 such 
 
BOOK FIRST, 23 
 
 a struggle is worthy of being recorded for all 
 time by man for man, since he must remember 
 it and be inspired by it to maintain his true self- 
 hood. He is now becoming really a man ; the in- 
 dividual thereby affirms his infinite worth, in fact, 
 his immortality, when he makes his deed immortal. 
 History is begotten of the consciousness that the 
 individual must be self-determined, and hence 
 imperishable, if his deed is not to perish. The 
 pulse-beat of all Occidental History down to the 
 present, the struggle for a higher liberty, is felt 
 on this early page of Herodotus recording this 
 conflict between Lydia and the Greek cities of 
 the coast. 
 
 Very familiar does History seem to us now, 
 but it was a great step, the step out of Asia into 
 Europe and even across into America. The 
 beginning of this marvelous step rose into dis- 
 tinct consciousness on the border-land before us, 
 which also furnished the Historian, our Herod- 
 otus. But even he had predecessors, he was 
 evolved out of a long series of mythographers, 
 geographers, chroniclers. Probably the forerun- 
 ner who came nearest to him was Hecataeus, 
 belonging to that Miletus which was itself the 
 spiritual forerunner of Athens, its own mother. 
 
 The Lydiad of Herodotus let us note again, is 
 the most highly finished and carefully organized 
 portion not only of the First Book but of this 
 whole work. We believe that the student, if he 
 
24 THE FA THE B OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 masters it, will possess the most typical product 
 of our Historian, as well as the key to Greek 
 History, including the very rise of the race's 
 historic consciousness. 
 
 II. Time before Croesus (7-25). In the 
 early portion of this Lydiad we find an intro- 
 ductory account telling of the time before 
 Croesus. It is in the main a mythical attempt 
 to connect Croesus with the past, and Lydia with 
 the great peoples of the earth. It is hardly 
 more than a meager genealogy, yet the names 
 are suo^gestive. 
 
 I^i)'st Dynasty. This begins with Lydus, son 
 of Atys, who is the son of Manes (I. 94). Thus 
 the Mythiis accounts for the designation of the 
 country (Lydus), and connect it with Phrygia 
 specially in the name Atys, which is frequent in 
 the royal family of Phrygia. Manes is a deity 
 of these two peoples ; or rather, it is the most 
 universal designation of the First Ruler that 
 exists in human speech. Old Teutonic Mannus, 
 Egyptian Menes, Hindoo Manu, Greek 3Iinos, 
 besides the Lydian and Phrygian forms, are well 
 known. The word in general seems to refer to 
 the divine beins: who first ruled over man and 
 brought to him government and the social sys- 
 tem. The My thus thus seeks to evoke the 
 primordial starting-point of the existing order ; 
 the Lydian rulers are carried back to the myth- 
 ical fountain-head of all civil authority. The 
 
BOOK FIBST. 25 
 
 English word man may thus be held to have a 
 world-wide affinity, and also a world-deep sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 Second Dynasty. Here the Lydian rulers are 
 mythically derived from Hercules (hence are 
 called Heraclidae), the great Greek national 
 hero, and also from Ninns (son of Bel, an As- 
 syrian deity), who is the founder of Nineveh and 
 the Assyrian Empire. A remarkable conjunction 
 of names ; one can see in it a mythical attempt 
 to unite Hellas and Asia in a common origin, 
 through a kinship of their greatest Heroes and 
 Gods. Herein Lydia is seen standing between 
 Orient and Occident, bringing the two extremes 
 together in her former rulers. Such, indeed, we 
 shall find to be the actual situation and character 
 of the Lydian nation. 
 
 Very little history can be discovered in these 
 genealogies, but we can see the great fact of the 
 time putting on a mythical form, which has its 
 significance as well as the historical form. The 
 age of Herodotus is looking back at the afore- 
 time and making the same real to itself not by 
 the way of the critical Understanding, but through 
 the Imagination. Each method the student is to 
 sympathize with, and to take up into his own 
 spirit. 
 
 Some writers have held that the Hercules men- 
 tioned in this genealogy is the Lydian Hercules 
 and is whollv distinct from the Greek Hercules. 
 
26 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Such a view seeks to briu^ij into the Mythus a 
 kind of formal consistency, whereas it is the 
 nature of the Mythus to fluctuate and vary in its 
 forms, when it has to express a new significance. 
 The Mythus is truly plastic, formable, not the 
 rigid historic fact. 
 
 The last ruler belonorinof to the Heraclidae was 
 Candaules, in whose time a new change of 
 dynasty takes place. The historian seeks to give 
 the ground of this change, and again he betakes 
 himself to the Mythus, but in a fresh shape. 
 Not a vague genealogy now ; the story enters in 
 order to express the meaning of the revolution. 
 
 The story of Candaules hints of the conflict 
 between Greek and Barbarian in an important 
 point of manners. The Greek loved the human 
 body as the most perfect work in all creation ; 
 he made it the abode of the God. Very neces- 
 sary is this culture of and reverence for the body 
 as the temple of the individual soul in life. The 
 Oriental hid the body, was ashamed of it; in his 
 eyes it belonged to the individual, who was little 
 or nothing, a slave, and destined to vanish. 
 
 Hence the difl'erence between Orient and Occi- 
 dent develops at the start into a difl'erence as 
 regards the body. The Greek exercised naked 
 in the palestra, and contended naked in the 
 Olympic games. Never again will a whole people 
 probably have the same inner delight in the poetry 
 of the body and its movement as the old Greeks 
 
BOOK FIBST. 27 
 
 had. They tore off the Oriental rags, doubtless 
 then more slattern than now, and revealed them- 
 selves to themselves in their individual bodies, fit 
 abode for the Gods. 
 
 In all this we can see that rising consciousness 
 of the worth of the individual, which takes on 
 many forms at the present epoch. It is no 
 wonder, therefore, that the Greeks seemed to 
 the Oriental to be lacking in chastity. Yet not 
 a mere tingling of lust was this love of the body, 
 it was a phase of their progress, of the glorifica- 
 tion of the individual. Even the face is often 
 masked in the East. 
 
 Now we can begin to understand the story of 
 Candaules. He was clearly hellenizing, those 
 Greek ideas were becoming strong in him. His 
 friend was Gyges; that friend he wished to look 
 on the most beautiful object in the world. So 
 the little drama with plot and dialogue plays its 
 first act. But then comes the counterstroke. 
 The woman, the Oriental queen, holding to her 
 custom, deems herself the most injured of mor- 
 tals ; only the death of the husband can atone 
 for the wrong. 
 
 So Candaules loses his realm not simply for 
 his love of beauty but for his love of imparting 
 it to others. The woman resents the attempt to 
 make her a Greek model. Who will refuse to 
 say in these days that she has not her right? 
 But the anecdote is truly characteristic; it shows 
 
28 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY, 
 
 the two ways, Greek and Oriental, of consider- 
 inor the human form ; moreover the source of 
 Greek art, of its statues, is suggested in the 
 story. 
 
 The same question has its pertinence in these 
 days. The Greek world of art has left us its 
 legacy of nude statues; what is their effect on 
 morals? Still further, the study of art de- 
 mands the nude model; is such a thing to be 
 permitted in our world which still holds to an 
 Oriental religion? So the old conflict between 
 Greece and the Orient, that conflict which de- 
 posed Candaules, is not yet settled; to-day it is 
 upon us, and often breaks out with fresh fury. 
 And there is no doubt of the danger. But 
 artists will tell you that the very function of art 
 is through the senses to rise above the senses, 
 to master the sensuous and make it the step to 
 the eternal. 
 
 Moreover, we may glance at the dramatic, 
 indeed tragic element in the story of Candaules. 
 Here is Guilt, the king violates the ethical con- 
 sciousness of his people doubtless, but certainly 
 of his wife, who is also queen. Two national, 
 perchance world-historical ideas begin to show 
 their conflict in this little tale ; note too that the 
 penalty is to be brought home to the guilty man 
 from the spot where the wrong took place. 
 Still this punishment will call down retribution 
 *' upon the fifth descendant of Gyges," namely 
 
BOOK FIBST. 
 
 29 
 
 Croesus. So the tragic deed of guilt perpet- 
 uates itself in a way similar to what is seen in 
 the House of Agamemnon. Herodotus was con- 
 temporary with the great Athenian tragic poets, 
 Aeschylus and Sophocles, and it may he often 
 observed how he shares in the tragric conscious- 
 ness of his age. He falls naturally into the 
 dramatic form, and has a profound sense of the 
 dramatic collision. To be sure this collision in 
 the present case is merely suggested by a little 
 tale, but this suggestion reaches down to the 
 deepest fact of the age, the grand conflict be- 
 tween Hellenism and Orientalism. 
 
 Third Dynasty, This is called the Merm- 
 nadae or children of Mermnas, which name is 
 otherwise unknown. Herodotus mentions ^yq 
 kings as belonging to this dynasty, whose names 
 and reiorns chronoloorists have set down in the 
 foUowinsT order: — 
 
 Gyges 
 
 Ardys 
 
 Sadyattes 
 
 Alyattes 
 
 Croesus 
 
 B. C. 716-678. 
 '* 678-629. 
 '* 629-617. 
 ** 617-560. 
 ** 560-546. 
 
 There is much difi'erence of opinion among the 
 learned about these dates (see Rawlinson's Essay 
 on Lydian History, appended to the first volume 
 of his translation of Herodotus). Into such dis- 
 cussions we shall not enter; but it is worth 
 
30 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 while to Dote that our historian has no era (like 
 the Christian era) by which to order historic 
 time. Still it is plain that he is dimly groping 
 for such an era, calling for it, we may say ; he 
 has the idea of temporal succession, and is meas- 
 uring it by dynasties, generations, and years. 
 
 We have already sought to discover what lay 
 in this last change of dynasty — a reaction 
 against the hellenizing tendencies of the monarch, 
 Candaules. His successor Gyges, however, still 
 retains a religious connection with the Greeks, 
 especially with the Delphic Oracle, to which he 
 made presents. It is to be noticed that Apollo 
 was probably the God of Asia Minor, at least 
 more highly revered there than any other 
 deity; he was worshiped in the Troad, as we 
 learn from the Iliad, and sided with the Trojans 
 and their Asiatic allies against the conti- 
 nental Greeks in the Trojan War. But in 
 the time of Herodotus, Apollo had moved west 
 (though rocky Pytho is known to Homer), and 
 acquired a transcendent influence in Hellas 
 proper, which he did not possess in Homer. So 
 all these Lydian Monarchs show a Greek religious 
 affinity and come to their God across the Aegean. 
 Gyges, however, is said to be the first of the 
 Barbarians (with one exception) who dedicates 
 offerings at Delphi. 
 
 Now the grand historic conflict of these four 
 Lydian kings before Croesus is with Greek cities 
 
BOOK FIB8T. 31 
 
 of the coast, especially with Miletus, which had 
 shown a wonderful development and had pro- 
 duced great individuals such as Thales, Heca- 
 taeus, Thrasybulus. It was a seafaring people, 
 hence the land people, the Lydians, could not 
 cut off their supplies. 
 
 After a variety of historic events intermingled 
 with anecdotes, another tale is woven into the 
 narrative, a tale with a supernatural element, in 
 contrast with the story of Candaules, which has 
 no such element. Arion is a famous singer, who 
 is saved by his power of song, which charms 
 a dolphin to do his will. The leading points are 
 three. 
 
 First is the deed of wrong. Second is the 
 supernatural conduct of the dolphin under the 
 influence of Arion's music. Nature yields to 
 the sweet sway of harmony — a theme elsewhere 
 treated in Greek legend (Orpheus, Amphion). 
 Third is the punishment of the guilty ; wrong, 
 which is the grand discord of the ethical world, 
 is undone. The whole is a genuine fairy-tale, 
 with its miraculous intervention to save the in- 
 nocent and worthy, and with its underlying 
 substrate of faith in an ethical ord^r. The 
 power of the tale is enhanced by making the 
 victim of wrong a singer and harpist, or a pro- 
 ducer of harmony, against whom the wicked here 
 conspire. Thus they assail the outer harmony, 
 which suggests the inner harmony ; indeed both 
 
32 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 kinds of harmony, the musical and the ethical, 
 are assailed, and also vindicated. 
 
 Such is the heart of the wonderful Tale of 
 Arion and the Dolphin, which has been a prime 
 favorite in all ages, having been wrought over 
 into many literary forms, ballad, narrative, 
 poem, prose-romance. Numerous attempts have 
 been made to rationalize or allegorize the present 
 tale, for instance, by making the dolphin a 
 wooden one at the ship's prow, on which ship 
 Arion escaped, or by making Arion a good 
 swimmer, as good as a dolphin, or by making 
 the whole into an allegory setting forth the 
 power of music, etc. Still, the best way is to 
 keep the tale as it is, being a genuine expression 
 of a phase of human consciousness. But we 
 should by all means inquire what is that human 
 consciousness which seeks to express itself and 
 its view of the Divine Order of the World in the 
 form of a fairy-tale. Under the narrative we 
 must reach down the ethical purport, which is the 
 heart of it, and its ground of existence. This 
 little tale of Arion and the Dolphin beautifully 
 reflects a faith in a world-justice and a providen- 
 tial ordering of things in this life. 
 
 We also catch a glimpse of some of the diffi- 
 culties in these Greek cities. Dissension within 
 and without; no Ionic city helped the Milesians 
 except Chios. The confederation was weak, the 
 jealousy of the strong city shows itself; the 
 
BOOK FIRST. 93 
 
 disease of Greece, of which she at last perished, 
 makes its appearance. 
 
 Then we see an internal change. A number of 
 these cities, Miletus in particular, had fallen 
 under the rule of a tyrant (or king). Thus an 
 Oriental tendency had started, quite different 
 from what we find in Homer. This tendency 
 also passes into continental Greece, and most of 
 its cities had their tyrants. While we behold the 
 Orient and Hellas in a mutual opposition, we can 
 also observe that there is even to this an 
 opposite tendency, which brings both together. 
 
 In looking back at these three dynasties we 
 may observe a slow dawning of the historic con- 
 sciousness, and with it a beginning of a World- 
 History. Especially during the third dynasty 
 (the Mermnadae) does the conflict become clear, 
 the great conflict between Hellas and Asia. 
 These Lydian monarchs wage war almost con- 
 tinuously against the neighboring Greek cities, 
 trying to subdue the rising influence. This small 
 border war we shall see develop into the great 
 Persian war, and reveal the deepest dualism in 
 all History. 
 
 With the peculiar intermingling of the myth- 
 ical and historical streams, the Historian reaches 
 the reign of Croesus, to whom the previous nar- 
 rative has been leading up, as the grand central 
 figure of the Lydiad. About one hundred years 
 before the historian's own time, Croesus lived, 
 
 S 
 
34 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY, 
 
 and called forth the preliminary conflict, the 
 first important historical conflict between East 
 and West. 
 
 III. Croesus. — We now enter upon the 
 drama of Croesus (26-94) distinctively, which is 
 portrayed in three stages, which may be called 
 the Rise, Culmination, and Decline of the Lydian 
 monarch. 
 
 The first two stages are treated with greater 
 brevity than the last; the impressive thing is the 
 decline and fall of a mighty individual. The 
 stress is here placed, therefore, upon the going 
 down of Croesus, after great success. Drama, 
 Epos, History are united in a new kind of 
 composition; story, dialogue, oracle, riddle, 
 omen, miracle, anecdote have their place in the 
 variegated totality. 
 
 1. The Rise of Croesus is given in a few 
 paragraphs (26-28). He passes rapidly before 
 us as the hero triumphant, victorious in the East 
 and West, as far as his arms extend. He shows 
 himself the ablest of the Lydian kings, and man- 
 ifests a great character, round which the events 
 of the time revolve. It becomes plain that he, 
 like the Oriental rulers, is strongly possessed with 
 the idea of conquest, of extending his country's 
 limits; any boundary is an insult to his author- 
 ity, and he proceeds at once to overcome it. 
 An immediate annulment of the limits of nature 
 is the Oriental spirit; that which is individual- 
 
BOOK FIRST. 35 
 
 ized has no right to be. So Croesus shows traits 
 of the Oriiental conqueror. 
 
 At the same time he manifests strono; Greek 
 aflSnities. No doubt he has a good deal of Greek 
 culture ; it is clear that he participates in the 
 intellectual movement of the Ionic cities of the 
 coast. He keeps up his relation to the Delphic 
 Oracle also, after testing it; this testing of the 
 Oracle shows his mental tendency. '' Wise men 
 came to him " (29), such as Solon, Thales, Bias. 
 He conquers the Greek cities and makes them pay 
 tribute ; he thinks of reducing the Islanders, but 
 he had no navy and evidently could not trust the 
 Greeks of the coast against Greeks of the islands. 
 Then he carries his arms eastward, making the 
 river Halys his boundary. Here he begins to 
 impinge upon another rising Asiatic power. 
 
 Thus Croesus is placed at the height of his 
 glory. The history of these conquests is not 
 told in much detail ; probably Herodotus did not 
 know much about them. At any rate the im- 
 pressive thing is not the rise but the fall, the 
 descent from a great career. And this is what 
 the historian now portrays with a decided dra- 
 matic power. The tragic view of the Great 
 Individual is presented, he is born to collide and 
 to perish, the very Gods are supposed to be 
 jealous of him, and to drive him against his limits. 
 
 Really however he drives himself against 
 them. The Greek cultivated individuality. 
 
86 THE FATHEB OF BIS TOUT. 
 
 Hellas reared many of the mightiest men of all 
 time. Yet they were tragic, they were too great 
 for their city, for their nation, yea, too great 
 for themselves. Hence after Homer's Epos 
 rises Greek Tragedy, which has this conception 
 at its foundation. Great is the individual, but 
 the greater he is the more tragic. 
 
 Now this fundamental consciousness Herodo- 
 tus is going to apply to Croesus, and on a far 
 vaster stage to Xerxes. So Croesus is to be seen 
 in his struggle with the fate which his own great- 
 ness and success have called up against him ; his 
 own good fortune evokes the Furies. 
 
 Moreover the historian has motived the guilt 
 for which follows vengeance ; the dynasty of 
 Croesus is tainted by the dethronement of Can- 
 daules; the Oracle has declared that retribution 
 will come after five generations. But the chief 
 crime of Croesus and of his dynasty is that of 
 enslaving the free Greek cities; he has wronged 
 the Hellenic spirit, which just at this epoch hap- 
 pens to be the bearer of civilization. 
 
 2. Croesus is next to be brought before us in 
 the height of his glory. The poet-historian intro- 
 duces a dramatic scene of striking vividness, in 
 which Solon and the Lydian king are the speak- 
 ers. The content of this scene is of a reflective 
 cast, ethico-didactic in spirit, and heralds the 
 dialogues of Plato. A new literary form is thus 
 introduced into the historical narrative ; the dra- 
 
BOOK FIRST. 37 
 
 matic subject is not now mythical, but philo- 
 sophic. The chief speaker is an Athenian, a free 
 citizen of a free State ; moreover a lawgiver of 
 freedom, a traveler and a philosopher. A re- 
 markable combination : Solon has in the first 
 place united liberty with law in his own city; 
 then through travel he has transcended the nar- 
 row limits of his own locality and become cos- 
 mopolitan, universal; finally through philosophy 
 he is able to formulate reflectively his view of 
 the world. Croesus, in the acme of his power 
 and wealth, is summoned by the Historian into 
 the presence of such a man, and is made to give 
 an account of himself. 
 
 It is highly probable that the whole interview 
 is fictitious; there are chronological diflSculties 
 in the way. Still our Historian does not disdain 
 the imaginative form to set forth historic truth. 
 And the historic truth here is that two kinds 
 of consciousness, two stages of human develop- 
 ment are placed alongside of each other and 
 contrasted, in the persons of their highest repre- 
 sentatives, Solon and Croesus, the free citizen 
 and the absolute monarch. Again we behold 
 a new image of the grand theme, Orient and 
 Occident. 
 
 The question takes the form of who is the 
 happiest man? Or more directly stated accord- 
 ing to the point under discussion. What kind of 
 a life is most worth living? We are to look to 
 
3B THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 the total life, to the very end thereof, in order to 
 find out. The philosopher answers in substance : 
 '* Not thou, O King Croesus, with all thy wealth, 
 but Tellus the Athenian who was a good citizen 
 of a good State, father of good sons, and died a 
 glorious death for his country." Very strongly 
 does this reply set up the free Athenian citizen 
 as the ideal man, having his institutional life in 
 Family and State and dying at last for his 
 country. 
 
 Then comes the second instance ; again 
 Croesus is not chosen, but Cleobis and Biton, 
 two Argive youths, who gave a remarkable ex- 
 ample of filial and religious devotion, and at 
 once were taken to the Gods, *' who thus showed 
 that it is better to die than to live." Once more 
 the man of humble station fulfilling some ethical 
 function and dying therein is held up to Croesus 
 as the pattern of happiness, or of right life and 
 death. The Athenian case was domestic and 
 political, the Argive case was domestic and 
 religious, both celebrate what may be called the 
 ethical as the true source of happiness, in con- 
 trast with the wealth and power of Croesus. 
 
 So much for these instances in which we see 
 the humble condition of the free Greek glorified, 
 his ethical devotion to family and country and 
 god, and his dying not in a deedless quiet but in 
 fulfillment of some worthy action. A philo- 
 sophic view of the life and death of the ordinary 
 
BOOK FIBST. 39 
 
 individual is thus held up before the Oriental 
 despot. Of course the latter could not see the 
 subject in that light. 
 
 Then Herodotus introduces his peculiar notion 
 about the Gods : they are jealous, and are level- 
 ers of the high and mighty. What does he 
 mean? Does he intend to put an ill-disposed 
 Providence at the head of the Divine Order? 
 So it seems. Now this view springs from two 
 sources. Herodotus saw the most powerful 
 rulers of the Orient humbled — Xerxes, and this 
 Croesus, not to speak of other lesser instances. 
 Then he saw the fate of the great individuals of 
 the Greek States, Pausanias and Themistocles, 
 for example. The deity Nemesis levels all. 
 
 This is, then, a statement of the tragic view 
 of the individual, which belongs to the time, and 
 indeed of the tragic view of the Greek World. 
 The grand mediation of Man with the Divine 
 and also with himself is the work of Christendom, 
 which is therefore not tragic. But Heathendom 
 is tragic in its outcome, and its best spirits know 
 it, and portray it. Hence the Greek Tragedians. 
 Still, at the start, the Homeric epical conscious- 
 ness is not tragic, since both the heroes (Achilles 
 and Ulysses) after their wrath and error, are 
 restored, do not perish, at least not in the poems, 
 though Achilles knows he has to die young. 
 But as the Greek consciousness developed, put- 
 ting more and more stress upon the individual, 
 
40 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 it felt the tragic counter-stoke, felt that great- 
 ness turned loose the Furies of Death. 
 
 Thus Solon bids Croesus wait for the end, be- 
 fore he can be pronounced happy. *' Wealth 
 does not make happy.'' Herein the humblest 
 individual may be superior to a king, is indeed 
 likely to be. In such fashion does Solon assert 
 his Greek principle of individuality, and give a 
 democratic Athenian tinge to his talk. Law- 
 giver too, he is; for all have come under the 
 law in equality, no absolute monarch can con- 
 trol law, specially the law of Nemesis — not 
 Croesus, not Cyrus. 
 
 Solon has asserted to the Oriental monarch the 
 universal point of view, and subsumed the mon- 
 arch under it, philosopher that he is ; has made the 
 monarch submit to law, lawgiver that he is. Did 
 he not leave Athens for ten years that he might 
 not repeal his laws, and that the Athenians might 
 have to submit to them? A great discipline for 
 that commonwealth, and for him, too; we behold 
 now arising the law-giving consciousness, which, 
 however, reaches its bloom in the Roman spirit, 
 when the whole world, and not merely one 
 city, is brought under law. Zaleucus, Charondas, 
 Lycurgus, Solon, are all individual precursors 
 of Rome. 
 
 Such was the warning given to Croesus, who 
 did not, could not, take it with his consciousness. 
 Solon says to the proud monarch: '* I shall level 
 
BOOK FIRST. 41 
 
 thee with rest of mortals, I shall be thy Nemesis ; 
 I shall read to thee the law of the Divine Order, 
 under which thou, too, must come ; I shall teach 
 thee a lesson of philosophy, which is of universal 
 application, making no exception even in favor of 
 kings." Before the tribunal of the Idea the 
 philosopher humbles Croesus, placing him below 
 the simple Athenian citizen Tellus, What next? 
 This Idea is to begin its realization, in which fact 
 the preceding scene is to connect with what 
 follows, 
 
 3. The downward movement of Croesus is the 
 last and fullest act of the Croesus drama (34-91). 
 The interview with Solon shows theLydian mon- 
 arch at high tide of external prosperity ; it also 
 hints the internal spirit, the pride (hi/brts) of 
 the man, which is the preparation for the turn in 
 his affairs. A look into the soul of Croesus is 
 given, by which we see the motive for his decline 
 and fall. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Historian portrays 
 the lot of Croesus with sympathy. Herodotus 
 was born not very far from the boundaries of 
 Lydia, and in his youth he must have heard 
 many traditions of the famous Lydian ruler, 
 whose conqueror was Persia, the great enemy of 
 Greece. But it is certain that our Historian 
 shows still greater sympathy with the doctrine of 
 Solon, who is here the real Oracle of Croesus, 
 having given the true response to the proud mon- 
 
42 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 arch, ill the way of warning. Athenian wisdom 
 is unconsciously placed above the Delphic Oracle. 
 
 So we mark the turning-point: *' a grand 
 indignation (nemesis) from God" fell upon 
 Croesus, of which the cause, according to the con- 
 jecture of the historian, was *' his deeming him- 
 self the happiest of all men." Of this decline 
 then may be noted five distinct stages: (1) the 
 domestic tragedy in which the king will lose his 
 son and heir; (2) the consultation of the 
 Delphic Oracle, whereby Croesus seeks to unite 
 himself with the religious feeling of Greece ; (3) 
 attempted alliances with Athens and Sparta, in 
 which Croesus seeks to unite himself with Greece 
 politically against Persia; (4) struggle with 
 Cyrus, and defeat; (5) the denouement, in 
 which Croesus loses his kingdom, but is per- 
 sonallv saved. 
 
 These five stages we shall now set forth singly, 
 as they unroll in all their diversity of color, 
 style, thought. Each of these stages may be 
 said to have its own literary form and quality — 
 which fact is one of the main points to be 
 discerned. 
 
 (1). The domestic tragedy sweeping in upon 
 Croesus, which is here narrated (34-45), strikes 
 him a blow in the tenderest spot; his son is 
 slain, his only son, except one who is deaf and 
 dumb — a calamity to his family and to his 
 state. 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 43 
 
 The king has a dream foretelling the death of 
 his son, which dream he regards as a divine 
 warning, and which he tries to circumvent, to no 
 purpose, however. Croesus is in the leading 
 strings of Fate, and every act of avoidance 
 becomes simply an act of furtherance. 
 
 The tale is a tragedy somewhat after the pat- 
 ern of the Athenian dramatists. Particularly 
 Oedipus is suggested, whose lines of life are laid 
 down for him in advance, and he cannot escape. 
 The fateful Oracle hangs over him : unwittingly 
 he will slay his own father and marry his own 
 mother. So Croesus brings about the very 
 means for the fulfillment of his dream (which is 
 oracular), nay we shall see him in the political 
 arena movinoj forward to his own undoing^. 
 Herein Herodotus, as on other occasions, shows 
 himself sharinsf in the trasric consciousness which 
 produced the great Athenian tragic poets ; indeed 
 he was the friend of Sophocles and had doubtless 
 seen or read the latter's Oedipus Rex, 
 
 The most interesting of the characters of this 
 present drama is Adrastus,the fateful man, who, 
 innocent of intentions, does the most terrible 
 deeds. He slays his brother unwittingly; he 
 has to flee from home under a curse, comes to 
 Croesus, who purifies and receives him back into 
 the social order. A curious conception, yet by 
 no means unnatural ; Adrastus takes Fate with 
 him wherever he goes ; perhaps because he 
 
44 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 broods over it, he cannot get rid of the fixed 
 idea about it, and thus accomplishes his own 
 presentiments. Typical is such a person for 
 Croesus now; Adrastus, *' the doomed," enters 
 the Lydian Court ; indeed we may consider 
 Adrastus as a phase of Croesus himself. For 
 Croesus deems himself the happiest of mortals, 
 above the stroke of destiny ; just behold, O 
 Croesus, this man, the victim of the Gods; are 
 you exempt? You shall soon see. We are 
 touched by the humanity and kindness of 
 Croesus, who purifies the man of misfortune and 
 even forgives his terrible deed. Still the blow 
 descends; Dot exempt from Fate is the king, 
 indeed he is exposed to it specially by his exalted 
 position. 
 
 Thus the philosoper with his abstract state- 
 ment of a view of the world goes in advance, and 
 the illustration is enforced in a vivid dramatic 
 scene. Nemesis is at work; does Croesus recog- 
 nize it? 
 
 Of course the modern world cannot accept this 
 Herodotean idea of nemesis, fate, and divine 
 envy. Already in the olden time Plato opposed 
 strongly the doctrine of envy. We must believe 
 that man makes his own fate, if he is overmas- 
 tered by it; the inner fortress, the mind, in its 
 freedom, must be made proof against fate. Man 
 cannot wholly avoid accident and so can be 
 reached externally by the external; but this 
 
BOOK FIBST. 45 
 
 cannot overcome him interntilly unless he lets it. 
 Still we must throw ourselves back sympatheti- 
 cally into the time of the old Historian and 
 appreciate his consciousness. 
 
 (2) The dealings of Croesus svith the Delphic 
 Oracle come next in order (46-56). We have 
 already seen in the case of his son, that Croesus 
 was accessible to a supernatural influence; the 
 dream was a kind of Oracle whose f ulfiUment may 
 have influenced him to this new step of consulting 
 the Oracles. But first he will test their truth; 
 then, when he has discovered the right one^ he 
 will seek to gain it. In fact, this entire section 
 may well be considered his attempt to conciliate 
 the Greek relisfious spirit through its leadino^ 
 Oracle. Then a political object (possibly he 
 was not wholly conscious of it himself) under- 
 lies these religious offerings of Croesus to the 
 Greek God. For some reason he felt the neces- 
 sity of sacrificing quite a portion of his treasures, 
 which our Historian saw still at Delphi. From 
 this dazzling account (the Greeks were always 
 and still are relatively poor) has come down the 
 saying: '* As rich as Croesus." 
 
 Thus the Lydian monarch reaches out toward 
 the religious heart of Hellas. He seeks to con- 
 ciliate it, to win it, perchance to purchase it in- 
 directly. What is the meaning of his conduct? 
 
 The time has come when Croesus has to take 
 sides, he cannot be Oriental and Hellenic too. 
 
46 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 As it is, he is a middle man, he is in Asia, yel 
 in contact with Greece, an Oriental despot with a 
 good deal of the Greek spirit in him. Tht; 
 Persian Empire is rising, a new hero appears in 
 the East, Cyrus ; with him Croesus has to 
 reckon. That Empire means the total absorption 
 of Western Asia and Croesus knows it, he i)re- 
 pares to dispute the new power. 
 
 For this purpose he seeks alliances with 
 Greece. To be sure, the Greeks must regard 
 him with suspicion, for he " has enslaved their 
 brothers in Asia." But first he will put himself 
 in harmony with the Greek religion which at that 
 time found utterance in the Oracle, specially the 
 Delphic Oracle. This was a wise move on the 
 part of Croesus. For the Greek consciousness 
 had its expression in these Oracles, there was 
 indeed no other expression for the total Hellenic 
 race. Politically the Greeks were divided into 
 hundreds of conflicting communities, scattered 
 over a wide stretch of territory from Sicily and 
 Italy in the West to the Euxine in the North and 
 Africa in the South. The Delphic Oracle was 
 their voice, their unity, their center, and it strove 
 to preserve and keep alive the common Greek 
 brotherhood, which was felt by all, and to a 
 degree obeyed by all, when voiced by the com- 
 mand of the Oracle. 
 
 Such was its chief sphere, a true one, though 
 it was often consulted on matters which lay out- 
 
BOOK FIBST. 47 
 
 side of its horizon, and so became ambiguous. 
 But why this form of expression? The oracular 
 consciousness feels the totality immediately, has 
 it not in the form of reason, but of feeling, or 
 perchance of inner vision. What is universal it 
 feels in the particular event and speaks it forth ; 
 no ground it has but its own self — a kind of 
 intuition of the Greek national spirit. Hence 
 the rise and the authority of the oracular con- 
 sciousness. Herodotus shares in it, though it 
 was departing in his day before the coming phi- 
 losophic culture. Yet even Socrates with his 
 demon has not wholly lost it. 
 
 Our Historian, true to the spirit of his time, 
 and specially to the time of the Persian War, 
 weaves this oracular thread through his history; 
 it would indeed be imperfect without the same. 
 He is in the transition from the oracular to the 
 historical ; his follower in history, Thucydides, 
 has quite lost this oracular element from his 
 consciousness. 
 
 Croesus also has this oracular spirit, though 
 not without some questioning; he has no longer 
 implicit faith. He would test the Oracles be- 
 forehand, to see if they did really foreknow — 
 not only the Grecian, but also the Libyan, that 
 of Ammon. He finds out the truth of the 
 Delphic Oracle by a cunning stratagem. Now 
 this is the difficulty ; we with our view of the 
 matter question the truth of the particular 
 
48 THE FATHER OF HISTORY, 
 
 case, but there can be no question of the general 
 reason for the choice. The Delphic Oracle, ex- 
 pressing the united spirit of Hellas, was for him 
 the true Oracle which he must consult. That 
 fact his own insight would tell him, yet he re- 
 quired also the special confirmation and got it 
 somehow. Croesus is skeptic enough to make 
 trial, though he has faith likewise. Yet he can 
 also proceed on purely rational grounds to deter- 
 mine his conduct. There is in all war a vast 
 field for chance ; especially so was it in the olden 
 time. He cannot wholly ignore the indetermi- 
 nate, and so there is room for the Oracle outside 
 of what is balculable. 
 
 Looking at it from our point of view, we see 
 that Croesus could not well have done otherwise. 
 Is he willing to be absorbed into the new Ori- 
 ental Empire? No. Then he must appeal to the 
 Greek spiritual principle and find its Oracle. 
 For the Greek specially is the foe of Asiatic 
 absorption, the upholder of individuality. 
 
 Now come his presents to the Oracle, which 
 have made his name famous for all time, and 
 proverbial. He seeks to conciliate the Oracle, 
 and win its voice to his side; or, better, to con- 
 ciliate the Greek consciousness, which he knows 
 he has deeply offended by his subjugation of the 
 Greek cities along the coast of Asia Minor. 
 Such is probably the meaning of these presents, 
 an act of restitution ; the most of his tribute 
 
BOOK FIRST. 49 
 
 from his Greek conquests he takes and devotes 
 to the Greek God. An atonement one may read 
 in this, in the presence of all Greece. 
 
 What will the Oracle say? Thrice it answers. 
 First it tells what King Croesus is doing at that 
 moment, proclaiming its vision over space; sec- 
 ondly, it tells him *' he would destroy a mighty 
 empire;" the third is,*' When a mule shall be king 
 of the Medes," then comes danger to the Lydian. 
 These last two oracles depend on ambiguities, 
 really they lay outside the scope and the mean- 
 ing of the Greek Oracle, which has to help itself 
 out with double meanings. For the real question 
 which comes home to the Oracle, representing 
 Hellenic consciousness, is this ; Is Croesus the 
 true bearer of the Greek world and its spirit 
 against Persia and the Orient? To such a ques- 
 tion there can be but one answer, No ! The 
 Lydian king is an Oriental despot, in spite of his 
 hellenizing tendencies ; he has subjected Greek 
 cities to his absolute rule. So Delphi, the voice 
 of Hellas, avoids the issue, nay, is willing to eg^ 
 Croesus on into a fight with Persia, turning one 
 Oriental against another. 
 
 Really, then, the attempt of Croesus to gain, 
 or perchance to buy, the Oracle is a failure. 
 How could it be otherwise? He cannot be ac- 
 cepted by the Greeks as their head, their repre- 
 sentative, nor can he be taken by the Oriental 
 peoples of Central Asia as their leader. He falls 
 
 4 
 
50 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 between tbe opposites ; the spirit of the age, 
 after foreshadowing its great conflict in him with 
 his double tendency, will eliminate him. 
 
 (3) The political design of Croesus now starts 
 to make itself manifest (56-70). *' He began to 
 inquire carefully who were the most powerful of 
 the Greeks, whom he might gain over as allies." 
 Accordingly we have in this part a short ethnic 
 dissertation (56-58) on the origin and relation- 
 ship of the Greek tribes. Not plain is the pass- 
 age (the manuscripts are said to be defective 
 here), and it has given rise to a great diversity 
 of opinion. The Historian, after noticing the 
 dual division of the Greek stock into Doric and 
 Ionic (or Hellenic and Pelasgic) seems to derive 
 both primordially from the Pelasgic race. Thus 
 far back in the prehistoric time there was a kind 
 of rude Greek unity, which now, however, is 
 split up into many independent commonwealths, 
 each asserting its own individual right of exist- 
 ence. Still there remains the religious unity of 
 the Greek consciousness, centering more in 
 Delphi at the present time than in any other 
 place. 
 
 After Croesus had, as he supposed, conciliated 
 the religious feeling, the feeling of brotherhood 
 among the Greeks, he turns to the separate 
 states, and takes up the political side of his cause. 
 For the Greeks were politically divided into 
 small states in spite of their common feeling ; 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 51 
 
 these were hostile to one another often, and 
 hence they had to be approached separately. 
 How different in Asia ! There the political unity 
 swallows all, the one state, the one man, the 
 monarch. Very soon Croesus finds the Greek 
 states reduced to two, Athens and Sparta — 
 Ionic and Doric. 
 
 Undoubtedly Herodotus has before himself 
 the intense breach just preceding the Pelopon- 
 nesiaii War, between Athens and Sparta, which 
 breach he throws back to the time of Croesus, 
 when the dualism had already started doubtless, 
 but was not so pronounced. Accordingly we 
 have the history of Athens and Sparta in the 
 time of Croesus and before interwoven in the 
 narrative. 
 
 (a) Athens in the time of Croesus had not 
 unfolded into her greatness, but was in an 
 internal struggle with her tyrants. This inner 
 conflict was no doubt the means of her develop- 
 ment, she had to feel the tyrannical hand before 
 acquiring her strong spirit of freedom. 
 
 Pisistratus obtains the tyranny thrice, expelled 
 but returning each time: first, through craft he 
 gets the citizens to give a body-guard and then 
 seizes the Acropolis; second, he makes the 
 Athenians believe that the Goddess Minerva 
 orders his restoration; third, he returns by 
 violence and stays. 
 
 In this account we see the Athenians held in 
 
52 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 submission, and the ruler using his chief strength 
 to keep clown the citizens. It is clear that 
 Croesus could find but little help in them ; though 
 the government corresponded with his own, being 
 despotic, it was not by the will of the people. 
 Accordingly he turns to Sparta. 
 
 (?>) He finds that the Lacedemonians had 
 extricated themselves out of great diflSculties, 
 and that they were internally at peace — which 
 was not the case at Athens. Frotn having '* the 
 worst laws " they had come to have the best. 
 This was done through their great man, the law- 
 giver Lycurgus, who was hailed by the Delphic 
 Oracle as a God. 
 
 Hereupon we have a discussion of the well- 
 worn theme, Spartan institutions, which have 
 brought their people to the highest state of pros- 
 perity and strength. Then follows an attempt 
 at conquering the Tegeans, which at first failed. 
 Here we should notice the share of the Delphic 
 Oracle in these matters. *' Thou askest for 
 Arcadia, I cannot grant it thee," but a part is 
 given. Yet even this part has to be won by 
 renewed effort, and the Oracle shows its double 
 side. In order to succeed, Sparta must bring 
 back the bones of Orestes (a sacred relic of 
 Sparta) ; their place was at last discovered in a 
 smithy. Here we have a fantastic tale, concern- 
 ing the conquest of Tegea. When the Spartans 
 'got these bones, they were always victorious. 
 
BOOK FIRST. 53 
 
 Indeed this conquest of Tegea by the Spartans 
 is one of the wildest thinsfs in the whole work. 
 They are defeated till they get the relics of a 
 hero; compare the fact that churches were often 
 built around the relics of a saint. Good laws 
 come first (Lycurgus), then there must be the 
 presence of the hero (Orestes). In such fashion 
 the history of Athens and of Sparta is inter- 
 spersed with marvelous tales to bring it down to 
 the present. The historic fact is bad tyranny in 
 the one state and good laws in the other ; how 
 did this fact come to be? Here the marvelous 
 plays in, to account for the reality. 
 
 It is manifest from the present account that 
 the relation of Sparta to the Delphic Oracle is 
 much closer than that of Athens. In this bit of 
 Spartan history no less than four oracular utter- 
 ances are given from Delphi, while Athens has 
 none, though the latter has its supernatural side 
 represented in the saying of a prophet, and in 
 allusions to Minerva. Such is the continental 
 Greek thread, which is now first woven into the 
 present history, and which will continue to 
 increase in importance to the end. 
 
 (4) We are next carried into the conflict of 
 Croesus with the East, which is represented in the 
 person of Cyrus (71-76). We now penetrate 
 the purpose of the Greek alliance, and of con- 
 ciliatinoj the Greek God. Croesus has seen the 
 struggle coming on, and has prepared himself. 
 
54 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 But just here he receives a warnincr from a 
 Lyclian wise man (not a Greek), advising him 
 not to go to war with the Persian. Such is the 
 manner of the Historian ; the warning of the 
 wise man, before the fatal enterprise, is to be 
 duly given ; Solon has already done so, and there 
 will be many other instances hereafter. But this 
 Lydian adviser reflects the Oriental view, and 
 seeks to keep the two Asiatic monarchs in 
 harmony. 
 
 Croesus succeeds iu entering into an alliance 
 with the Lacedemonians. But it is clear that he 
 had been active in other directions. He had 
 made a treaty of alliance with the King of Egypt 
 and with the Babylonian King. The growing 
 power of Cyrus had already roused the Oriental 
 world. Croesus has constituted himself the cen- 
 ter of opposition to Persia. 
 
 There had been an old conflict between the 
 Lydian and Median kingdoms, which had been 
 settled by the marriage of Astyages with the 
 sister of Croesus. But this brother-in-law had 
 been conquered by Cyrus, the new hero. Thus 
 a strugSfle arose between Western and Central 
 Asia, or Asia Minor and Middle Asia, the ques- 
 tion being who shall possess the grand highway 
 to the West and the Western World. 
 
 The battle between Croesus and Cyrus was. 
 fought at Pteria, in Cappadocia — result un- 
 decided. But Croesus concludes to return to 
 
BOOK FIBST. 65 
 
 Lydia and Cyrus follows. Here is shown the 
 difference between the two men — one retires and 
 the other pursues. Sardes is besieged, again 
 Croesus summons his allies. But his enemy is 
 in advance ; allies so far away cannot help. The 
 Lacedemonians do not come, having a war of their 
 own, which, as here recounted, has a legendary 
 touch like that of the Horatii and Curiatii. But 
 the outcome is that Sardes is captured and 
 Croesus is a prisoner. None of his allies ap- 
 peared, Cyrus was too rapid for them. 
 
 In the present passage occurs the famous state- 
 ment in which Thales, the Milesian philosopher, 
 is said to have predicted an eclipse of the sun 
 to the lonians. It was the appearance of the 
 eclipse which stopped the Orientals from a battle 
 and caused them to make peace. The statement 
 has roused wonder tbrousfh all succeedinof asfes, 
 and has been variously regarded. Was it merely 
 a happy guess or was it based on scientific data? 
 If the latter, Thales anticipated the modern 
 science of astronomy in some of its most intri- 
 cate calculations. Hardly any miracle recorded 
 by Herodotus equals this. According to the 
 reckoning of recent astronomers there were two 
 solar eclipses in the reign of Alyattes, 610 B. 
 C. and 584 B. C. (Sieiuy Com. adloc); some 
 take one and some the other, for the eclipse 
 spoken of by Herodotus. At any rate we 
 should note that science has started in that town 
 
56 THE FATHER OF HI8T0BY. 
 
 of Miletus and its greatest man is the philoso- 
 pher. To the same Thales is ascribed an engi- 
 neering feat in the next chapter (75). With 
 him begins also the distinctive movement of 
 Greek philosophy, 
 
 (5) The dramatic outcome of Croesus con- 
 nects him again with Solon, the philosopher. 
 The king is a prisoner and ascends the funeral 
 pile; thrice he repeats the name, Solon. He 
 now realizes that happiness must wait till the 
 end; the death of Tellus, the free Greek citizen 
 of the free state, is far to be preferred to his 
 own now approaching. '* Listen, I name a man 
 whose discourses all tyrants should hear." Still 
 further does the Lydian contrast the philosopher 
 with the king. What Solon had said, would 
 apply also to Cyrus ; the latter is touched with 
 the feeling of a common humanity, ** being but 
 a man ; " he commands the flames to be extin- 
 guished. This is not effected till Apollo comes 
 and puts out the fire at the prayer for rain made 
 by Croesus. 
 
 Yet it was this Apollo, '*the God of the 
 Greeks," who incited Croesus to make war 
 against Cyrus. The Oracle had its share in 
 encouraging Croesus to the contest; still the 
 latter had his own reasons for resisting the new 
 power rising in Central Asia. But now Croesus 
 blames the God of the Greeks as the cause of 
 the whole trouble. Does he see that he has 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 57 
 
 been made an instrument in the great struggle 
 between Greece and Asia? The preliminary 
 skirmish it is ; the powers have used him and he 
 has gone down, for which he finds fault with the 
 Greek God. 
 
 But what will the God say in defense? This 
 also is to be told. Croesus sends his golden 
 fetters to Delphi, and reproaches the deity. 
 Thus do you deceive your friends ! The claim of 
 Croesus is that the Greek spirit or the Greek 
 God did not support him, but deceived him. 
 Observe the several phases of the answer. (1) 
 *' The Gods cannot avoid the decrees of Fate ; " 
 so the God asserts that there is some jDower above 
 the God. *' I am not to blame," the God claims 
 to have delayed the fall of Sardes three years; 
 so the God can put off, though not change Fate. 
 (2) The ground of this decree of Fate was the 
 ancestral wrong in the change of dynasty, and 
 the time for retribution had come. (3) Apollo 
 saved the life of Croesus from the flames, send- 
 ing the rainfall. (4) As to the two oracles, 
 Croesus misunderstood both, and took his own 
 interpretation instead of asking the God. The 
 destruction of the great kingdom meant his own 
 kingdom, not the Persian, and the mule on the 
 throne was Cyrus. But the further problem, 
 why the God responds in such riddling answers, 
 was not explained. 
 
 Thus the historian makes the Oracle defend 
 
58 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 itself. Still it deceived Croesus, or rather he 
 deceived himself ; he was not to be the bearer of 
 Greek or of Oriental civilization. The World's 
 History had the matter in hand, the victory of 
 Croesus would have been no settlement of the 
 great issue, rather a retardation. 
 
 Retrospect, We have now before us the 
 Lydiad, with which Herodotus begins his account 
 of the historic movement of his age. Moreover 
 the conflict here portrayed is the conflict which 
 gave birth to the historic consciousness of the 
 race ; the struggle which winds through and de- 
 termines History truly begins here in a conscious 
 way and starts to uttering itself. The war be- 
 tween the free Greek cities of the coast, whose 
 principle was autonomy, and the Lydian mon- 
 arch, whose principle was absolutism, produced 
 the crisis, though Time was ready to bear the 
 child which is henceforth to register Time's 
 greatest doings. 
 
 Still we must recollect, that History iu this 
 epoch is but an infant, and has yet to grow 
 through all duration. In the Orient hitherto 
 History was not dead but unborn, struggling 
 often in the throes of parturition — a thing of 
 potentiality, not yet of reality. The shock 
 which produced the consciousness of History in 
 the movement of the race is recorded in this 
 Lydiad before us by the *' Father of History ; " 
 hence its abiding interest for the historical stu- 
 
BOOK FIBST. 59 
 
 dent. We may summarize some of its leading 
 points. 
 
 1. Those Greek cities of the coast had become 
 conscious of freedom, and were fighting for it 
 consciously, in opposition to the Oriental ten- 
 dency. In the Trojan War the Greeks had es- 
 sentially the same principle as these Greek cities 
 now have, but at that time they were not con- 
 scious of it, and so could produce no History of 
 it, the work of self-conscious Reason, but a 
 great Poem, the work of instinctive Imagination. 
 
 2. The conception of freedom in these early 
 Greek cities was very vague and ill-defined, and 
 was much abused. Hardly could it be other- 
 wise; the World's History is really a moving 
 into a more and more complete definition of 
 freedom. Still the individual has now become 
 aware of himself as free, that is, as a limit- 
 transcending spirit, who is not to have his 
 bounds put upon him from the outside but who 
 is to determine himself from within, whose 
 destiny it is to be autonomous. Thus that 
 ancient Greek man has beo^un to be a true indi- 
 vidual, of human dignity ; it is also clear that he 
 will fight for his principle and thereby do a deed 
 worthy of being recorded, as an example for all 
 men for all time. So History must come forth 
 now. 
 
 3. That same History must preserve the actions 
 of the enemy who conflicts with this principle of 
 
60 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 freedom ; hence the doings of the despot will 
 also be recorded. Croesus owes his fame to 
 those whom he sought to subdue, and Oriental 
 peoples and conquerors of antiquity have become 
 historical chiefly through Greek historians and 
 the Greek historical spirit. 
 
 4. History is born in the Lydiad, but it is 
 still a child, and its child-like character must be 
 duly appreciated, and, we think, lovingly sym- 
 pathized with. It still delights in the Marvelous 
 Tale, and will weave the same into the historic 
 fact ; it cannot wholly eschew the Mythus and 
 the supernatural ordering of the actual world ; it 
 must have the sign, the omen, above all the 
 oracle. Thus our Historian gives a complete 
 picture of the consciousness of his age, in all its 
 variegated hues; such, indeed, is his great value, 
 if he were more strictly historical, he would be 
 less true. 
 
 5. The artistic construction of the Lydiad is 
 especially worthy of study, combining, as it does, 
 the forward movement of History with the return- 
 ing movement of the drama or Epos. The 
 Lydiad is cyclical, a poetic whole, rounded off 
 with the return of the deed to the doer; yet it is 
 also progressive, giving the events in their suc- 
 cessive order in Time. Herein lies the art of the 
 Historian ; he is not merely the chronicler, but 
 also the poet; he will not be externally tied to 
 Time and its occurrences, but he must likewise 
 
BOOK FIRST. 61 
 
 give the inner movement which takes place in 
 Time. Specially he must unfold the cycle of the 
 central individual character, such as Croesus. 
 
 6. The Lydiad in many regards can be seen to 
 be a movement out of the Iliad, out of the Epos 
 into History. There is a distinct change from the 
 Homeric Pantheon, the world of the Gods, as it 
 is seen in the great poet ; the deities have become 
 more abstract, almost impersonal at times ; Zeus 
 and his Olympian family are succeeded by Fate 
 and by Nemesis ; indeed, we often catch a mono- 
 theistic tinge in the expression ** the God," em- 
 ployed instead of the plural. Still we observe 
 the supremacy of Apollo through his Oracle, and 
 certainly a strong faith in the Divine Order, 
 which the Historian is continually insisting upon, 
 and which he deems that History specially 
 reveals. But in general it is manifest that ab- 
 stract universal principles are supplanting the 
 personal interference of the Gods in the affairs 
 of men — which fact again shows a movement 
 out of the imas^inative into the historical con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 7. Of the two contestants in the Lydiad, the 
 Asiatic Greeks and the Lydians, neither can be 
 regarded as the adequate representative of the 
 <jrand world-historical conflict which is cominsf 
 on, and which is the theme of this History. 
 Though they reveal the presence of this conflict, 
 and play the overture in the Lydiad, they will 
 
62 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 both be absorbed in the mightier contending 
 forces which are now arising. The Asiatic Greek 
 was too much of an Asiatic to represent the 
 European, and so he soon falls under the Lydian; 
 but the Lydian is himself too much of a Greek 
 to represent the Asiatic in his struggle with 
 Europe. Croesus hence vanishes from the stage 
 of the World's History, and his place is taken 
 by a new character whose career is next to be 
 set forth in historico-dramatic fashion. 
 
III. PERSIAD. 
 
 Thus we shall designate the third general part 
 of the present Book (95-216). But the Persiad 
 extends beyond the present Book which hardly 
 gives more than the rise of the Persian Empire. 
 Hence the theme which now starts will embrace 
 the Second, Third and Fourth Books, and be 
 continued as one of the two leading threads in 
 the later Books. The Persiad describes the con- 
 solidation of all Western Asia under the power 
 of Persia, preparatory to the struggle with 
 Greece, in which the Orient is defeated. The 
 whole, therefore, shows the rise, culmination and 
 defeat of the Persian, wherein we see that the 
 Lydiad is in small what the total Persiad is in 
 large. The triple movement, growth, bloom, 
 decay, is fundamental in Herodotus, illustrating 
 his view of Nemesis and Fate. Still the fall of 
 one nation is the ground for the rise of another, 
 so that the world's progress continues, does not 
 die with the death of one particular nation, but 
 rather eets a fresh life. 
 
 (63J 
 
 & 
 
64 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Cyrus. — It is, however, anew hero, Cyrus, who 
 is the central figure of the remaining portion of 
 the present Book. Hence there is brought before 
 us a Cyrus drama, in this Persiad, which is the 
 new counterpart of and contrast to the preceding 
 Croesus drama of the~ Lydiad. Here, too, is 
 suggested a dramatic movement, which takes up 
 the historical portions and organizes them into a 
 poetic whole. We shall behold the rise, culmi- 
 nation and death of Cyrus, in whose tragic out- 
 come Croesus will again appear by way of con- 
 trast. Still this calamity will not stop the work 
 of Cyrus, whose principle we see to be the con- 
 quest and unification of the Orient under Persia. 
 Accordingly we shall treat the rest of the present 
 Book under the three heads just designated. 
 
 I. Bise of Cyrus, The historian states at the 
 start the double nature of his theme (95): «« My 
 History proceeds next to inquire who this Cyrus 
 was, and in what way the Persians got to be 
 rulers of Asia." The rest of the Book is essen- 
 tially an answer to the first question. But the 
 rise of Cyrus must be given for the beginning 
 of the account, which account embraces two 
 nations — Media and Persia, inasmuch as the 
 origin of Cyrus is connected with both. 
 
 The conflict with Greece always looms up in 
 the background, still the stress of the work is to 
 tell of Persia, and her acquisition of Asiatic 
 domain. She will have a series of monarchs. 
 
BOOR FIRST, 65 
 
 "whose reigns will be given in succession. Lydia 
 furnishes the example and the prelude with its 
 list of kings. In fact, for Herodotus this seems 
 to be the form of the Orient: a line of kings in 
 chronological order. Very striking is the con- 
 trast to the movement of the Greek world with 
 its many cities and struggles. The one is indi- 
 vidualized, atomized ; the other is gathered 
 round a strong political center. The two pro- 
 cesses are presented as going on alongside of each 
 other, the separative and the unitary; each, too, 
 has its own inner struggle, which, to a degree, 
 reflects the outer struggle. That is, the Greek 
 has his tendency toward unity, which, in the city, 
 is the despot ; but in religion it is the Oracle. 
 Still no attempt is here made to be despot of all 
 Greece ; only an Oriental sought that. At the 
 same time the Orientals had their movement 
 toward freedom, separation, yet it could not be 
 made valid. Each side thus has the total process 
 in itself, yet with the stress in opposite directions. 
 The first of these Persian kings is Cyrus, hero 
 and founder of his dynasty. Now he has to be 
 accounted for in the antecedent time ; so we have 
 a reaching back to a line of kings of Media, four 
 of them. The historic movement is similar to that 
 of Lydia, which ends in Croesus; also it is simi- 
 lar to the Persian regal movement, which reaches 
 to Xerxes. Here the idea of Time in successive 
 dynasties and monarchies enters. Yet the myth- 
 
 5 
 
G6 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 ical plays in and colors the historical material 
 everywhere. 
 
 1. Media, The Assyrians had conquered the 
 Medes and ruled over them for 520 years, when 
 the Medes Revolted and ** became free," in which 
 expression lies a suggestion of the Greek con- 
 sciousness. So we have a condition of the Medes 
 like the Greeks, divided into a number of inde- 
 pendent cities and communities, when Deioces 
 makes his appearance and reduces them under a 
 despotic government. This process is given in 
 some detail by Herodotus, since it was an inter- 
 esting matter to all Greeks. 
 
 The trouble was that the Medes had freedom, 
 but not justice ; in these communities we do not 
 wonder at hearing that lawlessness prevailed ; so 
 it was in the Hellenic cities also. Now Deioces, 
 being elected judge in his own village, '* ap- 
 plied himself with great zeal to the exercise of 
 Justice," so that he became famous among 
 other villages. He, '* keeping the sovereign 
 power in view^" just as the Greek tyrant at first 
 would act, receives people from all parts, who 
 came to submit their quarrels to his decision; 
 in this way the whole country got into the habit 
 of coming to him, and would have none else. 
 Then he refused to continue, whereat lawlessness 
 increased ; finally the people, glad to escape from 
 injustice, gave up their liberty and made him 
 despot. 
 
BOOK FIRST, 67 
 
 Here indeed is the dualism still giving trouble 
 enough; too much freedom, too little Liw; indi- 
 vidual right lapsing into wrong done to the indi- 
 vidual. The Greek leaned to the side of liberty 
 even at the expense of justice ; the Oriental soon 
 swept away freedom and often gave, but not 
 always, justice. Necessarily law is one will at 
 bottom, hence its face is toward absolutism; the 
 political problem is to combine it with individ- 
 ual freedom. It was therefore natural that the 
 Medes, Orientals as they were, should soon lapse 
 into despotism. 
 
 At once Deioces begins to fortify and central- 
 ize his power ; one city now, not many scattered 
 ones, as the Orient has its one great imperial 
 city. Lofty and strong walls; also a series of 
 circles, one above another to the highest at the 
 top of the hill-city ; seven circles with the king's 
 palace innermost; then with the seven differ- 
 ent colors the walls are painted. Thus we have 
 the outer symbol of classes, of castes possibly ; 
 strong social and civic divisions. Then he sur- 
 rounds himself with the pompous ceremony of the 
 Oriental despot, seeking to impress people that 
 he is ** of a different nature." So Deioces united 
 his people and ruled over them with severe 
 justice. In him undoubtedly the historian re- 
 flects to a degree the course of the Greek despot 
 in Greek cities. Doioces, the first king, shows 
 the origin of the Oriental empire — need of law. 
 
68 TEE FATHER OF HISTORY, 
 
 So Persia came to be through Deioces and 
 Cyrus. 
 
 Deioces' son Phraortes conquered the Persians ; 
 then his successor Cyaxares besieged Nineveh, 
 when the Cimmerians, a Northern horde, made 
 an irruption into Asia, and swept everything 
 before it, staying for twenty-eight years. Still 
 the Medes took Nineveh. Thus we see the 
 Median rule extending itself, subjecting other 
 peoples. But now there is to be a change, the 
 Median power is to pass over to the Persian, and 
 the man, the wonderful man, has appeared who 
 is to accomplish it. A change of dynasty and 
 national authority is decreed, the whole is a 
 providential matter in contrast to human pur- 
 pose. This fact is to be brought out by the 
 marvelous tale of the birth of Cyrus, and the 
 attempts to destroy him by his grandfather. King 
 Astyages. 
 
 Astyages has a dream, in fact two dreams, 
 foreshadowing what is about to happen ; he 
 orders Harpagus, a kinsman and most faithful 
 of all the Medes, to destroy the child of his own 
 daughter. But Harpagus hesitates to do the 
 deed, he gives the infant to a shepherd and this 
 shepherd is to expose it on the mountains. But the 
 shepherd refuses to do the brutal act, and so he 
 substitutes the dead child of his own wife, and 
 saves the living child and brings it up as his 
 own. 
 
BOOK FIBST. 69 
 
 But the royal boy is discovered in one of his 
 games, being chosen king by his playmates; the 
 king recognizes him by his character. The 
 Magi, the interpreters, say the time of danger 
 is past and the boy is permitted to live; still 
 Harpagus is punished by having his own child 
 served up in a banquet, but this only forwards 
 the plan by alienating Harpagus, who is now 
 ready to revolt and help Cyrus. The outcome 
 is that Cyrus gets to be king and rules over 
 Medes and Persians. 
 
 The great stress of the Tale is to show the 
 providential side against all the contrary plans 
 of men. The thing decreed will fulfill itself. 
 Thus is suggested an order above the will of the 
 individual, be it considered as a blind Fate or 
 as an ordering Providence. Here the historian 
 seems to seize the spirit of History (World- 
 Spirit) as realizing itself in the case of Cyrus, as 
 there is no word or oracle of the Gods, which pre- 
 determines the event. Astyages is the instru- 
 ment himself; in seeking to prevent, he brings 
 about the very occurrence. Hence he is the 
 man of Fate. 
 
 Many are the relations of this story ; we think 
 of the exposure of Romulus suckled by a wolf, 
 or by the shepherdess whose name was Lupa. So 
 here some said that Cyrus was suckled by a bitch, 
 or by a woman whose name was Cyno (meaning 
 bitch), as the historian puts it, The modern 
 
70 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 mythologist of a certain school sees here the 
 primitive belief that man was reared or sprung 
 of lower animals. Its sirailiarity to the Oedipus 
 legend is also striking. For Laius, like Astyages, 
 undertakes to expose the fateful child, and brings 
 about the fulfillment of the oracle. Then the 
 Thyestean banquet plays in — the serving up of 
 the cooked child to the parent in revenge. 
 
 The consciousness which creates such a legend 
 feels the unusual element in the Great Man, and 
 elevates it into the supernatural, which in a sense 
 it is, being above the general level of humanity, 
 and showing the providential order over the 
 ordinary. Yet the historic element therein is 
 not wanting ; at certain junctures the world- 
 historical spirit takes a hand ; this spirit Herod- 
 otus feels, even when he clothes it in a mythical 
 garb. 
 
 2. Pei^sia. Thus the Median kingdom passes 
 over into the Persian through the instrumentality 
 of the Great Man who is indeed the miracle. 
 He will continue the work he has begun, which 
 is to unify Western Asia. 
 
 The Persians as well as the Medes belonged to 
 the Aryan race; they, under their new leader, 
 will descend into the great river valley of the 
 Euphrates and Tigris and there subdue another 
 race, the Semitic, which has had hitherto the chief 
 influence in Western Asia. The historian makes 
 the Persians in their customs (131-9) a kind of 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 71 
 
 primitive, idyllic people, and doubtless suggested 
 to Xenophon the idea of his romance, the 
 Cyropaedia. Still it may be observed that some 
 signs of degeneracy are manifested. From the 
 age of live years their sons are instructed in three 
 things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to 
 speak the truth. A further consideration of the 
 Persian state and character will come later. 
 
 11. Culmination of Cyrus (141-200). In 
 these chapters the historian brin£:s before us the 
 conqueror Cyrus fulfilling his mission. He is 
 shown breaking down two great limits to his 
 Oriental sway. In the first place he subjugates 
 the Greek cities of the coast througrh his lieu- 
 tenants and thereby unifies Asia Minor under 
 his rule ; thus the Asiatic Aryans of the West 
 are his. In the second place the Babylonian 
 Empire of the great river valley (of the 
 Euphrates) he conquers, which is inhabited in 
 the main by Semitic peoples. Cyrus is herein 
 seen consolidating the two main races of West- 
 ern Asia into one vast Empire. 
 
 1. The Greek Thread (141-177). This the 
 historian picks up again, after having dropped 
 it for a good while (70), in order to develop 
 the Oriental Thread in the Lydian and Median 
 conquests. These two Threads wind through 
 the entire History, and the student should note 
 when one is left off and the other is re- 
 sumed; also the different stvle of each is to 
 
72 THE FATHEB OF EI S TOBY. 
 
 be scanned ; in the main the Greek Thread is 
 more historical, the Asiatic more legendary. 
 First is the complete subjection of Asia Minor, 
 when the narrative returns to Middle Asia. Again 
 we observe the stronor contrast of Greek with 
 Oriental ; the Greek world is a series of small 
 cities (no Nineveh or Babylon is among them), 
 refusing to concentrate beyond a certain point. 
 Then these cities are in a conflict with the Orient 
 for external freedom, also in an internal conflict 
 between one another and between classes and 
 parties. Their principle is difference, separation, 
 individuation. 
 
 The first division is the three Greek tribes, 
 Aeolians, lonians, Dorians, with their respective 
 cities. Not one great metropolis, but twelve 
 towns in Aeolis, and six for the Dorians. Not 
 only would the three Greek tribes not unite, but 
 each tribe would not take into membership other 
 communities of the same tribe ; lonians exclude 
 lonians, Dorians exclude Dorians. 
 
 And yet we witness faint attempts at union. 
 The lonians had a Panionium, a religious union 
 for common worship of the Ionic cities glorying 
 in the name which seemed to other Greeks a re- 
 proach. Or does Herodotus, a Dorian, let a touch 
 of tribal or local prejudice appear in this place, 
 a Dorian contempt for the Ionian? But this 
 religious unity seems never to have risen into a 
 political unity, the jealousy was too great. 
 
BOOK FIBST. 73 
 
 It is interesting to note that the idea of con- 
 federation with its twofold principle, union on 
 one side and local self-government on the other, 
 had suorgested itself to the thinkers and states- 
 men of Ionia before the present trouble. Of 
 these the greatest was Thales. Exceedingly sug- 
 gestive, indeed prophetic is the passage (see it in 
 c. 170). That is, Thales had proposed to have 
 a council at Teos, on an island and at the center 
 of Ionia ; this council doubtless was to have cer- 
 tain political powers, and the states were to be 
 independent (autonomous). So we have a prim- 
 itive Greek presentiment of the United States. 
 This idea foreshadowed in Asia will never after- 
 wards wholly die; it will reappear in old Greece 
 in various forms, of which the most important will 
 be the Achaean League; it will move through 
 History till it crosses the Ocean and there finds 
 realization. Thales, then, sent the winged 
 thought on its flight down Time; himself not a 
 Greek wholly, but with Semitic blood in his 
 veins, a cosmopolitan ; surely the greatest figure 
 appearing in these times. 
 
 Such were the lonians ; the Dorian cities to 
 the South showed in general the same tendencies. 
 They too had a common religious festival to 
 Triopean Apollo. The Dorians manifest the 
 same spirit of exclusiveness toward their own, 
 ** taking care not to admit any of the neighbor- 
 ing Dorians.'' Herodotus speaks of the expul- 
 
74 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 sion of his own city Halicarnassus from this 
 league on account of a violation of a sacred 
 custom by a citizen. 
 
 The twelve cities of the Aeolians on the conti- 
 nent follow the example of the lonians and 
 submit to the Persian; the islanders who are 
 Aeolians remain free (Lesbos and Tenedos). 
 It is clear from this that lonians took the lead. 
 Here, too, we observe that Lesbian did not spare 
 Lesbian, but enslaved him ; Arisba is subjected 
 by Methymnae. Then note how ungrateful the 
 exiled Colo[)honians acted toward Sm3^rna, which 
 had received them. No wonder the Greek cities 
 were suspicious and jealous of one another. 
 
 Now what will these Greek people do in their 
 emergency? Send embassadors to Sparta, which 
 was evidently looked upon as the great supporter 
 and defender of Greek spirit — not to Athens, 
 which is still under tyranny, lonians likewise 
 send to Sparta. The Phocaeans speak ; Pythermus 
 shows the most spirit of all these lonians in oppo- 
 sition to the Persian (Miletus had come to terms). 
 But the Spartans would not help the lonians 
 openly, yet they sent word to Cyrus not to 
 injure any Greek city. Cyrus taunts them, and 
 threatens, but events call him back to Persia. 
 
 The conquest of the Greek cities, however, 
 goes on under lieutenants of Cyrus; the heroic 
 people in this struggle are the Phocaeans, whose 
 courage is duly celebrated by the historian, who 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 75 
 
 mentions their long voyages as far as Spain, and 
 their settlement in Sardinia. The Teians also 
 acted in nearly the same way, similar to Athens 
 later. But the Persian was too strong ; even 
 the islanders at last submitted in terror. 
 
 What was to be done? Bias, the wise man, of 
 Priene, advised colonization, the lonians should 
 go to Sardinia and there rule, holding under 
 sway a large island by means of their ships. 
 But that was not written in their destiny. An- 
 other people, world-historical, was rising in the 
 West ; the Greeks were not to rule in Hesperia. 
 But they now have almost completed their func- 
 tion in the World's History, these Asiatic 
 Greeks; they will never again mean to the world 
 or to themselves what they now mean. They 
 bftve had their time; the World-Spirit, moving 
 westward, settled down in these cities for a while 
 but is preparing to pass on. 
 
 The lonians and Aeolians are conquered and 
 incorporated in the Persian army. The Persian 
 general next subjects the more barbarous peo- 
 ples, the remaining contingent of earlier tribes — 
 Carians, Caunians, Lycians, of whom the his- 
 torian gives some details. 
 
 The Greek cities of the coast are now sub- 
 jugated to Persia, and some on the islands have 
 submitted ; thus there is a unification of all Asia 
 Minor under Persia, which has asserted the 
 imperial principle of the Orient. Asia Minor 
 
76 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY, 
 
 was a mass of many cities, tribes and peoples in 
 a condition of conflict — Semites and Aryans 
 evidently intermingled. We note (1) the Greek 
 cities of the coast; (2) the backward tribes of 
 the Hellenic stock, Pelasgic (Carians, Caunians, 
 etc.); (3) the nations under kings, Lydia, 
 Phrygia, etc. All these are swallowed up into 
 the Orient, the period of separation is ended. 
 Now Asia Minor belonged to Asia, yet the Greek 
 cities brought over or generated the new prin- 
 ciple of the Occident, which is at present sup- 
 pressed in this country. 
 
 Most distinctly has the historic battle between 
 Orient and Occident opened along this coast; the 
 present outcome is defeat of the West on this 
 Eastern soil. Every Greek who at this time 
 crosses to Asia is not free. We may see in it 
 the discipline of the Greeks, though external; 
 they have to obey a unity now, a central 
 authority outside their own city. 
 
 Still the Oriental sway of the Persian is not 
 without opposition among the Orientals. The 
 semi-hellenized Lydians are ready to revolt under 
 Pactyas ( 154) as soon as Cyrus departs for home, 
 *' since Babylon was in his way, and the Bac- 
 trians and the Sacse, as well as the Aegyptians.*' 
 Thus the conqueror is seen struggling with his 
 boundaries in every direction. The Lydian 
 revolt, however, is soon suppressed, and the 
 ringleader is captured, after fleeing from one 
 
BOOK FIHST. 11 
 
 Greek city to another for protection, beinoj torn 
 from a sanctuary and delivered up by the Chians 
 for a reward. An anecdote accounts for the 
 rapid degeneracy of the Lydians ; they are for- 
 bidden to have weapons of war, and are required 
 ** to wear tunics under their cloaks and buskins 
 on their feet ; " moreover, the rising generation 
 is taught to play on the cithara and to sell by 
 retail; thus *' from men they shall quickly become 
 women." But the Lydians have simply followed 
 the general law of Oriental peoples : a hardy, 
 uncivilized nation is unified within under a great 
 leader, it conquers the neighboring civilized 
 nations, and passes with them into effeminacy 
 and final subjugation. The Persians, the present 
 conquerors, will verify the same law. 
 
 2. The Oriental Thread (177-201). The 
 historian makes a distinction between Lower 
 Asia (Asia Minor) and Upper Asia; to this last 
 Cyrus devoted himself, '* subduing every tribe 
 and lettinof none go." But the account of these 
 conquests is omitted, with the exception of two 
 or three cases. 
 
 Nor will the historian here give any record of 
 the Assyrian kings. Only the queens will he 
 mention, Semiramis and Nitocris, both of whom 
 constructed useful works. The memory of 
 Nitocris is specially celebrated by Herodotus, 
 who probably beheld in his travels some of the 
 works ascribed to her. As usual he spins around 
 
78 THE FA THE B OF HISTORY, 
 
 the fact a garment of romance ; he accounts for 
 the actual through the mythical. 
 
 The description of Babylon is that of a vast 
 Oriental citv, and is in the strono^est contrast to 
 the small Greek city. A centralized power is 
 shown in every part; an unlimited control of 
 human labor; an attempt to bar out the enemy 
 by walls, of which two, one inside the other, 
 encompass the city, doubtless with much spare 
 land inside not covered by buildings and used 
 for tillage in case of a siege. More than 200 
 square miles of land lay within these walls, 
 which were 200 cubits high (over 300 feet). 
 Naturally the correctness of these figures of 
 Herodotus has been questioned (see Rawlin- 
 son's Herodotus, ad Joe). This Babylonian 
 work has been estimated to contain nearly 
 double the cubic contents of the great wall of 
 China, which is 1,200 miles long, 20 to 25 feet 
 high, 15 to 20 feet broad. 
 
 Thus the historian brings before his country- 
 men the Oriental idea of colossality. The 
 Greek structure was comparatively small, such 
 as the acropolis, the temple; even the so-called 
 Cyclopean masonry with its huge blocks of stone 
 incloses a very limited space at Mycenae and 
 Tiryns. But the Greek had the idea of propor- 
 tion, not of hugeness, which was to him barbaric. 
 Moderation is his well-known principle; a little 
 town was his political unit, not an immense empire. 
 
BOOK FIBST. 79 
 
 Doubtless the historian, Greek that he was, 
 refused to insert at this point the long annals of 
 Assyrian monarchs, as it would throw his narra- 
 tive out of proportion, making it unwieldy with 
 a vast mass of Oriental matter. So he cuts 
 short the account of the conquests of Cyrus in 
 the East, lest it be disproportionate to the 
 Greek or Western thread of his History. 
 
 The walls of Babylon, though so immense, do 
 not, however, keep out the foe. The Babylonians 
 retired within the inclosure, expecting external 
 protection ; they even engaged in a festival dur- 
 ing the siege. Cyrus deflected the river which 
 ran through the city and entered the latter along 
 the bed of the stream. There was no stout 
 defense on the part of the people, no heroic 
 deeds of valor such as were often witnessed in 
 Greece. Why should there be? The people 
 were essentially slaves, they had nothing to fight 
 for, one despot was as good as another ; indeed 
 they were not unwilling probably to change mas- 
 ters for a while. So it is with so many of these 
 Oriental conquests: the rulers only are changed ; 
 the tribute, otherwise the same, passes into new 
 hands. When these rulers become enervated by 
 luxury, they are violently shoved aside by a new 
 set young and vigorous, till these in turn become 
 enervated. 
 
 This rich plain is the condition of civilization 
 on the one hand and of eflfeminacy on the other. 
 
80 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 What the Babylonian eats is mainly the gift of 
 nature ; what the Greek eats is mainly the 
 product of his own labor on an unkindly soil. 
 The yield of corn on the Assyrian lands is pro- 
 digious to a Greek mind ; but there are no trees 
 (except the cultivated palm), no produce of the 
 fig, vine and olive. A dead uniformity of toil 
 in the one case; in the other a variety of work, 
 coupled with skill, foresight, versatility. In like 
 manner in Greece there is a varied scenery, moun- 
 tain, valley, sea; in Babylonia the level prairie. 
 
 When we pass from land to water, there is a 
 similar contrast. What a difference between a 
 sail on the Euphrates and on the Aegaean ! The 
 Oriental floats like his vessel down the river, 
 carried to his destination by an external power ; 
 the current bears him on, and he is dependent 
 or resigned. Such is his religion ; so he gets 
 to the Capital and so he gets to Heaven. But 
 the Greek sailor (and most of the Greeks had 
 something of the sailor in their fiber through 
 experience with sea, which borders on every 
 Greek province except one — Arcadia) must be 
 self-determined, self-reliant in his little craft on 
 the waves and in the winds of the Greek waters. 
 Such is the diflferent training which nature, the 
 first teacher, gives to these two diflferent peoples. 
 
 The ethical contrast between the two peoples 
 is seen in the customs relative to virginity and 
 marriage. The abominations of Babylon have 
 
BOOK FIBST, 81 
 
 become proverbial through the prophetic de- 
 nunciations of the Old Testament, for all time 
 that city will be known as the harlot and the 
 scarlet woman. Moreover, we may note here a 
 contrast between the Jew and the Greek looking 
 at the same social phenomenon ; the one is the 
 fiery moral preacher and prophet, the other is 
 the observer, impartial, quite calm, though he 
 too breaks out into disapproval at ** the most 
 shameless custom of the Babylonians '% the 
 woman's offering of herself in the temple of the 
 Goddess Mylitta (199). 
 
 The activity of the mythical spirit we may 
 observe in what is said Cyrus did to the river 
 Gyndes (189). Because it drowned one of the 
 sacred white horses which plunged into it, he is 
 said to have divided it into three hundred and 
 sixty small channels, making *' its stream so 
 weak that women henceforth shall cross it with- 
 out wetting their knees.'* A strain of insolence 
 is thus ascribed to Cyrus, such as we shall here- 
 after see manifested by Xerxes. But there is 
 hardly a doubt that these channels were cut for 
 the purpose of irrigation, and were probably 
 connected with the sun, one for every day of the 
 the year. Legend undertakes to account for the 
 fact and connects it with the Persian hero, in his 
 great enterprise against Babylon. Such an out- 
 burst of caprice and passion is characteristic of 
 the Oriental monarch, yet shows his power. 
 
82 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 III. Defeat and death of Cyrils. This is the 
 third act of the Cyrus drama, taking place after 
 the eulminatioa of his career in the conquest of 
 Asia Minor and Babylon. We have noted that 
 Cyrus, like the Oriental conqueror in general, 
 frets against all external limits, he cannot endure 
 a boundary to his country or to himself. He 
 will be universal, not from within, through 
 mind, but from without, through a continual 
 annulment of physical limitations. So he gets 
 annulled himself in his physical limitation. 
 
 To the North and Northeast of Persia lay a 
 vast territory, which bounded his Empire, and 
 which he determined to make his own. There 
 dwelt the Massagetae, generally supposed to be 
 the ancestors of the Goths, Teutons, perchance 
 our own forefathers in their barbarous period. 
 They were under a queen Tomyris ; it is curious 
 to see how Herodotus brings into the foreground 
 these queens of the Orient; in which connection 
 we should remember that his own city, Hali- 
 carnassus, during his life, had a queen, Arte- 
 misia, who also distinguished herself in war. 
 
 The Cyrus drama now falls into dialogue. 
 The queen bids the Persian king desist from his 
 attempted conquest : ** you rule over your dom- 
 inions, and bear to see me rule over mine.'* So 
 said Tomyris, really voicing a Greek view of the 
 situation ; but Cyrus the Oriental could not bear 
 to see her ruling over her own ; thus there is a 
 
BOOK FIRST. 83 
 
 limit to his land and to his authority. Then she 
 challenges him to fight, whereby Croesus is intro- 
 duced giving his opinion, which is a warning to 
 Cyrus that he is a man and not an immortal 
 (hence he should respect the limits of the finite 
 being), and that there is *' a cycle in human 
 affairs," which does not permit the same man to 
 be always successful. After thus rebuking the 
 fatuity of the Persian monarch, Croesus suggests 
 a stratagem, which Cyrus follows, winning the 
 victory and capturing the queen's son who at 
 the first chance slays himself through shame at 
 his capture. 
 
 A second battle takes place in which Cyrus is 
 slain, and his body falls into the hands of Tomy- 
 ris. Then occurs the tragic nemesis in a most 
 striking passage. Queen Tomyris plunges his 
 severed head into a skin filled with human blood, 
 saying, ** I shall glut thee with blood as I 
 threatened.'* 
 
 Thus retribution has come and the Cyrus 
 drama closes. He dashes himself to pieces 
 against the outer bounds of his world, against 
 the barbarous limit. Darius will do the same 
 thing later against Scythia on the North, and just 
 escape with his life; Xerxes will throw himself 
 upon the Hellenic boundary, and be driven back 
 defeated. Persia has begun to find her limits 
 already in the time of Cyrus; still more she will 
 come upon them in her later history. 
 
84 THE FATHER OF BISTOBT, 
 
 Thus the Cyrus drama is a tragedy in contrast 
 with the Croesus drama. Cyrus subdues, slays, 
 till he gets his own deed back ; Croesus is trans- 
 formed by his misfortune internally, is converted 
 to Solon, and is saved at the last moment. 
 Solon's is, therefore, the saving view of the world, 
 the view which eradicates insolence (authadia) 
 and thereby preserves the individual from the 
 stroke of retribution. Some such thought under- 
 lies these two dramas of the First Book, with 
 their different outcomes. 
 
OBSEBVATIONS ON BOOR FIE ST. 
 
 The structural principle of the present Book 
 has shown itself, we hope, in the preceding ex- 
 position. Two great characters are seized and 
 are portrayed in a cycle of development — Croe- 
 sus and Cyrus — which produces the feeling of 
 an artistic whole in each case. But into this 
 cycle of a great individual the historic move- 
 ment of the epoch is interwoven, whose events 
 are chronicled in the order of time. Thus from 
 the standpoint of structure there is a complete 
 interfusion of poetry and history, peculiar to 
 our historian. But as yet the poetic dominates 
 the historical, though the former be moving into 
 the latter. 
 
 The contents correspond ; the historian does 
 not hesitate to introduce the supernatural, the 
 mythical, the oracular, the fictitious, more par- 
 ticularly when he wishes to set forth the con- 
 trolling order of things, the providential element 
 which gleams through events. Herodotus has 
 
 (85) 
 
86 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 the conceptioD of a World-History, indistinct 
 yet at work. The counterpart of the Honaeric 
 Gods is in him, yet in a state of transformation. 
 I. The Delphic Oracle, Some things can be 
 explained about the Delphic Oracle and some can 
 not; when the mystery is interpreted, it is no 
 longer a mystery ; when the Oracle is made over 
 into the terms of the understanding, it is no 
 longer oracular. We can, however, make clear 
 in a certain degree the consciousness of which 
 such a phenomenon is the expression. 
 
 1. Imagine a .people divided into a thousand 
 distinct communities without any political bond 
 of authority, yet with a feeling of unity in race, 
 language, customs, religion, in fact with a feel- 
 ing: of a orreat common destinv and of oneness 
 of spirit — and we have the general sphere of 
 the Oracle. It has no such sphere in the Orient, 
 with the one authoritative, absolute ruler, who 
 must be himself the Oracle for his people; the 
 Hebrew prophet was not an Oracle, though both 
 shared in the prophetic consciousness. Note 
 that the Lydiad is full of oracular utterances 
 which quite disappear in the Cyrus drama, except 
 in the Greek thread, though there is the prophetic 
 dream. The Oracle, therefore, performs a dis- 
 tinct function for its people, the Hellenic, and 
 even reaches over into semi-Hellenic and bar- 
 barous peoples with its influence. 
 
 2. The Oracle sought to preserve the unity of 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 87 
 
 the Greek stock by promoting internal peace 
 among jealous and combative communities. It 
 would not permit, for instance, its favorite Sparta 
 to absorb Arcadia (66). It worked through sen- 
 timent and religion, not through political author- 
 ity, which it had to keep shy of in the main. 
 Religion must influence politics indirectly. 
 
 3. It favored and united the Greek against the 
 Barbarian, though the latter also came to the 
 sanctuary with rich presents. In the main, but 
 not without some ambiguity, it supported the 
 Occident against the Orient. The case of 
 Croesus is an instance. 
 
 4. It promoted colonization in the interest of 
 the Greek race against the barbarous world, and 
 in the interest of the inner peace of cities, which 
 often had to get rid of one of two political 
 leaders, and send him off to found a colony. 
 
 5. Such an Oracle was sure to be asked about 
 matters concerning which it had no business to 
 give a response — matters special, personal, not 
 of universal import. Yet it had to answer, or 
 recognize its own limit, or the limit of the God. 
 The result was it took refuge in ambiguity, ob- 
 scurity, riddle, cunning, quackery, charlatanism. 
 Such was the outcome of the whole oracular 
 business in Greece, and the Oracles at last 
 became dumb because they had nothing true to 
 utter. But this corruptible strain was in them 
 from the beginning:. 
 
88 TEE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 6. We still inquire about the procedure in 
 getting: the oracular utterance. Out of a fissure 
 in the earth over which stood a tripod, rose a 
 sort of exhalation (supposed to produce a kind 
 of trance or ecstasy when breathed). Upon this 
 tripod the priestess (the Pythia) took her seat, 
 came under the influence, and muttered incoher- 
 ent words, which were taken down by men 
 present and put into hexameters usually, which 
 the consultor received as his response. 
 
 The numerous points involved in this process 
 cannot be discussed. There is a psychical ques- 
 tion in regard to the Pythia — mesmeric, mag- 
 netic, mediumistic, theosophic ; this we shall at 
 once let drop. But the intermediate set of men, 
 the college of priests or the committee who 
 framed the oracles — what shall we say to them ? 
 We shall have to grant them the shaping in- 
 fluence, be it of wisdom, folly, cunning; they 
 were often wise, must have often been in great 
 doubt, but in the main were Pan-Hellenic. 
 
 7. The locality at Delphi is impressive, Na- 
 ture herself has the Delphic hint. The Greek 
 required this outer suggestion, he was extremely 
 sensitive to the still small voice of environment, 
 his poetical bent led him to blend nature and 
 spirit into one harmony. He would undertake 
 no enterprise without the favorable omen ; he 
 required the external whisper from his surround- 
 ings before he would act in an important matter. 
 
BOOK FIEST. 89 
 
 He could not as yet wholly determine himself 
 within himself. So he demanded an oracular 
 statement as his starting-point; so too this orac- 
 ular statement at Delphi required the murmur or 
 the raving of the Pythia as its starting-point; 
 not till then could the college of priests frame the 
 response out of their own view of the circum- 
 stances. They must first be impelled from with- 
 out, then they can act from within. 
 
 They reflected something like our public 
 opinion. How does the Greek world feel about 
 Croesus? Can it make any real alliance with an 
 Oriental despot who has enslaved Greek cities? 
 The Delphic instinct (Delphi was called the 
 omphalos, the navel) must have felt the ques- 
 tion as well as the response of all Hellas, and yet 
 it must be very circumspect, indeed ambiguous 
 toward the great Asiatic power. 
 
 In such cases we can recognize the sphere of 
 presentiment and prophecy. *' The soul has a 
 prophetic element/' says Plato; it is continually 
 giving out the note of anticipation. Especially 
 is the undeveloped, prehistoric soul in this con- 
 dition ; it is like the child whose play fore- 
 shadows the future man and even the future in- 
 stitutional world which he is growing into. So 
 too the Oracle has a play element, spontaneous, 
 premonitory ; it is a child utterance of a natural 
 soul in its child epoch, which passes away with 
 the growth of the self-conscious reason. 
 
90 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY, 
 
 II. Orientalism and Hellenism, The reader 
 of Herodotus is always seeking to formulate for 
 himself the difference between the Orient and 
 Greece, as this is the grand dualism from which 
 arises not only the present History, but History 
 in general and the historic consciousness. We 
 must often repeat that on the Greco-Asiatic line 
 herein laid down the great conflict between East 
 and West took place, with which conflict History 
 opens and the conception of History, and which 
 calls forth the man, living in this district, and 
 both seeing and sharing in the conflict, who is to 
 record the fact. 
 
 1. In the Family, which is the basis of all in- 
 stitutional life, the Persian and the Oriental iren- 
 erally is polygamous ; the Greek and the Occi- 
 dental orenerallv is monooramous. Thus the East- 
 ern husband is a domestic despot, mild though he 
 may be; he takes a new wife when he wants one, 
 and she cannot exact from him the same unity of 
 love and devotion which she is required to man- 
 ifest toward him. The caprices and passions of 
 the despot have a starting-point in the domestic 
 circle. 
 
 2. In the State the Oriental ruler is absolute 
 and the subject is a slave, in contrast with the 
 free Greek citizen. Authority belongs to the 
 Orient, freedom to the Occident. Throughout 
 the present History this difference is set forth. 
 To be sure, it cannot be affirmed that the Greeks 
 
BOOK FIJRST. 91 
 
 were wholly free (they had slaves), or that 
 they had the complete conception of freedom. 
 It is a well-known statement of the philosopher 
 Hegel that in the Oriental world one man 
 was free, in the Greek world some men were 
 free, in the Modern world all men are free. 
 
 3. In the Orient there is the tendency to con- 
 solidation through conquest; in Greece is the 
 counter principle of autonomy for each com- 
 munity. Herein each side is an extreme ; be- 
 tween the two lies the golden mean ; in the one 
 case unity runs into despotism ; in the other, 
 individuality runs into selfishness and anarchy. 
 
 4. Alono^ the same line of thouo^ht we see that 
 the Orient in its artistic expression seeks magni- 
 tude, while the Greek aims at proportion. 
 
 5. In the physical features of the Orient and 
 Hellas we can trace the suggestion of the differ- 
 ence in their spirit. The one is very large, the 
 other very small ; the one has great river val- 
 leys and plains in which civilization begins; the 
 other is divided up and diversified in every part 
 by mountain, sea, little streams and valleys. 
 The Greek was mountaineer, lowlander, sailor, 
 all in one; nature would not permit him to sink 
 into the uniformity of the Orient 
 
 6. The nations of Western Asia are not fully 
 historical, yet are by no means devoid of a his- 
 tory; we may call them semi-historical. There 
 are long lists of kings, with accounts of con- 
 
92 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 quests and rebellions; but that does not make 
 History in its Occidental sense. Writing there 
 is on brick and stone, records of some monarch, 
 yet no transferable history appealing to the 
 individual; little or no account of great national 
 deeds, nationality as well as individuality being 
 quite sunk in the one man, the monarch. War 
 seems to settle mainly one thing : Which of the 
 two despots shall rule? The people remain 
 pretty much the same whoever rules. History 
 deals with national life, which is in the Orient, 
 but is not 3^et explicit. 
 
 7. Why this continual desire of conquest in 
 the Orient? The Oriental spectacle is a never- 
 ending series of rising and falling empires; 
 why cannot these nations endure one another, 
 and exist side by side together, as in modern 
 Europe? The Oriental State cannot recognize 
 the neighbor State as a State, as itself in fact; 
 there is but one State, one ruler, one authority. 
 The external limit to itself it cannot make 
 internal, and thus transcend the same ; it must 
 break down the limit from the outside. 
 
 The Oriental does not know what to do with 
 individuality, and hence seeks to destroy it or 
 violently to repress it. This individual State 
 appears with its limit against the Persian State ; 
 thus it confines and so far controls the Persian 
 spirit, which marches forward to remove the 
 limit to itself. For all spirit. Oriental too, is 
 
BOOK FIRST, 93 
 
 inherently limit-transcending, though in very 
 different ways. In the United States each State 
 recognizes the other to be just what it is, having 
 the same rights in all things ; thus the 
 State limit is really no limit of exclusion, 
 and the States are truly united and form 
 one Nation. Just the reverse was the Oriental 
 consciousness, which had as yet hardly a glim- 
 mer of such a recognition. Hence it could 
 transcend its limit only though breaking down 
 the same by force, by a negative act. But the 
 return of such an act was inevitable ; every 
 nation in destroying a nation, is destroying itself . 
 Hence the monotonous series of rises and falls of 
 empires in the Orient. 
 
 Just as little can the Orient recognize the indi- 
 vidual man in his freedom as it can the individual 
 State, and for the same general reason. Such a 
 man would be a limit to the ruler; to the single 
 will other wills must be made nought. The 
 Oriental ruler is the law, — yet not the written 
 law, which would again be a limit. The East 
 has had lawgivers, but they are exceptional in a 
 despotic world. The true lawgiver, in whom the 
 law separates itself from the person, is Greek, 
 is Solon, Lycurgus ; finally the lawgiver must 
 personally vanish in the law, and not be known 
 as an individuality ; note, for example, the 
 Roman Law, in which Jurisprudence attains its 
 pure universality, being evolved, not from one 
 
94 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 brain, but from a nation, and that nation too the 
 universal ruler and lawgiver. 
 
 8. With Persia, however, development begins, 
 history connects it with Greece and the Occident, 
 and the historic continuity starts, which has not 
 since been seriously interrupted. 
 
 Persia simply held together the subject peo- 
 ples, did not transform them, they were the same 
 in religion, customs and character as before. An 
 external bond of power suppressed war between 
 countries and allowed a certain inner unfolding. 
 But the Greeks had the inner bond of race, 
 religion, and spirit, though they lacked the more 
 external bond, or political union. The Persian 
 worshiped light; he was to a degree the light 
 which shone on Western Asia, made all its dis- 
 tinctions manifest, and left them as they were. 
 The Persian army, as we shall see in the expedi- 
 tion of Xerxes, was a vast aggregate — men of 
 the sea, men of the plain, men of the mountain ; 
 an aggregate of races also — Aryan, Semitic, 
 Turanian. No political limit is allowed; all 
 other distinctions are not interfered with. The 
 war will show that the Greek cannot be sub- 
 sumed under this external aororreofation . 
 
 III. Thales and Miletus. Of both we have 
 already spoken, but they deserve repeated men- 
 tion and thought. Of the cities of the Asiatic 
 coast, Miletus stood far in advance as regards the 
 arts, commerce, civilization, though the people 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 95 
 
 of the small city of Phocaea were the most 
 heroic. A wonderful development had taken 
 place in Miletus, which apparently culminated 
 about the time of Croesus, or a little before. 
 It was a sea-faring town, and so could defy the 
 attempts of the Lydian kings from the land; 
 still it had also its territory and its agriculture. 
 It was a center of trade, of manufactures, 
 specially ; of navigation ; art and poetry were 
 not wanting but particularly natural science 
 flourished among a people who traded in the 
 physical products of separated countries. 
 Geography must have had a good start ere 
 Anaximines, a Milesian, could have constructed 
 the first map. History, too, had begun in 
 Miletus; probably the most distinguished pre- 
 cursor of Herodotus was Hecataeus, one of 
 its citizens. Astronomy necessarily follows in 
 the wake of navigation; the sailor will have to 
 study the stars. 
 
 There is no doubt that politics flourished in 
 Miletus, as in all these Greek towns. The leaninsf 
 was toward democracy, yet with other tendencies. 
 Political speculation probably began in Miletus ; 
 its citizens had started to think and to philoso- 
 phize, the three forms of government — democ- 
 racy, aristocracy, monarchy were seen in the 
 countries about them, and had supporters in the 
 city, which had in its own history more or less 
 experience of the democrat, the tyrant and the 
 
96 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 aristocrat. Herodotus in a well-known passage 
 projects a Greek discussion of these three forms of 
 government into the heart of Persia (III. 80-82). 
 
 But the most striking and important political 
 idea which can be traced to Miletus is that which 
 is ascribed to Thales (I. 170), and which 
 receives the commendation of our Historian, 
 though he introduces it in a merely casual man- 
 ner. Thales ** who was of Phoenician extrac- 
 tion," advised the separate Ionic cities *' to 
 constitute one general council in the central 
 place of Ionia (which was Teos), but the cities 
 were to remain independent as before," each 
 with its own local government. Here is dis- 
 tinctly the idea of a constitutional confederacy 
 of States into which our modern world is just 
 beginning to enter, and which is the government 
 of the future. Still this idea made its appear- 
 ance among those Ionic cities of Asia Minor some 
 600 years B. C, being called forth by the ne- 
 cessities of their situation. 
 
 Thales is manifestly the great man of the 
 epoch, nT)t, however, the great man of action, 
 but the thinker. These cities did not produce 
 any supreme, all-dominating man of action, like 
 Themistocles, like Alexander. But a mighty 
 intellectual force was manifested in Thales. 
 Already we have spoken of his prediction of the 
 eclipse, which is supposed to have taken place in 
 the reign of Alyattes, father of Croesus, during a 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 97 
 
 war between the Lydians and the Medes (I. 74). 
 Thus the consciousness which underlies physical 
 science had been born. Thales looked upon 
 nature as the expression of law, not as the play- 
 thing of divine caprice; otherwii?e he could not 
 have calculated the ecli[)se. With him at least 
 'the mythical has passed into the scientific stage, 
 or the beginning thereof. In a parallel manner 
 we have noticed the mythical passing into the 
 historical stage, which sees the deed as it is, 
 not as determined by a supernatural power. 
 Science and History have thus made their start 
 in Miletus, springing from a common conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 But the chief fame of Thales is yet to be men- 
 tioned : he is celebrated as the first Greek phi- 
 losopher; his is the first great name in that 
 discipline, whose essence is thought, and which 
 is still working in undiminished energy down to 
 this day. Thales asked the question : What is 
 the principle of all things? The great advance 
 is that man could ask such a question, whatever 
 be the answer. Thouojht is seekins: to think 
 itself as the primal essence, and philosophy 
 begins. This may be likewise considered to be a 
 grand step out of the Orient to the Occident, 
 especially at this early day. Indeed the Orient 
 has hardly yet philosophy in the Occidental 
 sense; all philosophy has a tendency there to 
 become theosophy, the nature of which is rather 
 
 7 
 
98 THE FATHER OF HISTOBT. 
 
 religious or mythological than philosophical. 
 Thales, however, makes the grand spirit-step 
 {^dreifacli merkwurdiger Geisierschritt^y and 
 lands himself in the science of all sciences 
 (scienlia 077111111771 scientiarum)^ in that old Greek 
 town of Miletus. The History of Philosophy, 
 accordingly, starts with him and his Ionic 
 School, and records the movement of Thought 
 trying to think Thought as the principle of the 
 Universe, in an unbroken line of names down to 
 the present. 
 
 The answer of Thales to his own question is 
 also worthy of being noted here, as it is 
 characteristic of his time and of his city. He 
 said that the universal principle of things is 
 water; man has to think water as the true 
 essence. We have already noted how the sea is 
 everywhere in Greece, and enters into Greek life 
 and character. The sea in those old times was 
 the realm of freedom, which neither the Lydian 
 nor the Persian was able to fetter. The 
 sea gave to Miletus its importance and 
 independence, rendering it for a long 
 period inexpugnable against the Oriental. 
 The mastery of the sea was indeed the 
 grand new mastery, which finally in the hands 
 of the Athenians overwhelmed the Persian, 
 and rescued Europe. The old philosopher of 
 Miletus, looking out from the shore upon the 
 sea, and beholding the going and returning ships 
 
BOOK FIBST, 99 
 
 of his city, may well have felt a strong attach- 
 ment — he must have been a sailor too — for 
 water. Seeing before him the numberless 
 islands of the Aegaean floating, as it were, in the 
 water, he would naturally recall the Homeric 
 conception of an Ocean stream, in which the 
 whole earth mio:ht be floatinor. Thus water is 
 the all-holding, the boundless which everywhere 
 bounds, the infinite limiting the finite, the one 
 thing out of which all things flow. 
 
 Such we may conceive to have been some of 
 the early struggles of Thought — seeking to get 
 back to itself through a form of the external 
 world. Another characteristic we may mention 
 here : water is the formable, ever suggesting 
 forms to the imagination — Tritons, Nereids, 
 Mermaids; it thus caught the Greek plastic 
 sense. Art fixes these fluid forms which, how- 
 ever, are first suggested by the fluid water. 
 (See the use to which Goethe has put Thalesand 
 the water philosophy in the Second Part of 
 Faust, Act II. ) 
 
 Such must have been the intellectual activity in 
 ancient Miletus nearly 2500 years ago, antedating 
 that of Athens and continental Hellas by a century 
 at least. The starting-point of the Occident with 
 its new idea we may place here, in its conscious 
 form ; this idea seems to have gotten distinctly 
 aware of itself in Miletus and its philosopher. 
 The struggle with Lydia was indeed prolific ; 
 
100 TEE FATHEB OF HISTORY, 
 
 the conflict with that Oriental people called 
 forth the intellectual beginning of the Occident ; 
 here we catch glimpses of the birth of History, 
 Science, Philosophy, all of them specifically 
 Occidental disciplines. 
 
 The Phoenician cities were sea-faring, commer- 
 cial, colonizing as well as the Greek (Miletus 
 alone is said to have planted eighty colonies). 
 Tyre and Sidon must have been active intellec- 
 tually, but they did not reveal their knowledge ; 
 they have left behind themselves no History, 
 Science, or Philosophy. 
 
 IV. Antecedents of Herodotus. Note again 
 that Herodotus begins his History with the con- 
 flict which called forth the historic consciousness 
 of the Occident; that is, he begins his History 
 with the beginning of History in its Occidental 
 sense. This conflict took place about one hun- 
 dred years before his own time. The interven- 
 ing period produced many incipient forms of 
 writing, which go to make History, and which 
 contributed also to the makins: of Herodotus. 
 The most important of these antecedent classes 
 of writers we may designate. 
 
 1. The mythographer, who sought to bring 
 the Greek mythical world — gods, demi-gods, 
 and heroes — into some kind of an ordered 
 whole. The understanding, no longer myth- 
 creating, reduces the vast mass of transmitted 
 mythical material into a system of which the 
 
BOOK FIEST, 101 
 
 work of Apollodorus may be taken as a sample. 
 Herodotus has this tendency also; see the open- 
 ing chapters of the First Book, as well as his 
 attempt to bring into harmony the Greek and 
 the Egyptian Pantheon in the Second Book. 
 
 2. Ethnography, the description of tribes and 
 nations by travelers ; several such works had 
 been written before the time of Herodotus, who 
 was himself a great traveler, and whose History 
 devotes much space to accounts of barbarous, 
 Greek, and Oriental peoples. 
 
 3. Geography, the description of the physical 
 earth and its products. A commercial city, like 
 Miletus, must have found this science a necessary 
 help to its trade. Hecataeus, the Milesian, a pre- 
 decessor of Herodotus, wrote a book, which was 
 doubtless chiefly geographical, and which is cited 
 by our Historian. 
 
 4. Chroniclers had already appeared before 
 Herodotus and had recorded events in succession, 
 putting stress upon the time element of affairs. 
 Hence arose the need of a chronological stand- 
 ard. Chronology is not very distinct in Herodo- 
 tus, since he has no era or universal measurer of 
 historic time. Each country took for such a 
 purpose its own line of rulers, and each city its 
 list of magistrates. But the question must rise 
 in History, what rulers and events are cotempo- 
 raneous? At last Greece found a canon in the 
 Olympiad, but Herodotus does not employ it, 
 
102 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 though he has his way of indicating what is 
 successive and what is synchronous. 
 
 5. Herodotus has taken these afore-mentioned 
 elements into his History, which is, however, 
 something altogether distinct from each of them 
 and from all of them together. We shall find in 
 him the Mythus, the historical event in time, a 
 description of lands and of peoples ; but there 
 comes just that which makes his book unique — 
 its conception and organization. There is, first 
 of all, that wonderful artistic sense, which has 
 already been dwelt upon in treating of this First 
 Book with its Lydiad and Persiad ; but the whole 
 work shows the same constructive power, accom- 
 panied by dramatic vividness and skill in drawing 
 characters. His History is thrown into the form 
 of recording a great collision, whose spiritual 
 principle is the heart of the entire action, which 
 unfolds itself and orders itself from beojinnino: 
 to end, making the whole avast work of art that 
 includes many dramas. 
 
 V . Personal relation of the Historian to the First 
 Book. We often ask ourselves in the course of 
 the present narrative, What were the sources of the 
 Historian's information, about Lydia and about 
 Persia, for instance? There were native Lydian 
 chroniclers whom he doubtless consulted ; he 
 also refers to the learned among the Persians 
 for his authority in certain cases. But the 
 main source of his statements is " inquiry," 
 
BOOK FIRST, 103 
 
 which is the original meaning of the word 
 History. 
 
 The chief scene of the occurrences of the 
 present Book is laid in the western part of Asia 
 Minor, in the Historian's own home, as it were; 
 the incidents pertaining to Croesus he must have 
 often heard, from his childhood on; tradition 
 had woven around the Lydian king the web of 
 fact and fable, which the Historian has here 
 ordered. The materials were given, but his is 
 the organizing hand, the architectonic soul. 
 Herodotus had lived through the great conflict 
 of Greece with Xerxes ; he saw the germ of the 
 same conflict in the war of Croesus with the 
 Greek cities of the Asiatic coast ; he recognized 
 the same principle in both and made it the 
 creative idea of his entire History. 
 
 The stay of the Historian at Athens (some- 
 where in middle life) shows its influence in the 
 present Book. It may well be doubted if he 
 reached fully the depth of his great conception, 
 till he had come into contact with Athenian 
 spirit. Athens had done the grand deed, and 
 knew it ; that is, Athens had shown the mightiest 
 will-power in resisting Oriental domination, 
 and was well aware of the meaning of the strug- 
 gle. To will-power she added thought-power; 
 Herodotus saw her in the very bloom of her 
 intellectual greatness, in the age of Pericles, 
 when she had become self-conscious in art, in 
 
104 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 poetry, and especially in philosophy, which is 
 just the self-knowing discipline. 
 
 On the other hand no Athenian wrote or 
 could write the history of the Persian War, and 
 transmit the historic record of Athens* greatest 
 glory. It needed an outsider, free from the 
 partizanship and enmity of the continental 
 Greeks ; it needed a man who could feel and 
 trace the beginninor of the conflict in the strug- 
 gle of the Asiatic Greeks with the Lydian 
 monarch. No Athenian could know much of 
 this matter, and would not be likely to attach 
 much importance to it, if he knew it. So 
 Herodotus, an Asiatic Greek, yet absorbing the 
 Athenian spirit, was the chosen man to make the 
 complete and impartial record for all time. 
 Another reminiscence of the stay of Herodotus 
 at Athens is the use he makes of the Athenian 
 lawgiver and philosopher, Solon, in the present 
 Book. To the Athenians of the age of Pericles, 
 when Herodotus was in Athens, the name of 
 Solon was revered as the father of the Athenian 
 democracy ; Solon was the man who resisted the 
 tyranny of Peisistratus on the one hand, and 
 reduced the wild populace to law on the other, 
 thereby seeking to unite liberty with authority. 
 Thus Solon lived and deserved to live in the 
 hearts of the people; but he had another dis- 
 tinction: he was a philosopher, the man who 
 had begun to think universally. A poet, too, he 
 
BOOK FIRST. 106 
 
 was, of the gnomic kind. Now this Athenian of 
 the aforetime Herodotus brings into the age and 
 presence of Croesus, in order to contrast the 
 two opposite states of consciousness, the Athe- 
 nian and the Asiastic, each giving his view of 
 the matter called human life. Our historian, 
 accordingly, makes Athens, in the person of her 
 great citizen, the bearer of the Greek Idea 
 versus the Oriental, long before Marathon and 
 Salamis. Such a view, we may well hold, was 
 the fruit of his stay at Athens, and forms a kind 
 of prehide to his entire History. 
 
 Many indications we have of his travels in the 
 present Book. He remained at Delphi quite a 
 while and studied its monuments and offerings; 
 they were indeed valuable historic documents. 
 A stay at Delphi also we have the right to sup- 
 pose ; deeply sympathetic he shows himself to be 
 with its spirit of which he drank at its fountain- 
 head. The result is, a Delphic thread is woven 
 throuo^h his whole Historv, from beojinnin": to 
 end. He could hardly have obtained so much 
 knowledge of the Oracle and its treasures, and 
 have been so deeply permeated with its spirit, 
 except by a prolonged and loving participation in 
 the life of the Delphic town. Here is indeed a 
 contrast with Athens which was growing out of 
 the oracular and prophetic stage into that of 
 the self-conscious reason. But our Historian 
 took up both sides into his universal sym- 
 
106 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 pathy, and gives both in his universal book on 
 Hellas. 
 
 Far beyond the bounds of Greece the travels 
 of Herodotus extended ; in the present Book we 
 have glimpses of his wanderings and investiga- 
 tions in Middle Asia, though it is not easy to 
 point out the exact line and limit of his journeys. 
 The great city Babylon he saw, pondered, and 
 compared with the Greek world; it was indeed a 
 soul-broadening contrast. The river Araxes in 
 the far north he did not see, but has to take the 
 report of others in reference to its size and 
 character (202). He must have known the 
 Persian language, and probably something of 
 other Oriental tongues, which he needed in his 
 travels and studies. Commentators generally 
 suppose our Historian to have been ignorant of 
 every language except his native Greek — a sup- 
 position wholly without foundation and against 
 the reasonable probabilities of the case. 
 
 Accordingly, in the present Book we behold 
 Herodotus, first of all, investigating and record- 
 ing his home history, that of western Anatolia 
 (Asia Minor), in which he places the rise 
 of History; then we behold him travel- 
 ing to Delphi, perchance consulting the Oracle 
 about his contemplated History and about what 
 he should do to make his record true and eternal, 
 and getting the response to stay and absorb the 
 Delphic spirit, which was then the central relig- 
 
BOOK FIB ST. 107 
 
 ious influence of all Hellas; still further, we 
 behold him going to Athens and taking up 
 Athenian spirit in its highest Periclean excel- 
 lence ; finally, we behold him traveling thousands 
 of miles over vast Asiatic tracts to the grreat 
 Oriental centers — Babylon, Nineveh, Susa (Per- 
 sia), Ecbatana (Media). 
 
 Yet all this is not a mere rambling book of 
 travels ; it has a spiritual center round which the 
 whole turns in due obedience; thus it becomes in 
 the best sense a work of art. 
 
BOOK SECOND, 
 
 In the preceding Book we saw the develop- 
 ment of the Lydiad, or the movement of Lydia 
 out of its mythical to its historical period through 
 a line of kings ending in Croesus. Then it was 
 absorbed into the greater Persiad, or the History 
 of Persia, into whose movement all the nations 
 of Central and Western Asia have been drawn 
 by means of conquest. Such is the Herodotean 
 conception of the historic process in the Orient. 
 Now we are to see the same general principle 
 applied to a new country, Egypt, which is to be 
 shown in its geography, in its institutions, and 
 in its lines of kings. 
 
 Cyrus, the great hero of the preceding Book, 
 we beheld smitten with a tragic destiny at its 
 conclusion. But the fate of the nation does not 
 (108) 
 
BOOK SECOND, 109 
 
 depend on the fate of the individual hero ; his- 
 tory is more than a drama, it is many dramas; 
 the Persian national spirit, of which Cyrus was 
 the hio^hest expression, will continue to unfold 
 its career after his death, till it also completes its 
 cycle of development. Cambyses, son and suc- 
 cessor of Cyrus, reaches out for Egypt ; con- 
 sequently we are now to have an Egyptiad 
 interwoven into this History. 
 
 The most important document pertaining to 
 ancient Egypt is this Second Book of Herodotus. 
 It is written in a spirit of genuine sympathy, and 
 itjmparts to the reader something of the wonder 
 and veneration which the historian himself felt 
 as he gazed upon that land of marvels. He is 
 unconsciously seeking to bring the old and iso- 
 lated nation into line with the World's History, 
 and to raise to light the points of connection 
 between it and the great new movement of the 
 time. Egypt is conquered by Persia and so 
 becomes a part of the Persian Empire in the 
 latter's conflict with Hellas, which is the central 
 event of the History of Herodotus, as well as of 
 the age. 
 
 There is no doubt that Egypt's place is far 
 up toward the head waters of civilization. It 
 may not be the primordial fountain, still no 
 other land, as far as is known at present, reaches 
 beyond it in antiquity. The Nile of History 
 has, indeed, its sources hidden, but it flows into 
 
110 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 light first in Egypt, where it remaius confined in 
 a narrow channel for a lons^ distance, till it 
 pours into the great Midland Sea which washes 
 the shores of so many European peoples. 
 
 Herodotus is a Greek, and he is particularly 
 eaijer to find out the relations between his race 
 and the Egyptians. He traveled in Egypt prob- 
 bably between the years 460-455 B. C, a period 
 which reaches from his twenty-fourth to his 
 twenty-ninth year. ( See Rawlinson's Herodotus, 
 Vol. I., p. 12.) This was the period of the 
 revolt of Inarus, when an Athenian army had 
 possession of Egypt. Still the Greeks had ob- 
 tained a foothold in the land of Nile during the 
 reign of Psarametichus, more than two hundred 
 years before, and had begun to break down its 
 exclusiveness. The same king caused a number 
 of Egyptian children to be instructed in the 
 Greek tongue, from whom was descended a 
 special class, the interpreters. One of these ac- 
 companied Herodotus in his visit to the pyramids, 
 as cicerone, and read the inscriptions. A hun- 
 dred years before the time of our historian, 
 Amasis was king of Egypt, who was also very 
 friendly to the Greeks. Thus for more than two 
 hundred years antecedent to the visit of Herodo- 
 tus, the Greek language had a certain currency in 
 Eg3^pt, and with it had come Greek ideas, 
 mythology, literature, Homer. 
 
 Our young traveler, therefore, saw an Egypt 
 
BOOK SECOND. Ill 
 
 which was well acquainted with his countrymen. 
 Indeed Grecian intercourse with the people of 
 the Nile goes back to Homer, who also, specially 
 in the Odyssey, spins a thread of connection 
 between Hellas and Egypt. On many sides the 
 relation was friendly. The Greek was, in the 
 time of Herodotus, the strong, beautiful youth 
 of the world; the Egyptian was an old man, 
 whose time had passed, but who wished, even 
 while looking into the setting sun, to impart his 
 wisdom to the coming time. We see in this 
 Book that there was a double movement, from 
 each side, toward a mutual acquaintance and 
 adjustment. The Greeks in Egypt sought to 
 peer into their own origin through Egyptian his- 
 tory ; they translated specially the ancient Gods 
 of the valley of the Nile into their own Pantheon, 
 and connected themselves and their religion 
 with the oldest of nations. On the other hand 
 the priests of Egypt, depositories of its ven- 
 erable lore, took the attitude of the aged seer 
 toward the young man who was starting in 
 life, the attitude of the Orient to the Occident, 
 as if saying : We made you what you are, 
 we gave you your wisdom and your deities ; 
 listen, therefore, with reverence.^^ Hence it 
 is that the Orient resents with such contempt 
 tbe idea that the Occident should send mis- 
 onaries to their part of the world to teach 
 nem in matters of religion; better reverse the 
 
112 THE FATHER OF HISTOBT. 
 
 process. So the Orientals think and act to-day ; 
 so those old Egyptian priests thought and acted 
 toward Herodotus, the young Greek traveler, 
 who listened not only with reverence, but with a 
 certain degree of faith to their marvelous state- 
 ments. Accordingly he will endeavor to link 
 together Greece and Egypt; especially he will 
 try to connect Greek and Egyptian religion and 
 mythology. 
 
 We can also see that even the exclusive, secre- 
 tive Egyptian is putting himself in line with 
 Universal History, is ready for Herodotus to ap- 
 pear and to record the new situation. Such is 
 the outcome of Greek influence for several cen- 
 turies. The grand connection is brought about in 
 this Second Book ; Egypt with its Nile is made 
 to pour through the Greek consciousness, which 
 reveals it to the world, having been hitherto 
 largely a land of mystery, of concealment, of 
 darkness. To be sure the historian does not tell 
 all he knows; so strong is his sympathy that an 
 Egyptian awe steals over him at times and he 
 refuses to reveal certain sacred secrets. 
 
 It is characteristic that the first thing of which 
 Herodotus speaks in reference to Egypt is its 
 claim to antiquity. *' The Egyptians before the 
 reign of Psammetichus believed themselves to 
 be the most ancient of mankind" (c. 2). 
 Mark that this Psammetichus is the king who 
 broke down the barriers and let in the Greeks, 
 
BOOK SECOND. 113 
 
 tvTo centuries before Herodotus. The ruler is 
 now an investigator of infantile science. The 
 story of the two children reared in a lowly hut 
 and suckled by goats, rests on the supposition that 
 when these children begin to talk, they will 
 utter the first human word, which is here 
 declared to be becos. This, the author says, is 
 the Phrygian word for bread ; hence the Phry- 
 gians are the oldest people. 
 
 Two very different explanations of this word 
 becos have been given. The professional philol- 
 ogersees in it an Aryan root akin to the English 
 bake or even to^a, father. Better would it be 
 to regard the root as the child's imitation of the 
 bleat of the goat or of the kid when hungry for 
 its portion of milk. Romulus, suckled by a she- 
 wolf, would probably give a different call for his 
 nourishment. 
 
 Herodotus reports that the Egyptians gave up 
 their claim of being the most ancient of men 
 after this experiment ; if so, they were easily 
 satisfied. But Diodorus, writing of Egypt some 
 four hundred years after Herodotus, says that the 
 people of the Nile valley in his time still main- 
 tained that they were the oldest of mankind. 
 This is probably the truth of the matter, though 
 our historian implies that he received his infor- 
 mation from three sets of priests, those at Mem- 
 phis, at Heliopolis, and at Thebes. We to-day 
 "Save to acknowledge that Egypt's claim to the 
 
 8 
 
114 THE FA THEE OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 most ancient civilization among men has the 
 greatest probability of truth. 
 
 Modern lino^uistic research has sought in various 
 ways to connect the Egyptian tongue with the 
 leading divisions of human speech, Aryan, 
 Semitic, and Turanian, and thus to probe 
 down to the question of origin. The results 
 as yet are uncertain. A curious point is 
 that the language of the hieroglyphics is 
 said to show decided Celtic affinities, and 
 the Irishman's statement that Irish was the 
 man's primordial tongue, spoken first in the 
 garden of Eden, may yet be confirmed. The 
 general trend of opinion among investigators 
 seems to be that the Egyptian language shows 
 traces of the primitive tongue spoken before the 
 separation of the Aryan and Semitic into two 
 great families oi" speech, which would throw 
 Egypt far back into a very remote time for its 
 beginning, and connect it with Asia. The ques- 
 tion, however, whether Egyptian civilization 
 came from Asia, or Asiatic civilization came 
 from Egypt, remains unanswered. 
 
 Far more profitable than this search for origin 
 is the tracing of the Egyptian stream into those 
 peoples who succeeded it in the World's History, 
 specially the Greek and the Hebrew. The Greek 
 connection in its earliest form is unfolded in this 
 Second Book of Herodotus, which is now the 
 subject of our study. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 115 
 
 The Historian himself has hinted his diyisi^ift 
 of the Book (c. 99) into two parts: his own 
 personal account of '« what he saw, thought and 
 learned by inquiry/' and the account of the 
 Egyptians themselves. The former will, there- 
 fore, be of the Present, the latter of the Past, 
 though both elements will intermingle in each 
 case. 
 
 The first part of the Second Book easily sub- 
 divides into two portions. After a kind of In- 
 troduction (1-5), there will be an account of 
 Physical Egypt with its River (6-34); then the 
 author will pass to '* a more extended account '' 
 (35) of the country because of its '' wonders and 
 its works; " such an account we may in general 
 call Spiritual Egypt in contrast with the preceding, 
 as it takes up the religion, customs, arts, insti- 
 tutions of the land. The relation between the 
 two elements (physical and spiritual) is very 
 close, probably closer in Egypt than in any 
 other country that ever existed. 
 
 The portion devoted to the Past (beginning at 
 c. 99) we shall call Historical Egypt, since it 
 deals with kings and dynasties that have been, 
 and recounts their deeds and works. So much 
 for the structure of this Book, as it lay in the 
 mind of Herodotus. We shall permit ourselves 
 one slight change m it; instead of making two 
 subdivisions of the drst part, we shall at once 
 
116 THE FATHER OF HISTORY, 
 
 cast the whole Book into three main divisions as 
 follows: — 
 
 I. Physical Egypt.- 
 
 II. Spiritual Egypt. 
 
 III. Historical Egypt. 
 
 This arrangement (for us, at least) simplifies 
 the matter, and sets forth the thought and the 
 movement of the Book in a clearer light. 
 
7. PHYSICAL EGYPT. 
 
 This naturally starts with *« the gift of the 
 River," the Delta, for the Delta and the Nile 
 are the two positive factors of physical Egypt, in 
 the view of Herodotiis (5-34). 
 
 The stream and its alluvion are hedged about 
 by seas, by deserts and by barren mountains — 
 an environment of desolation, through which the 
 river pours a line of green fertility. Egypt 
 proper is estimated to have an area of about 
 100,000 square miles, of which hardly more than 
 one-tenth is cultivable. The country in its best 
 days probably contained not more than seven 
 millions of inhabitants, all clinging to the 
 stream. 
 
 Every bit of Egypt, therefore, worthy of the 
 name, is " the gift of the river,'* as the historian 
 says. Especially is this the case with the Delta. 
 About 100 miles from the sea the Nile forks and 
 sends one branch to the right and one to the 
 left, which reach the Mediterranean some 300 
 
 (117) 
 
118 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 miles apart. Besides these two extreme mouths, 
 five others are counted between them, two of 
 which are artificial. Such is the Delta, filled 
 anciently with flourishing cities. 
 
 We see that in antiquity (c. 15) the question 
 had arisen, which still gives trouble: To which 
 grand division of the globe does Egypt properly 
 belong — to Asia or Africa? Geographically it 
 is embraced in the latter, but spiritually it is ab- 
 solutely distinct ; it connects in history with Asia 
 on one side and with Europe on the other. Not 
 African surely, nor can we deem it Asiatic; 
 Egypt is a peculiar world, *' the gift of the 
 river,'* which is the next phenomenon considered 
 by the historian. 
 
 The first great mystery connected with the 
 Nile, in the eyes of Herodotus, is the fact that it 
 rises in summer — from the end of June till 
 September, when it is highest — then falls in the^ 
 winter* which is the rainy season in Greece and 
 in other countries known to our author. We see 
 that the circumstance had evoked much specula- 
 tion among the Greeks, who were seeking for a 
 physical cause; three theories are examined and 
 rejected. Then Herodotus gives his own view, 
 obscure enough, yet seeming to be about this: 
 the Sun is the cause ; being driven from the north 
 by the storms of winter, '* he retires to Libya," 
 to the south, where he attracts or dries up the 
 Nile. But '* when winter grows mild," he returns 
 
BOOK SECOND. 119 
 
 to the north (Tropic of Cancer), and then ** at- 
 tracts water equally from all rivers ; ' ' thus the Nile 
 is relieved from his special presence, and begins 
 rising. Herein the Sun seems to be controlled 
 by the seasons instead of causing them; he is 
 conceived as the bright migrating bird of the 
 skies flying southward with the approach of 
 inclement weather, and returning to the north 
 with the spring. 
 
 Closely allied with the preceding problem is 
 another, that of the sources of the Nile. Our 
 author confesses that they are unknown to him, 
 and he clearly holds that they were unknown to 
 the Egyptians. He himself went as far as 
 Elephantine in order to investigate the subject; 
 that city lies on the Nile 700 miles from the sea; 
 there he found the African wall which shuts in 
 Egypt, and beyond it he could not pene;trate. 
 Vague rumors he picks up and tells (c. 28-34 ) ; 
 but that whole borderland begins to lapse into 
 fable. Still here is the grand fact : the mighty 
 river bearing all its fertility comes flowing hither 
 out of an unknown world, and lays down at the 
 feet of men its gift, which is just this Egyptian 
 land. 
 
 As is well known, it is our own age which has 
 solved the problem of the sources of the Nile, 
 which fact is indeed a typical one of the century. 
 The river rises in Equatorial Africa from two 
 great lakes called Albert and Victoria Nyanza, 
 
120 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 which are fed mainly by heavy rains for nine 
 months of the year. The Nile on its journey to 
 the sea starts from Albert Nyanza about 2,000 
 miles from its mouth direct, or 2,500 miles, if 
 its windings be included. This is the true Nile 
 or the so-called White Nile, which is a perma- 
 nent, almost unvarying stream, pushing its vast 
 volume of water throuorh an arid desert to the 
 Mediterranean. The rise of the Nile is caused 
 by its affluents, chief of which is the Bahr-el- 
 Azrak or Blue Nile in Abyssinia, and the last of 
 which is the Atbara, which empties into it 1100 
 miles from its mouth (Sir Samuel Baker). The 
 tributaries of the Nile bring the fertilizing soil, 
 which is carried by the body of the river into 
 Egypt and there deposited. Such are the two 
 chief elements of the Nile system. 
 
 We have now before us the main physical fact 
 pertaining to the Nile and the Delta. In shape the 
 whole was compared by the old navigator Scylax 
 to a double-edged batttle-ax with its long handle 
 reaching up to Elephantine. But it is far more 
 significant to compare Egypt to a human hand at 
 the end of the outstretched arm, with the five 
 fingers extended, corresponding to the five natural 
 mouths in the Delta. That hand is not smiting 
 with a battle-ax but is bountifully giving, or 
 perchance is spread out for sowing the crop. 
 Moreover the forearm is visible for quite a dis- 
 tance, but the upper part passes into the invis- 
 
BOOK SECOND. 121 
 
 ible; the shoulder, the body, the face of that 
 mighty form reaching out of the Beyond are un- 
 seen, invisible as spirit itself. Verily it is the 
 hand of deity, of Father Nile, giving his bless- 
 ing to his favored childen of Egypt. The form, 
 the situation, the action of the river, all force 
 the conception of God, the Giver, Provider, 
 beneficent, yet covered with darkness, whose 
 hand alone with a little of the arm is visible. No 
 wonder that the old historian regards the Egyp- 
 tians as the most religious of mortals, being 
 driven, first of all men, to make the grand dis- 
 tinction between the k5een and the Unseen, the 
 Sensible and the Supersensible, and gradually be- 
 tween the Finite and the Infinite. So already 
 ancient Homer shadows forth this distinction in 
 his myth of Proteus. 
 
 Hence Egypt is the real Holy Land, which 
 conception passed thence to the Hebrews and 
 Arabians. Religion becomes its all-environino* 
 element; man is fed directly by the Gods ; even 
 the animals, products of the Nile, become sacred. 
 Also a sacred writing rises into existence, the 
 hieroglyphic; the idea of the Holy Book or Bible 
 springs from Egypt and the Nile, and passes to 
 other peoples of the Orient, and also to the 
 Occident, which has not produced and cannot 
 produce a Holy Book of its own. Thus the 
 Nile stream is still flowino: thrOuo:h us all. 
 
 Let us note again the fact that to the Egyptian 
 
122 THE FATIIEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 the source of the River was hidden ; the body, 
 the face, even a part of the arm were in the 
 region of the Unseen. Egypt, therefore, be- 
 comes a land of mystery, of dark symbolic cere- 
 monies, of the mystical consciousness in general, 
 it is the primitive source of the mystery as an 
 element of religion. 
 
 The Egyptians lived not only through the 
 activity of this hand, but lived in it literally; it 
 gave them not only their sustenance, but their 
 terrestrial standing-room. Hence there are two 
 great gifts of the Nile, the eternal and the tem- 
 poral ones, the soil itself and the renewed annual 
 deposit, the gift of the ages and the gift of the 
 year. The same double character will manifest 
 itself in Egyptian life ; even the Gods will show 
 an eternal and a phenomenal element. 
 
 Thus man in Egypt was one with the Nile, 
 he clung to its banks, he could not be separated 
 from it without death. He became exclusive, 
 peculiar, self-introverted, secretive. How dif- 
 ferent the Greek ! Open, self-reliant, enter- 
 prising, he can bring freedom and the secular 
 world into existence. Herodotus contrasts the 
 Ister (Danube), which is for him the great 
 European river, with the Nile; the Ister has no 
 secrets, no mystery, being known from its foun- 
 tain head to its mouth, lying all the way in the 
 sunlight, a type of Europe. 
 
 The hand is not pnly an implement of the body. 
 
BOOK SECOND, 123 
 
 but is one of the most significant symbols of the 
 spirit. The great hand of the Nile feeds the 
 Egyptian infant, truly the infant of the World's 
 History, who is yet to become a man. These 
 primitive children are scattered helpless up and 
 down the valley of the River; they are put into 
 a marvelous garden, tilled by the unseen hand ; 
 a child garden (kindergarden) it may be called, 
 first of its kind, and to a certain extent the 
 pattern of all succeeding ones, in which the 
 primeval man-child learns his earliest and most 
 important lesson from his invisible teacher, 
 namely that he lives in and through a Divine 
 Order. 
 
 The Egyptian, therefore, is led through Nature 
 into that which is beyond ; the known, the finite 
 is here before him, but it springs directly out of 
 an unknown, an infinite. Hence he passes by 
 means of the Nile out of the physical into the 
 spiritual world, the river itself dividing into two 
 parts, the seen and the unseen. For Herodotus 
 this division takes place at the border city of 
 Elephantine, which he says that he visited. 
 
 We may note again the fact of the exclusive- 
 ness of physical Egypt as indicated by nature. 
 (1) The total country is inclosed on every side 
 by sea and desert, with a narrow gateway connect- 
 ing with Asia. (2) The River, inside of Egypt, 
 is inclosed in its narrow channel and its delta. 
 Thus a double separation from the outer world is 
 
124 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 given by nature, or a double rampart against 
 external powers, (3) Another separation is that 
 of the stream of the Nile within itself into its 
 pure and permanent body, and its turbid, unclean 
 addition of sediment and water; rise and fall of 
 the Nile, growth and decline. (4) Then another 
 separation of the River into the known and the 
 unknown portions. (5) Still further, the Nile 
 divides this inner Egypt, its own land, into two 
 well-marked parts — Upper and Lower Egypt, or 
 the Delta and the River Valley. Thus nature 
 dualizes Egypt on many sides, and each one of 
 these dualisms leaves its imprint on her spirit, 
 individualizes her character among the peoples 
 of the world. 
 
 The River overflows not alone for irrigation, 
 but also for a deposit of sediment ; it brings not 
 simply moisture, but the very soil along with 
 itself. It makes a new earth, the land is reborn 
 every year, like the season, like Osiris, like the 
 Sun to a degree. Thus is the cycle of life sug- 
 gested by nature, and enters deeply into Egyptian 
 spirit. Moreover, the gift is certain, it never 
 fails, though sometimes more and sometimes 
 less. The Nile does not forget. No plow is 
 needed, it is the plower, too, though man has to 
 sow. Only a few times comparatively has the 
 Nile stinted his gift to the extent of producing 
 a famine. 
 
 In Greece, on the contrary, is the rain-god 
 
BOOK SECOND, 125 
 
 Zeus, sending his showers for humidity only, not 
 sending the soil, which has to be plowed and 
 tilled with great care and economy, being in little 
 patches here and there amid the rocks. Small 
 alluvial valleys are indeed found in Greece, but 
 no great Nile Hand reaching out from the Unseen 
 God and giving food to His children. 
 
77. SPIRITUAL EGYPT. 
 
 That which the Egyptian sees to be true of 
 the river, with its two halves, visible and in- 
 visible, he will make the pattern or transforming 
 idea of the whole sense-world. Upon it he will 
 found his customs, his institutions, his religion, 
 art, literature. 
 
 This twofoldness, the sensible and supersen- 
 sible, will be noted everywhere. The secular 
 life will be distinct from the religious, and 
 overarched by the latter. There will be a 
 class, the priests, who will deal with the 
 unseen, the mysteries, the Gods, hence Egypt is 
 the very home of priestcraft. Not to be con- 
 sidered a cunning set of men keeping the people 
 in ignorance and superstition ; they had to arise 
 in the Nile valley, and the people would have none 
 other; these would have driven out any dilFerent 
 system, as something foreign to their spirit. 
 There will be the veiled image of the Goddess at 
 Sais, and the Sphinx with her riddle. The 
 (126) 
 
BOOK SECOND. 127 
 
 priests will know the inner meaning of rites and 
 worship, the multitude will cling to the sensuous 
 side for dear life ; the latter is the seen Nile, the 
 other the unseen. Outer idols, yet inner spirit 
 also; the spirit will have its caste. 
 
 On these lines two great influences are to 
 move forth from Egypt. Judea will take the 
 supersensible element, this pure spirit, and 
 break the idol, and flee to its own land throuo:h 
 the wilderness. The sensuous Nile is dropped, 
 rooted out, destroyed ; Jehovah is the one God, 
 eternal as spirit, and so lives to-day and keeps 
 his people alive. Such is the Egyptian contri- 
 bution to man, being purified by passing through 
 th© Semitic soul. 
 
 On the other hand, Greece developed the sense 
 side, the finite Nile, kept the idols, but trans- 
 figured them into works of art. Polytheism the 
 Greek retains ; Egypt is both, monotheistic in 
 esoteric doctrine, polytheistic in exoteric or 
 popular doctrine. 
 
 A Hebrew document and a Greek document 
 give the history of these transitions — the Pen- 
 tateuch and this Second Book of Herodotus. 
 
 We observe the same dualism in writing — 
 sacred (hieroglyphic) and profane (demotic), 
 one for the priests, the other for the people. 
 Even in speech too ; some things to be spoken, 
 others to remain unspoken, nay unspeakable. 
 
 Deeply significant is it to note how this Egyp- 
 
128 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 tian characteristic has entered the very soul of 
 our historian. He will not tell the secrets, 
 which are not to be spoken, for speech has two 
 sides, the voiced for the sense bf hearing, and the 
 unvoiced for the spirit. Hence he feels the 
 Egyptian mystery and preserves silence; he, the 
 talkative Greek, receives the impress of the Nile 
 also, else indeed he were no good reporter. 
 Still, even by his silence, he reveals a phase of 
 Egyptian spirit, probably better than by any 
 description. 
 
 We can trace from the relation of the Egyp- 
 tian to the Nile some of the most important sub- 
 jective traits of his religion. He receives 
 blessings for which he can give no return — grat- 
 itude; he knows not whence these blessings 
 come — wonder; he must rely upon them regu- 
 larly — trust ; he must conciliate the unseen 
 power, that it continue to be friendly — worship 
 with its rites, formulas, organization. Depend- 
 ence was their trait, with all its allied advantages 
 and drawbacks ; Egyptians were children with a 
 sweet submission on the one hand; or they might 
 be called Nature's beggars, who lived off her 
 alms without much effort on their own part, and 
 were very importunate in their solicitations, 
 spending their lives in prayers and ceremonies 
 and attitudes, all invoking their benefactor to 
 give and to give again and to give more. An 
 excess of religion is this for most minds of the 
 
BOOK SECOND. 129 
 
 Occident, in which self-reliance rather is the law 
 of conduct. 
 
 Only in one place in Egypt were there gym- 
 nastic contests, once a year. These were dedi- 
 cated to a Greek hero, Perseus, in the city of 
 Chemmis. Did he pass here on his way to Ethio- 
 pia to relieve Andromeda, the beautiful maiden, 
 from the Oriental monster? The fact suofSfests 
 
 Do 
 
 one striking contrast between Hellas and Egypt. 
 The Greek believed in a culture of the body 
 during life, it too was to be unfolded, to be made 
 perfect. But when life left it, it was burnt. 
 The Egyptian, 'however, sought to preserve the 
 body after death by embalming ; it was not to be 
 destroyed by fire, slow or speedy; he trans- 
 formed it into a mummy ; even the bodies of 
 animals were embalmed and made to endure. 
 Thus the Egyptians were more intent upon death 
 and the hereafter, the Greeks the reverse. 
 Hence the one reproduced the body in the beau- 
 tiful statue, the other preserved it in the mummy, 
 not beautiful. 
 
 In tracing the rise of mythology, which is a 
 rise from nature to spirit, there are certain 
 physical facts common to all mythologies. 
 There are light and darkness, springing from 
 one. source, the sun, which gives the first dual- 
 ism of nature, or separation into opposites. 
 Then there are heat and cold, the second dualism 
 of nature, also caused by the sun and producing 
 
 9 
 
130 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 the seasons. So we have the daily and the 
 yearly dualism of nature, as the original start- 
 ing-point of the mythical consciousness of man. 
 Universal it is among peoples on the globe and 
 relates to man universally. 
 
 Then every people or time has some special 
 form of nature which makes its mythology indi- 
 vidual. The Egyptian had the phenomenon of 
 the Nile, its rise and fall, its fertilizing gift, its 
 passage from known to unknown. This will 
 specialize its mythology, which rises from 
 nature. The God Osiris dies and is born again; 
 is entombed, embalmed, yet will return immor- 
 tal. The Egyptian mythus will be unlike the 
 Greek, which showed the sensuous subordination 
 of the sensuous; the Greek mythus put down 
 the Orient, which never put itself down. 
 
 So strong was the influence of the physical 
 phenomenon of the Nile upon the Egyptian 
 mind that the Sun, the main element in other 
 mythologies, especially the Ar3^an, is absorbed by 
 the Nile. The yearly Sun, with cold and heat 
 elsewhere, is supplanted by the rise and fall of 
 the Nile. Light and Darkness, or day and 
 night, come, with their good and evil ; but these 
 have a much stronger suggestion in the Giver of 
 fertility, the Nile, than in the Giver of Light. 
 Still the Egyptians had their Sun-god (Ra) and 
 their Sun-city (Heliopolis). Then there was no 
 rainfall, no clouds obscuring the Sun, which 
 
BOOK SECOND. IBl 
 
 plays such a prominent part in the old Aryan 
 mythology as seen in the Vedas. Aryans were 
 plowers, but there was very little need of plow- 
 ing in Egypt; crops were a gift. Greek clouds 
 and rainfall (like the Aryan) play into Greek 
 mythology. 
 
 Hence the Nile is the determining source of 
 Egyptian mythology and religion (worship and 
 rites). Yearly the Sun moves north and south 
 with the fall and rise of theNile. East and west are 
 opposite to the Nile — hence light and darkness 
 contribute not so much to Egyptian mythology. 
 
 That which individualizes Egypt and makes 
 
 the Egyptian man distinctive is the Nile. What 
 
 will be its effect upon the mind observing it, 
 
 livino- with it? Let us trace the movement of 
 
 the River, reflecting itself in the human soul. 
 
 First it brings to consciousness the unknown and 
 
 the known; then it vanishes and returns. Let 
 
 us see the process. ( 1 ) The Nile as unknown — 
 
 yet the Giver, Provider, the good. (2) TheNile 
 
 as known, the gift, the sensuous fact, the finite 
 
 world. (3) The Nile droops, falls, is old age ; it 
 
 vanishes into the sea, it dies like Osiris, and 
 
 is absorbed, losing its individuality as River. 
 
 Hence the lament of the people. (4) The Nile 
 
 returns, is full the next season or cycle, returns 
 
 out of the sea somehow, through the heavens. 
 
 It has to go back to its unseen source and be 
 
 individualized over again. 
 
132 THE FATHEIt OF HISTORY. 
 
 Such is the grand cycle of the Nile to which 
 the Egyptian consciousness adjusts itself and in 
 which it finds expression. We cannot say that 
 the Nile creates the mind of Egypt, but it is the 
 mould into which this mind pours itself and gets 
 utterance, especially its mythical utterance, and 
 also its religious, in rites and worship. Now a 
 mountain utterance, like the Aryan, would be dif- 
 ferent. Yet the Ego is present in both cases, nature 
 is its vehicle, which it transforms into a symbol. 
 
 Thus, of the cycle of the Nile, there is a small 
 segment which is known, and a vast segment 
 which is unknown. So nature calls forth the 
 corresponding consciousness, it leaves its imprint 
 upon the Ego. The Egyptian will pour his life 
 into this fact of the Nile ; life is a little fragment 
 here and now, rolling out of the land to the sea; 
 yet it will return after a long absence. Hence 
 the Egyptian has the doctrine of immortality in 
 one of its early forms. The Nile produces ani- 
 mals as it does man — its life goes over into the 
 animal, which is a transformation like that of the 
 river. Herein we may behold the hint of the 
 doctrine of metempsychosis. Still the shriveled 
 body of the Nile remains ; in like fashion man 
 must preserve the body dead as mummy, as the 
 future bearer of life, quite as the Nile brings 
 down life in its body by the addition of sediment 
 and more water. The spirit of the Nile calls 
 forth the mummy, tomb, labyrinth. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 133 
 
 It is now known that the Nile divides itself 
 into the pure body of water coming from the 
 lakes, and the sedimentary waters of its affluents. 
 The old Egyptian felt this, indeed saw it, in the 
 two Niles of summer and winter, which are really 
 the White Nile and the Blue Nile along with 
 some other tributaries. Hence the dualism is in 
 the water of the stream, with its permanent life- 
 portion and the mere passing body. 
 
 Still the Egyptian, being mind, had to tran- 
 scend even the Nile. It brought before him 
 strongly the seen and the unseen, it split his 
 consciousness into the known and unknown. 
 But he has to reach over this unknown, grasp it, 
 account for it. In other words, the whole Egyp- 
 tian spirit shows a striving to know the unknown, 
 to image it in the Gods, in the Mythus, in the 
 religious ceremonial. The very fact of his say- 
 ing "the unknown'' is a kind of knowledge; 
 when mind knows its limit, it has begun to trans- 
 cend the same. So the spirit and its process 
 take the form of the unknown in Egypt. 
 
 The Nile stream flows through all history, it is 
 flowing through you and me now. It is of 
 course transformed ; it flowed through Judea and 
 it flowed through Greece, bringing forth a new 
 set of products each time. Now it is flowing 
 into the Mississippi, which runs south, as the Nile 
 runs north; one with a broad fertile valley, the 
 other with a narrow valley, limiting and lim- 
 
134 THE FATHER OF HIS TOE Y. 
 
 ited ; the one with freedom, the other with re- 
 straint; the one determined the civilization of 
 its dwellers, the other had its civilization brought 
 to it 
 
 It will thus be seen that one great work of 
 Egyptian mind was to transform the Nile into a 
 vast symbol, in fact, all its manifestations 
 became symbolic. Nature was made over into 
 the bearer of mind; the physical object thus 
 had two meanings, its own and a new one given 
 to it by mind. The Nile Hand became the 
 Giver, Creator reaching out of the Unseen ; the 
 Egyptian God Ptah, whose temple was built by 
 Menes, the first king of Egypt, means Hand 
 literally; so we can see how the conception of 
 this deity arose. Truly it may be said that there 
 is no understanding Egyptian spirit without 
 understanding the symbolic, and its place in the 
 history of culture as well as in the development 
 of the individual mind. Egypt is the land of 
 the symbol, with its fundamental division of 
 itself into the sensible and the supersensible 
 manifested also in the division of the Nile. 
 
 There is presupposed in the Nile Valley the 
 Ego; whence it came and how it arose is not 
 our inquiry. The Egyptian as such did not 
 descend Nile from Meroe and bring his civiliza- 
 tion, just as little did he come from Asia with 
 his civilization. He was made an Egyptian in 
 Egypt. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 135 
 
 Nature always puts its stamp upon the people; 
 it gives their particular character, it specializes 
 them. Nature puts its limits upon the Ego and 
 makes it an Egyptian Ego. Yet the other side 
 is present: Nature does not create that primor- 
 dial Ego, as far as we at present can ascertain. 
 
 But the Eofo in the limits of Nature must show 
 its unlimited, infinite character; it is something 
 more than this special form, it is universal. It 
 must find itself by always transcending itself. 
 The Nile divides the Ego into known and un- 
 known, yet the problem of the Ego is just to 
 master this unknown and to transcend the 
 bounds of the known. The limit put upon it 
 by Nature, here by the Nile, gives it an Egyp- 
 tian character ; yet the Egyptian must in an 
 Egyptian way show the limit-transcending trait 
 of his own spirit. Hence all his efforts to 
 reach beyond this unknown will be Egyptian in 
 form. He must be seen as an Egyptian in 
 Egyptian limits trying in Egyptian fashion to 
 transcend his Egyptian limits and becoming 
 universal, human. 
 
 Let us designate this Egyptian way. The Nile 
 is the physical object which reveals man's con- 
 sciousness to himself — hence the supreme sym- 
 bol. The Nile is man, his life and death, its 
 cycle is identified with the human cycle. To be 
 sure, it is something different, namely a natural 
 object ; but through its cycle and through his 
 
136 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 observing it completely the Egyptian finds it in 
 himself and so becomes aware not only of it but 
 also of himself. Thus through the Nile he 
 begins to be self-conscious. 
 
 Still further, this Nile, being regarded as a 
 man, is yet something far more than an individ- 
 ual man, greater, mightier; nay, it is himself as 
 universal, it is God. For he is the finite man, 
 corresponding to this finite Nile, product of the 
 same; yet the river is the unknown or infinite 
 Nile too, which is Osiris, the colossal man of the 
 world, who also is born, dies and returns. This 
 is the second division of the Nile; note again the 
 suggestion in the physical fact that the Blue Nile 
 is transitory, and the White Nile permanent. 
 
 The Egyptian first identifies the Nile with him- 
 self and so becomes self-conscious ; secondly, 
 this Nile-man he projects out of himself, and 
 gets conscious of God. So the self-conscious- 
 ness and the God-consciousness both arise to the 
 Egyptian through the Nile. 
 
 Zeus, the rain-God, sends the showers upon 
 the earth from the sky, hence, is a sky-God, 
 light, clear, when the clouds are gone. But the 
 Nile is a hidden God, unknown, yet terrestrial. 
 Light plays a secondary part in Egyptian Relig- 
 ion and Mythology, as compared with the Persian, 
 Greek, or Vedic. 
 
III. HISTORICAL EGYPT, 
 
 With chapter 99 begins a new section of this 
 Second Book, which tells of some of the kings 
 of Eo-ypt, as well as their works and actions. 
 Our author marks the transition with decided 
 emphasis: "Hitherto I have given what 1 per- 
 sonally saw, thought, and learned by inquiry; 
 henceforth I shall give the account of the Egyp- 
 tians, adding certain things which came under 
 my own eyes." Moreover, we also learn that 
 the priests were his informants, those who were 
 the depositories of Egypt's ancient lore, and who 
 laro-elv lived in her antiquity. This fact indi- 
 cates an important spiritual trait of theirs, 
 which will play a part in the forthcoming 
 
 history. 
 
 How shall the reader, seeking to grasp the 
 essence of the matter, regard this line of Egyp- 
 tian kings? Herodotus does not pretend to give 
 the names of them all ; it is clear that he makes 
 a selection. But what is his principle of selec- 
 tion^ Unless they made '* a showing of works " 
 
 (137) 
 
138 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 by erecting some great monument, or performed 
 *' something brilliant " in the way of exploits 
 (101), the historian drops their names, casting 
 them all at one throw into the sea of oblivion. 
 
 This list of Herodotus is, therefore, not so much 
 a list of kingfs as a list of £:i"eat deeds ; a kino^ who 
 does nothing worthy of kingship is no better than 
 a common man. The mighty fact which the his- 
 torian saw in Egypt was the stupendous works 
 of aforetime; how did they get to be? A chaos 
 of names, numbers, facts, fancies, were tumbled 
 out before him; he starts to arranging them as 
 best he can, according to his fundamental con- 
 ception of historic order. 
 
 This conception, as we have already seen, is 
 twofold: cyclical and progressive. Herodotus 
 had deeply implanted in his spirit the idea of a 
 cycle both in human affairs and in human con- 
 duct. It lay in the Greek consciousness from 
 the beginning ; Homer has it, and the poets of 
 the Trojan War are, as a whole, termed 
 cyclical; the Attic tragedians apply it toman's 
 deed, and Herodotus applies it to History in his 
 thought of Nemesis. 
 
 The Egyptians also had the cycle as physical 
 in the yearly return of the Nile, and in the 
 return of the soul to its former habitation. But 
 the Greeks conceived the cycle as spiritual, and 
 separated it from its physical substrate, wherein 
 lies their advance upon the Egyptians, 
 
BOOK SECOND. 139 
 
 Now Herodotus will apply the idea of the 
 cycle to the list of kings, so that each name will 
 stand for something in the movement of Egyp- 
 tian civilization ; if not for something important 
 always, at least for a good story, since that 
 barren inventory of royal names is death to the 
 sprightly Greek, though it may be dear to an 
 Egyptian priest. Then another principle comes 
 into play: the idea of progress, which also lies 
 deep in the spirit of our historian. The cycle 
 does not move merely back to its beginning and 
 so keep on repeating itself in an everlasting 
 routine, but it also moves forward, it has devel- 
 opment, progress; it begins the new age laden 
 with all the treasures of the old, and ad- 
 vances toward its goal by alvvays coming back to 
 itself. 
 
 Such are the two elements deeply underlying 
 the historic conception of Herodotus, which he 
 will apply, indeed cannot help applying, more or 
 less unconsciously, to Egyptian history. We 
 shall follow him on these lines, and seek to 
 rnake them more prominent and distinct, which 
 is possible chiefly through the fact that we can 
 look back at him through more than twenty- 
 three centuries, and see the complete unfolding 
 of that which he only saw in the germ. 
 
 I. The first cycle. This presents to us the 
 movement of old Egypt, after the rule of the 
 Gods, which rule Herodotus expressly leaves 
 
140 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 out. The land of the Nile organizes itself inter- 
 nally first then it bursts its bounds and rushes 
 forth to conquest, which embraces quite the whole 
 Orient; thereby it comes in contact with the 
 Occident, the new world, represented by the 
 Greeks. The three stages of this cycle may be 
 designated by the three leading kings, though 
 others are mentioned. 
 
 1. Menes, Such is the name of the first king 
 of Egypt, imparted to Herodotus by the priests, 
 and confirmed generally by succeeding authors 
 and by the monuments. This name has surpris- 
 ing analogies among many peoples of the globe, 
 being given to some early king, law-giver or 
 God — the Lydian Manes, the Greek Minos, the 
 Hindoo Menu, the Teutonic Mannus, to which 
 list we may add the English word man. The 
 Egyptian Menes does indeed the first work of 
 man in the Nile valley in furthering a civilized 
 order. 
 
 The prime fact of his career is that he built 
 the capital Memphis in the right spot to unite 
 the two parts of Egypt, upper and lower, which 
 nature has made so difi'erent, and which have a 
 tendency to separate. The one a long strip, the 
 other a triangular field, the one scattered, the 
 other concentrated, they will certainly be always 
 in danger of going asunder. Memphis, built at 
 the apex of the Delta, is by its position the uni- 
 fier. So we catch the idea of Menes in his first 
 
BOOK SECOND, Ul 
 
 work, which makes Egypt one nation, uniting 
 the hand to the arm of the Nile Valley. 
 
 Moreover he turned the Nile by an embank- 
 ment, and made it flow around the new city, 
 excavating also a lake which was situated to the 
 north and the west of Memphis. Thus the capi- 
 tal was surrounded by water, and lay on an 
 artificial island. All this must have been the 
 work of a great engineer and builder; he han- 
 dles already the mighty River, bending it to his 
 purpose; he erects a city in its former channel, 
 and encircles the same with water, for protec- 
 tion against the enemy. Menes already shows 
 the architectonic spirit of Egypt. 
 
 Herodotus states also that this king built the 
 vast temple of Vulcan, who was the Egyptian 
 God Ptah, the divine architect, maker of the 
 universe. Him the Greeks call the artificer, 
 or demiurge, the true deity of the Egyptian 
 mind, which chiefly uttered itself in building; 
 true patron deity also of Menes whom we have 
 already seen as builder. Doubtless from the 
 priests of this temple our historian derived the 
 information, which he has here given to us. 
 How old Egypt then was, let us ponder : be- 
 tween the reader reading these words at the end 
 of the 19th century and Herodotus listening 
 to the priests in the temple of Ptah, lie some 
 twenty-three centuries and a half; but between 
 Herodotus and Menes lies a greater length of 
 
142 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 time, according to the reckoning of most Egyp- 
 tologists. 
 
 Now follows a curious passage of our historian : 
 *' After this king the priests read me from a hook 
 the names of 330 other kings," whose reigns 
 had occupied as many generations ; 330 genera- 
 tions would fill 11,000 years. It is manifest that 
 Herodotus was puzzled much by these figures. 
 Moreover the list was a very barren one, only 
 two of the names are deemed worthy of mention. 
 One is that of a woman who is evidently noted 
 down because she was a woman and not a man, 
 our historian being quite partial to queens 
 throughout his history. The other name is that 
 of Moeris, also an engineer and builder, and thus 
 a repetition of Menes, inasmuch as he too dug a 
 lake and built a portal to the temple of Ptah, as 
 well as some pyramids. The reigns of these two 
 monarchs, Menes and Moeris, lay many hundreds 
 of years apart; indeed, if we accept the chronol- 
 ogy of Dr. Brugsch, and place the reign of 
 Menes at 4455 B. C, the two kings will be sepa- 
 rated by more than 3000 years. But Egyptian 
 chronology is a very uncertain thing ; no wonder 
 the Father of History held aloof from it as soon 
 as he heard it from those priests. Still here are 
 the monuments, here are the antiquities, which 
 must be accounted for ; accordingly they are 
 arranged in groups which show the movement of 
 Egyptian history, and are labeled with the name 
 of typical kings. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 143 
 
 Menes, therefore, may well stand for the inner 
 development of Egypt, and its unification into 
 one people. His is the spirit of construction; 
 he built cities and great public works, he also 
 built the nation. He lasted much longer than 
 his life, we have to think ; he represents an 
 epoch or an elenjent which enters into Egyptian 
 civilization. The works of many kings and many 
 ages may be stamped with his label; as, indeed, 
 the mythical spirit has a tendency to cluster all 
 the "Treat works and deeds of an era around some 
 one great name. 
 
 2. Sesostris. Egypt having been unified 
 within and having reached a high stage of inner 
 development, begins to move outward and to 
 assert herself in the rest of the world. She 
 subjects other peoples, she goes forth beyond 
 her own bounds which have become too small 
 for her spirit, and marks out for herself new 
 limits on the globe. She cannot remain cooped 
 up in the valley of the Nile, she breaks her 
 Egyptian shell and marches mightily forth to 
 conquest. 
 
 This movement from internal development to 
 external conquest is connected with the name of 
 Sesostris. Though the Egyptians were hardly 
 a seafaring people, this king gathered ships of 
 war on the Eed Sea, and sought to conquer by 
 means of a navy — a plan which probably did 
 not succeed. Then he collected a vast army and 
 
144 THE FATHER OF BISTOBY. 
 
 traversed the continent, reaching even Thrace 
 and Scythia on the North and extending his 
 sway to the Ethiopians on the Sonth. Concern- 
 ing his conquests eastward no statement is 
 given by our historian. It is manifest, how- 
 ever, that Sesostris is conceived as push- 
 ing out the arms of Egypt quite to the 
 limits of the then known world ; he ran up to 
 the rim of the desert and of savagery which 
 surrounded the more civilized portion of man- 
 kind. This rim we shall see to be a very im- 
 portant element in the historic conception of 
 Herodotus. 
 
 Such was the culmination of the national 
 spirit of Egypt, the period of its greatest 
 power and glory. It is now generally acknowl- 
 that the military exploits of several of the most 
 warlike Egyptian monarchs are ascribed to 
 Sesostris. The original Sesostris is supposed to 
 be King Osirtasen I. of the Twelfth Dynasty 
 (B. C. 2080, according to Mr. Stuart Poole, but 
 B. C. 3064 according to M. Lenormant). The 
 fact is that Sesostris was the typical Egyptian 
 conqueror, standing for all of them, and repre- 
 senting the spirit of conquest. As already 
 stated in the case of Menes, the people concen- 
 trate all the great deeds and characters of an 
 epoch or of a class into one personality. The 
 people are mythical in spirit and must have the 
 all-embracing hero. Our historian sympathizes 
 
BOOK SECOND. 145. 
 
 with this popular trait, he can do nothing with a 
 Ion": chronological list of kinoes. 
 
 Such, then, is the main fact of Sesostris — 
 external conquest- But other points are noted. 
 Very naturally his absence from home caused 
 internal trouble ; his brother conspired against 
 him — which resulted in a terrible domestic 
 tragedy. The prisoners whom he brought from 
 foreign lands he compelled to dig canals; with 
 the name of Sesostris is connected the canaliza- 
 tion of Egypt. His name is also connected 
 with the land tenure of the Nile valley ; ** he made 
 a division of the soil among all Egyptians, 
 giving a square plot of ground to each one" 
 (109); that is, the individual ownership of 
 property is ascribed to him. Also he was a 
 builder and a patron of sculpture. 
 
 The Egyptian, however, was no organizer of 
 conquest, such as was the Persian, notably 
 Darius. Booty and captives were brought back 
 from conquered lands, but there never was 
 probably a vast consolidated Egyptian Empire. 
 The greatest of Egyptian conquerors is now 
 known by the name of Thothmes III. (eighteenth 
 dynasty, 1700-1600 B. C), who seems to have 
 overrun all Western Asia. But he, too, had 
 quite vanished into the name of Sesostris when 
 Herodotus visited Egypt twelve centuries after 
 his time. The one represented all ; in the royal 
 list of Herodotus there is no other conqueror. 
 
 10 
 
146 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Sesostris is succeeded by a son who evidently 
 was not like his father. A story is told of him 
 and then he is dismissed. The military epoch is 
 past; just through her wars, Egypt is brought in 
 contact with other nations. Sesostris is the 
 name which represents Egypt as breaking over 
 her ancient limits, becoming universal, uniting 
 with Asiatic nations, and sharing in the move- 
 ment of the World's History. Next comes her 
 relation to Europe, the new, continent of that 
 time, with its new spirit represented by Greece. 
 Now to the Greek mind the grand conflict between 
 Orient and Occident was begun on the plains of 
 Troy, and was sung of by Homer. Accordingly 
 our historian introduces an Egyptian king who 
 lived in the time of the Trojan War, and who is 
 to show his attitude toward that conflict, as well 
 as towards Homer and Helen. 
 
 3. Proteus. The name is Greek and is un- 
 doubtedly derived from the Odyssey, which 
 represents the sea-god Proteus as frequenting 
 the island of Pharos along the coast of Egypt. 
 The mythus again takes him up, but places him 
 now upon the Egyptian throne, from which he is 
 to utter his decision in the famous case of Helen 
 and Paris. 
 
 The land of the Nile was known to Homer. 
 The Iliad, in an oft-cited passage, speaks of the 
 hundred gates of Egyptian Thebes, and the 
 Odyssey draws Egypt into the stream of its action, 
 
BOOK SECOND. 1 47 
 
 inasmuch as Meneiaus and Helen are borne to 
 Egypt on their return home from Troy. In fact, 
 the old Greek poet mythologizes Egyptian spirit 
 into the form of the sea-god Proteus, who hints 
 the manifold appearance of the sense-world, yet 
 also the essence therein; those transformations 
 of Proteus in the Odyssey are the outward shows 
 of things, while there is underneath them all one 
 abiding substance, which is the true form of the 
 god, and which Meneiaus is at last to grasp 
 and make talk. (See author's Commentary 
 on Homer's Odyssey, Book IV.) So we have 
 seen the Nile breaking forth into many shapes 
 of nature — - animal, plant, man — yet there 
 is the one principle under all its manifesta- 
 tions. 
 
 Now Meneiaus, as a Greek, has to solve the 
 Egyptian problem before he can get home to 
 Greece with his Helen. He must in his way 
 master the dualism between sense and spirit, 
 between known and unknown. His way is the 
 mythical, Homer is a natural mythologist, all the 
 movements of his own spirit and of the World's 
 History belonging to his time he transforms into 
 a Mythus. Thus he has done with Egypt in the 
 story of Proteus. Also in the second part of 
 the Odyssey (the, last twelve Books) Egypt 
 appears in the background repeatedly. Here, 
 then, we see the first traces of intercourse be- 
 tween Greece and Egypt, long before the time of 
 
148 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Psammetichus and Amasis, who took Greeks into 
 their service. 
 
 Herodotus says that Homer lived 400 years 
 ** before my time," and there is no doubt that the 
 lonians and Carians from the coast of Asia 
 Minor near Troy, and from the islands of the 
 Egeaq, had brought to Egypt the knowledge of 
 Homer, and of the Trojan struggle. The Egyp- 
 tian priests, therefore, had known of the great 
 Greek epics for 200 years before Herodotus, 
 and had transformed them according to the 
 Egyptian idea, which transformation we are now 
 to hear. 
 
 In the first place, these priests report that 
 Paris and Helen were driven by contrary winds 
 to Egypt, where the king, Proteus, learning of 
 the wrong, detained Helen. Then the Greeks 
 make the expedition to Troy, capture the city, 
 but find no Helen. Menelaus goes to Egypt, 
 where he recovers his wife and treasures, and, 
 requiting evil for good, does a great wrong to 
 the Egyptians, for which he is driven away. 
 
 Such is the Tale of Troy Egyptianized. The 
 sack of the Trojan city is for nothing, the great 
 conflict between Orient and Occident has no 
 meaning. Helen is reall}^ in Egypt, not in Troy ; 
 Proteus is the moral hero, and surrenders her to 
 her rightful lord without a fight ; he does not 
 care for the ideal Greek beauty, nor does Egypt. 
 Finally the wicked deed is done by the Greek 
 
BOOK SECOND. 149 
 
 chieftain, who is for his conduct driven out of 
 Egypt. 
 
 Such is, then, the Egyptian Iliad. The priests 
 take Helen away from Paris, and keep her and 
 restore her, according to justice, abolishing the 
 Trojan War, or the great Greek movement, 
 which gives the supreme picture of Hellenic 
 spirit in the heroic age, and indeed for all time. 
 Still we should note that Egypt recognizes Greece 
 in restoring Helen. 
 
 The historian in the main agrees with the 
 Egyptian view. Already we have seen him 
 in a kind of moral protest against the Trojan 
 legend. The same protest was common at 
 Athens in his time, and was specially voiced by 
 Euripides. Our author indeed becomes quite 
 dramatic in this part, and employs speeches and 
 dialogue; he catches some of the Homeric 
 vividness in speaking of Homer. 
 
 Naturally the question comes up; Who made 
 the story? It is manifestly a product of Greek 
 and Egyptian combined; the myth-making 
 spirit could not help working over the old legend 
 and adjusting it to the new circumstances. 
 Homer was probably an Ionic Greek and sang 
 his strains on the coast of Asia Minor and 
 among the isles of the Aegean. From the same 
 quarter came later those Ionic mercenaries who 
 were given a foothold in Egypt by King Psam- 
 metichus and King Amasis. We can still im- 
 
150 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY, 
 
 agine those Ionic soldiers chanting the measures 
 of their great poet in their camp alongside the 
 Nile, and gradually bringing him and his theme 
 to the knowledge of the priests. The inter- 
 preters, sprung of both nationalities, must also 
 have united the characteristics of both, and have 
 helped to bring about a spiritual acquaintance 
 between the two peoples. Hence arose a Greco- 
 Egyptian Mythus, a thread of which we find 
 running through this Second Book of Herodotus 
 and culminatino; in the legend of Proteus. 
 
 Thus the Homeric poems, the earliest and 
 greatest Greek book, are interwoven into 
 Egyptian history. It is true that there never 
 was such an Egyptian King as Proteus, his name 
 has not been found on the monuments ; still 
 Greek influence, even Homer, is entering Egypt, 
 just as Egyptian influence is entering Greece, as 
 celebrated in many a legend. Greece is the next 
 heir of Egypt in the World's History ; we shall 
 henceforth see the Egyptian world slowly van- 
 ishing into the Grecian, till the Ptolemies, 
 Greek conquerors and kings possess and rule 
 the valley of the Nile. 
 
 So we may affirm that Herodotus, in this 
 Mythus of Proteus, is truer to the spirit of history 
 than the monuments, which are mute on this 
 subject of Greek influence, for the priests prob- 
 ably would not acknowledge it. Yet the Greco- 
 Egyptian bridge on which the World-Spirit 
 
BOOK SECOND. 1^1 
 
 travels out of Egypt and the Orient into 
 Hellas and the Occident, is being rapidly con- 
 structed. 
 
 But the Homeric mythical connection is not the 
 only one in Greek story. There is the tale of 
 Oedipus who guesses the sphinx-riddle, being 
 thus the Greek intelligence which solves the 
 Eiryptian problem. There is the Minotaur, 
 half man and half bull, an Egyptian shape of a 
 God, guarding the Cretan Labyrinth, also derived 
 from Egypt; this Minotaur is slain by a Greek 
 hero, Theseus, and the Labyrinth is threaded. 
 So Perseus another Greek hero frees the beau- 
 tiful Andromeda from an Oriental monster; 
 Bellerophon also puts down the Chimaera, the 
 commingled animal shape of the East. And 
 Zeus, disguised in the form of a bull, and appear- 
 ing to fair Europa, expresses a Greco-Egyptian 
 mythical relation. 
 
 Thus our historian, seeking to set forth not 
 merely certain deeds done, but to give the history 
 of a total consciousness, cannot leave out the 
 mythical element, if he is faithful to his call. 
 For the earliest form in which history expresses 
 itself is the mythus. Especially the imaginative 
 Greek spirit, receiving from and giving to the 
 Orient, uttered itself wholly in a mythical form 
 at first, and partially so to the last. 
 
 Such is an outline of the first cycle of Egyp- 
 tian History as conceived by Herodotus, not 
 
152 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 altogether consciously and clearly, but with a 
 Greek poetic instinct which compels him to set 
 in some kind of order the chaotic mass of names 
 and events before him. In Menes is the idea of 
 an internal unfolding into a nation, the rise of that 
 individual people called Egyptian. In Sesos- 
 tris we see the same people expanding beyond 
 their national limits and taking up into them- 
 selves other nations by conquest, especially 
 Asiatic, Oriental. In Proteus we observe that 
 they are brushing against Europe, they have 
 met the Greeks, their future masters, who are 
 their successors in the grand world-historical 
 movement from Orient to Occident. As yet, 
 however, this Greek element is but a secret 
 influence entering the Egyptian soul, not recog- 
 nized by the Egyptian, but distinctly seen and 
 indicated by the Greek historian looking back- 
 ward in time. 
 
 Rliampsinitus . As a kind of pendant to the 
 Egyptian transformation of Homer, we next are 
 treated to a wholly different sort of tale, which 
 is usually called the Treasure of Rhampsinitus. 
 It belongs to the same species as the well-known 
 Master Thief, and has its counterpart in folk- 
 tales of all peoples, which have often in them a 
 strain of glorification for the man of cunning. 
 The Odyssey is not altogether exempt from such 
 a tendency. Still the present tale is on the 
 whole in strong contrast with the Homeric tale 
 
BOOK SECOND, 153 
 
 of Helen, in which the stolen is restored, and 
 the arch-thief along with his people receive 
 punishment. At present, however, the robber 
 is the hero, and is successful in all that he under- 
 takes. It has a decided touch of the Arabian 
 Nights, and as the Arabians were neighbors to 
 Egypt and always in close communication with 
 it, we may here find an early edition of an 
 Arabian tale transferred to Egyptian soil. Cer- 
 tainly it is, as here told, more Oriental than 
 Greek, though Herodotus may have derived it 
 from his Greek guide. 
 
 The general trend of the story is that author- 
 ity is foiled at every point by cunning, and has 
 to compromise with the latter, else it will steal 
 all the State's treasures. Thus the tale hints a 
 perennial condition of things ; old Egypt had the 
 same difficulty as modern Chicago. How can 
 the social order get the man of intellectual keen- 
 ness on its side? Observe that the king gives to 
 the arch-thief his own daughter, and thus secures 
 himself. The skillful thief (boodler we some- 
 times call him now) knows the secret stone of 
 the treasure house, and pulls it out ; then he 
 enters and helps himself. Somehow the king, 
 (our Law), cannot catch him; nay, he often 
 makes his own terms with the Law-giving power 
 (Legislature). So we can well have our mod- 
 ernized edition of this old folk-tale of the 
 Treasure of E-bampsinitus, inasmuch the material 
 
154 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 of it is eternal, and may take on various forms 
 according to nation, custom, and environment. 
 
 II. The Second Cycle. The previous cycle 
 showed Egypt in its greatness ; it developed to 
 its fullness, it broke forth from its bounds and 
 imposed its influence upon foreigners, but foreign 
 influence has begun to return upon it and to de- 
 termine its character. Herewith takes place an 
 inner scission ; the two tendencies, domestic and 
 foreign, meet upon Egyptian soil; there result 
 civil strife, war, inner disruption. Egypt is 
 passing out of its exclusive, isolated, individual 
 condition, and is being slowly absorbed into the 
 greater movement of the World's History; but 
 it has first to be all broken to pieces, its refrac- 
 tory spirit of isolation, its pride must be crushed 
 for a thousand years. 
 
 Many are the phases of this inner trouble, but 
 the chief conflict lay between king and priest- 
 hood, the secular and the religious elements, or, 
 as we say, between State and Church. Medieval 
 Europe went through a corresponding transition 
 in the strife between the royal and the papal 
 power. The priesthood sought to keep the 
 country apart, exclusive, for itself, to hold it 
 forever under the might of sacerdotalism. But 
 there was a national movement in the land, or 
 perchance a world-historical trend, which was 
 bent upon breaking those inner bonds of the 
 priesthood. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 155 
 
 It is true that the history of Herodotus does 
 not in so many words make the above statements, 
 but it gives the facts and the reigns in such an 
 order that the thought comes out plain to the 
 attentive reader. This movement has its three 
 stages. 
 
 1, The pyramid-builders. Concerning these 
 monarchs the report of the priests to Herodotus 
 was very unfavorable. The first one, Cheops, 
 '* shut up all the temples and forbade sacrifices 
 to the Gods," and then he *' made all the Egyp- 
 tians work for himself " in building his pyramid, 
 which altogether took twenty years. Another 
 tale of infamy is heaped upon this Cheops in 
 regard to the degradation of bis own daughter. 
 He was succeeded by his brother, Chephren, of 
 like character, who also built a great pyramid. 
 The two brothers reigned 106 years, during 
 which Egypt suffered all sorts of calamities, and 
 ** the temples were never opened." So we seem 
 to catch a decided note of priestly hatred : '' the 
 Egyptians are not willing to mention their names, 
 through hate of them," 
 
 Herein we certainly have to read the strong 
 antagonism between king and priest, which ex- 
 presses itself in the building of the pyramids 
 versus the closing of the temples. But why 
 should the priests develop such an opposition to 
 the pyramid ? It was the tomb of the king^ to 
 be built far greater than the abode of the God, 
 
156 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 home of the priests. It probably indicates also 
 a new religious direction, it is a tremendous 
 struggle to build immortality in stone. 
 
 The pyramid seems a grand means of protec- 
 tion, a fortress raised against Time itself, in 
 which fortress the body of the monarch is laid. 
 The people grind out their life in erecting it; do 
 they have no share, no spiritual participation, in 
 the pyramid? I believe they do, it is their 
 symbol too, in it they meet the negative power 
 of Time, the all-devouring ; they give Time this 
 huge stone which he cannot digest. The Egyp- 
 tian is thus trying to transcend the power of 
 Time, not through mind, but through matter; 
 by means of a temporal fortress he will shut out 
 the temporal; by means of the sensible he will 
 reach the supersensible. Desperate was the 
 struggle ; by the aid of their hands they wrought 
 for salvation ; they had to build something im- 
 mortal here and now. The p3"ramid is an 
 Egyptian document of immortality, a longing to 
 last forever, an eternal sigh in stone for eternity. 
 
 I believe, therefore, that the pyramids express 
 the consciousness of the Egyptian people at a 
 certain stage of their national life. Not mere 
 objects of tyranny; no absolute monarch could 
 have erected them without the support of the 
 people, by his mere arbitrary fiat. They express 
 the overpowering feeling for immortality, the 
 people's, not alone the king's. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 157 
 
 But wherefore the antagonism of the priests? 
 Very difficult to tell with exactness; still we do 
 know that org^anized sacerdotalism is usually 
 opposed to any new doctrine. The pyramid was 
 certainly religious in origin; it was a kind of 
 temple too, as against the»old kind of temple. 
 If we were to hazard a conjecture, it would be that 
 the old reliction had become too sensuous; the 
 religion of the pyramids puts new stress upon the 
 supersensible, the immortal. For the overwhelm- 
 ing effect of the pyramids lies in the fact that 
 they seek to master in a direct grapple the very 
 condition of the sense- world, namely Space and 
 Time, by their two supreme characteristics, colos- 
 sality and durability. The body lay mummified 
 in the pyramid, but that was not enough; it was 
 given a new body of stone of vast proportions, 
 taking up Space into itself, and a new body of 
 granite for the most part, which would defy 
 Time. I cannot help regarding these pyramids 
 built so impressively and with so much sincerity 
 as monuments of a great relisfious Reformation 
 which, like some other Reformations that might 
 be mentioned, has remained in bad odor with the 
 priests, or with a class thereof. So Cheops and 
 Cephrenes, builders of the greatest monuments 
 of Egypt and of Time, have been damned. 
 
 When the third pyramid-builder, Mycerinus, 
 appears, it is plain that a reaction is setting in, 
 or a compromise is taking place. Though the 
 
158 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 son of Cheops, he '* opened the temples again, 
 and permitted the people to return to their 
 sacrifices and employments; " also he was just 
 in his decisions. Hence he is the most highly 
 praised of all the kings that ever ruled in Egypt. 
 Evidently he reconciled the opposing sides, still 
 he built his pyramid too, though it was much 
 smaller than either of the others. Thus the two 
 diverse elements of faith began to get along 
 together. It should be noted that the pyramids 
 are not far from Memphis where was the great 
 temple of Vulcan (Ptah). So they stood in 
 rivalry. 
 
 After Mycerinus, the third pyramid builder, 
 comes Asychis, who not only opened the temple 
 of Vulcan (Ptah), but built a large and beautiful 
 addition to it, a portico ; manifestly there is a 
 religious reaction. Still he too built a pyramid, 
 he did not wholly abandon the new movement, 
 though his pyramid was of brick, and his portico 
 of the finest stone and workmanship. Moreover, 
 can we not see that the tomb is becoming some- 
 what less sacred by the fact that the law can 
 seize it for the benefit of the creditor? A living 
 civil relation has become paramount to the 
 sepulchre. So we may interpret this fact in con- 
 nection with the new movement. 
 
 The next king: is called the blind kino^, whose 
 rei^n stands for internal trouble, and external 
 interference. The Ethiopians enter and rule 
 
BOOK SECOND, 159 
 
 Egypt which once ruled Ethiopia; a change 
 which means decline, dissension, weakness. 
 The foreign king at last left Egypt voluntarily 
 on account of a dream, possibly the result of 
 the priests working upon his superstition. At 
 any rate the sacerdotal order gets the benefit of 
 his withdrawal, since soon we find one of their 
 order in possession of the throne. 
 
 2. The Priest-king , He doubtless represents 
 the extreme of the reaction against the pyramid- 
 builders, being a priest of Vulcan (of Ptah), 
 whose temple we have already noted at Memphis, 
 the rallying point against the pyramids. He 
 ''despised the military class," as not needing 
 their services, thinking to do all now by a divine 
 miracle, of which the flight of the Ethiopians is 
 an example, and still more the undoing of the 
 Assvrians under Sennacherib, throuo^h the field 
 mice gnawing the bowstrings of their archers. 
 In token of which miracle a statue of this king 
 with a mouse on his hand stands in the temple of 
 of Ptah (Vulcan) bearing the inscription " Who- 
 ever looks on me, let him revere the Gods." 
 In all of which one cannot help feeling the 
 sacerdotal influence. 
 
 Our historian now takes the opportunity of 
 dilating upon theological topics, fit subject for a 
 priestly reign. First is the idea of a great 
 antiquity, the historic descent of the priesthood, 
 counting in one case 345 generations — more 
 
160 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 than 11,000 years — a kind of apostolic descent 
 and transmission, here from father to son. 
 That which was ancient was holy to the Egyp- 
 tian ; as we go backward in Time, we come 
 nearer to the Gods, who are always first. Hence 
 the priesthood were the conservators of the old, 
 this is the ground probably of their difference 
 with the pyramid builders. 
 
 Another claim is that in these 11,000 years 
 and more, no God has assumed the form of a 
 man. The Greek Hecataeus held that he, six- 
 teen generations back, was derived from a 
 God; the Egyptian priest Pyromis traced his 
 genealogy 345 generations back without any 
 God, which was his rebuttal of Hecataeus. 
 The Greek has the idea strongly of divine 
 sonship in many cases; the Egyptian and the 
 Oriental consciousness generally reject it stoutly, 
 hence they have not become Christian. So the 
 old Egyptian would not allow men to be born of 
 a God, in strong contrast with the Greek. 
 
 In the third place, Herodotus undertakes in a 
 short account to translate the Egyptian Pantheon 
 into the Greek one. It is indeed a difficult task. 
 The chief mythus of Egypt, that of Osiris, 
 Typhon (Seth), and Horus will not easily fit into 
 any Greek account of Greek Gods — Osiris here 
 being called Bacchus and Horus Apollo. Still 
 further, the most recent Greek Gods are Pan, 
 Hercules and Bacchus; but in Egypt Pan is 
 
BOOK SECOND. 161 
 
 among the oldest Gods, and Hercules is in the 
 second class; Bacchus, though among the new- 
 est Gods, goes back 15,000 years from the time 
 of Amasis. All these Gods being new in Greece 
 were transferred from Egypt to Hellas, '* and so 
 the Egyptians themselves relate;" they are the 
 old parents of the Greeks. 
 
 It is manifest that the Egyptian priests were 
 in the time of Herodotus making the attempt to 
 connect their Gods with the Greek ones, claim- 
 ing antiquity and even ancestry. The. prestige 
 of age they had, and our historian accepts it and 
 reverences it. One other point may be men- 
 tioned, also connected with religion (142); the 
 rising and the setting Sun changed places four 
 times in these 11,000 years, which were reck- 
 oned to the reign of this priest-king, Sethon. 
 Three-thousand years was the period of trans- 
 migration, which the Sun also measured, as it 
 does the cycle of daily life. 
 
 It is evident that this priest-king gave up the 
 defense of Egypt through its soldier class; the 
 result is that after his reign the country fell to 
 pieces. No less than twelve kings are ruling at 
 once. So the priest governing the State destroys 
 it, sacerdotalism has ever been destructive of the 
 political element of a land. The former unity 
 of Egypt is disrupted. 
 
 Still this dodecarchy, evidently a kind of con- 
 federacy, seeks to establish and perpetuate itself. 
 
 11 
 
162 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Friendship, treaties, interraarriages — such are 
 some of the means of union, but the chief is the 
 construction of the Labyrinth. It is claimed 
 that these kings built the Labyrinth with twelve 
 courts, three thousand rooms, one-half above 
 ground and one-half below ground. So the dual- 
 ism again shows itself, the here and the beyond, 
 the known and the hidden. It contains the 
 tombs of the kings who built it and of the sacred 
 crocodiles. 
 
 3. Psammetichus and Amasis. The return to 
 unity isnow the movement ; one king, Psamme- 
 tichus, suppresses the division and unites Egypt 
 again. But he does so by the aid of foreigners, 
 who have already been reacting upon the land of 
 the Nile from the West. Some lonians and Car- 
 ians from the coast of Asia Minor and from the 
 Greek Islands of the Aegaean are thrown upon 
 Egypt by stress of weather ; these are the men 
 of fate for the Egyptian people, inasmuch as they 
 help Psammetichus gain the throne and become 
 its chief upholders. This king, accordingly, gives 
 the Greeks a foothold in Egypt, from which they 
 have not been dislodged to this day. He assigned 
 to them lands called *' the Camps," through 
 which flowed a branch of the Nile. Note this 
 other important fact: he caused Egyptian 
 children to be trained in the Greek tongue, who 
 became the interpreters. Also the children of 
 these Greeks must have spoken both languages. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 163 
 
 Psammetichus did not neglect the Egyptian 
 and his religion. He too constructed a portico to 
 Vulcan's temple facing southward, and built a 
 court for Apis. The religious war is evidently at 
 an end, the secular ruler is restored. But the 
 great new thing is that Egypt is becoming Hel- 
 lenized. It has a body of interpreters, who inter- 
 pret Greek poetry and thought to Egypt, and 
 Egypt to travelers. 
 
 In the reign of Apries, we observe that the 
 Greek foreigners were creating trouble ; the mili- 
 tary class, who revolted and set up Amasis, were 
 met by the Ionian and Carian auxiliaries to the 
 number of 30,000. But Amasis found little 
 favor among the native Egyptians who despised 
 him as not being of an illustrious family ; the 
 result was he turned to the Greeks, and gave them 
 a city Naucratis, and other places for trading as 
 well as for their altars and temples. Nay, he 
 dedicated offerings to the Greek Gods at Samos 
 and elsewhere, as Croesus did. To be sure, he 
 dedicated many works to the Egyptian deities 
 also, especially at Sals (to Minerva). Greek 
 philosophers, Solon and Pythagoras and Thales, 
 visited Egypt during his reign and learned her 
 wisdom. He broke down the castes of Egypt; 
 he was himself a man of no standing in ancestry. 
 He feels the new spirit rising in and around the 
 Aegaean ; he accepts it and is ruled by it. Psam- 
 metichus obtained the crown of the nation, united 
 
164 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 by help of the Greek, and he was aided by their 
 power, but Amasis was intellectually dominated 
 by Greek spirit. 
 
 Herodotus declares (147) that he has other 
 authority besides the Egyptians for what he says 
 about this last dynasty from Psammetichus 
 onward. Doubtless he means the Greeks. More 
 historical he feels the account to be ; in fact, the 
 time begins to move into his chronological era, 
 ' which starts from 100 to 200 years before his 
 age. Perhaps if we heard the priests on Psam- 
 metichus and Amasis, we would have a different 
 color in the narrative. 
 
 Thus we behold at the end of this Second 
 Cycle of Egyptian History the new spirit, repre- 
 sented by the Greek, entering Eijypt and really 
 taking possession, through Amusis, the king. 
 In a sense this is the destruction of Egypt, as the 
 seed is destroyed by the sproutling. In another 
 sense the Greek influence is the preservation of 
 Egypt, it was joined to the World's History and 
 still has its place in the World's Culture largely 
 throu2:h Greece. A number of Greek writers for 
 a thousand years and more sought to reveal the 
 Egyptian secret to the world. For that which is 
 mystery in the Egyptian must become revelation 
 in the Greek. So the Greek has been the 
 interpreter of the secluded, secretive people of 
 the Nile to the world. 
 
 The Second Cycle began with a great struggle 
 
BOOK SECOND. 165 
 
 in the land, that between king and priest ; first 
 the king triumphed, then the priest ruled and the 
 country ended in complete disunion; this dis- 
 union was overcome by an Egyptian king calling 
 in an external force, the Greek, who really dis- 
 places the Egyptian soldier, and causes him to 
 migrate to Ethiopia. It looks as if the military 
 and sacerdotal caste had undone each other. 
 Really Greek power and Greek thought control 
 Egypt. 
 
 Is Egypt to secede from the Orient and go over 
 to Hellas? Such is the question which introduces 
 the Persian upon the scene. Persia is now the 
 grand bearer of the Orient, the conflict with 
 Greece and the Occident has been already sharplv 
 defined, specially by Cyrus. His son Cambyses 
 turns his attention to Egypt, which easily falls 
 under the Persian yoke. So both, native king 
 and Greek soldier, are set aside for a new 
 dynasty and a new military power. 
 
 Note. It is to be observed that the preceding 
 account of Herodotus does not agree with in- 
 formation from other sources, such as the lists 
 of Manetho and Turin papyrus, and the monu- 
 ments as deciphered by modern Egyptology. 
 The period of the three chief pyramid-builders 
 is thrown back to the Fourth Dynasty (about 
 4000 B. C), and is supposed to have been pre- 
 ceded by other pyramid-builders. Thus the 
 pyramids are declared to antedate by thousands 
 
IGG THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 of years the great coDquerors represented in 
 Sesostris. 
 
 Still the names of the chief pyramid-builders 
 as given by Herodotus are confirmed by the 
 monuments, being designated on them as 
 Khufu (Cheops), Khafra (Chephren), Men- 
 kaura (Mycerinus). Manifestly the guides of 
 Herodotus were not trained archaeologists, nor 
 was he. We, however, are, at present, study- 
 ing Herodotus and are trying to place ourselves 
 upon his standpoint ; into the history of Egypt 
 as found in modern text-books, there is here no 
 intention of entering. That has become a great 
 department of investigation by itself, with its 
 own demands, methods and aims. 
 
 In the present case we are seeking to view the 
 movement of Egyptian history as it was looked 
 at by the Egyptian, or rather the Greco-Egyp- 
 tian mind four and a half centuries B. C. Every 
 age has its own way of regarding the events and 
 movements of former ages ; the history of pre- 
 ceding epochs has to be interpreted anew by each 
 succeeding epoch. For us, looking back at the 
 reign of King John of England, the main event is 
 the Magna Charta. But for Shakespeare and for 
 Shakespeare's England that was not the chief 
 matter, the great poet of the English-speaking 
 people never mentions the struggle over the 
 Great Charter in his drama ot King John ^ but 
 4Qe3 put Stress upon the religious oonfliot witb 
 
BOOK SECOND. 167 
 
 Rome, this being the absorbing matter of inter- 
 est in the Elizabethan age. 
 
 So the pyramids were regarded and interpreted 
 in the light of the time, when the historian saw 
 them ; the consciousness of the present is pro- 
 jected backward into the remote past, and traces 
 itself out of antiquity. Such a view is not false, 
 but deeply genuine, and valid in its sphere. 
 
OBSEBVATIONS ON THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
 This Book is not an episode in the History of 
 Herodotus, in the sense of being extraneous 
 to the subject. On the contrary it is deeply, and 
 we think, artistically adjusted to the conception 
 of the historian, which is that of the World's 
 History. Not always consciously present to him 
 is this conception, still it is always at work and 
 is the driving-wheel of his total history. Egypt 
 has to be shown developing through itself, as an 
 individual nation, in its secluded Nile valley, till 
 it moves forth out of itself and is taken up into 
 the world-historical process. Such we have 
 already noted in the First Book to be the pro- 
 cedure of Herodotus; each people has its time 
 of inner development, its national birth ; then it 
 breaks its bounds and reveals its internal power 
 outwardly as a conqueror of other peoj^les ; finally 
 comes the period of dissolution within and sub- 
 jugation without. Such is, in general, the move- 
 ment of the Oriental nation. 
 (168) 
 
BOOK SECOND. 169 
 
 The entire Book, accordingly, maybe regarded 
 as the movement of Egypt into the World's 
 History. After its inner development, it is joined 
 to the Persian Empire, whose function is to con- 
 solidate the whole Orient against Hellas. Egypt 
 has felt many Hellenic influences, still it is 
 Oriental and so belongs to Persia in this final 
 mustering of nations in the present epoch. Later 
 it will be ruled by a Greek dynasty. 
 
 I. Summary of Egyptian History. It is 
 manifest, then, that Herodotus gives, under 
 names of kings, the movements or cycles which 
 he sees in Egyptian History. He openly re- 
 jected much what the priests told him, being 
 mainly a vast mass of names, years, dates, 
 dynasties, without any visible order or inner 
 principle. Nor was there apparently any 
 chronological canon, except succession, almost 
 as blank as Time itself. Still less did any poetic 
 ordering come to light. So the historian, keep- 
 ing up a kind of historic continuity of names, 
 really puts the events, deeds, and great works 
 under heads and arranges them through his 
 artistic instinct into what we have named cycles. 
 
 These we shall briefly recapitulate. 
 
 1. The first cycle — old Egypt, considered as a 
 unity ; time of growth, the unfolding of the nation. 
 
 (1) Menes. Internal development; the found- 
 ing of the capital (Memphis) and the management 
 of the Nile. 
 
170 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 (2) Sesostris. External conquest, with works 
 at home. 
 
 (3) Proteus. Foreign influence, Greek espe- 
 cially, which is expressed mythically, however. 
 
 2. The second cycle. — Egypt disunited, sepa- 
 rated within itself; national dissolution. 
 
 (1) The pyramid-builders ; king versus priest, 
 the religious breach. 
 
 (2) The priest is king; enemies (Assyrian 
 and Ethiopian) miraculously driven off", still the 
 country falls to pieces (the Dodecarchy ). 
 
 (3) New unity of Egypt, not from within, but 
 from without, by means of Greek mercenaries. 
 Psammetichus to Amasis. Egypt now enters 
 Greek history, and becomes a sharer in the his- 
 toric continuity of Hellas and of Europe. 
 
 3. The third cycle. — This embraces the time 
 of Herodotus and extends beyond him, as well as 
 before him. 
 
 (1) The Persian rule, beginning with Cam- 
 byses. ( See next Book. ) Thus Egypt is joined 
 to the Orient in the Persian Empire, and is 
 thrown against Greece in the great conflict. 
 
 (2) The Egyptians revolt from Persia, and are 
 aided by Greeks, especially by the Athenians, 
 who send their ships to the Nile. But Egypt 
 remains Persian for the present ; in this condi- 
 tion Herodotus sees it, probably not long after the 
 period of the revolt of Inaros (B, C. 460), la 
 g@»@ral tbi^^ epo^h \% a continued ^truggla aa to 
 
BOOK SECOND. 171 
 
 who shall have Egypt — Persia, Greece, or 
 Egypt herself. Not fully settled till long after 
 the time of Herodotus in favor of the Greek. 
 
 (3) The Ptolomies, Greek rulers of Egypt, 
 who, however, fuse with the spirit of the people, 
 and reign till its absorption into the Koman Em- 
 pire. This brings Egyptian history down to the 
 Christian Era. 
 
 Thus we see a Greek strand interweaving itself 
 into Egypt through all three cycles, from Homer 
 down, both mythically and historically. The old 
 Nile-people, with all its wonders of art, custom, 
 faith, had a great fascination for the impression- 
 able Greek, who in every age has grappled with 
 the sphinx-riddle, and sought to interpret the 
 same. These interpretations have a history and, 
 inded, a significance of their own; we still have 
 to consult them in order to understand Egypt, 
 and also in order to understand the many-sided 
 activity of the Hellenic mind. Accordingly, we 
 shall give a brief abstract in the following : — 
 
 II. Greek Interpretations OF Egypt. Along 
 with the actual monuments of Egypt and its 
 written records, we have to look mto the succes- 
 sive Greek accounts, which are indeed the chan- 
 nel conducting the Egyptian stream into the 
 world's culture. The interpretation of Egypt into 
 Greek life and thought moved mamly on three 
 lines, the mythical, the historical, and the philoso- 
 pbici in each of which tJre^k .spirit >vus fit bom^. 
 
172 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 (1) The Greek mythical interpretation. The 
 grand separation and distinction of Hellas from 
 the Orient and specially from Egypt' was reflected 
 in many a legend. First and best is the Homeric 
 tale of Proteus in the Odyssey, which Menelaus 
 tells to the Greek youth, Telemachus. The story 
 of Oedipus is directly connected with the sphinx 
 and her riddle, which the Greek has to guess or 
 to perish. The Labyrinth and the Minotaur 
 (the latter half man and half bull, and hence 
 suggestive of Apis) appear in Crete, the border- 
 land between Greece and Egypt; Theseus, the 
 Greek hero, has to slay the monster (Egyptian) 
 and to release its prey, who are children of the 
 Greeks. Likewise in the les^ends of Danaus and 
 of Perseus we trace the Hellenic relation to 
 Egypt. So much for the early Greek mythus; 
 but the Greek mythical spirit kept playing with 
 Eg3'pt and its wonders through the Alexandrian 
 epoch till long after the Christian era. 
 
 (2) The Greek historical interpretation. 
 Here in particular belongs Herodotus, whose 
 visit to Egypt is usually placed 460-55 B. C. 
 He combines, to a certain extent, all three ways 
 of looking at Egypt. He has a mythical vein, 
 also a touch of philosophical reflection here and 
 there; still he is essentially the historian in the 
 broadest sense. 
 
 Before Herodotus there were Greek historical 
 investigators who visited Egypt. First, prob- 
 
BOOK SECOND. 173 
 
 ably, was Hecataeus of Miletus (500 B. C), 
 who grave an account of the laud of the Nile from 
 personal observation, and whose work w:is re- 
 morsely pillaged by Herodotus, according to 
 modern writers who are fond of showinor their 
 critical ingenuity. Before the time of our his- 
 torian we must also place Hellanicus, a Greek 
 writer on things Egyptian. 
 
 After Herodotus comes a lonof list of Greek 
 historians who treated of Egypt, but whose works 
 have mostly perished. Diodorus Siculus, his- 
 torian, who traveled in Egypt about 57 B. C, 
 has preserved some valuable facts about the coun- 
 try in the First Book of his Bihliotheca. After 
 the Christian Era many names appear as writers 
 on Egypt in Greek, which had become the uni- 
 versal language of the learned — the Jew Jose- 
 phus (born A. D. 37) ; Ptolomy, the geographer, 
 of Alexandria (A. D. 160); the Christian St. 
 Clement, of the same place and time. It is inter- 
 esting to note that the Greek town Naucratis, in 
 Egypt, set apart for the Greeks by King Amasi-, 
 produced a number of writers on Egypt. This 
 town must have been an early home of guides 
 and guide books for travelers in Egypt ; Herod- 
 otus doubtless employed both. 
 
 Thus a stream of Greek writing, historical and 
 descriptive, flows out of Egypt for ages ; it was 
 really this writing which explained and joined 
 Egypt to the world of culture. 
 
174 THE PATH Eli OF HISTORY. 
 
 (3) The Greek pJiilosoj^hical interpretation. 
 That class of men whom the Greeks first called 
 philosophers, and thereby designated the dawn of 
 a new stage of consciousness in the human mind, 
 were in the habit of visiting Egypt from the 
 start. The origin of Greek philosophy, there- 
 fore, has many an indication pointing back to 
 the land of the Nde, from which at least it 
 received no little impulse. Thales, Solon, Py- 
 thagoras, the earliest thinkers of Helhis, are all 
 reported to have seen Egypt, and to have been 
 students of its lore. Pythagoras is credited with 
 having brought home the doctrine of metem- 
 psychosis, as well as his science of number. 
 All of these philosophers lived in the sixth cen- 
 tury B. C. One hundred years and more after 
 them came Phito, the Athenian philosopher, who 
 has also his Egyptian strand. Next we note 
 Plutarch of Chaeroneia (125 A. D.) who trans- 
 lated and interpreted the Osiris myth for the 
 Greek philosophic mind of his day. Finally the 
 new Piatonists, who wind up the movement of 
 ancient philosophy, return on a number of paths 
 to Egypt and the Orient ; some of them indeed 
 were Egyptians by birth. They come back to 
 the One, inexpressible, above consciousness, the 
 unknown; the Nile-stream in them seetns to 
 have whirled around to its sources hid in 
 night. Thus the end of Greek philosophy 
 returns to its Egyptian beginning and goes out 
 
BOOK SECOND. 175 
 
 forever in presence of the new light, that of 
 Christendom. 
 
 Not only on these three lines, through mythol- 
 ogy, history and philosophy, did Egypt pass 
 into the Greek soul, but also in other ways, 
 notably through religion (Greek mysteries) and 
 also through art (architecture and sculpture). 
 
 Thus we may catch some notion of the inter- 
 est which the land of the Nile and its problem 
 roused in the Greek mind. Such was indeed 
 its deepest necessity. The Greek had always to 
 solve the Egyptian riddle anew in order to 
 transcend it and thus assert himself as Greek 
 (see the Oedipus legend). The Egyptian 
 offered to the Greek his intellectual problem, 
 the Persian his political problem ; both he had 
 to answer or die. 
 
 This long Greek thread of information and 
 speculation about Egypt has come down to us, 
 broken in places, yet is our leading-string still 
 in many matters. But in our own day the land 
 md the people of the Nile have begun to talk 
 again through their monuments, through their 
 own sacred characters. The Sphinx, silent so 
 long, silent to most of the Egyptians them- 
 selves in their own time, has strangely begun 
 to speak in this nineteenth century. 
 
 The counter-process would be the Eofyptian 
 interpretation of the Greek world. But for 
 whom? Only for themselves; Egypt had no 
 
176 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 connection of her own with the movement of 
 Universal History, or with the culture of the 
 race. She was isolated, introverted, occupied 
 with herself; her writing was kept secret, she 
 refused to communicate what she was to the 
 rest of mankind, perhaps she could not, being 
 a mystery to herself. It was the Greek who 
 revealed Egypt as far as she has been revealed. 
 Still there are indications that the Egyptians 
 were not altogether satisfied with the Greek 
 interpretation of themselves. Hence arises the 
 native historian. 
 
 HI. Manetho. Under the Greek rule of 
 Egypt, we find a born Egyptian compiling and 
 publishing a history of his country in Greek, in 
 order to correct the mistakes of Herodotus and 
 other Greek writers. Manetho was a priest him- 
 self, born at Sebynnetus; he had access to the 
 records of the Egyptian temples and proposed 
 to reveal their contents. All this indicates a 
 great change in the Egyptian mind; the priest- 
 hood evidently has begun to share in the his- 
 torical spirit, and is going to tell Egypt's own 
 story from an Egyptian standpoint (about 250 
 B. C.) Really, however, this is a result of Greek 
 influence, that the Egyptian should undertake to 
 interpret himself to the world. 
 
 But Manetho's work has perished, he probably 
 did not succeed in revealing his people as well as 
 the Greeks did. In fact, how could he? He 
 
BOOK SECOND, 177 
 
 was too near his own to see them plainly. Only 
 some of his lists of Egyptian dynasties have 
 been preserved in extracts of other writers. In 
 fact, the lists of his which we possess seem to be 
 two removes or more from Manetho, not direct 
 copies, but copies of copies. For instance, 
 Julius Africanus, who copied Manetho, is lost, 
 hut we still have Georgius Syncellus, who copied 
 Africanus. The list in Eusebius seems also to be 
 a copy of a copy, though there is a doubt here. 
 
 But anyhow the whole is merely a dry list of 
 names, truly an Egyptian mummy, or a mummi- 
 fied history. Such is this Manetho to us now. 
 We are inclined to believe that when he was 
 alive, he mu?t have been a kind of mummy ; 
 indeed every Egyptian was probably. His book 
 has probably found its natural outcome in its 
 present stage of mummification. Herodotus has 
 lived because he has life, movement, spirit. We 
 must recollect that he could not digest that long 
 list of 330 kings read to him by the priests at 
 Memphis. Think of the sprightly, artistic, 
 imaginative Greek tackling such a pioblem. But 
 Manetho tackled it and died, all of him having 
 quite vanished except this mummy of him. 
 
 Still Manetho has given prodigious occupation 
 to the learned. As nearly everything about him 
 and his dynasties is in a cloud of uncertainty, he 
 offers the richest harvest for emendation, erudite 
 conjecture, and sport of learned probabilities. 
 
 12 
 
178 THE FAT HE B OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 First comes the questiou : Are these thirty-one 
 dynasties of Manetho all successive, or in part 
 contemporaneous? The Egyptologers are still 
 hammering away at this and other Egyptian rid- 
 dles, as yet with no great success, though with 
 much increase of material. 
 
 In addition to the lists of Manetho, there are 
 other independent sources for the lines of the 
 Egyptian monarchs. First in order comes the 
 famous Turin papyrus, which, however, is in an 
 imperfect, tattered condition. Then the monu- 
 ments help out with many names and suggestions. 
 It is needless to say that all this distracted 
 material tumbled together is but little better than 
 chaos, to which are to be added the learned con- 
 jectures and re-arrangements of the scheme by 
 the Egyptologers, each one of whom has his own 
 caprices in the business, as well as his merits. 
 
 In fact, when we rea4 the modern Egyptolo- 
 gers we always have to think of the Egyptian 
 priests recounting their endless lists of kings to 
 Herodotus. For the most part a dry recital of 
 names, dates and figures; the whole thing is as 
 arid as the Libyan desert, as desiccated as a 
 mummy. We cannot help taking the attitude of 
 the old historian, who mentions the number 
 merely, and is inclined to quit just there. " Here 
 follows a list of 330 other kings," but what they 
 did seems of little moment. Manetho, Egyptian 
 that he was, took up the list of kings and dynas- 
 
BOOK SECOND. 179 
 
 ties and flung it into the stream of time some two 
 hundred years after Herodotus ; Manetho's suc- 
 cessors, the Egyptologers, have been tinkering at 
 it ever since, and still they cannot make it hold 
 water. The interested outsider, not initiated into 
 these Egyptian mysteries, reads with searching 
 glances, and thinks with the old Greek historian, 
 What shall I do with all these barbarous names 
 and numbers, so devoid of any significant deeds 
 or events, without any historic process in them 
 visible? Herodotus at least gives a process and 
 thus appeals to the human spirit ; he, some four 
 hundred and fifty years before Christ, wheeled 
 Egypt into line with the world-historical move- 
 ment. Where is the man who can do the same 
 for us and for our consciousness, more than 
 twenty-three centuries later than Herodotus? 
 We are still waiting for him. 
 
 IV. Herodotus in Egypt. When the his- 
 torian (but now the traveler) set out from his 
 native city Halicarnassus for his Egyptian jour- 
 ney is not known. He entered Egypt at the 
 western or Canobic mouth of the Nile, passed up 
 stream till he came to the Greek settlement at 
 Naucratis. Here he found his countrymen from 
 Asia Minor in large numbers, yet intermingled 
 with many crosses between Greek and Egyptian. 
 His own townsmen, the Halicarnassians, were 
 doubtless well represented ; with some of these 
 he may have been personally acquainted or 
 
180 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 related by blood; he, being of a well-known 
 family, would be hospitably received. Letters 
 of introduction he may have had too ; and when 
 he set out from Naucratis to see the real Egypt, 
 be probably bore his testimonials from his Greek 
 friends there to Egyptians at Sais, Memphis, and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Naucratis in the time of Herodotus must have 
 been a lively Greek town, with its market place, 
 its wineshops, its temples and porticos, all of 
 them resorts for talkative people. To these 
 places he would go in order to hear the 
 news, for this was the ancient Greek 
 substitute for the newspaper. Particularly would 
 he there catch the Greco-Egyptian character and 
 tendency; besides, he would learn much from 
 experienced persons about Egypt, her people and 
 her customs. He would hear his own tongue, 
 chiefly his own familiar dialect, as most of the 
 inhabitants of Naucratis were from Asia Minor. 
 Many tales which we find in his Egyptian History 
 bear the stamp of the story-telling Greek of 
 Naucratis. Also he could hear more solid infor- 
 mation concerning geography, customs, religion. 
 
 Such, in general, was the first training-school 
 of Herodotus in Egypt. He obtained a general 
 survey of his subject before starting; he caught 
 the transformation which the land of the Nile 
 undergoes in passing through the Hellenic mind. 
 It must not be forgotten that Naucratis was 
 
BOOK SECOND. 181 
 
 already one hundred years old when Herodotus 
 arrived there. Three generations of Greeks had 
 been born in the town. But the Greeks had been 
 settled much longer in Egypt; Psammetichus 
 nearly two hundred years before the visit of 
 Herodotus had given them a foothold in his 
 realm ; this was the king who put Egyptian youths 
 under the care of Greeks to be instructed in the 
 Greek language; *' from these the present inter- 
 preters in Egypt are descended" (154). So 
 not only the commercial but the intellectual 
 intercourse between Hellas and Egypt had been 
 established, and even fostered by law quite two 
 centuries before Herodotus. The result of this 
 intercourse, the Greco-Egyptian spirit, is really 
 what the historian has caught in the pages of 
 his book and transmitted to us in permanent 
 form. Naucratis was his central point, he must 
 have remained there quite a while at first, and 
 have made excursions into the neighborins: cities 
 of the Delta. The work, therefore, which He- 
 rodotus has given had been in the process of 
 making for several centuries, being essentially 
 the Greek interpretation of the Egyptian world. 
 At Naucratis our traveler, therefore, would 
 find matters prepared for him. There were 
 guide-books ; the names of several Greeks of 
 Naucratis who wrote on Egypt have been handed 
 down. We can also imaojine him takinor lessons 
 in Egyptian, in the conversational tongue of the 
 
182 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 people, of which there must have been teachers 
 in that Greek town, though nobody probably 
 could explain to him the hieroglj^phics. Thus 
 he could help himself out with bits of con- 
 versation on his journeys. Moreover, there is 
 hardly any doubt that he had some knowledge 
 of Persian. He was born under Persian rule, 
 and the lanojuao^e of Persia was the official Ian- 
 guage of every important place in Asia in his 
 time ; it was also the official language of Egypt 
 at the time of his visit; as Persian subject he 
 probably had his privileges. It is certainly 
 within the range of probability that he knew 
 somethins: of other tono^ues. 
 
 By such statements it is not meant to affirm 
 that he knew any of these languages in a critical 
 sense, as they are known by a modern philol- 
 oger. Probably no Greek and no Persian had 
 any idea of the affinity between Greek and Per- 
 sian, though speaking both tongues; the modern 
 philologer knows that affinity though able to 
 speak neither tongue. Most writers on Herodo- 
 tus seem to take for s^ranted that he was ac- 
 quainted with no language except Greek, but it 
 is a purely gratuitous assumption, and contrary 
 to the probabilities of the case. It is true that 
 his linguistic knowledge is without any back- 
 ground of Comparative Philology, and hence he 
 is liable to make mistakes ; but such mistakes 
 are far from proving total ignorance, especially 
 
BOOK SECOND. 183 
 
 in the matter of speaking. It is highly prob- 
 able that Herodotus studied, heard and practiced 
 conversational Egyptian during his stay at 
 Naucratis. 
 
 While remaining in the Greek town, he could 
 make many a profitable excursion from it as a 
 center in the company of guides or of friends. 
 A short distance up the stream from Naucratis 
 lies the ancient Egyptian city of Sais, which had 
 its own special Goddess, Neit, the unbegotten 
 mother of the Sun, whom the Greeks identified 
 with Pallas Athena (Minerva) of their own 
 Pantheon. From this city Psammetichus started 
 forth and freed Egypt with the aid of the lonians 
 and Carians (152), to whom he then gave a 
 permanent home in Egypt, which was still further 
 confirmed by Amasis. Herodotus must have 
 seen its great festival; indeed it is likely that he 
 visited many of these cities of the Delta at the 
 period of their various festivals in honor of their 
 particular deities. From Naucratis he could go to 
 most of them in a boat at the specified time, accom- 
 panied by Greek friends and sightseers, for the 
 latter were never wanting in that Greek town. 
 In one of these excursions he went to Heliopolis, 
 the city of the Egyptian Ea, the sungod, home 
 of Egyptian learning, where Plato is known to 
 have studied, and where the earlier Greek phi- 
 losophers probably received their Egyptian 
 learning. 
 
184 THE FATHER OF HI 8 TOBY. 
 
 When the traveler was fully ready, he trans- 
 ferred his headquarters from Naucratis to the 
 great capital of Northern Egypt, Memphis. Not 
 far off were the pyramids and other marvels. 
 The results of his stay at Memphis appear 
 throughout the Second Book, especially in the 
 historical portion. The great temple of Ptah 
 (Vulcan), whose history is closely connected 
 with the entire political and economical develop- 
 ment of Egypt, was a subject of special study. 
 From Memphis he passed into Southern or Upper 
 Egypt, going as far as Elephantine, according to 
 his own statement. 
 
 But he has not much to say of Upper Egypt 
 and its wonders, its temples, its tombs, its capital, 
 the hundred-gated Thebes. He has already 
 written as much about Egypt as the plan of his 
 total work will permit; we have already seen 
 how short he cuts his account of the conquests of 
 Cyrus in the previous Book; his Greek sense of 
 proportion would be violated by too much detail 
 concerning Egypt. He is writing a World's 
 History, not an Egyptian History; has he not 
 already given sufficient for his purpose? He has 
 told what was necessary ; so let Egypt next be 
 shown absorbed into the Persian Empire. 
 
 Undoubtedly Upper Egypt had been less in- 
 fluenced by the Greeks, was less accessible and 
 less friendly to them than the Delta. It was also 
 quite out of the range of the historian's central 
 
'\ 
 
 BOOK SECOND, 185 
 
 point, Naucratis, which we hold to have been the 
 pivot of his Egyptian travels. Less information 
 about it was attainable ; probably, too, at the time 
 of the historian's visit it was in an unsettled con- 
 dition politically ; the Persian authorities had not 
 so strong a grip upon it as they had upon the 
 cities of the North. 
 
 Still it is wholly unauthorized (and indeed 
 calumniatory) to say that he never saw Thebes 
 and Upper Egypt, in the face of his own declara- 
 tions and the probabilities of the case. Even 
 more unjustifiable is the attack upon his integrity, 
 when he is charged with plagiarizing and appro- 
 priating the work of preceding travelers (such as 
 Hecataeus) without acknowledgment. (See Rev. 
 Prof. Sayce's very unfriendly and unwarrantable 
 statements in his Book, The Egypt of the 
 Hehreivs,) There are many mistakes of fact in 
 the Herodotean account of Egypt, but they are 
 honest mistakes, though his calumniators have 
 often sought not only to disprove his declarations, 
 but also to impugn his character. Let the good 
 Christian (even if he be a minister) show him- 
 self as candid, as fair-minded, as universally 
 charitable as this old heathen historian. 
 
 V. Some Egyptian Topics. — The Nile river 
 flows through all Egypt, not only physically but 
 spiritually ; it makes the peculiar soil and moulds 
 the peculiar mind of that country; the Egyptian 
 is individualized, is made an Egyptian, through 
 
186 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 the Nile, which must, therefore, be seen putting 
 its impress upon institutions, arts, customs, relig- 
 ion, character. The people cling to their river 
 like parasites ; they deem themselves one with its 
 animals, its bugs and beetles; all are the sacred 
 spawn of the Nile slime. 
 
 Art. Egypt is supremely a land of formative art, 
 had to be such as a true child of the Nile, which 
 pouring down from the unknown into the known, 
 begets millions of forms, animal and vegetable, 
 high and low. The people must behold these shapes 
 of the divine Provider ; the Egyptian will be- 
 come an artificer, even artist. There will not be 
 simply an imitation of nature, but a play of the 
 imagination, the symbol-making activity. For 
 the Nile has its unseen, nay, its eternal element, 
 and the artist must give this also, or suggest it, 
 in his sensuous shapes, else he will not adequately 
 express the truth of the Nile, which by its very 
 character compels him to manifest the invisible in 
 the visible. 
 
 The Egyptian, in his mighty struggle for ex- 
 pression, will not follow Nature and simply copy 
 her shapes, he will unite where Nature separates, 
 he will mingle animal and human parts in every 
 conceivable way, in order to show forth the 
 forms of his Gods. The Nile, working through 
 the imagination of the artist, produces with its 
 dual character the Sphinx, half man half beast. 
 Thus Egypt becomes the great birth-place of 
 
BOOK SECOND. 187 
 
 artistic monstrosities, all of them children of 
 Father Nile. 
 
 Colossality, too, these works will show, which 
 is the striving to make the known reveal the 
 unknown, to force the finite to hold the infinite; 
 the little Nile here must manifest the Great Nile 
 yonder; the seen Nile hand on this side must 
 somehow make an imasfe of the unseen Nile 
 body beyond, in all its magnitude. Pyramids, 
 Tombs, Temples, Statues, and Monuments of 
 various kinds have in the main this spirit of 
 colossality; Architecture is specially its art. 
 
 Hieroglyphics are pictures of the Nile animals 
 which also must represent an unseen element 
 along with the seen ; that is, a spiritual counter- 
 part begins to enter the physical sign, which 
 thus has not only an outer form, but also an 
 inner meaning. 'Therein writing has begun, and 
 the communication between man and man 
 through the written symbol. 
 
 These hieroglyphics have the forms of animals 
 mainly, yet they have a significance of their own, 
 apart from the mere form. Each has thus a seen 
 and an unseen element, and therein corresponds 
 to the Nile, which incarnates itself in living 
 shapes. Each hieroglyphic is a kind of new 
 incarnation ; the pictured animal, visible, as- 
 sumes a new meaning, invisible, of the spirit. 
 All writing indeed has this seen and unseen 
 principle in it ; what is this word before you but 
 
188 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 a seen outer form with an unseen inner significa- 
 tion? Our al[)habet is probably derived from the 
 Egyptian hieroglyphic, which became hieratic 
 and demotic in Egypt, and then passed to the 
 Phoenicians, who changed the picture to a sound- 
 sign, and so made an alphabet. From Phoenician 
 to Greek this alphabet was transmitted, thence 
 to Roman and to Anglo-Saxon. The English 
 letters before you are traceable back to the Nile 
 stream, which pours through all that you read, 
 in a far-ofi" undercurrent ; all writing is an incar- 
 nation of the unseen, first wrought out in Egypt 
 and first suggested by its sacred River. The 
 Nile, in many a subtle transformation, is still 
 pouring through us all. 
 
 The ancient Egyptian language survives in the 
 modern Coptic, if indeed the latter be not now 
 quite extinct. But the Coptic letters are derived 
 from the Greek alphabet, with some additions, 
 it is said, from the Demotic. The early Christian 
 missionaries, in converting the Egyptians, found 
 it necessary to change their old style of writing, 
 thouofh the language itself remained. The hi«ro- 
 glyphic was indeed a kind of sacred picture, an 
 idol ; with it was connected the ancient worship, 
 and it would always call back the old Gods of 
 the Nile. Moreover, the new idea had to have a 
 new body, a new incarnation as it were, very 
 remote from the animals and insects of the Nile 
 slime. The change from picture-writing to 
 
BOOK SECOND. 189 
 
 alphabetic writing was a mighty step in the 
 development of the ages, and was involved in 
 the movement from the Egyptian to the Christian 
 religion. Still that old faith of the Nile valley 
 has thrown out many fibers which have unfolded 
 and become ingrown with our beliefs. 
 
 Religion, Art is most intimately connected 
 with religion ; to give outer form to the God is 
 indeed a necessity for the primitive man, and 
 even civilized peoples do not so easily renounce 
 it. That which the soul" adores as invisible and 
 universal, must be made to appear to the wor- 
 shiper ; thus religion calls forth art. 
 
 The Egyptian worshiped animals, for the 
 Nile incarnated himself in animal life; his inner 
 unseen principle seemed to pass over into the 
 inner vital motion of insect and crocodile ; the 
 unknown thus shows itself and takes on body. 
 Among the Nile animals we may reckon man 
 himself in his specialized Egyptian character, 
 for man is also a living thing, sharing in the 
 grand mystery of life, yet he is only one form 
 of the many incarnations of the Nile. 
 
 Metempsychosis is suggested therefore, by the 
 Nile, which has a permanent principle amid all 
 its transformations. The individual appears, 
 vanishes, and re-appears with the Nile, which 
 has the immortal element undergoing all these 
 chano^es. The Greek doctrine of transmisfra- 
 tion did not naturally take to the animal form, 
 
190 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 but was inclined to keep the human form 
 (Pythagoras and Plato). Egypt, however, 
 must cling to all the Nile shapes, of which the 
 .human frame is but one; hence the Egyptian, 
 man and God, is re-incarnated in the lower 
 orders of life, lower to us at least. 
 
 Immortality of the soul is bound up with this 
 doctrine of the transmigration of the soul. It 
 may be said that in Egypt was the one early 
 battle-ground to preserve the individual from 
 death. Can individuality be immortal, preserv- 
 ing itself from being swallowed up in a pantheis- 
 tic All or Nothing? Egypt says distinctly it can, 
 but it must take other bodies, which are already 
 being individualized by the creative power of 
 Father Nile. Soul in itself is not fully free and 
 complete, is not fully individualized as yet in 
 Egypt, without assuming the new living body, 
 ** the gift of the River." The Egyptian soul is 
 not certain of itself separated from the body, 
 hence the embalming, the pyramid, the rock-built 
 tomb, as well as transmigration. Some writers 
 have said that the soul, after its long wandering 
 through the thousands of Nile shapes, after its 
 long discipline, sinks back into Osiris and is one 
 with him; if so, then the Egyptian individual is 
 lost after all in a kind of pantheistic world-soul. 
 
 We must think that, as regards the doctrine 
 and worth of immortality in the development 
 of the race, a most important step was taken in 
 
BOOK SECOND. 191 
 
 Egjqit. The Nile is immortal, it keeps flowing 
 year in and year out, yet with a difi'erence; it 
 shows a rise and a fall, birth and decline, it has 
 a permanent and a transitory element, in which 
 the dawning soul of man will gradually see 
 itself, and come to a consciousness of its own 
 dualnature, its mortal and its immortal portions. 
 The Nile thus is a grand education for its people, 
 becoming a symbol which reveals themselves to 
 themselves. 
 
 The Nile body remains, even after the freshet 
 has deposited its sediment, and the principle of 
 growth and vitality has vanished out of the 
 stream. Life departs, the body remains, that 
 body of the Nile ; so the human shape must be 
 preserved after life — hence embalment. The 
 new body of the Nile, returning with the new 
 season, brings the principle of life into the 
 old body. Such too must be man's cycle. Above 
 any other duty apparently was the duty of 
 embalming, to the ancient Egyptian ; the poor, 
 the drowned, the unknown must have their 
 corpses, when found, embalmed at public ex- 
 pense. Four hundred millions of human mum- 
 mies are estimated to have lain in the land of 
 Egypt, besides untold quantities of animal mum- 
 mies. For the animal too was the offspring of 
 Father Nile and contained his immortal princi- 
 ple. If the Nile passes into the beast, so must 
 man, yes, so must the God. 
 
192 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 Yet here multiplicity enters and brings con- 
 fusion. Some towns of Egypt worship one 
 animal, some another; some worship one God 
 and some another. Some adore the crocodile 
 (Crocodilopolis), and some reject its diyinity, but 
 take another animal. These differences are said 
 to have caused wars between Egyptian cities. 
 Thus the Egyptian Pantheon becomes chaotic, 
 self-assailing, a veritable Pandemonium, with 
 struggling mortals as its instruments. The list 
 of Gods is as confused as the list of kings; for 
 thousands of years in Upper and in Lower Egypt 
 we find deities cotemporaneous and in succession. 
 Still there is a unity of principle in all this 
 wriggling mass of Gods, the spawn of the Nile 
 stream. 
 
 The mummy speaks its word still to those who 
 are ready to listen, and among other things it 
 says that spirit has not yet attained supremacy 
 over nature, the soul cannot do without the body, 
 each has quite equal validity; the human and the 
 animal belong together, as represented in the 
 sphinx and in thousands of other shapes. Such 
 is, indeed, the image of the Egyptain dualism. 
 
 The Hebrew will quit the land of Egypt and 
 carry with him the faith in the pure spirit ; the 
 God is one, hostile to nature and often to man ; 
 the finite, the sensuous is remorselessly extir- 
 pated, the animal (the golden calf) must not be 
 worshiped. The eternal, imperishable element 
 
BOOK SECOND. 193 
 
 of the Nile does not for the Hebrew need the 
 Nile valley with its thousandfold shapes in nature 
 and art; the plastic work becomes an idol, a 
 devil fit only to be broken. Thus the Nile, with 
 changed course, will flow into Palestine and 
 thence down the ages. 
 
 Osiris is the youngest, yet the greatest God of 
 Egypt; he lives, dies, and is restored ; he repre- 
 sents the process of life, death, resurrection. 
 Egypt's fanes were full of lamentations, those 
 of Greece had dancing and song and festivity, 
 though the dying God was known in Crete under 
 the name of Zeus; he doubtless came from the 
 Nile. The other-worldliness of Egypt was indeed 
 its most impressive trait, it was supremely the 
 land of tombs, and of religious ceremonies and 
 mysteries. The old Egyptian must often have 
 been himself a kind of living mummy, being 
 occupied so much with the beyond. Very 
 naturally the Egyptians had their descent to 
 Hades (Amenti), which also was a phase of the 
 Greek religious conception, as we see in the 
 cases of Ulysses, Hercules, Orpheus, etc. The 
 Homeric Hades, as given in the Odyssey, was 
 probably outlined in part from the Nile, as the 
 Odyssey in a number of ways shows the influence 
 of Egypt. 
 
 The religion of Egypt had also its negative, 
 diabolic powers. There was the enemy of Osiris, 
 Set, who has an essential part in the dying God, 
 
 13 
 
194 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 being a stage of the process. Aphophis is the 
 serpent, evil, Satan, often pictured on the mon- 
 uments. He, too, entered the garden of the 
 Nile, was there probably before he entered the 
 Hebrew Eden, which was likewise a kind of 
 river-garden. 
 
 The /Sun and the N'ile. Their relation is very 
 intimate in the Egyptian mind. The Sun has his 
 cycle, first the diurnal one, secondly the annual 
 one, which latter brings with itself the changes 
 of the seasons and also the changes of the Nile. 
 Undoubtedly the Nile was the more important 
 of the two, and, as already said, the determining 
 physical fact for Egypt. The Sun seems to move 
 with the River, the two are counterparts, one takes 
 a celestial and the other a terrestrial course. So 
 the Nile rose to the skies, and there flowed 
 through the year, with increase and decline, with 
 heat and cold, making summer and winter, to 
 which the Nile below responded, with his rise and 
 fall. The solar Nile has his path through the 
 heavens (the ecliptic), also his broad stream-bed 
 (the zodiacal belt), nay, his animals made of 
 stars (the constellations of the zodiac). The 
 twelve signs through which the Sun passes in his 
 annual cycle are composed of animals, human and 
 lower ; so the Nile luminary of the skies produces 
 and deposits his shapes made of light. Zodiac is 
 derived from a word which means animal (or 
 little animal), and had its beginning in Egyptian 
 
BOOK SECOND. 195 
 
 astronomy, showing a mystical connection with 
 the River, from which connection it was released 
 by Greek science. Some writers, however, 
 affirm that the idea of the Zodiac goes back to 
 the Chaldean, or to the Hindoo astronomers. 
 But its origin was in the Egyptian soul, which 
 saw it begotten of the Sun and the Nile-stream, 
 whence it passed to Hellas, where it was sepa- 
 rated from its terrestrial parent (the Nile), and 
 became simply a celestial object. 
 
 The Labyrinth seems to have been a symbolic 
 structure, having reference to the Sun and the 
 Nile. It had ** two kinds of rooms, some above 
 ground and some below ground," an upper and 
 a lower, a celestial and a terrestrial, a seen and 
 an unseen division ; Herodotus was not permitted 
 to see the underground chambers. A sugges- 
 tion of the zodiac lies in this: "to the Laby- 
 rinth belong twelve courts " with roofs and col- 
 onnades; '* six courts are turned to the North, 
 six to the South," separated into these two 
 sides by an equatorial line, as it were; "the 
 whole is enclosed by the same exterior wall." 
 If the Nile was raised to the skies, and pro- 
 duced the zodiac, this zodiac is now brought 
 down to earth and reproduced in a work of art. 
 Still further *' there are three thousand cham- 
 bers," half above and half underneath the earth's 
 surface, hinting the cycle of transmigration 
 doubtless ; " the underground chambers contained 
 
196 THE FaTHEB OF HIS TOBY, 
 
 the sepulchers (mummieri) of the royal builders 
 and of the sacred crocodiles," but were not seen 
 by the profane eyes of the foreign traveler, in 
 spite of his reverential awe. This Labyrinth is 
 said by Herodotus to have been constructed by 
 the twelve kings, when Egypt was divided into 
 twelve kingdoms or nomes, and the government 
 (the Dodecarchy), had apparently adjusted 
 itself to the celestial divisions of the zodiac. 
 Thus had the Nile land received politically the 
 impress from above, and its rulers proceeded to 
 embody this same impress in a colossal work of 
 art, bringing down the Beyond into the Here. 
 But the first builder of the Labyrinth is now 
 deemed to have been Amunemhat HL, the sixth 
 king of the twelfth dynasty, whom the Greeks 
 called by the name of Myris. The likelihood is 
 that the work was a growth, a product of many 
 ages, with the cycle of the Nile transferred above 
 and joined to that of the Sun, then brought back 
 to earth and reincorporated in art, specially in 
 architecture. 
 
 With the Sun and the Nile enters the idea of 
 the measurement of Time, to which the Egyp- 
 tian g^,x\Q no small attention. Still he had no 
 chronological canon or historical clock, no era, 
 which is indeed impossible till the conception of 
 a World's History has arisen. Even then it is 
 a matter of slow growth, as we may see in the 
 case of Herodotus himself. Egypt, the exclu- 
 
BOOK SECOND. . 197 
 
 sive, could not create a chronological era and 
 order her history by it; the two elements of 
 historical chronology, succession and cotem- 
 poraneousness, are hopelessly junabled together 
 in her lists of kings, and in the periods of her 
 monuments. What rulers and even whatdynas-. 
 ties are successive, and what cotemporaneous? 
 Herodotus could not say ; probably Manetho 
 himself, though an Egyptian priest with Greek 
 culture did not and could not. Egyptian kings 
 and dynasties are as badly mixed as Egyptian 
 Gods and systems of Gods. 
 
 Still there is, we hold, a spiritual order cog- 
 nizable in these Egyptian matters, though the 
 chronological order cannot be ascertained, except 
 within certain general limits. The Time-garment 
 of the Egytian Idea is exceedingly loose, still the 
 Idea is there and is knowable. But now the ex- 
 clusive, solitary condition of Egypt is to be 
 broken up, she is to be brought into the move- 
 ment of the World's History, and share in the 
 grand conflict which opens the historic conscious- 
 ness of the race. 
 
BOOK THIRD. 
 
 This Book as a whole shows an important 
 stage in the advance of Persia toward her great 
 end, which is the conflict with Hellas. The vast 
 Empire is getting ready without and within for 
 its historic destiny, to which we see all things 
 tending. The movement toward the consolida- 
 tion of the Orient, which we noted in the First 
 Book, continues. In the first place, Egypt is 
 conquered by the new Persian king, being taken 
 away from its Hellenized ruler and joined to the 
 countries of Western Asia under a common 
 authoritv. This makes the Orient a unit, as far 
 as it was known to Herodotus, who begins to 
 indicate the limits surrounding it in Africa and 
 in Asia, to designate the Rim of Barbarism which 
 (198) 
 
BOOK THIBD. 199 
 
 encompasses the more civilized peoples. In the 
 second place, there is a decided step forward 
 toward Greece itself in the subjection of Samos, 
 an island of the Egean, where Poly crates was 
 tyrant and had his so-called Thalassocracy (rule 
 of the sea). Thus the Persians have conquered 
 the List remaining obstacle between themselves 
 and continental Hellas ; they have subjugated the 
 Greek sailor, though they were no sailors; the 
 lordship of the Greek sea is to be the bridge over 
 to Europe and the Occident. In the third place, 
 Persia undergoes an internal change; she obtains 
 a new ruler who organizes the vast, unwieldy 
 empire, bringing it into something like order and 
 unity. 
 
 Such are the chief matters which the historian 
 is to unfold in this Third Book. We feel here a 
 spirit moving which we have sought to grapple 
 and designate by calling it world-historical. 
 Egypt has been more or less isolated hitherto ; 
 she has lived her own confined life in the valley 
 of the Nile, sometimes conqueror, sometimes 
 conquered ; now she is to be wheeled into line 
 with the other peoples of the Orient, and is made 
 to share in the mighty enterprise which is really 
 the begetting of History in the universal sense. 
 On the other hand, in regard to Samos the narra- 
 tive clearly shows that she could not become the 
 grand bearer of the principle of the Occident ; 
 her government was a tyranny, and hence too 
 
200 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 like Persia ; nor would she get rid of it and expel 
 her tyrants as Athens did. So Samos falls, as 
 Croesus fell, being neither the one side nor the 
 other, but somewhere between; she was not the 
 true representative of the Hellenic cause, though 
 we see that many Samians protested against 
 tyranny. It was not the smallness or the pov- 
 erty of Samos that incapacitated her; Athens in 
 the Persian War was smaller and poorer, yet 
 became the real leader of the Hellenic spirit in 
 the great struggle. Samos was the first Greek 
 city of this epoch and had *' the three greatest 
 works that have been accomplished by the 
 Greeks" (60) comparable only with those of 
 Egypt. 
 
 We shall in advance take a look into the 
 structure of the present Book. It is divided 
 into two main portions, of which the first brings 
 before us the two tyrants and their doings — 
 Cambyses and Polycrates, Persian and Greek. 
 The second portion shows the fates of the two 
 tyrants, along with the manifold vicissitudes of 
 their respective governments, Persia and Samos. 
 Thus two Threads of Narration run through both 
 portions, namely, the Greek and the Persian 
 Threads, being deftly interwoven in each por- 
 tion; these two threads, as we shall often notice, 
 pass through this entire History of Herodotus, 
 forming indeed the double element of its compo- 
 sition as well as the conflict which it describes. 
 
BOOK THIBD. 201 
 
 The followinsf gives the structural outline of the 
 Book :— 
 
 I. The two tyrants and their deeds (1-60). 
 
 1. The first Persian Thread — Cambyses 
 
 (1-38). 
 
 2. The first Greek Thread — Polycrates 
 
 (39-60). 
 
 II. Fates of the two tyrants — events of 
 Persia and Sanios (61-159). 
 
 1. The second Persian Thread (61-119). 
 
 2. The second Greek Thread (120-149). 
 
 3. The third Persian Thread (150-159). 
 
 Such is the skeleton of the Book, suggested 
 by its structure, its vital principle, or the thought 
 which governs it. But there will be many an 
 excursion into other adjoining domains; the his- 
 torian tvill interweave fact, fancy, tale, anecdote, 
 reflection, in fine the whole varied consciousness 
 of his time. He does not feel himself called 
 upon to confine himself to the bare historic event ; 
 that is but a fragment in the total picture of the 
 age, as he beholds it and portrays it. He will 
 tell the wonders of the barbaric borderland both 
 in Africa and in Asia ; such an account is indeed 
 necessary, when we come to see into his proced- 
 ure. Geography, ethnography, manners and 
 customs of peoples are introduced by the way, 
 and stories of personal adventure (like that of 
 
202 THE FATHEU OF HISTORY. 
 
 Democedes) find their place in the movement of 
 the Whole. 
 
 The historian still works-in his idea of nemesis; 
 he shows his faith strongly in the return of the 
 deed upon the evil-doer, and from this point of 
 view he gives a dramatic turn to his record of 
 mighty personages. Cambyses and Polycrates, 
 tyrants, get back their own in the final act ; their 
 doom is written in their deeds. Thus into the 
 forward-movino: historical stream is inwrought a 
 
 O CD 
 
 cyclical movement of individual destinies, usually 
 tragic; the great man, high-placed, is over- 
 whelmed by the fates of his own conduct, though 
 a new world is brought forth through his career. 
 Successive is history, the individual is cyclical. 
 
 I. 
 
 The two tyrants, Cambyses and Polycrates, 
 are brought together by way of contrast as well 
 as of similarity in the first portion of the Book 
 (1-60). They are the centers of important 
 movements of their time, as well as rulers of 
 their respective countries. In the one we may 
 behold the Persian boundlessless, the rasping 
 against all external limitation, the greed of con- 
 quest, coupled with the reaction internally, the 
 effect of tyranny upon the tyrant himself. In 
 the case of the Greek we may observe the outer 
 reaction of Greece, seeking to get rid of her 
 
BOOK THIBD. 203' 
 
 great tyrant, and indicating that such a ruler is 
 deeply antagonistic to the Hellenic spirit. There 
 is a Samian party hostile to him in his own 
 island, then Sparta as the head of Greece sends 
 an army against him. Still the stroke of destiny 
 comes to Polycrates from a Persian source, not 
 from a Greek. He is a middle power whom both 
 sides disown and seek to put down ; lying in the 
 sea, between Hellas and Asia, Samos and the 
 rule of Polycrates mast be absorbed. He 
 favored Cambyses in the latter's invasion of 
 Egypt, then he is himself swallowed in turn. 
 
 1. The First Persian Thread (1-38). The 
 historian proceeds to give an account of the con- 
 quest of Egypt by Cambyses, son of Cyrus 
 (usually placed in the year 525 B. C), who con- 
 quers king Psammenitus after a short reign of six 
 months. Cambyses' stay in Egypt lasted some 
 seven or eight years, according to the generally 
 received chronology ; the king never returned to 
 Persia after once entering the hind of the Nile. 
 The narrative of the historian we shall look at 
 under three heads: the successful conquest of 
 Egypt, the unsuccessful attempt to pass beyond 
 the limits of Egypt, the rebound upon the 
 character of Cambyses. 
 
 (1) It is important to observe the manner of 
 the historian in probing for the origin of the 
 war between Egypt and Persia. Three possible 
 causes he gives, all of them resting on personal 
 
204 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 grounds — the trick of Amasis, the boyish pledge 
 of Cambyses to his mother, the desertion of the 
 Greek Phanes. Thus does gossip play around 
 the great event and seek to account for it; most 
 wars, ancient and modern, have been traced to 
 personal spite and ambition, or even to the petty 
 intrigues of women. Such may be the little 
 taper which starts the conflagration; but the com- 
 bustibles must be ready, piled together by another 
 hand, if there is to be much of a bhize. 
 
 The deeper cause of this Perso-Egyptian con- 
 flict we are to recognize. The time has coaie 
 when Egypt is to be torn from her exclusiveness 
 and self-occupation, and compelled to start in the 
 great world-historical movement of the Orient, 
 of which Persia is the leader and the representa- 
 tive. Egypt now really joins the historic con- 
 tinuity of the race, is forced to join it; history 
 she has had hitherto, but no World's History; 
 a national history, even an Asiatic history, dim 
 and fragmentary, but no World's IIi>(ory, which 
 is indeed just now beginning to be, having been 
 born of this struggle between Hellas and the 
 Orient. The surging of Asiatic peoples over 
 one another, down and up, now conquering, 
 now conquered, is hardly history, certainly not 
 Universal History. 
 
 It may be well to note here that we see in 
 Herodotus three phases of historic movement: 
 first is a national or internal history, such as the 
 
BOOK THIED. 205 
 
 Ljdian, Median, Persian, Egyptian; second is 
 the international imperial phase, which brings 
 several Asiatic nations together by subjugation ; 
 third is the world-historical phase, which is begot- 
 ten of the mighty collision between Orient and 
 Occident, of this Persian conflict between Greece 
 and Asia. Such is indeed the ultimate cause of 
 the war, including all other minor causes. 
 
 Eg3^pt apparently made no stout resistance to 
 the Persian invader, she belonged to him in the 
 due order of things. The land was defended by 
 foreigners mainly, by Ionian and Carian merce- 
 naries, not by native soldiery, who, according to 
 one story, had quit Egypt. Evidently there was 
 no national spirit flaming up for the defense of 
 home and country ; nor could the Greek soldier 
 have had much interest in the struo^o^le as a 
 Greek. Under Amasis Hellenic influence was 
 powerful in the land; but we may reasonably 
 suppose that Egypt was too Greek for the Egyp- 
 tian, and too Egyptian for the Greek. She 
 easily yielded to the Oriental, who was proba- 
 bly more to her liking than the Occidental 
 intruder. 
 
 Moreover, we learn that the neighboring peo- 
 ple, the Arabians, furnished a passage to the Per- 
 sian king through their desert, and provided him 
 with water. Here was some enmity, possibly 
 some jealousy of the Greek. Once the Arabians 
 ruled Egypt, had there a dynasty of kings, and 
 
206 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 always traded with the valley of the Nile. 
 Phanes, the deserter, must have known of this 
 Arabian feeling; he was certainly in a position 
 to know it, being stationed near the border with 
 the Greek troops. Hence his advice to the Per- 
 sian ** to send embassadors to the Arabians and 
 make a treaty with them." 
 
 (2) The Persian, having conquered Egypt, can- 
 not rest in its bounds, he is driven by his own 
 boundless spirit against the Rim of Barbarians, 
 which surrounds Egypt, especially on the South ; 
 he hurls himself against the Ammonians of the 
 desert on the West, and contemplates an expedi- 
 tion asrainst the Carthaiiinians. On all sides he 
 
 O CI? 
 
 impinges against the limits of Egypt by land and 
 even by sea; he cannot endure any territorial 
 restraint. Such we have already noticed to be a 
 characteristic of Persian spirit. 
 
 Now these far-off lands, beyond the pale of 
 ancient civilization, are just the realm of wonders 
 and the theme of the Marvelous Tale. The 
 myth-making faculty begins to play on the line 
 outside of the domain of the known fact ; peoples 
 wiiich have no history are handed over to the 
 imagination. Thus around the whole Persian 
 Empire, except where it borders on Greece, is a 
 fringe of Wonderland which is a kind of transi- 
 tion from the known world to the unknown, the 
 twilight of fable lying between day and darkness. 
 Our historian will always lapse into romance 
 
BOOK THIBD. 207 
 
 when he comes to this twilight border of the 
 world ; his spirit responds at once to its charac- 
 ter, and he springs from the historical to the 
 mythical with a decided relish. 
 
 Cambjscs sends messengers to the Long-lived 
 Ethiopians *' who dwell in that part of Libya 
 which borders upon the South Sea." A remote, 
 marvelous people; they have a Table of the Sun, 
 to which every sort of meat comes already 
 cooked, and he who wishes partakes, the earth 
 itself producing these bounties; a kind of 
 ■ScJdaraffenland^ where the dove flies into the 
 hungry human mouth, just broiled aright. Those 
 Ethiopians were also *' the tallest and handsom- 
 est of all men," quite diff*erent from the Ethio- 
 pians of these days. Moreover, their king, 
 chosen because he is the largest and strongest 
 man of the nation, sends back this stunning 
 reply to the Persian monarch: " He is not a just 
 man; for if he were just, he would not desire 
 any other territory than his own ; nor would he 
 reduce people to servitude who had done him no 
 injury." Thus is the grand Persian sin set 
 forth from the Greek point of view by that dis- 
 tant Ethiopian king. 
 
 Nor is this all. He sends a huge bow, his 
 own, with the taunt: when the Persian king can 
 bend this, let him make war upon me. So the 
 Bending of the Bow comes up again as the test 
 of strength, as in many a legend, notably in 
 
208 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 that of Ulysses. The Long-lived Ethiopians 
 attained often the age of one hundred and twenty 
 years, and sometimes even more, but evidently 
 falling short of the Hebrevr patriarchs; their 
 food was meat and milk, not grain, which in their 
 eyes was but *' dung," or the product thereof, 
 and not fit to be eaten. And they had a foun- 
 tain, a veritable EI Dorado, in which they bathed, 
 whereby the body became as sleek as if oiled, 
 and a fragrance rose from it as of violets. This 
 is what gave them long life, truly another Foun- 
 tain of Youth. Many other wonders are seen; 
 finally the tomb is shown ; the corpse is pre- 
 served in the semblance of life, by a preparation, 
 and encased in a transparent casket, which is set 
 up in the household for a year; thus the dead are 
 not absent from the family gathering. Such a 
 treasure of legend do we suddenly come upon 
 among these Long-lived Ethiopians far away to 
 the South. 
 
 Cambyses, ** madman that he was," proposed 
 to march against this people, ** not taking into 
 account that he was going to make an expedition 
 to the extremes of the earth." Of course he failed 
 utterly, he could not enter this legendary land, 
 the limit was fixed against him and he had to fall 
 back. Even more disastrous was his expedition 
 against the - Ammonians ; his whole army was 
 overwhelmed in the sand storm of the desert 
 before it could reach its destination. 
 
BOOK THIRD. 209 
 
 (3) Thus from all three directions Cambyses 
 is thrown back upon Egypt, from an inhabited 
 land, from the desert, from the sea.* The limit 
 is drawn strongly upon him, he finds the boun- 
 dary to his will and to his empire from without. 
 But he still has no boundary from within, he 
 gives himself up to unmeasured caprice, which 
 becomes at last insanity. For he gets to think- 
 ing that the world is a caprice, without order, 
 without law; the man who holds that the world 
 is irrational, must become irrational himself. 
 The picture of Cambyses, the irresponsible 
 Oriental despot, is drawn by a Greek hand for 
 Greek readers, but it is psychologically true and 
 is verified by the fact. 
 
 The disease which comes of absolute authority 
 has been outlined by the great English poet in 
 one of his most completely elaborated characters. 
 King Lear, once absolute monarch, has limit 
 after limit put upon him by his own daughters, 
 till he sinks away into insanity like Cambyses. 
 Unlimited power has the tendency to make the 
 man crazy who is born to it and exercises it 
 from youth. Xerxes shows a touch of madness, 
 though his father, Darius, seems to have been 
 free of it, having had to acquire his authority. 
 The Koman Emperors, Nero, Caligula and others 
 had mental disease, evidently begotten of their 
 position; Russian Czars have shown a mad 
 strain; and is^ not something the matter with the 
 
 14 
 
210 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 present German Kaiser? The impressive lesson 
 from Shakespeare's Lear is that absolute author- 
 ity is more dangerous to the person who exer- 
 cises it than to the people over whom it is 
 exercised, though the latter live at the peril of 
 a caprice. 
 
 Cambyses quite fills the definition of a tyrant 
 given later (80): "he changes the institutions 
 of the ancestors, wrongs women, puts men to 
 death without trial." We see Cambyses assail- 
 ing the customs and belief of the Egyptians : he 
 killed Apis and scourged the priests; he dese- 
 crated the temples, and scoffed at the Egyptian 
 Gods. Nor did he respect Persian law and cus- 
 tom: he marries his own sister, violates sepul- 
 chres, burns dead bodies — the latter being a 
 sacrilegious act, since the Persians believe fire 
 to be a God (16) who is not to be polluted with 
 a corpse. Finally he slays his own brother and 
 sister, having become a monster who devours 
 his own family. 
 
 Any limit put upon him he resents as if it were 
 the most heinous crime; any advice is a wrong 
 against majesty. Upon his own inquiry, Prex- 
 aspes, his most trusted friend, dares to tell him 
 that the Persians " say you like wine too well." 
 Whereupon Cambyses shows that he is sober by 
 drawinoj his bow and shootinor throus^h the heart 
 his cup-bearer, the son of Prexaspes. Croesus 
 admonishes him: "Do not so completely give 
 
BOOK THIBD. 211 
 
 way to youth and passion, but restrain yourself," 
 put yourself in bounds. Whereat Cambyses: 
 *' Dost thou presume to give advice to me," to 
 me the absolute monarch ! For certainly advice 
 means limitation, even limitation of wisdom. 
 " Give me my bow," but Croesus jumped up and 
 ran out. 
 
 Such is the lively portrait of the Oriental 
 despot going mad through lack of self-restraint; 
 he finds an external, but no internal limit. Now 
 we are to pass to another kind of tyrant, the 
 kind which Greece produced in its movement 
 from the heroic to the historic age. The main 
 example is Poly crates of Samos, but Periander 
 tyrant of Corinth is introduced by the way with 
 his fateful drama- 
 
 2. The first Greek Thread {39-60). *' While 
 Cambyses was invading Egypt, the Lacedemoni- 
 ans sent an army against Samos and Poly crates," 
 its tyrant. Such is the historian's method of 
 connecting events in time. He has no estab- 
 lished era, by which to measure each people in 
 its movement through the passing years. So he 
 seeks to measure the two main peoples, Greek 
 and Persian, by each other. The Olympiad is 
 not employed by Herodotus, but a kind of 
 synchronism, which allows him to throw his 
 occurrences into significant groups or cycles, thus 
 giving him free range to set forth his ethical and 
 dramatic view of things. Still these groups or 
 
212 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 cycles he makes contemporaneous with one 
 another, as he unfolds his two great Threads of 
 Historj'; as, in the present case, he gives us a 
 cycle of the Persian tyrant, and then proceeds to 
 give a cycle of the Greek tyrant, both being con- 
 temporaneous and connected in a certain spiritual 
 kinship. 
 
 Of course such a chronology is vague according 
 to modern notions, but it has its great advan- 
 tages ; it prevents an epoch from being cut up 
 into years and brings the stress of attention upon 
 the complete movements of history. Still it 
 shows historical succession and contemporaneous- 
 ness, the two time-factors of history ; not by 
 years, however, but by epochs and cycles. 
 
 Samos, an island of the Egean, is now the 
 Greek center, which has passed from Miletus 
 and the mainland, where it was in the Lj^dian 
 time. The power has been concentrated in the 
 hands of one man. Poly crates, who has dis- 
 possessed, his brothers, put down the people and 
 seized authority. Thus he differs from the 
 Oriental despot, who has inherited his power 
 and holds it in accord with the spirit of his peo- 
 ple. But Poly crates has brought about his 
 ascendency through his own activity and ability, 
 having wrenched it from others, and from the 
 people who submit with more or less protest. 
 He is, therefore, the strong individual, who has 
 proved his own right, self-reliant, self-deter- 
 
BOOK THIBD. 213 
 
 mined, self-made. So he is still Greek, in strong 
 contrast with the Persian monarch, though he 
 defies the Greek consciousness in establishing a 
 tyranny. 
 
 The historian speaks of the long-continued 
 good fortune of Polycrates, but it is manifest 
 that the latter deserved his luck through his 
 capacity. Notwithstanding, such a man is envied 
 by the Gods, whose function it is to put the limit 
 upon the individual in his prosperity and great- 
 ness. Polycrates too has his prophetic monitor, 
 as Cyrus had in Croesus and as Croesus had in 
 Solon. Now it is a friend, the Egyptian king 
 Amasis, who sends the admonition, and bids him 
 throw awa}^ that which he values most, *' so that 
 it may never more be seen of man." Polycrates 
 accepts the advice and resolves to get rid of his 
 most precious jewel, and thus forestall fate, like 
 Oedipus and like Astyages. The ring (or seal) 
 is thrown into the sea far from shore, but is 
 brought back to its owner, after having been 
 swallowed by a fish which is caught and carried 
 to the king by a fisherman. 
 
 The historian again foreshadows the outcome 
 of Polycrates through a Marvelous Tale, which 
 shows that he cannot escape his own, it is certain 
 to come bacli to him after many days. What is 
 that of which he cannot get rid? It is his deed, 
 that is really man's fate, though the story-teller 
 does not say so, for such a statement would be 
 
214 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 reflective, not mythical. The ocean, the universe 
 will surely send him back his own ; a faith of 
 this kind rests on the moral order of the world. 
 The fact is indeed a marvel, though very real ; 
 the Fairy Tale in its best form utters to the 
 childlike mind this primordial belief. Possibly 
 the ring, being circular, may also have its sug- 
 gestion . 
 
 In the present conjuncture Samos is shown in 
 a double conflict ; with a party af its own citi- 
 zens and with the Lacedemonians. It is mani- 
 fest that Polycrates had a strong opposition 
 among the Samians; these, when he tried to 
 get rid of them, resisted, and called to their aid 
 the Lacedemonians, who unsuccessfully sought 
 to put down the tyrant. Polycrates, the fortu- 
 nate man, is still master of the situation; but we 
 see what a stir he roused against himself in Hel- 
 las. In the great conflict approaching, Greece 
 cannot employ him ; he is too like the Persian 
 despot to be the bearer of the Hellenic principle. 
 Nor can Samos be placed at the head of Greece, 
 in spite of her power and greatness at this time ; 
 her people as a whole have shown themselves 
 unable to shake off the yoke of their own tyrant; 
 they have not the free Hellenic spirit, which is 
 necessary to leadership. We may also note here 
 that Sparta alone was not equal to suppressing 
 the Samian tyrant; still less, could she alone 
 have conquered the Persian. A new city is yet 
 
BOOK THIBD. 215 
 
 to show the qualities which are now seen lacking 
 both in Samos and Sparta. Athens will expel 
 her own tyrant and then defeat the Persian ; for 
 her career events are preparing. 
 
 Polycrates seems to have sided more with the 
 Orient than with Greece. He subjugated Greek 
 islands and cities, but he was on friendly terms 
 with Amasis; then he seems to have quit the 
 Egyptian (Herodotus says the Egyptian quit 
 him). At least we find him ready to help Cam- 
 byses when the latter attacked Egypt. It is 
 highly probable that Polycrates saw which way 
 the wind was blowing and shifted to suit the 
 time. Certainly it was far more important for 
 him to be on a good footing with Persia, whose 
 territory lay nearest to his own, than with Egypt. 
 
 Polycrates, therefore, had broken deeply with 
 Hellenism, Greece could not think of him as her 
 protagonist against Asia. But he likewise stood 
 in the way of Persia, which cannot accept a 
 boundary to her power ; he must in the end sub- 
 ordinate himself or fight. Still Polycrates had 
 his historic function ; he through his Thalasso- 
 cracy kept the Persian power off the sea, till 
 the fullness of time ; he was a kind of wall be- 
 hind which the infant Athens was protected and 
 grew. He united the Greek islands in the only 
 way they could be united, by the strong hand of 
 despotic authority ; thus the Egean did not at 
 once fall under swav of the Persian. 
 
216 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Alongside of Poly crates, another bad tyrant 
 of Greece is introduced in a sad story of do- 
 mestic unhappiness. The Corinthians aid the 
 Samian exiles, which fact gives the historian an 
 opportunity to interweave the wicked deeds 
 done by Periander and the retribution. He 
 was tyrant of Corinth. He put to death his 
 own wife, by whom he had two sons; one of 
 these sons, he who had the superior talent, 
 hearino: of the murder of his mother, conceived 
 the strongest loathing for his father, refused to 
 live with him, even to see him. Yet the father 
 still loved him, loved him with the greater in- 
 tensity, and sent messenger after messenger to 
 bring; about a reconcilation : all in vain. The 
 aged tyrant at last loses his son by death ; thus 
 the domestic tie, which he had so deeply wronged, 
 avenges itself upon the violator. Again the 
 tragic vein of our historian rises prominently 
 into view ; not a marvelous tale but a short novel 
 we may name it ; the incidents bear the impress 
 of reality and are probably true in the main, 
 though the author has given them an impressive 
 dramatic coloring. History with Herodotus 
 easily passes into biography, and biography 
 rounds itself off into complete periods, or cycles 
 of life. Such is one of Periander's cycles. 
 
 Samos in the time of Poly crates was not only 
 a great political center, but also a great intellec- 
 tual center, a precursor of Athens. Herodotus 
 
BOOK THIED, 217 
 
 praises the great works of the Samians in engi- 
 neering^ and architecture — the tunnel throusrh 
 the mountain, the mole to protect the harbor, and 
 the famous temple of Juno, " largest of all we 
 have seen." Samos indeed shows a tendency to 
 Egyptian magnitude in its structures, an Oriental 
 colossality. Then there were renowned artists 
 in Samos, evidently forerunners of Greek sculp- 
 ture. Polycrates must have had strong artistic 
 taste ; he selected as his most valued object the 
 signet ring cut by Theodorus, a very famous 
 Samian artist. In fact the Samians seem to have 
 liked works of art a little too well ; they are 
 charged with stealing the bowl of Croesus and 
 the corselet of Amasis (47). Anacreon, the 
 jolly poet of Teios, was apparently a favorite of 
 Polycrates. Nor must we forget the greatest of 
 them all probably, Pythagoras the philosopher, 
 who was born at Samos, and probably went 
 thence to Egypt in the time of Polycrates and 
 Amasis. On account of the trouble at Samos he 
 emigrated to Italy, where his career became epoch- 
 making in a number of ways. Egypt and Samos, 
 through their mighty constructions, may both 
 have contributed to his idea of making number 
 the principle of all things. Pythagoras was in- 
 deed a great teacher, and his school he probably 
 started in Samos, then the center of culture. 
 
218 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 II. 
 
 We enter upon the second portion of Third 
 Book with a return to the Persian Thread (61- 
 159). There will be a repetition of the two 
 Threads, Greek and Persian, thus the structure is 
 like to that of the first portion just given. Yet 
 there will be a kind of Persian appendix in refer- 
 ence to the revolt and recapture of Babylon 
 (150). 
 
 In this portion the historian brings before us 
 the fates of the two tyrants, Cambyses and 
 Polycrates, Persian and Greek, both perishing 
 by a tragic death, both showing retribution for 
 the deed, yet in different ways. Persia has in- 
 ternal conflict also, which she has to settle before 
 she can march against Greece and the Occident. 
 She has to make a transition to a new race of 
 kings, to Darius, the organizer rather than the 
 conqueror. The house of Cyrus has done its 
 part in conquest, the new order must consolidate 
 and build up the empire internally. 
 
 Still there are some conquests. Samos, the 
 island of the Egean, the half-way station to cx)n- 
 tinental Hellas, having lost its able tyrant, is 
 shown to be incapable and unworthy of being 
 the bearer of the Hellenic principle against the 
 incoming Orient. Samos goes to pieces inter- 
 nally, no longer held by the strong hand, and 
 easily falls a prey to the Persian. 
 
BOOK THIBD, 219 
 
 1.' The second Persian Thread (61-119). 
 The general sweep of this part is the movement 
 from the House of Cyrus, through revolution, 
 to a new dynasty and a new order of things in 
 Persia. The central figure, the pivotal charac- 
 ter, is Darius who makes the transition from 
 Persia the conqueror without, to Persia organ- 
 ized within. The chief stages of this change 
 we shall follow out separately. 
 
 (1) The fate of Cambyses is told in the usual 
 dramatic fashion. He had long been absent 
 from Persia ; he hears of the revolt of Smerdis 
 the Magician. Cambyses had caused his own 
 brother, also named Smerdis, to be secretly 
 murdered; the result was that a pretender of 
 the same name rose up and seized the govern- 
 ment, passing himself off as Smerdis, the son of 
 Cyrus. The tale of the usurpation of Smerdis 
 has in it fictitious elements; the old dramatic 
 device, resemblance of name and of person, is 
 made the plot of the story (as in Shakes- 
 peare's Comedy of Errors and in the Men- 
 oechmi of Plautus, which last reaches up 
 to a Greek model, which again may con- 
 nect with the age of Herodotus). The false 
 Smerdis has the same name as the mur- 
 dered son of Cyrus and looks like him ; 
 hence the success of the impostor. But 
 probably both kinds of resemblance are unhis- 
 torical ; we know from the Behistun Inscription 
 
220 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 that the real name of the usurper was Gomatas 
 (or Gauinata); the personal resemblance was 
 easily added. Still the Magian revolt is historical 
 as well as the fact that the impostor pretended to 
 be the son of Cyrus. Thus does our historian 
 take the reality and clothe it in a fictitious garb. 
 
 Cambyses at once sets out for Persia with 
 bitter lamentings for his slain brother Smerdis, 
 whom he now perceives to have been murdered 
 in vain. Then, leaping on his horse, he was 
 wounded by his own sword in the thigh, ** just 
 where he had formerly stabbed the Egyptian God 
 Apis." So retribution has come; the dream is 
 fulfilled, which he tried to forestall in the case of 
 Smerdis ; and the prophecy concerning his death 
 is about to be verified. With deep remorse he 
 confesses his guilt, and announces that the 
 Median Magi, " he whom I left steward of my 
 palace and his brother Smerdis," now rule the 
 land of Cyrus. He conjures the Persians pres- 
 ent to recover the crown from the Medes, 
 wherein we may see that there was still some 
 jealousy between the Persians and the Medes, 
 and that the present revolution had its political 
 side. 
 
 (2) This revolt or usurpation of the Magi has 
 given rise to a good deal of conjecture. From 
 two or three allusions we may infer that Herod- 
 otus regarded it as a political revolution ; the 
 Medes revolt and regain for a few months their 
 
BOOK THIBD. 221 
 
 ancient ascendency. This view is held by in- 
 fluential modern historians (Grote and Niebuhr). 
 Unquestionably there is some truth in the view. 
 The House of Cyrus in the person of its monarch 
 Cambyses had quit Persia and had stayed in 
 Egypt ; why should not discontent arise ? Then 
 after Cambyses there was no heir of the House of 
 Cyrus ; why should not the authority revert to the 
 Medes? The ruler being absent, the Empire in 
 Asia would have a tendency to dissolve of itself. 
 Hence the call for the organizer, Darius. 
 
 Yet there is no doubt that a religious principle 
 plays in also, as is always the case in the political 
 revolutions of the Orient. The Magians were 
 worshipers of the elements — fire, air, water, 
 sun, moon; this worship had assailed and proba- 
 bly in part had supplanted the old Persian 
 Dualism, Light and Darkness, or good and evil, 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman (see Rawlinson's Essay, 
 appended to his Translation of Herodotus, Book 
 n.). The conquered population of Media and 
 Persia adhered to their old religion, which was 
 not that of their Aryan conquerors. This old, 
 partially repressed religion again flames up and 
 seeks supremacy, not only religious but also 
 political, in the Magian revolt. 
 
 To this we may add that there was also some- 
 thing of a social upheaval in the affair. The 
 Magi were priests, in the possession of a sacred 
 ritual; they were a caste. On the other hand. 
 
222 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 the Persians were soldiers, at least the chief 
 soldiers, and they had the State. Thus the con- 
 flict so often seen in History, arises in Persia, 
 the conflict between the military and the sacer- 
 dotal class. A priest-king gets the crown ; at 
 once he exempts everybody from military service 
 and from tribute, doubtless a very popular 
 measure to all except the Persians, who were the 
 military captains and were exempt from tribute 
 at all times. But the State went to pieces by 
 such a policy ; see the many revolts which Darius 
 had to put down mentioned in the Behistun In- 
 scription (Rawlinson Herodotus, Vol. II., Ap- 
 pendix). Such a political result may have been 
 intended by the Magus, as it would destroy the 
 Persian supremacy. 
 
 Such various gleams — political, religious, 
 social — flash out of this revolution from afar, 
 with much intermittent darkness. The student 
 will note that the same conflict between the two 
 castes, priest and soldier, took place in Egypt 
 also (see the preceding Book), and with the 
 same result, namely, the dissolution of the State 
 under a priest-king. But Persia at once recov- 
 ered herself, while Egypt remained long in a 
 condition of internal disruption. 
 
 (3) The story of the discovery of the impos- 
 ture and the death of the Magi is given with 
 fullness and vigor by the historian (67-78). A 
 noble Persian Otanes finds out the truth throus^h 
 
BOOK THIBD. 223 
 
 his daughter, who is one of the wives of the 
 king; five associates join w^ith him, when Darius, 
 son of Hystaspes, arrives in Susa from Persia, 
 and is taken into the conspiracy. Darius also 
 had found out the imposture, and Prexaspes, 
 who had slain the true Smerdis, announces the 
 fact openly to the people and puts an end to his 
 own life on the spot. It is curious that Darius, 
 who had to tell a falsehood to the guard in order 
 to gain entrance to the king, gives a sophistical 
 defense of lying (72), which in a good Persian 
 seems contradictory, as a chief point in their 
 education was to speak the truth. But he seems 
 to justify himself *' by the advantage to be 
 gained," and so he serves up deception to the 
 deceiver. 
 
 As there is now no ruler and no established 
 authority of any kind, the question comes up, 
 what form of government shall we choose? At 
 least such a question comes up in the mind of 
 Herodotus, who all his life must have been hear- 
 ing discussions about the best method of con- 
 structing a State. Those active Greek heads had 
 already opened the problem, which is still worked 
 over and over w^ith many a twist and turn : Shall 
 it be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy? 
 Hardly does any such question belong to the 
 Orient, but here it is interjected into the 
 stream of events, and we may well listen to the 
 aro^ument. 
 
224 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 Otanes favors a democracy : ' ' How can a 
 monarchy be a well-constituted government, 
 where one man is allowed to do what he pleases 
 without responsibility T ' Very distinctly does the 
 speaker point out the psychological effects of 
 absolute authority upon the one who exercises it : 
 *' If the best man were granted such power, he 
 would depart from his wonted thoughts, inso- 
 lence would be engendered in him." Behold the 
 career of Cambyses. Envy too will rise in the 
 breast of the monarch. '* He changes the coun- 
 try's institutions, violates women, and puts men 
 to death without trial." A summary of the 
 Greek tyrant! "Democracy, on the contrarj^ 
 has isonomy (equality before the law), most 
 beautiful word ! The ruling power is selected by 
 lot and is responsible, while all plans are referred 
 to the public." 
 
 From these and other expressions in the 
 course of his History, as well as from certain 
 events of his life, Herodotus is usually consid- 
 ered as favoring democracy. Still he puts a plea 
 for aristocracy (the rule of the bjest) into the 
 mouth of Megabyzus, who repeats the Greek com- 
 mon-places about the folly and tyranny of the 
 multitude; ** nothing is more senseless and inso- 
 lent than the worthless rabble (canaille, bum- 
 mers)," better the single-headed tyrant than the 
 many-headed one. Thus the everlasting conflict 
 between Demos and Aristos, with boundless 
 
BOOK THIRD. 225 
 
 mutual vituperation, has started on its career 
 down time. 
 
 Darius now takes up the argument in favor of 
 monarchy, after setting forth the evils inherent 
 in the other two forms of government. More- 
 over did not we Persians get our freedom from 
 Cyrus, a monarch? ** My opinion is that we 
 should maintain the same kind of government 
 and not change the institutions of the fathers." 
 Darius has the best of the argument for his 
 Oriental audience, the three silent conspirators 
 side with him, and a monarchy is decreed. But 
 who is to be the monarch? It comes to the 
 man who has defended monarchy. Darius in his 
 speech puts special stress upon the monarch's 
 being a good man; on the whole, he fulfills the 
 requirements which he himself lays down. 
 
 We may w^ell think that this whole discussion 
 is a piece taken out of our historian's life at 
 Athens. The Y^^i^tisans of Aristos and Demos 
 were abundant in that city, though Demos had 
 the upper hand ; it is possible that even Tyran- 
 nos (some belated follower of Pisistratus) may 
 have had his defenders. It is supposed that 
 Herodotus came into personal contact with Peri- 
 cles, the grand champion of democracy; we may 
 have here some short abstract of a speech or a 
 conversation of the Athenian statesman. Cer- 
 tain it is that Demos makes the best plea of the 
 three in this Persian disputation, which is, how- 
 
 15 
 
226 THE FA THE B OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 ever, simply a bit of Greek speculation on the 
 nature of government. The historian naively 
 declares at the start that some Greeks think such 
 a discussion never took place in Persia. 
 
 (3) Darius shows himself the right man in the 
 right place at the right time : he becomes the 
 organizer of the Persian Empire, now falling to 
 pieces. It is true that he is repi esented as get- 
 ting the crown through the sagacity of his groom, 
 but he probably obtained it through merit, and 
 took it himself by his own power. The histo- 
 rian is fond of tracing the external accident 
 which accompanies the inner and necessary 
 movement of events. Some have supposed, too, 
 that Darius was the rightful heir after the ex- 
 tinction of the house of Cyrus; the Behistun 
 Inscription seems to make some such claim. At 
 any rate he begins by showing his insight into 
 the needs of his time and of his country, as well 
 as his administrative talent. He divides the 
 Empire into twenty nomes or satrapies ; then 
 he imposes on each a fixed tax, which is certainly 
 an enormous stride forward in administration. 
 The historian says : ** During the reign of Cyrus 
 and Cambyses there was no stipulated tribute, 
 but only presents." The regulation was prob- 
 bably unpopular with the ruling Persians, for it 
 lessened their opportunity for rapacity and 
 plunder. " Hence the Persians call Darius a 
 tradesman," an opprobrious term in their eyes. 
 
BOOK THIItD. 227 
 
 It has been often noticed that the Turkish 
 and Persian governments of to-day are very 
 similar to the ancient Persian. Indeed some 
 writers affirm that the ancient Persian Empire 
 was better administered than are Turkey and 
 Persia at present. Less cruelty, less fanaticism, 
 less corruption and rapacity ; more enlighten- 
 ment, more civilization ; so we may give credit 
 to Darius as a great reformer in political and 
 probably in religious matters. In the Behistun 
 Inscription he declares that he had restored the 
 faith of Ormuzd, which the Maojian rule had set 
 aside. 
 
 (4) The historian, having given an account of 
 the organization of the Persian Empire by Darius, 
 passes to its extreme limits toward the East, 
 where it had subjected India, which Herodotus 
 unquestionably places in the valley of the Indus, 
 not in the valley of the Ganges. Of the con- 
 quest of these Eastern lands by Persia we know 
 nothing, though it is evident that there must 
 have been great wars of subjugation in those 
 regions. But such events are not historical, have 
 never been taken up into the historic movement 
 of the race ; Persia herself gets a place in His- 
 tory almost wholly through her great conflict with 
 the West and its representative, Hellas. The 
 struggle of Persia with India, Bactria, Sogdiana 
 and the rest was outside the pale of the historic 
 consciousness. 
 
228 THE FATHEH OF HISTOHY. 
 
 Our historian, as soon as he begins to treat of 
 these remote parts, becomes mythical in his nar- 
 rative; India is now the land of wonders (98). 
 He drops into the Marvelous Tale in order to 
 account for the vast quantity of Indian gold; 
 hence the story of the huge ants which dig up 
 the sands of the desert and thus bring to the 
 surface the shining metal, which is carried off at 
 the risk of human life. Such is the toiling 
 miner here, who throws out the treasures of the 
 earth without knowing their value, and is robbed 
 of them by the stranger. It has been often con- 
 jectured that stories of this sort are fabricated in 
 order to scare away explorers. 
 
 In like manner Arabia to the South furnishes 
 a borderland of Arabian Tales for our historian, 
 similar to those of the Thousand Nights ( 107). 
 On this rim of the world grow those marvelous 
 aromatic articles which lend such a perfume to 
 Araby the Blest. Frankincense is guarded by 
 winged serpents, which have to be driven off by 
 burning styrax, whose offensive odor conquers 
 these fragrance-loving reptiles. The cassia has 
 to be fouojht for ao^ainst *' wing^ed animals like 
 bats, which screech terribly and are very fierce." 
 Cinnamon is obtained from the nests of large 
 birds, which are built at inaccessible places on 
 high mountains, and which are broken down by 
 huge pieces of meat carried up thither by these 
 birds (compare the fabulous roc in the story of 
 
BOOK THIBD. 229 
 
 Sinbad). Mythical animals and fowls, often 
 with commingled shapes, are characteristic of the 
 art and the les^end of the Orient. 
 
 The historian (106) gives us a glimpse of his 
 philosophy in this matter. *' The extreme parts 
 of the earth possess the most excellent prod- 
 ucts " — that is, the most extraordinary; India, 
 '*the farthest reo^ion of the inhabited world 
 toward the east," has the largest birds and 
 quadrupeds, as well as the most gold. Arabia, 
 *'the farthest of all inhabited countries toward 
 the south " has its wonderful aromatic plants. 
 From these wonders of nature the mind easily 
 sweeps to the wonders of fable ; so the extremes 
 of the earth with their extraordinary products 
 become Fableland. Extraordinary they are for 
 Greece w^ith its moderate climate, its central situ- 
 ation, its even-tempered people whose chief prov- 
 erb is, JSfo excess. As our historian moves out 
 in Space from his Hellenic center toward the 
 Oriental border, he gets mythical; in like man- 
 ner, as he moves upward in Time, he shows a 
 similar tendency. The present belongs to the 
 Understanding and is historical; the distant be- 
 longs to the Imagination and grows more and 
 more toward the fabulous. 
 
 Already we have noted a similar fringe of 
 fable to the South of Egypt, the African border, 
 in the first Persian Thread ; now in this second 
 Persian Thread we have the Asiatic border of 
 
230 ^ THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 fable, hinting the symmetrical structure of the 
 present Book. 
 
 Thus the history of Persia fades into a mythi- 
 cal twilight, as the historian moves out toward its 
 limits. Already the account of Persia is mingled 
 with fictitious elements, though they clothe real 
 history. Not the least interesting study is the 
 consciousness of the historian, as he unfolds his 
 great work ; he becomes mythical in his treat- 
 ment where man is mythical ; for the chief his- 
 toric fact of an epoch and of a nation may be 
 just the fact that they are mythic;il, or in the 
 mythical stage. 
 
 2. The second Greek Thread (120). In the 
 preceding Thread we see Persia rising to a new 
 life and order through Darius ; in the present 
 Thread we witness a Greek State sinking into 
 disorder and ruin, and finally absorbed into the 
 Persian Empire. Samos is a tyranny, which can- 
 not take an independent position permanently 
 between the Orient and the Occident ; when the 
 strong tyrant is destroyed, the people show them- 
 selves incapable of continuing either a free or a 
 tyrannical government. 
 
 ( 1 ) The fate of the Greek tyrant Polycrates 
 is told first, in correspondence with the fate of 
 the Persian tyrant Cambyses of the preceding 
 Thread. 
 
 A Persian satrap of Asia Minor, Oroetes by 
 name, evidently sees the necessity of getting rid 
 
BOOK THIBD. 231 
 
 of Polycrates, and so lure? him to destruction 
 by a tempting bait — heaps of money. More- 
 over, he throws the Greek tyrant off his guard 
 by a specit)us pretext, saying that " King Cam- 
 byses meditates my death." Plainly does Poly- 
 crates here lose his sagacity, he perishes through 
 the plot of Oroetes by a most terrible kind of 
 death, which the historian refuses to describe. 
 Moreover he is entrapped into an unfriendly act 
 asfainst Persia, offerins^ to take the treasures 
 which really belonged to the Persian monarch, 
 if Oroetes had been telling the truth. The fore- 
 cast of Amasis regarding Polycrates has come 
 true. 
 
 Note the various causes assigned by the his- 
 torian for the slaying of the Greek tyrant by 
 Oroetes : first the taunt from another Persian 
 satrap — purely fortuitous; secondly a personal 
 cause — the insult to the satrap's herald on the 
 part of Polycrates; thirdly, the political cause — 
 the tyrant's ambition to rule the Greek islands 
 and Ionia (122) and thus put a limit on the 
 Persian supremacy. To these causes, we may 
 add the fourth, the world-historical, not directly 
 mentioned by Herodotus : the Samian power 
 could not be the bearer of either Hellenism or 
 Orientalism in the approaching struggle, and 
 had, in the order of things, to be swept out of 
 the way. 
 
 We may observe, in passing, the clear distinc- 
 
232 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 tion which the historian makes (122) between 
 the historical and the mythical : Polycrates is 
 the first Greek who formed the plan of a Thal- 
 assocracy (rule of the sea), except Minos or any 
 others before his time (who belong to the heroic 
 or mythical age); but in the so-called human 
 (non-heroic or historical) age Polycrates is 
 the first. Such is the important distinction 
 here made by the historian himself, which he 
 speaks of as current in his time, probably at 
 Athens. 
 
 After the Samian Thalassocracy comes the 
 Athenian, which Herodotus saw before him 
 when writing this passage, and compared it with 
 that of Polycrates, who had the idea which 
 Athens carried out after the Persian War. It 
 must be remembered that Herodotus passed some 
 time at Samos, where he had the opportunity of 
 studying Samian history from native sources, and 
 of finding its true place in the development of 
 Greek history. Also he made a prolonged stay 
 at Athens. Thus he seeks to order the totality 
 of Greek history, giving every section its due, 
 quite as Homer gives a totality of the Greek 
 world in describing the Trojan conflict. 
 
 It is to be noted that Thucydides and Aristotle, 
 both later than Herodotus and both quite devoid 
 of his legendary sympathies, allude to the 
 Thalassocracy of Minos as historical (Thuc. I. 
 4, and Arist. Pol. II. 10. See Hawlinson, also 
 
BOOK THIBD. 233 
 
 Stein^ ad loc). Thus we find our historian 
 dropping hints here and there, which show that 
 he was to a certain extent conscious of his own 
 procedure, or growing into a consciousness 
 thereof in the writing of his Book. This dis- 
 tinction between mythical and historical is 
 fundamental in his spiritual texture, and he 
 was aware of it in part. 
 
 This Oroetes is not a very good Persian in one 
 way ; he is a cunning liar, deceiving Polycrates, 
 himself no novice in craft, both with words and 
 actions. Thus he is learning Greek subtletv and 
 bringing it home to its chief practicers. But 
 Oroetes himself, becoming insolent with success- 
 ful treachery and murder, gets the backstroke of 
 his own deeds, and perishes through a plot laid 
 for him by Darius, who also can employ decep- 
 tion, as we have already seen. Thus the Persian 
 tyrant gets his own also ; this even-handed jus- 
 tice is not confined to the Greek, being indeed a 
 principle of the world-order. 
 
 Still Oroetes with his crimes has his place in 
 the grand historic movement of the age. He 
 brings about the death of Polycrates, which takes 
 awav the main barrier of the Persian to crossino; 
 the sea into continental Greece. The Samian 
 Thalassocracy is destroyed, the Egean becomes a 
 Persian sea, still traversed by Greek sailors, 
 though no longer independent. The Persian, 
 however, was never fully able to master the 
 
234 THE FATHEB OF HI STORY. 
 
 watery element ; though ruler, he was still 
 dependent on the Greek mariner. The new 
 Thalassocracy, the democratic one, that of 
 Athens, will rise and sweep him from the sea. 
 But this is a chapter of Greek history, whose 
 full development lies beyond the ken of our 
 historian. 
 
 (2) Now we have another kind of story in- 
 terwoven into the narrative, forming a contrast 
 with the tale of the tja-ants, and showing the new 
 realm in which the Greek triumphs over the Bar- 
 barian. Greek science is also to be celebrated in 
 the pages of history ; Greek intellect will finally 
 be the conqueror in this conflict, Pallas Athena 
 and her city will overwhelm the Persian, who 
 tries to seize both bv violence, from the outside. 
 
 Democedes (120) was born in Crotona, a Greek 
 city of Italy, famous for its medical school. He 
 had been a kind of public practitioner in several 
 Greek States — Egina, Athens, Samos — by 
 which fact we see that the Greek cities had 
 already some sort of sanitary regulation, and 
 regarded health as a public matter. Instruments, 
 too, he had; the free Greek life of the time is 
 manifestly flowering into science. 
 
 But Democedes ventures into Asia in com- 
 pany with Polycrates; he soon finds himself 
 a slave, and is sent up to Susa, the Persian 
 capital, along with other slaves. There, how- 
 ever, his medical skill quickly brings him into 
 
BOOK THIBV. 235 
 
 notice, he cures the king's sprain by means 
 of " his Greek remedies," the Egyptian doc- 
 tors being completely outdone and discredited. 
 It is a noteworthy fact that he intercedes to 
 save his medical rivals from the effects of 
 the king's displeasure, and does rescue them ; 
 a truly humane trait, also a result of the free 
 Greek life, which recognizes the competitor and 
 will not destroy him. Still Democedes, though 
 honor, wealth, and royal favors are showered 
 upon him, is unhappy, is a bird in a cage ; he 
 longs to return to Greece where alone he finds 
 life worth living. He is not free at the court of 
 Darius, so he plans his escape. 
 
 Here a personal element plays in to help him 
 out : Queen Atossa is cured by him of a danger- 
 ous malady and gives him a promise to send him 
 to Greece. She is another Persian besfuiler, now 
 a woman beguiling her husband. But under this 
 personal reason we can observe the political 
 reason: Greece has become the grand limit of 
 the Persian Empire ; we may go further and say 
 the grand limit of Persian consciousness, which 
 limit must somehow be removed if Persia is to 
 exist. Thus Atossa' s words only persuade Darius 
 to do that which he was ready to do, and to 
 which Persian spirit was pressing him forward. 
 So an explonng expedition is sent out to Greece 
 with Democedes, in order to take notes of the 
 country and report to Darius the situation. 
 
236 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 "Fifteen eminent Persians" went with him, 
 who were ** to see that he did not escape;" so 
 he was suspected a little after all. 
 
 When the Greek doctor is as far away as pos- 
 sible from Persian authority, in distant Italy, 
 he succeeds in escaping to his own home, Cro- 
 tona, whither the Persians pursue him and try 
 to capture him in the market place as a runaway 
 slave; but it goes against the grain of a free 
 community to give up such a fugitive. After a 
 struggle the pursuers leave without Democedes, 
 who sends back to the king a piece of Greek 
 bravado. Says the historian, *' These were the 
 first Persians who came from Asia to Greece, 
 and these came as spies," spying out the future 
 problem of Persia; Democedes was hardly the 
 cause of the embassy's being sent, rather the 
 embassy was the cause of his being sent to 
 Greece. 
 
 It is a typical story of the time, showing how 
 science had begun to germinate in that free 
 Greek life, with an excellence not to be found in 
 Asia, or even in Egypt noted for its physicians 
 from the old ages; showing how the Asiatic 
 monarch wished to possess this excellence for 
 himself, and so tried to seize it from without and 
 reduce it to servitude ; how the captive Greek 
 longs to escape and to return to his own free 
 world. In like fashion a Persian monarch later 
 on will trv to seize all Hellas at once from the 
 
BOOK THIBD. 23? 
 
 outside, thinking perchance he can possess its 
 superiority in that way; but he will be foiled, as 
 Darius is foiled in keeping Doctor Democedes in 
 slavery, though the chains be golden. 
 
 (3) Having heard the story of Democedes, 
 we return to the history of Samos (139) after 
 the death of Poly crates. It is not the intention 
 of the Persian to surrender the advantage gained, 
 he must take possession of Samos, "the first 
 city of Greece " at that time, and the capital of 
 the Thalassocracy, which blocked the passage to 
 Europe. The plan is to establish a Greek tyrant, 
 brother of Poly crates, over the city, yet have 
 him subject to Persian authority. Here again a 
 personal ground is given to account for the selec- 
 tion of the man whose name is Syloson : he, on 
 a visit to Egypt in the reign of Cambyses, had 
 done a favor to Darius, then a member of the 
 body-guard of the Persian monarch, *' and a 
 person of no great account;" thus he became a 
 benefactor of Darius, who gave him back his 
 favor in the shape of the government of 
 Samos. 
 
 The Samians, however, show themselves 
 divided upon the great question of the time : 
 Shall we accept the Persian and the tyrant, or 
 turn toward democracy and freedom? Maean- 
 drius, the chief man left in chargfe after 
 the death of Poly crates, favors the latter; 
 " what I condemn in another, I shall not 
 
238 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY, 
 
 do myself, namely, exercise despotic sway 
 over others equal to myself. I, therefore, la}^ 
 down my authority and proclaim isonomy for 
 all." But just at this point the Greek dema- 
 gogue appears with his scurrility, and even 
 Maeandrius gives up his lofty hopes of isonomy : 
 *' for he saw that if he should lay down his 
 power, some other fellow would be set up as 
 tyrant in his place." He perceiving the situa- 
 tion proposes to surrender to the Persians without 
 a blow, and quit the country, but an unexpected 
 opposition rises through his brother Charilaus, 
 '* a half-witted person." Syloson however gets 
 possession of Samos and the Persian influence be- 
 comes paramount. Maeandrius goes to Sparta; 
 then deemed the head of the opposition to Per- 
 sia, but he is rudely expelled under the pretext 
 of bribery. But how could he, who had been 
 both a democrat and a tyrant, be acceptable to 
 aristocratic Sparta? 
 
 Thus Samos with its Thalassocracy is swallowed 
 up, and the sea no longer stands in the way of 
 the Persian advance to the mainland of Europe. 
 Samos could not be the bearer of the Hellenic 
 principle, that is plain ; so it is swept out in the 
 great overshadowing movement toward the cul- 
 minating struggle. But Darius and Persia are 
 held back from Greece for the present by an 
 internal trouble; this is the revolt of Babylon, 
 which is appended here to the present Book. 
 
BOOK THIBD. 239 
 
 3. The third Persian Thread (150-160). 
 *' While the naval armament was moving against 
 Samos, Babylon revolted, having prepared itself 
 well; " this great city in the heart of the Per- 
 sian Empire, had to be retaken first of all. The 
 hero is Zopyrus, who shows his devotion to his 
 king and country by maiming himself and pre- 
 tending to desert to the enemy, over whom he is 
 placed in command on accomit of his zeal and 
 bravery, then at the critical moment he betrays 
 the city. This is a well-known Eastern Tale of 
 which many forms have been current throughout 
 the Orient. It reappears in Greek and Roman writ- 
 ers (for instance, Polyaenus and Livy), and may 
 thus be reo^arded as a kind of universal folk-tale, 
 which shows the loyalty of the individual to his 
 land and ruler in a peculiar way involving self- 
 mutilation, deep-laid cunning, courage, with final 
 success and reward. The historic fact is the re- 
 volt and recapture of Babylon ; the fiction plays 
 in with the hero performing the deed. 
 
 In the Behistun Inscription, which mentions 
 two revolts of Babylon under Darius, the name 
 and deed of Zopyrus are not mentioned; the 
 naked fact of rebellion and conquest is stated in 
 the most naked fashion. Great is the contrast 
 with Herodotus, who clothes the historical with 
 the heroic and mythical. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON TEE THIRD BOOK. 
 
 1. The reader will notice quite a difference in 
 style and in manner of treatment between the 
 Greek and Oriental Threads on the part of the 
 historian; this difference corresponds with and 
 mirrors the different character of the two sec- 
 tions. Herodotus falls into the tone of the 
 Arabian Tales \vhen he describes the wonders of 
 Arabia and of the extreme East ; he lays aside 
 his critical acumen, and makes little or no sepa- 
 ration between history and fable. He seems to 
 share in both easily, and can become historian or 
 fabulist according to the need of the place and 
 the time. When he speaks of the gold of India 
 dug up by colossal ants, and the frankincense of 
 Arabia guarded by winged serpents, he lapses 
 into the Oriental view and belief. The polit- 
 ical accounts of the East, those pertaining 
 to Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius, are history min- 
 gled with fiction, though Greiek conceptions, such 
 as nemesis, the return of the deed to the doer, 
 (240) 
 
BOOK THIBD, 241 
 
 wind through them, and gives them a peculiar 
 artistic coloring. Remarkable is this sympathy 
 of the old historian, not found in any other, 
 ancient or modern ; his soul is transmuted into 
 that of the people whom he describes, he adjusts 
 himself to their consciousness and thus interprets 
 them. Asia has even in its reality this marvelous 
 element, at least to the Occidental mind; if 
 reduced to the prose of the historic conscious- 
 ness, its essence is lost. 
 
 The center of this world's periphery is Hellas, 
 the land not of extremes, but the mean, whose 
 principle is moderation, proportion, harmony. 
 When the historian touches the Greeks, he .par- 
 takes of their character; he is historical, he finds 
 and describes the reality ; he feels himself 
 among a people with a consciousness of his- 
 tory. The Greek myth he often rationalizes, 
 often rejects, yet sometimes accepts; even in 
 Greece he interweaves a mythical strand into 
 affairs; how else could he mirror Greek spirit? 
 But the Orient turns to fableland in proportion 
 as he gets from the center ; indeed to the Orien- 
 tal himself the world is a kind of a fabulous 
 thing. Herodotus reflects this consciousness, 
 yet in Greek fashion ; he is partly Oriental by 
 birth, residence, travel and culture, and still a 
 Greek. He has both sides in a delightful har- 
 mony, he is not the extremist in one direction or 
 the other. If he were strictly historical or strictly 
 
 16 
 
242 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 mythical, he could never have done his work, 
 he could never have been the Father of Historv. 
 A dual nature he has, which not only enables 
 him to portray the great conflict with sympathy, 
 but makes him an image of it within himself. 
 
 But when our historian comes to the West, 
 all chancres and he chancres with all. It seems 
 a different world not only as to territory but as to 
 spirit; it seems to call up in him a new canon of 
 judgment. He will not believe in the Cassite- 
 rides, or Tin Islands of the Far West, though 
 they existed and exported tin which he saw ; he 
 will not believe in the river Eridanus of the Far 
 Northwest, whence amber is said to come; yet 
 what improbability in a river discharging itself 
 into the Northern Sea? No miracle in that, still 
 he questions it, though he can believe in the 
 Indian ants and in the winged serpents of Arabia. 
 " The extremities of Asia and Libya " he dec- 
 orates with a fringe of fable, but he utterly re- 
 fuses any such decoration to '* the extremities of 
 Europe" (115). He also refuses credence to 
 the one-eyed Arimaspians of the North. 
 
 Important is the following sentence (11^) for 
 the standpoint of the historian in this matter: 
 *' The extremities of the world, surrounding the 
 rest of the earth and inclosing it within, seem 
 to possess those things which are the rarest and 
 are deemed the most beautiful." The concep- 
 tion of the world's rim, and its periphery of 
 
BOOK THIBB. 243 
 
 wonders here comes to the surface and finds ex- 
 pression. Still the western part of this periphery 
 is not adorned with the legend which we find 
 elsewhere — East, South, and even in the North 
 (see the following Book). 
 
 2. Herodotus must, in one way or other, have 
 spent a good deal of time in Samos and with 
 Samians. In this third Book he assio:ns to them 
 a chief part, and puts them alongside of Persia. 
 In the great struggle between Orient and Occi- 
 dent he distinctly sees and establishes their 
 historic position, which is the most important 
 one in the Hellas of that period. Moreover he 
 shows an intimate knowledge, not only of politi- 
 cal events, but also of many personal matters 
 pertaining to the island. In the rest of his work 
 he often introduces something about Samos, 
 there is something of a Samian strain running 
 through the whole of it. 
 
 A late Greek writer, Suidas, states that Herod- 
 otus had to flee from Halicarnassus on account 
 of the tyrant Lygdamis, grandson of Queen 
 Artemisia, who has attained such distinction for 
 all time through our historian. The same writer 
 relates that Herodotus at Samos chose the Ionic 
 dialect for his history and wrote the latter there — 
 both somewhat doubtful statements, at least 
 needing modification. But another statement of 
 Suidas may be in general accepted : the historian 
 returned to his native city and aided in expelling 
 
244 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 the tyrant. This event may be placed {Stein, 
 Einleitung, s. 10) in the year 449 B. C, when 
 an Athenian fleet under Cimon appeared along 
 the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. 
 
 At that time Herodotus was about thirty-five 
 years old (born 484 B. C), and had doubtless 
 completed his travels in the Orient, or the greater 
 part of them. But how long he stayed at Samos 
 before he returned to Halicarnassus, cannot be 
 told. The probability is, that he had been often 
 at Samos before and had connections there; he 
 must have read the native chroniclers, for there 
 was literary activity already at the court of Poly- 
 crates, and historic composition had been prac- 
 ticed in Ionia, especially at Miletus ; he must also 
 have heard many traditions of the golden age of 
 Samos, not a hundred years distant in time ; 
 many experiences he gathered concerning the 
 Persian war from men still living who had passed 
 through them. We can imagine him conversing 
 all his life with Samians whom he knew, and who 
 had information to impart, jotting down his 
 facts, and gradually bringing them into the order 
 in which we see them. 
 
 The account of the Samians cominsr to the 
 Greek fleet at Delos and begging for support in 
 a revolt against the Persians may well have been 
 taken down from the lips of one of the chief 
 actors (IX. 90). The conduct of the Samians 
 who were in the Persian camp at the battle of 
 
BOOK THIRD. 245 
 
 Mycale and who had been deprived of their arms 
 through a suspicion of their fidelity (IX. 103), 
 is probably the report of one who was there to 
 the inquiring historian (see also IX. 106, for 
 another important incident at Samos during this 
 same time). Thus the Samians seem to be 
 specially mentioned, while the other islanders are 
 on the whole lumped together. The two Samian 
 captains who took Greek ships at the battle of 
 Salamis and distinguished themselves by zeal for 
 the Persian cause, are mentioned by name (VIII. 
 85) and thus branded with disgrace — doubtless 
 the whole being: an echo from Samos. The 
 bravery of the Samians in the battle fought in 
 Cyprus (V. 112) is duly recorded; their bad 
 behavior during the Ionic revolt is not omitted 
 (VI. 13, 14.). 
 
 It is not necessary to hold that Herodotus must 
 have lived several years at Samos in order to get 
 this information, though he doubtless had stayed 
 there off and on a good deal. He knows the 
 offerings in the great temple of Juno at Samos, 
 and knows their history ; matters pertaining to 
 Samian trade and wealth he is acquainted with ; 
 gossip about persons is not excluded (IV. 43). 
 In this Third Book there is a Samian atmosphere, 
 which the sympathy our historian has repro- 
 duced so well, just as there is an Egyptian atmos- 
 phere in the Second Book. 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 
 
 The main connecting principle between this 
 and the preceding Book lies in the fact that 
 the Persian is drivino^ with all his mio^ht ao^ainst 
 the Rim of Barbarians which surrounds hi-s 
 empire. He must remove that external limit to 
 his rule or dash himself to pieces against it. 
 Already we have seen in Book Second how that 
 Cambyses, after conquering Egypt, pushed out 
 against the Ethiopians to the South and against 
 the Ammonians to the East of his Egyptian 
 boundary. In Book First we beheld Cyrus, the 
 founder of the Persian empire, perish in his 
 attack on the Massagetae to the North of Persia. 
 Further to the East, we catch some vague hints 
 of the Persian impinging upon India, and pos- 
 sibly Thibet, but these countries lie beyond the 
 (246) 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 247 
 
 knowledge of Herodotus. Thus we see Persia on 
 all sides chafing against her physical limits, shak- 
 ing the adamantine chains of nature, but unable 
 to break through them. 
 
 It is manifest that the Persians are a great 
 will-people, conquerors like the Romans, restless in 
 any physical bounds yot unable to transcend them. 
 Herein they contrast strongly with both Greek 
 and Egyptian. The Greek was content with a 
 small city, but he sought for autonomy in its 
 walls ; the outer bouod did not concern him so 
 much, but his endeavor was to remove the inner 
 bound to his spirit; not the physical but the 
 spiritual limit he chafed against, and so he opens 
 the battle for freedom just with this Persian 
 Empire. 
 
 On the other hand the Egyptians were in the 
 main an introverted, self-occupied people there 
 in the narrow valley of the Nile; self-satisfied 
 they seem, having no deep inner struggle like the 
 Greek, and no mighty outer struggle like the 
 Persian, with their limits. Both these Oriental 
 peoples flow into Greece and are taken up by its 
 spirit, as they are here taken up into the history 
 of Herodotus — whereby they, Persia and Egypt, 
 become historical, yea world-historical. In them- 
 selves, however, they show no such power. 
 
 We have already mentioned the Rim of Bar- 
 barism, which, in the present Book, reaches the 
 height of its importance, though it encompasses, 
 
248 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 as it were, the whole history of Herodotus. In 
 general, Greece and the Persian Empire lay in- 
 side of this Rim, which encircled ancient civil- 
 ization, and gave to the same a most pressing 
 question, which may be stated as follows : What 
 are we going to do with the vast mass of uncivi- 
 lized peoples dwelling around us on every side? 
 The answer always felt if not spoken, is: if 
 we do not put them down, they will put us 
 down. 
 
 These barbarous peoples often broke through 
 the bound and fell upon civilized countries ; 
 note the Cimmerians and the Scythians men- 
 tioned in the First Book. The reader can still 
 feel in ancient writers that these barbarians 
 were a dark cloud in the horizon, uncertain, 
 premonitory and menacing; a fate, the real fate 
 of Persia, Greece and Rome. It is well known 
 the ancient world perished through the peoples 
 coming from that border and from behind it. 
 The ancient world was tragic in reality, and the 
 fate so often portrayed in its Tragedy is its true 
 forecast, the very fact of it. 
 
 We may here be permitted to take a glance at 
 the various dealings with this barbarous Rim. 
 Persia sought to subjugate it externally ; Greece 
 sought to colonize it and to impart to it Greek 
 culture ; Rome conquered it in part, civilized this 
 part, and gave to it law and order and military 
 discipline, and then was destroyed by it. Chris- 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 249 
 
 tianity went beyond it and gave to its peoples 
 religion, humanized them, and so conquered 
 Fate, which hung over the old world. Chris- 
 tianity first broke down the barbarous Rim and 
 made all brothers, so that there cannot again 
 be a destruction of civilization from without. 
 Greece began the work by her colonies, Rome 
 possessed that outside power across the Rim 
 externally ; Christianity obtained it internally. 
 Modern Europe and even present America has 
 no such Rim of Barbarism, or of the civilized 
 versus the uncivilized. 
 
 So we conceive of that barbaric border as it 
 lay in the mind of Herodotus. Persia grapples 
 with it on every side, but is thrown back from 
 it ; Persia could conquer only through an order 
 in the nation conquered, but the barbarian pure 
 and simple has nothing to seize, no fields, no cities, 
 chiefly no State, or social order. Persia can 
 subject only civilized Asia with Egypt, all of 
 which is now consolidated under her control. 
 
 But inside the border, where lies the civilized 
 world, there is the grand split; Europe and Asia, 
 or Greece and Persia, are the two parts, which 
 cannot be made one. The Greek resists Persian 
 unity, in favor of what he calls freedom ; the 
 matter can be settled only by a struggle which is 
 now everywhere approaching. So there is the 
 barbarous limit to Persia on the one hand, and 
 the Greek limit to her power on the other. 
 
250 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 The Fourth Book gives two phases of the 
 Persian impinging against this Rim or the bar- 
 barous limit of the world — namely the Northern 
 and the Southern (rather Southeastern), or the 
 Scythian and the Libyan. They are thus oppo- 
 site, from Greece as a center — counterparts, 
 the hot and the cold regions. We may observe 
 a kind of symmetry in the two portions, which 
 Herodotus shows by his statement that there 
 must be Hypernotians if there be Hyperboreans. 
 
 Another fact : each of these borders, Scythian 
 and Libyan, has a line of Greek towns, colonies 
 sent out by the mother country, for trade and 
 for relief of her population. The Greek did not 
 seek, on the whole, to conquer these barbarians ; 
 he sought his personal advantages there, went 
 there to live, and bore thither his Greek culture, 
 which he began to impart to his barbaric neigh- 
 bors. The Persian did not colonize, little of 
 that spirit is seen in the Orient excepting in 
 Phoenicia. Greece appears to have begotten 
 the idea of colonization and to have introduced it 
 as an important factor in the World's History. 
 It seems to require a free people to made good 
 colonists — not the migratory hordes of the 
 East. The colonist must have an individual 
 strength of his own in the new land to build his 
 home and to preserve his civilization. Each set- 
 tlement was a center of light ; so Greece pali- 
 saded all Barbary with lines of colonies. 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 251 
 
 Yet these towns were absorbed by Persia or 
 ran the danger thereof. Such had been already 
 the fate of the studded line of thriving communi- 
 ties along the coast of Asia Minor ; many Greek 
 towns had been compelled to yield to Persia. 
 So also in the North in Thrace. In Libya like- 
 wise Gyrene and Barce at one time or other 
 had to yield their independent life to the same 
 power. 
 
 Yet another limit of the world was faintly 
 dawning — the geographical ; beyond the bar- 
 baric Belt lay, it was supposed, vast seas, 
 indeed the Ocean Stream surrounding the earth. 
 Africa had been circumnavigated, Europe was 
 rumored to have a Northern Sea as the limit on 
 the North; to the West outside the Pillars of 
 Hercules lay also a great sea. The century 
 before Herodotus was a time of geographical 
 investigation, pushing over the limits without 
 and within. The classic Renascence showed a 
 similar activity in the geographical field, Africa 
 had to be again circumnavigated. Thus Greece, 
 the center, seeks to reach the circumference by 
 knowledge, by enterprise, even by colonization. 
 
 On the other hand, the heroes, born in 
 Barbary, but who saw the advantages of Greek 
 culture and sought to bring it to the people, are 
 not forgotten. They met with a tragic fate, as 
 such men usually do ; still the barbarian became 
 tinged with Greek civilization. Note the names 
 
252 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 of Anacharsis the Scythian and King Scylas ; also 
 of Zamolxis the Thracian. So among barbarians 
 the new idea had its martyrs. 
 
 The structure of the Book, in accord with its 
 theme, falls into two portions; 1st., Scythia 
 and the attack by the Persian upon the same 
 ( 1-144) ; 2d., Libya with its Greek colonies, and 
 the attack by the Persian (145-205). The 
 attack on Scythia is the main one, being led by 
 the Persian king, Darius ; the attack on Libya is 
 of less account, being the work of the Satrap of 
 Egypt. Both are essentially without results ; or 
 at least no permanent conquest is effected; the 
 barbaric Kim asserts itself against the vast might 
 of Persia in both cases. 
 
 Such are the two main divisions of the Book ; 
 but each of these main divisions has leadinor 
 subdivisions dealing specially with Barbarians, 
 Persians, and Greeks. The whole shows a sym- 
 metrical order and movement, of which we may 
 take a complete survey in the following tabular 
 statement: — 
 
 I. The Scythian division (1-144). 
 
 1. The Barbarico-Scythian Thread — ac- 
 
 count of the Scythian barbarians 
 (1-82). 
 
 2. The Persico- Scythian Thread — expedi- 
 
 tion of Darius against Scythia (83- 
 144). 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 253 
 
 II. The Libyan division ( 145-205). 
 
 1. Greco-Libyan Thread, giving an ac- 
 
 count of Greek colonies in Libya 
 (145-167). 
 
 2. Barbarico-Libyan Thread, giving an 
 
 account of the Libyan barbarians 
 (168-199). 
 
 3. Persico-Libyan Thread, giving an ac- 
 
 count of the Persian invasion of 
 Libya (200-205). 
 
 The symmetrical structure of the two divisions 
 would be complete if the historian had given a 
 separate account of the Greek settlements in 
 Scythia ; but of these he tells incidentally. 
 
 I. 
 
 We shall, accordingly, first consider the 
 Scythian division of the Book, which, after a 
 short allusion to the desire of Darius *' to pun- 
 ish the Scythians," will proceed to give an elab- 
 orate account of Scythia and its peoples, and 
 then will take up the grand expedition of the 
 Persian monarch against that country. We shall 
 call the entire northern tract, corresponding 
 nearly to modern European Russia, by the name 
 of Scythia, though a distinction is to be made 
 between the Scythians proper and other peoples 
 dwelling there ; just as the Russia of to-day 
 embraces not only Russians as such, but many 
 
254 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 other distinct peoples and even races. Both these 
 meanings of the term may be found in Herodo- 
 tus. 
 
 1. The Barharico- Scythian Thread, This 
 embraces the account of the Scythians as a mass 
 of barbarous tribes (1-82), which had long be- 
 fore Herodotus begun to excite the attention of 
 Greek colonists, navigators, and merchants. A 
 good deal of information was extant about Scy- 
 thia ere the historian wrote, but he traveled 
 thither himself, in the true spirit of the inves- 
 tigator. Here is the result which still has its 
 importance for ethnography and anthropology, 
 as well as for geography and history. 
 
 (1) The book opens with what may be called 
 a short Introduction (1-4), in which there is, 
 first of all, the mention of the leading theme — 
 the great expedition of Darius. When Babylon 
 had been taken (see end of preceding Book), 
 and the troubles of the new monarch, resulting 
 from a change of dynasty, had been quieted, 
 Darius resolved on making his expedition against 
 the Scythians. Why not against Greece? Why 
 such a turn given to Persian desire for conquest ? 
 The motive assigned by Herodotus was that of 
 punishing the Scythians for their invasion of 
 Media, when they are said to have ruled over 
 Upper Asia for the period of twenty- eight years 
 (Book I. 103-6). 
 
 A very insufficient reason this seems; in the 
 
. BOOK FOUBTH. 255 
 
 first place Darius could hardly feel himself called 
 on to aveno^e an insult to Media when he had 
 just suppressed a Median usurper and an essen- 
 tially Median revolt. Then the insult had taken 
 place about one hundred years before this time. 
 
 Therefore we nmst at least add to the reason 
 given by Herodotus. That the Scythian tract 
 could send forth a wild, fierce, barbarous mass 
 upon civilization had often been experienced 
 (Cimmerians and Scythians). Indeed the great 
 race war between Iran and Turan was something 
 of this sort. Possibly a new invasion threatened, 
 so that the Persian very naturally renews the old 
 war with Turan, with the North, and seeks to 
 control this mass in its own home, before its 
 departure. 
 
 But, whatever be the cause, the war was a 
 happy event for Greece. After the taking of 
 Samos, the last Greek barrier was broken down; 
 still the blow of the Persian fell to the North, 
 into the water, as it were, and the continental 
 Greeks obtained valuable time for preparation. 
 
 Note that on the return of these invading 
 Scyths to their homes, after an absence of 
 twenty-eight years, a story is interwoven, com- 
 mon the world over, and pertaining to a soldier 
 absent for a long time. What will his wife do? 
 A new generation springs up, with which there 
 is a contest. 
 
 The reader is next to enter upon a long treat- 
 
256 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 tise which shows the interest of the historian in 
 the Scythian country. A right instinct lies at 
 the bottom of this extended account; Herodo- 
 tus must have felt a new world reposing there 
 in germ. Modern Europe was at that time faintly 
 sprouting ; the people who were to be the future 
 actors in the World's History were struggling, 
 seething in that vast region. The Aryan race in 
 three leading stocks was doubtless there, the 
 Teuton (Getae) the Slavonian (Sarmatae), even 
 the Celt (Cimmerian, Geloni) in some scattered 
 remains. Also Turanian elements were present 
 both fore and aft; the Finn and the Lapp, and 
 doubtless others, were being pushed into corners 
 and byways, while the Tartar was pressing behind 
 the Aryan races. A mighty cauldron of peoples, 
 big with futurity, is this Scythia; our historian 
 now has his face turned to what is to be, as in 
 Egypt it was turned toward what has been, 
 Greece being the present. 
 
 (2) The first question is: ** What is the origin 
 of the Scyths? How did they get to be? " No 
 less that four accounts are given (5-15) one of 
 which is historical and three mythical. 
 
 The first is the mythical account given by the 
 Scythians themselves, which starts with the first 
 man, the Adam of Scythia, called Targitaus, 
 son of Zeus and a daughter of the river 
 Borysthenes. This is a suggestive genealogy, 
 indicating that the Scythian is first a son of the 
 
BOOK FOURTH, 257 
 
 God, the universal principle, yet also a child of 
 the special environment, hinted by the Scythian 
 river. Also that present of a plow, a yoke and 
 an axe, falling from heaven, gives the first imple- 
 ments of cultivation of the soil — truly a divine 
 present ; likewise the golden bowl which the 
 3^oungest son alone can handle, is what chooses 
 him as ruler. 
 
 The Scythians regard themselves as the young- 
 est of peoples, in contrast with the Egyptians, 
 who deem themselves the oldest; they are the 
 youngest, whose career indeed belongs to the 
 future. 
 
 The historian Justin, citing another legend, 
 says that the Scythians claim to be the oldest 
 of peoples; but this legend of Herodotus is 
 probably the true one, as it seems to be the 
 appropriate one. 
 
 Such is the Scythian mythical account. Next 
 comes the Greek mythical account, which intro- 
 duces the universal Greek Hero Hercules into 
 Scythia, who has time there to beget three sons on 
 a native woman, half human, half serpent, repre- 
 senting man still in his natural state, to whom 
 Greek civilization is brought ; the result is a new 
 race and order. Such a legend, we must think, the 
 Greek colonies of the Euxine framed, giving a 
 reflection of themselves and of the Greco- 
 Scythian spirit. Another phase of Hercules, 
 the Greek hero of culture, putting down Geryon 
 
 17 
 
258 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 and CacLis, and many other barbaric monsters, 
 we see here. 
 
 The thh'd account tells of migrations, and does 
 not seek to give the origin of the Scythians, but 
 narrates how they came to their present localit}^ 
 They were once in Asia and were harassed by 
 the Massagetae, when they started westward, 
 impinging upon the Cimmerians and driving them 
 on before. A dark tradition of old Aryan move- 
 ments from the heart of Asia would seem to lie 
 in this statement, as if Celts (Cimmerians) were 
 fleeing before Scyths, and Scyths were fleeing 
 before Goths (Massagetae). 
 
 The fourth account is the work of a known man, 
 a poet, Aristeas, being told in a poem, and is a 
 conscious handling of the mythical element, using 
 the same with the historical element. This poet 
 starts the wave in the far North at the line of 
 the Hyperboreans and the gold-guarding Griffons, 
 where the one-eyed Arimaspians dwell ; the latter 
 tribe first impinges upon the Issedones, the 
 Issedones upon the Scythians, and the latter 
 upon the Cimmerians. The poet thus has his 
 natural and supernatural forces, the latter start- 
 ing and propelling the former. 
 
 Thus our historian neglects no side of human 
 consciousness, deeming the mythical statement 
 a phase of spirit as well as the purely historical. 
 
 The modern reader must learn to sympathize 
 with him, to see something in all these state- 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 259 
 
 ments, of which the first two accounts for origin, 
 the second two for migration. The first is a 
 Scythian agricultural legend, the second is 
 Greco-Scythic legend of colonization and cul- 
 ture. The first three are popular in origin, the 
 last is individual, the work of a poet. 
 
 (3) Now we are to have the account of Herod- 
 otus, which in most respects is a reverse way to 
 that of Aristeas. The historian besfins with the 
 fact, with Greek port of Borysthenitae, which 
 he doubtless visited, and he passes gradually 
 from the actual to the fabulous tribes. First are 
 the Callipedae, ** a Greco-Scythic race." Then 
 follow agricultural people, till we came to a great 
 desert beyond which to the North the Andro- 
 phagi (Cannibals) dwell, who are non-Scythian. 
 Beyond the river Tanais, to the East, dwell the 
 Sarmatae, non-Scythian, usually supposed to be 
 Slavic. 
 
 Having gone beyond the bounds of Scythians 
 proper and their neighbors (the Sarmatae) we 
 begin to enter a semi-mythical region. Here 
 dwell men ** bald from their birth " (23) with 
 other peculiarities ; an ideal realm is located in 
 this land of fable, where no man receives any 
 wrong, and where the people live chiefly from 
 the fruit of a tree, in a kind of paradisaical inno- 
 cence. Beyond " the bald men " lies the uncer- 
 tain, the unknown, hence the fabulous ; here are 
 countries inhabited by goat-footed men, actual 
 
260 THE FATHEIi OF HISTORY. 
 
 satyrs ; then come people who '* sleep six months 
 at a time," manifestly a hint of a polar region 
 (25). On a line to the east of '* the bald men " 
 are the Issedones, a tribe well-known; but to the 
 north of this tribe is again the unknown and 
 the fabulous, in which are placed the one- 
 eyed Arimaspians and the gold-guarding Griffons. 
 Far up in this northern country are the Hyper- 
 boreans, with whom Greek les^end has inter- 
 twined itself in a variety of ways, whereof our 
 historian gives quite a lengthy specimen (32—36). 
 We can now bring before our minds the gen- 
 eral conception of Herodotus in regard to Scythia. 
 In a later chapter he speaks of the square which 
 the Scythian country forms (101); this also we 
 may take into our view. We are to note the 
 gradual approach from the real to the imaginarj^, 
 from the historical to the fabulous, as we pass 
 from the known to the unknown. (1) The Hel- 
 lenic colonies, the civilized border, lying on the 
 sea-coast or not far from it. Here all is real, 
 natural, historical. (2) The Scythian square, 
 whose southern line rests on the sea, and so is 
 one with the line of Greek colonies; then it 
 sweeps inward for four thousand stades (450 
 miles), passing from Greeks, through Greco- 
 Scythian peoples to complete barbarism, and 
 from the well-known, through the less known to 
 the unknown. (3) Beyond the square is the 
 advance into the mythical region, which is the 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 261 
 
 unknown or what is known only by hearsay 
 (25-27). Thus, as we recede from the Greek 
 world where all is clear and known, we come 
 to the fabulous world, beyond the Rim of 
 the Barbarians, quite like what we saw to 
 the south of Egypt in the previous Book. 
 Still another bound, the circumfluent ocean, 
 was placed beyond the Hyperboreans by 
 Hecataeus and others, but this is rejected by 
 Herodotus "with a smile" (36). Fableland 
 becomes actual in what is distant on Earth, and 
 extends, without the interruption of even a 
 fictitious sea, into the unknown. Nor should 
 we foro^et that lesfend of the air filled with 
 feathers, common in northern Mythology, and 
 hinting the snow storm. Note too the story of 
 Abaris, the Hyperborean, who carried an arrow 
 '* around the whole earth without eating any- 
 thing." 
 
 Our historian as^ain has surrounded his civil- 
 ized world with a cordon of fable. The same 
 conception essentially is found in Homer's 
 Odyssey. When Ulysses is driven by the storm 
 out of the known limits of Hellas, he comes to 
 a Fableland in which dwell the Lotus-eaters, 
 Polyphemus, Circe, and many other fabulous 
 beings. In like manner, when he returns to 
 Hellas in its known parts, such as Ithaca, these 
 superhuman forms vanish more and more into 
 human actors. 
 
262 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 (4) Herodotus now takes occasion to insert an 
 excursus on the geography of the globe, appar- 
 ently being led thereto by the story of Abaris 
 which suggests the rotundity of the earth (36). 
 It is generally held that he must have had a map 
 before him in the following description-. 
 
 He is aware of the triple division, into Europe, 
 Asia, and Libya, but does not know who made 
 it, or why it was made, and is decidedly inclined 
 to deem it inappropriate. He prefers the dual 
 division of the world, connecting Egypt espe- 
 cially with Asia. The reason for this prefer- 
 ence is not so much geographical as spiritual ; it 
 manifestly springs from his conception of the 
 great conflict which he is recording, that between 
 Asia and Hellas. This is the fundamental dual- 
 ism of the world according to Herodotus, and 
 for his ao^e it was doubtless the rio^ht view. 
 
 Accordingly he runs a line of division between 
 Europe and Asia, which line embraces the Med- 
 iterranean Sea on through the Propontis and the 
 Euxine to the river Phasis, from which the 
 boundary is continued by the Caspian Sea and 
 the Araxes into the unknown. Thus the earth 
 is divided into two halves, the northern (or 
 Europe) and the southern (Asia and Libya). 
 Now it was the latter which was consolidated by 
 Persia and thrown against Greece, which was 
 then verily the new world, and represented 
 dawning Europe and the future. 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 263 
 
 It is interestinsf to note that the historian tries 
 to give some faint glimpse of the Eastern boun- 
 dary of Persia. He mentions the voyage of Scylax 
 (44) down the Indus, '' the second river that 
 produces crocodiles," and the safe arrival of the 
 navigator at the port of the Red Sea *' in the 
 thirtieth month." After the voyage "Darius 
 subdued the Indians and used this sea." Per- 
 sian arms did not apparently penetrate to the 
 valley of the Ganges, but probably subdued 
 the Punjaub. 
 
 Of these early voyages the most extensive 
 doubtless was the circumnavigation of Africa 
 twice, once by Phoenician and once by Cartha- 
 ginian sailors, each going in opposite directions 
 (41-3). Here occurs the striking sentence: 
 these Phoenician sailors after their return re- 
 lated "what to me does not seem credible, but 
 may to others, that, as they sailed round Libya, 
 they had the sun on their right hand." This 
 statement, so dubious to the historian, is now 
 the strongest proof of the circumnavigation. 
 So those old Semitic sailors — Phoenician and 
 Carthagnian — anticipated Vasco de Gama in 
 doubling the Cape of Good Hope. Striking 
 is the contrast with the Persian attempt made 
 apparently with Egyptian sailors (43), which 
 attempt did not succeed. 
 
 To a certain extent we see Herodotus in these 
 geographical matters quite behind the most 
 
264 THE FATHER OF HISTOBT. 
 
 advanced views of his time. He does not believe 
 in the rotundity of the earth, nor in the circum- 
 ambient ocean, nor in the tripartite division of the 
 continent ; it is manifest that bis mind was on tlie 
 grand dualism between Orient and Occident, the 
 Persian Empire and Hellas. 
 
 (5) The many rivers of Scythia roused the 
 historian's interest, and he devotes to them quite 
 a section here (47-58). Personally he could 
 not have investigated these streams, the result is 
 that his account has many mistakes of detail . Of 
 all the most important was the Ister ( Danube ) , 
 which he again compares with the Nile, as he did 
 in his Egyptian Book (H. 33). He conceived 
 the two as counterparts, the one in the northern 
 half of the earth, the other in the southern half, 
 showing numerous contrasts one with the other. 
 The Nile has no visible tributaries, the Ister has 
 many along its whole course; the one is known, 
 the other is unknown in origin. 
 
 ( 6 ) A few chapters are now devoted to the 
 social life of the Scythians (59-75) — to the 
 relio^ion, customs, etc. It is a kind of summarv 
 of barbarous life, as nearly all rude peoples have 
 these or similar customs. In matters of religion, 
 the historian translates their crude deities into 
 corresponding names of Greek Gods; Hestia, the 
 hearth, is the chief, in her the family center is 
 conceived ; the others are more or less nature 
 deities. No temple, altar or image for other 
 
BOOK FOUBTH, 265 
 
 deities, except Mars; the savages must have 
 their war-god, whose image is an old iron 
 scimiter, to which many sacrifices, human and 
 animal, are made. 
 
 The Scvthian drinks the blood of his slain foe, 
 and cuts off the head as a present to the king ; 
 he scalps his enemy and uses the scalp as a nap- 
 kin, or sews a number of them together as 
 articles of dress. He makes the skull of his foe 
 into a drinking cup. (Compare the Teutonic 
 Valhalla.) 
 
 The divining rod and the sooth-sayers are 
 here, the latter are burned if they tell false. A 
 pledge or contract involves the exchange of 
 blood in some form, like that of Faust and 
 Mephistopheles. 
 
 The burial of a dead king brings with it a 
 revolting sum of barbarities. One of his con- 
 cubines and his household servants must go 
 along to provide for him beyond; so they are 
 slain on his grave. After a year's time fifty 
 youths, beautiful, select, are strangled, and fifty 
 horses are impaled and fixed as if rearing, while 
 on them are placed the fifty corpses of youths in 
 a circle round the grave, evidently his body- 
 guard beyond. 
 
 Most of these cu^oms have been traced 
 among the Calmucks and Tartars of Southern 
 Russia of the present time, from which fact it 
 has been inferred these Scythian peoples of 
 
266 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Herodotus were Turanian. But such rites and 
 beliefs belong to all savage peoples — in Africa, 
 in America, as well as in Asia. The first concep- 
 tion of immortality is that death is the change to 
 the same kind of life beyond ; the king will want 
 his horse, meat and drink and his attendants, 
 even his palatial tomb. Hence these sacrifices 
 and monuments. 
 
 (7) The fates of two Scythians who sought to 
 introduce Hellenism into their native land are 
 now told (7G— 80). The first is Anacharsis, a 
 famous man among the Greeks, as traveler and 
 wise man, who traveled over the world and 
 accepted Greek religion, custom and thought. 
 He perishes while celebrating the rites of a 
 Greek Goddess, Cybele. The second is Scylas, 
 who became king of a Scythian tribe, and 
 caused a revolt of his people through his 
 initiation into the Bacchic mysteries. 
 
 Thus we may affirm a strong conflict in the bar- 
 barous tribes of Scythia with the incoming Greek 
 civilization. Such a conflict alwavs rises on the 
 • border. The American Indians are divided into 
 two parties on the same lines; the one party 
 will accept the civilizing tendency and will be 
 '* the friend of the white man," the other party 
 will remain barbarian and cling to the customs 
 of the ancestors, fi«htino^ to the death the new 
 idea. The Creek Indians not lons^ asro had a 
 civil war on this question. 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 267 
 
 To these two Scythian characters, Anacharsis 
 and Scylas, we may add the Thracian Zamolxis 
 of the Getae (94), who evidently was a teacher 
 of his people, teaching them chiefly the doctrine 
 of immortality, along with Greek civilization. 
 He is connected with Pythagoras, the great 
 teacher of Greece, " the first pedagogue." The 
 scheme of an undergromid chamber may be dis- 
 missed as the clever explanation of a smart Greek. 
 So Zamolxis was a kind of missionary. 
 
 These three cases were of natives who brousfht 
 Hellenic civilization into their own barbarous 
 lands. But the Greeks, though hide-bound 
 enough and vain, had their legend of the mis- 
 sionary, not a man, but a woman, who goes to 
 Scythia, to the land of the Tauri, and who is 
 regarded as a Goddess there — Iphigenia, daugh- 
 ter of Agamemnon. Euripides connects this 
 story with the Trojan war in his famous dramas 
 on the subject of Iphigenia. The Tauri are 
 supposed to be Cimmerians by Grote, that is, 
 Celtic, a remnant left in the^ Tauric country 
 when the rest were driven out. Herodotus of 
 course, gives no definite account of the Iphigenia 
 legend or its purport (103). 
 
 2. TJie Perisco- Scythian Thread. The Scy- 
 thian expedition of Darius is next to be recounted 
 (83-144). A general survey of the land and its 
 various peoples has been given in the preceding 
 narrative; we are now to behold the Persian 
 
268 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 monarch striking into the vast mass of barbar- 
 ism and seeking to subject it to an Oriental sway. 
 He fails, for such a result lay i)ot in the plan of 
 the World's History ; the vast Scythian territory 
 had to wait for its development ; indeed it seems 
 to be still waiting. 
 
 This entire section has the characteristic move- 
 ment from the historical into the unhistorical, 
 which fact we have already noticed in our histo- 
 rian as he passes from the civilized world to the 
 barbarous, from the known to the less known or 
 to the unknown. The Rim of Barbary is the 
 realm of fable ; we shall find that this expedition 
 of Darius grows less and less credible in its 
 details as it advances toward the North and moves 
 into the nebulous borderland of civilization. 
 The whole account has been doubted by high 
 historical authority, but such skepticism is not 
 discriminating. There was certainly an expedi- 
 tion of Darius to Scythia; equally certain is it 
 that many statements here recorded about it are 
 open to question. 
 
 In order to find the clue of the narration, we 
 must catch the movement of the historian's mind, 
 unfolding^ into his theme. We shall note that, 
 as long: as he is dealinoj with the transactions 
 which took place before the crossing of the Lster 
 (Danube), he is historical both in the general 
 outline of events and in the essential details. 
 But when the expedition has crossed the Danube 
 
BOOK FOUBTB. 269 
 
 and taken its plunge into the barbarious regions 
 northward, the details grow more and more dubi- 
 ous and unhistorical, thous^h the o-eneral outline 
 is still true in fact ; that is, the advance of Darius 
 into the country, the barbarian manner of war- 
 fare by retreating and harassing the invader with- 
 out coming to a battle, the final retreat of Darius, 
 must all be considered as historical. When the 
 expedition gets back to the Danube, it re-enters 
 the domain of history, not only the general out- 
 line but also the details must be regarded as 
 real. 
 
 In order to bring the preceding view into bold 
 relief, we shall throw this account into three 
 portions. First will be the advance of Darius to 
 the Danube over which he builds a bridge — his- 
 torical; second, is the movement into Barbary, 
 which is also the movement and evanishment of 
 the historical into the unhistorical ; third is the 
 return to the bridge over the Danube, which 
 bridge also leads back into the sphere of history. 
 Such is the general sweep which will now be 
 given in greater fullness. 
 
 (1) The account of the expedition till the 
 crossing of the bridge over the Ister has the air 
 of truth, both in its general course of events 
 and in its essential details (83-98). Darius may 
 not have addressed " the men of Ionia " (98) 
 in the words here set down, but there is no 
 reasonable doubt that he left them in charge of 
 
270 THE FATHEB OF HI STOUT. 
 
 the bridge. In accord with the manner of Herod- 
 otus a warning is given to Darius by his brother 
 Artabanus (83) against entering upon the un- 
 fortunate enterprise ; in hke manner Croesus 
 received a warning from Sandonis (I. 71), and 
 Xerxes will receive a warning from this same 
 Artabanus (VII. 10). The story of the father 
 (84) whose three sons serving in the Persian 
 army were slain by orders of Darius, because 
 the father asked that one of them be allowed 
 to remain at home, has its counterpart in the 
 similar bloody act of Xerxes (VII. 38). When 
 the king was personally serving in the army, 
 he resented as the direst insult any request for 
 release from military duty; such a request was 
 evidently regarded as a crime against majesty 
 (laesae majestatis). The measurements of the 
 Euxine and of the Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azoff ) 
 here given (86) are not accurate, still these 
 seas are a fact, and the general outline of their 
 description holds good to-day. So it is with the 
 events here recorded ; certain details are errone- 
 ous, but the totality is correct in the main. 
 
 The first bridge (87) built of boats over the 
 Bosphorus by Mandrocles the Samian architect, 
 is duly celebrated by our historian, whose stay 
 at Samos and whose acquaintance with Samian 
 affairs have been already noticed in the preceding 
 Book. It is probable that Herodotus saw the 
 picture here mentioned and read the inscription 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 271 
 
 here quoted (both being in the temple of Samian 
 Juno) and likewise heard all about Mandrocles, 
 some sixty years after the building of the bridge. 
 The Samians of this period were famous builders 
 and artists (see III. 60). 
 
 The second brids^e is thrown over the Ister at 
 the point where the river divides into several 
 mouths, and the work is accomplished by the 
 Greek sailors, who go by boat over the sea to 
 the spot. This evidently was a construction 
 requiring much less skill than the first bridge; 
 the builder's name is not mentioned though it 
 was probably Mandrocles. But this second 
 bridge has greater strategic value than the first, 
 being a pivotal point in the expedition, as we 
 shall see later. 
 
 Darius moves toward the Danube by land ; on 
 the way he subdues the Thracian Getae, sup- 
 posed to be ancestors of the Goths and hence a 
 Teutonic people, who are here declared to be 
 *'the most valiant and the most just of the 
 Thracians." Moreover they believe themselves 
 '« to be immortal, and, dying, to go to the divine 
 Zamolxis. ' ' But who was Zamolxis ? Some Greeks 
 said that he was once a Thracian slave of the 
 Samian philosopher Pythagoras, and, going back' 
 to Thrace, carried thither these strange traces 
 of the latter's doctrine, which, in its turn, was 
 derived from Egypt. Evidently the legend of 
 Zamolxis gives some far-off adumbration of the 
 
272 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY, 
 
 missionary who introduced a few Greek ideas and 
 a touch of Greek civilization into the land of the 
 Getae, and was afterwards adored as a God. 
 Again the historian shows his knowledge of 
 Samian men and things, though he must also 
 have known of Pythagoras in Italy. 
 
 At last Darius with the land forces reaches 
 the bridge over the Ister, and is ready to take 
 his audacious plunge into the vast unknown 
 ocean of Barbary. He proposes at first to break 
 up the bridge, and have the Tonians follow on 
 land with the forces from the ships ; but Coes, 
 the general of the Mitylenians gives him a warn- 
 inof to secure his retreat in case of misfortune. 
 The Persian monarch then bids the lonians wdio 
 constructed the bridge to stay and guard it for 
 sixty days ; after this time they could sail away 
 to their country. Did Darius think of returning 
 to Persia throuj^fh the Caucasus? He doubtless 
 expected an immediate conquest of the Barba- 
 rians, and was regardless of the more distant 
 future; the lapse of sixty days would indicate 
 his permanent hold on the country. At least so 
 he seems to have thought. 
 
 (2) After crossing the Ister, Darius enters 
 Scythia, which is the object of his expedi- 
 tion. An advance, a stop, and a retreat back 
 to the starting-point make up the movement. 
 The whole is a vain effort to strike some- 
 thing where there is nothing to be struck — a 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 273 
 
 blow in the water which simply yields and then 
 closes together again. *' We have no cities, no. 
 cultivated lands," says the Scythian leader; they 
 have no fixed habitations, not even houses, but 
 live on wheels, moving about in their carts over the 
 vast steppes, as the Calmucks do to-day. They 
 are thus the absolutely movable, flexible, unseiz- 
 able, which Darius is going to seize. 
 
 We may first try to figure to ourselves the 
 geographical features of the country. Herodo- 
 tus conceives Scythiato be a square (^tetragonon) 
 having four thousand stadia to each side (say 
 450 miles). One side of this square rests on the 
 Euxine from the mouth of the Ister to lake 
 Maeotis; upon this line the square is built toward 
 the north ( 101). Round this square toward the 
 interior are grouped the peoples which are not 
 Scythian ; on the east side of the square dwell 
 the Sauromatae, the Tauri, the Geloni and 
 Budini ; on the north side the Melanchlaeni 
 (Black Coats), the Androphagi (Man Eaters), 
 and the Neuri; on the west side the Aga- 
 thyrsi. Thus our historian marks out his Scy- 
 thian pale with definite measurements ; yet this 
 pale lies outside his civilized pale already 
 designated. 
 
 Concerning all these nations beyond the Scy- 
 thian pale he adds a few touches more or less fab- 
 ulous (103-117). The Tauri, who offer human 
 sacrifices to their Goddess, are connected with 
 
 18 
 
274 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 the Greek legend of Iphigenia, Agamemnon's 
 daughter, who is represented to have been borne 
 to their land miraculously when she was about 
 to be immolated by her father at Aulis. Evi- 
 dently this is another story of the Greek mis- 
 sionary, now a woman in barbarous lands, which 
 facts the Greek Mj^thus did not fail of embody- 
 ing. Euripides, a younger contemporary of He- 
 rodotus, has given a dramatic form to the tale in 
 his " Iphigenia in Taurus," which has had many 
 reproductions (notably Goethe's). The Aga- 
 thyrsi have their wives in common, *' to the end 
 that all children born may be brothers and of 
 one family " — which realizes an idea advanced 
 by Plato in his Republic, this philosopher being 
 also a younger contemporary of the historian. 
 The intermino^lino^ of the Budini and the Geloni 
 is suggestive; the former are savages, nomads, 
 who paint their bodies and live on vermin ; the 
 latter dwell in cities (Gelonus), till the soil, eat 
 corn, and differ from the Budini both in shape 
 and complexion; a primitive and an advanced 
 people are inhabiting the same land. Into the 
 account of the Sauromatae the legend of the 
 Amazons is interwoven; thus only can be ex- 
 plained the position of women in that tribe. In 
 such fashion the Greek historian introduces the 
 Greek Mythus among the barbarous nations out- 
 side of the Scythian pale ; some of the Greek 
 Gods are also found there, and one of these 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 275 
 
 peoples, the Geloni, are declared to have been 
 originally Greeks (108). 
 
 There is no complete unity of all these scat- 
 tered tribes against the attack of Darius, still he 
 can take nothing where there is nothing to take. 
 Individuals he can capture, but there are no fixed 
 abodes, no settled habits of life. Striking is 
 the resemblance of this campaign of Darius to 
 the campaign of Napoleon in the same general 
 locality twenty-three centuries later. The enemy 
 are mounted, but will not come to an open fight; 
 they hover on the flanks, harass, waylay, Cos- 
 sack-like ; the Budini and Geloni set fire to their 
 own capital city, quite as Moscow was burnt. 
 Darius begins to throw up forts for quarters, 
 but concludes to make a retreat, which is also 
 disastrous; the Scythian horsemen likewise 
 wheel about and follow up their old tactics. 
 
 Darius had repeatedly demanded of the 
 Scythians earth and water, symbols of sub- 
 mission. In their turn the Scythians send a 
 bird, a mouse, and a frog, with five arrows to 
 the Persian king; what does such a message 
 mean? A double interpretation is given, one 
 implying submission, the other quite the reverse. 
 At last the opinion of Gobryas prevailed, which 
 ran as follows : '' Unless ye, O Persians, become 
 birds and fly into the air, or become mice and 
 hide yourselves in the earth, or become frogs 
 and leap into the ponds, ye shall never return 
 
276 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 home, but be stricken with these arrows." Such 
 was this symbolic play, evidently a product of 
 Greek fancy, playing a variation on the well- 
 known Persian symbols of earth and water, yet 
 imaging the great emergency of Darius. 
 
 (3) The bridge at the crossing of the Ister 
 again begins to appear in the narrative (133), 
 and we feel once more that a fresh historical ele- 
 ment starts to show itself. Some Scythians 
 arrive and confer with the lonians in charge of the 
 bridge, exhorting them to leave when the sixty 
 days have passed. Meanwhile the Persian re- 
 treat evidently becomes a flight ; the Scythians 
 now draw up in line of battle (134), but the Per- 
 sians decline the challenge, and slip awaj^ in 
 stealth by night. 
 
 Again the Scythians appear at the bridge and 
 begin to reproach the lonians for staying so long 
 on guard, as their term of sixty days had already 
 expired. Here the Greek begins to show him- 
 self, the dualism which is later to develop into 
 revolt appears. A consultation is held ; His- 
 tiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus, saves the bridge and 
 the Persian army, since he saw in the power of 
 Darius his own safety and that of the other 
 tyrants; "every one of us holds his own city 
 through Darius." But Miltiades, the Athenian, 
 who was "tyrant of Chersonesus," gave the 
 opinion that "they should comply with the re- 
 quest of the Scythians, and free Ionia." Mark 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 277 
 
 this Miltiades, we shall hear of him later at the 
 battle of Marathon. Now he is *' a tyrant," 
 holding one-man power over a Greek city, yet 
 voting *'to free Ionia." The only person then 
 in authority who gave such a vote, standing quite 
 alone : ** all went over to the side of Histiaeus." 
 The author at this point publishes the roll of 
 Greek tyrants, who in such a crisis refused to 
 undo the Persian and **to free Ionia"- — evi- 
 dentl}^ a kind of black list, with names forever 
 accursed and detested by every patriotic Greek. 
 
 So the two sides have risen to light, each with 
 its prominent representative ; both men will yet 
 have a history. The heroic man who is destined 
 to give to Persia her first great defeat in the West 
 now steps forward and takes his stand as the 
 grand protagonist of Greek freedom ; already at 
 the bridge over the Ister he shows the spirit 
 of Marathon. Histiaeus, however, deceives the 
 Scythians by a cunning Greek trick and saves 
 Darius aloncr with the remnants of his armv. 
 
 Such is the prophetic incident foreshadowing 
 much to come. 
 
 D9,rius hurries back to Persia, somewhat as his 
 son Xerxes will do hereafter upon witnessing the 
 battle of Salamis. An inglorious expedition; still 
 he leaves behind him his general, Megabyzus, 
 apparently his most trusted officer, who conquers 
 the Greek colonies and Hellenized peoples in the 
 north around the Propontis. This is an impor- 
 
278 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY, 
 
 tant conquest, it opens a path for the Persian 
 into Europe, which he will take rather than sail 
 across the sea. Miltiades was probably driven 
 out of the Chersonesus in the course of this con- 
 flict and returned to Athens, where he wnll take 
 ample revenge, doubtless using his experience in 
 Persian warfare to train the Athenians. Thus 
 Darius has obtained a foothold in Europe, and 
 the Orient has taken a decided step in advance 
 toward the great struggle which is approaching. 
 In the present section the historian being of 
 Doric stock, appears to show some of the deep- 
 rooted prejudices of his tribe against the lonians. 
 There is an evident ironical tinge in what he says 
 about ''the Ionic mode of life " ( as contrasted 
 with the simpler and sterner Dorian) as well 
 as about " the more refined manners " of the 
 lonians (95). Pythagoras, the Samian sage (the 
 Samian^ were Ionic) beseems to regard as a kind 
 of charlatan who taught Zamolxis to bamboozle 
 the imiorant Thracians into believins^ that he was 
 immortal, through the trick of vanishing and 
 staying in an underground habitation for three 
 years and then reappearing. But in the 
 reproaches of the Scythians to the lonians for 
 not breaking up the bridge, the tone becomes 
 one of acrid sarcasm : *' the lonians, when free, 
 are the basest and most cowardly of all men, 
 but when slaves, are the most servile and obe- 
 dient." Certainly the voice of historian mingles 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 279 
 
 in this stinging rebuke ; still we must recollect 
 that Miltiacles and the Athenians also belonged 
 to the Ionic tribe. It is likewise probable that 
 Herodotus during his visit to the Euxine may 
 have heard from living lips these reproaches ; 
 for the Scythians, after the defeat and flight of 
 Xerxes, would naturally claim that they would 
 have whipped the Persian worse than the Greeks 
 did, had it not been for those cringing, lying 
 slaves, the lonians, who kept the bridge for the 
 escape of Darius, after giving their promise to 
 return home. Clearly the historian has his 
 secret pleasure in the taunt, though he puts it 
 into the mouths of the Scythians. 
 
 Some of the most distinguished modern 
 writers, who have reviewed this account of 
 Herodotus, have agreed in regarding the expedi- 
 tion of Darius as incredible (Grote, Thirlwall, 
 Niebuhr), But we believe this can be shown to 
 be an undiscriminating skepticism. That there 
 are fictitious elements in the narrative must be 
 granted; but these can be separated from the 
 historic kernel by the careful student. We have 
 already noted that it is the Herodotean manner 
 to weave around the reality a garb of fiction, 
 and that, as our historian moves towards the 
 bounds of his world, he becomes more and more 
 mythical. The rejection of the Scythian ex- 
 pedition carries with it the rejection of the 
 Libyan and the Aethiopian expeditions. Nobody 
 
280 THE FATHEB X)F HISTORY. 
 
 will say that all the details in each of these cases 
 are true ; the outline is true and can be distin- 
 guished from the fictitious. To be sure there 
 are some special events in regard to which the 
 boundary between historical and unhistorial can- 
 not be laid down. The discriminating reader 
 will, therefore, make three gradations in the 
 narrative: the certainly historical, the uncertain, 
 and the certainly fictitious. Moreover we must 
 compare Herodotus with himself, and seek to 
 discover his law ; then we shall find that this 
 Scythian expedition is not isolated in its treat- 
 ment, but is harmonious with other parts of his 
 history, and, more deeply still, is harmonious 
 with his spirit, with his historic consciousness. 
 
 Certain improbabilities on physical grounds are 
 often alleged in regard to the expedition. For 
 example, it is claimed not to be likely that the 
 Persian army could cross such large rivers as the 
 Don, Dnieper, and the Bog, which are found in 
 southern Russia (Scythia). But it is certain 
 that the Persian armies of Asia knew how to 
 cross the even larger rivers of their own domains, 
 such as the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and must 
 have had a good deal of experience in the matter. 
 Again, it is affirmed to be improbable that the 
 Persian army could transport or find sustenance 
 for such a large body of men and animals in its 
 long march over the steppes of Scythia. Still 
 Oriental armies of large numbers have crossed 
 
BOOK FOUBTH, 281 
 
 the vast deserts of the Orient, where there was 
 not even vegetation or water. Doubtless Persian 
 generals knew what measures to take in such an 
 emer^yency. Thus the two chief physical im- 
 probabilities vanish, on examination, into their 
 opposite. (See Rawlinson's Translation of 
 Herodotus, note to Chap. 142 of the present 
 Book). 
 
 II. 
 
 We now come to the counterpart of the Persian 
 expedition against Scythia, namely, the Persian 
 expedition against Libya (Africa), which takes 
 up the rest of the Book (145-205). The move- 
 ment of this portion is essentially the same as 
 the preceding ; each is seen to be harmoniously 
 adjusted to the other in structure, and the 
 fundamental thought is one. The Persian 
 strikes against the outlying barbarous nations, he 
 tries to beat down the grand limit of uncivilized 
 peoples which hems him in. Moreover the same 
 Greek element plays into the second portion as 
 into the first, namely, the colonized Greek ele- 
 ment, which has also in its way laid hold of 
 Barbary. But in the last case there is an im- 
 portant difference in treatment; the Greek 
 thread of colonization is quite fully developed 
 in the second portion, whereas it remains unde- 
 veloped by the historian in the first portion, 
 though it be present and active. 
 
282 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 There are likewise contrasts between the two 
 portions. The one expedition is in the North, 
 the other is in the South, Hellas lying in the 
 middle, which fact suggested her own spiritual 
 position and character (hinted in her apothegms, 
 no excess, the golden mean). Her civilization 
 lay between North and South, East and West, 
 heat and cold, between extremes generally. The 
 Scythian expedition was commanded by the king 
 in person, the Libyan by the general of a satrap. 
 This satrap, called Aryandes, directed his arms 
 first against Barke, a Greek colony, but the his- 
 torian says that this was but a pretext, and that 
 the satrap intended to subdue the Libyans, *' as 
 the greater part of the latter paid no heed to 
 Darius " ( 167 ). The limit must be broken down 
 in Libya also — which well accords with what we 
 already know of Persian spirit. 
 
 In this second or Libyan division of the Fourth 
 Book we shall have, therefore, three divisions, as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. The Greek Thread, giving an account of the 
 Greek colonies in Libya (145-167). 
 
 2. The Barbaric Thread, giving an account of 
 tribes and natives of Libya, with the physical 
 characteristics of the country (168-199). 
 
 3. The Persian Thread, giving an account of 
 the Persian satrap's expedition against Libya 
 (200-205). 
 
 It will be observed that the last is treated very 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 283 
 
 briefly, while the Greek and Barbaric Threads 
 are unfolded at some length. The reader will 
 note the general symmetry of this second division 
 of the Book with the first ; the one is structurally 
 a repetition of the other, with the addition of 
 the Greek Thread interwoven in the second 
 division. 
 
 1. The Grveco-Lihyan Thread. Already the 
 fact has been remarked that the Greek element, 
 which is treated of in connection with other mat- 
 ters in the first portion, now receives a full and 
 separate development. What caused this differ- 
 ence of treatment on the part of the historian? 
 What made him give such a detailed and distinct 
 account of the colonization of Gyrene, while the 
 important Greek colonies of the North are quite 
 cursorily dismissed? Of course the reasons can 
 only be surmised. It may here be noted that 
 Herodotus was born in a Dorian colony, of Do- 
 rian parentage doubtless ; in spite of his warm 
 admiration for certain Ionic cities, as Athens and 
 Samos, he had a strong undercurrent of Dorism 
 in his nature, which often shows itself by his 
 unfavorable comments on the Ionic character in 
 general. Now the colonizing movement from 
 Sparta through Thera to Cyrene was essentially 
 Doric. It is also clear that Herodutus had some 
 special source of information about this move- 
 ment. Such information he may not have had 
 concerning colonies northward which were largely 
 
284 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 of Ionic origin. Samos plays quite an important 
 part in this account of Cyrene; our historian's 
 stay at Samos must have furnished him with a 
 number of facts, some of which have a personal 
 and local stamp (152): 
 
 But that which especially fascinated our his- 
 torian in this account of colonizing Cyrene, was 
 the part taken by the Delphic Oracle, which here 
 assumes a more authoritative position than any- 
 where else in the entire History. Only in the 
 First Book in the narrative about Croesus is the 
 Oracle as prominent, and there it is not so com- 
 manding. The whole scheme of colonization 
 seems to be directed from Delphi ; indeed we may 
 say it is forced upon an unwilling though obedi- 
 ent community. Herodotus loved and revered 
 the Delphic Oracle in common with the whole 
 Dorian brotherhood; he takes particular pains to 
 interweave its influence and its responses into 
 Greek affairs. With the Greek Pantheon as 
 shown by Homer he evidently has not much sym- 
 pathy ; to a certain extent he has broken with the 
 old faith; his religious nature is, however, not 
 by any means destroyed but finds expression in 
 the oracular element; in particular the Delphic 
 Oracle is his divine Providence, his Zeus. Thus 
 we may in part account for the fullness with 
 which he sets forth the present section. Nor 
 should we forget that Herodotus probably had 
 his oracular period which had its culmination 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 285 
 
 when this section was written, and when he felt 
 a stronof Doric influence. The Ionic influence 
 was different, more of a free-thinking cast; we 
 heard little about oracles in the Samian history of 
 the preceding Book, and in the later Books which 
 deal with Athenian history, the oracular element 
 will be present, but in diminishing energy. We 
 shall see what Themistocles did with a Delphic 
 response. 
 
 (1) The colonization of Thera by Greeks 
 (14»5--149) is first told and is connected remotely 
 with a famous legend, that of the Argonauts, 
 whose descendants, the Minyae, come to Sparta, 
 and are fraternally adopted into the Spartan com- 
 munity; but they grow insolent, are thrown 
 into prison, escape through a strategem of their 
 Spartan wives ; part of them are taken by Theras, 
 who is dissatisfied with his condition at Sparta, to 
 help found a colony at Thera. This was an 
 island of the Aegaean, most southern of the group 
 called Cyclades, and had been settled already by 
 the Phoenicians, whose settlement there was 
 traced back to Cadmus, when he came westward 
 in quest of Europa. Thus both the Greek and 
 the Phoenician colonization is referred to a mythi- 
 cal origin, which passes over into history; we 
 observe asrain how Herodotus makes the historical 
 rise out of the mythical. 
 
 It is manifest that this colonizing scheme is 
 the offspring of discontent at home. The leader, 
 
286 THE FATEEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 Theras, once ruler of Sparta as guardian of his 
 rojal nephews, '* thought it awful to be ruled by 
 others when he had once tasted of power (147.)" 
 The Minyae were in a kind of revolt; to those 
 were added other people from Sparta, doubtless 
 also dissatisfied. This colonization gave a vent 
 for the discontented spirits of the country ; so it 
 has often done since. Thera has in this way 
 made the transition from a Phoenician to a Greek 
 settlement, though much mixed in population. 
 
 (2) The colonizing movement from Thera to 
 Cyrene is next told (1 50-9 ) . The Delphic Oracle 
 now enters with a persistent response, command- 
 ing those in authority '* to build a city in Libya." 
 But the order is not obeyed, the result is "no 
 rain fell in Thera for seven years." Thus the 
 Oracle punishes for non-compliance. There are 
 two stories told about the matter, but both agree 
 in showing that the purpose of the Oracle is to 
 compel the Theraeans to colonize Libya. They 
 were probably nearest to Libya of all those whom 
 the Oracle might so authoritatively command ; 
 they were Dorian, and came from Sparta, and 
 hence were intimately connected with Delphi. 
 It is evident, however, that they were very un- 
 willing and strongly reacted from the enterprise. 
 In the North, the East and the West, Greek 
 colonies had been planted; the South, too, must 
 not be neglected. Colonization was the Greek 
 method of conquering Barbary, quite in contrast 
 
BOOK FOUBTH, 287 
 
 with the Persian method. Herein the Oracle 
 appears as the representative and promoter of a 
 certain phase of Greek spirit, lashing the more 
 backward communities to make them do their 
 part in the new movement. Battus, the leader, 
 and his colonists lose heart and come back to 
 Thera from Libya, but are not permitted to land ; 
 they return and settle on an island, Platea, but 
 this is an evasion of the Oracle, which gives them 
 no peace till they go to the mainland and found 
 Cyrene. 
 
 Such was the long wearisome struggle laid upon 
 a Greek community by the Oracle for the sup- 
 port of a plan of colonization. While the bar- 
 barians began to be Hellenized, there was also 
 conflict ; the natives did not calmly permit the 
 new-comers to take their lands. The Libyans 
 called in Egypt, which also had its jealousy 
 roused by the new Greek community. The 
 result was a war in which the Egyptians were 
 beaten ; the Greek colonies of Libya assert them- 
 selves against all enemies in that quarter till the 
 Persian (Cambyses) appears. 
 
 There is a passage (152) which probably hints 
 the source whence Herodotus derived the details 
 of the colonization of Thera and Cyrene. A 
 Samian vessel left " provisions for a year " to a 
 solitary remaining colonist on the island of 
 Platea — *' from which act the Theraeans and the 
 Cyreneans contracted great friendship for the 
 
288 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Samians." As our historian lived for a time, 
 possibly more than once, at Samos, he had the 
 opportunity of learning all about the history of 
 Thera and Cyrene here given. Moreover his 
 special interest was roused by hearing it with all 
 the particulars, even with different versions of 
 the same story — Greek fancy spinning itself 
 around the historic fact, as usual. 
 
 (3). From outer prosperity we pass to inner 
 troubles which afflict Cyrene as they do every 
 Greek city (159-67). The Oracle has specially 
 helped the Libyan colony, which it apparently 
 regards as its own fosterling, having published to 
 all Greeks the following oracular advertisment 
 on the occasion of an allotment of land : '' Who- 
 ever comes too late to lovely Libya, will repent 
 of his delay, the land having been divided." 
 This division took place under the second Bathus, 
 apparently some sixty or seventy years after the 
 founding of the city, and greatly increased the 
 population, as we see by the fact that the city at 
 once could defeat the Egyptian army, and later 
 could lose 7,000 heavy-armed soldiers without 
 being undone. 
 
 This success was soon accompanied by domestic 
 strife, which began in the royal family ; some 
 princes quarreling with their brother on the 
 throne, quit Cyrene and founded Barke; which 
 became an important town and long outlasted 
 Cyrene. Revolt of the native Libyans followed, 
 
BOOK FOUBTH, 289 
 
 and then war, the outcome of which was the 
 slaughter of 7,000 Cyreneans. The king was 
 murdered by his brother and this brother was 
 murdered in turn by the king's wife. The royal 
 family had an African strain of barbarism and 
 cruelty in its members, through intermarriage 
 with native princes. It is no wonder that we 
 read of popular discontent with such rulers at the 
 helm in a city which must have been Greek 
 chiefly after the allotment of lands. Again the 
 Oracle at Delphi is invoked, to which it is plain 
 that the people naturally looked in the emer- 
 gency; note that the Cyreneans, not the king, 
 called in the Oracle, which commands them to 
 get an arbitrator from Mantinea, a city famous in 
 Greece for its good government. 
 
 Thus Demonax is sent to Cyrene and makes 
 what would be called in our time a new constitu- 
 tion. He was probably the best fitted man of 
 the period through personal character and talents, 
 and therefore was selected by the Delphic wise 
 men before the matter was handed over to Man- 
 tinea. Then Mantinea was not Doric or Ionic, 
 but Pelasgic ; its citizen would not be warped by 
 a tribal connection, which no doubt caused part 
 of the trouble at Cyrene. We see by his division 
 into three tribes what some of the difficulties 
 were ; he made one tribe of old settlers (Ther- 
 aeans and their dependents), another of Pelopon- 
 nesian and Cretans (Doric), another of the 
 
 19 
 
290 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Islanders (Ionic). The last two contained prob- 
 ably most of the new-comers, who now obtained 
 important political rights, which had before been 
 denied. 
 
 The king, on the other hand, is shorn of his 
 political prerogatives, though he is retained in 
 his religious capacity as priest (Rawlinson com- 
 pares rex sacrificuhts at Kome and archon basileus 
 at Athens in republican times). The king has 
 also his allotments of land. This constitution 
 has a decided democratic look, and shows that 
 Cyrene was following the strong political ten- 
 dency of the age. 
 
 One king, the lame Battus, submitted to the 
 new order during his life ; but after his death, his 
 son and his wife make trouble. The son, called 
 Arcesilaus, '* demands back the prerogatives of 
 his ancestors." At first the two are defeated in 
 an uprising; the son goes to Samos and collects 
 a band of adventurers, while the mother, Phere- 
 time, goes to King Euelthon, of Salamis in 
 Cyprus, praying for help. The Delphic Oracle, 
 too, is invoked, this time by the king, which 
 now strongly encourages him, though it had 
 before favored the people and caused the send- 
 ing of Demonax. Probably the new constitution 
 was too democratic to be acceptable to the Doric 
 sentiment of Delphi, hence the change. For the 
 Oracle does not merely prophesy, it is also 
 directive. It bids the king, however, to be 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 291 
 
 moderate after his return and '* not to bake the 
 amphorae in a hot fm-hace," but the king, being 
 successful in his attempt to return to Cyrene, 
 with the characteristic cruelty of his house did 
 '' bake the amphorae ;" the result was that he as 
 well as ' ' the beautiful bull " ( an obscure desig- 
 nation of his father-in-law Alazir, king of Barke) 
 perished, as the Oracle had foretold. 
 
 The Delphic Oracle has been invoked by both 
 sides, and has interfered in favor of both sides — 
 the people and the king ; also it has sought to 
 keep both in the bounds of moderation ; evidently 
 without success. The people, having obtained 
 the power, used it to do wrong against others, 
 according to an allusion in Aristotle (Pol. VI. 
 2) ; in like manner the king, having returned to 
 power, uses it for revenge, as we see in the 
 present narrative. The Oracle is, however, rec- 
 ognized, as a kind of medieval papal authority, and 
 tries to hold the balance between both parties. 
 
 Pheretime, the king's mother, stays at Cyrene 
 after her son's departure, and exercises authority 
 for a time; but she flees to Egypt after her son's 
 death at Barke, and there invokes the interfer- 
 ence of the Persian. Already the king, Arcesi- 
 laus, had *' given Cyrene to Cambyses and 
 imposed on himself a tribute (165)." In this 
 fact we may see one ground of discontent with 
 the royal family: it had handed a free Greek 
 city over to the rule of Persia. 
 
292 THE FATHER OF EI S TOBY, 
 
 2. Hie Barbarico- Libyan Thread (168-199). 
 This interference of the Persian is the histo- 
 rian's occasion for introducing his account of the 
 barbarous peoples of Libya in correspondence 
 with the account of the barbarous peoples of 
 Scythia previously given in the present Book. 
 Moreover the correspondence is carried still 
 further : as the Persian intended to subdue bar- 
 baric Scythia, so now he intends to subdue bar- 
 baric Libya; thus the two acts have their common 
 root in Persian policy, or in Persian spirit. It 
 is true that Dahlmann in his Life of Herodotus 
 has chosen to cast suspicion upon any such 
 design of subduing Libya on the part of the 
 Persian, but his statement is without any his- 
 toric basis, wholly drawn from his inner con- 
 sciousness — wherein he receives the approval of 
 Rawlinson (ad loc). But the historian knew 
 the fact and especially knew the Persian char- 
 acter, of which the fact is but a manifestation, 
 far better than either of his modern comment- 
 ators. 
 
 On the sea-coast of Libya at different places 
 two sets of f oreio^ners had settled : the Greek 
 and the Phoenician, the one represented by 
 Cyrene, the other by Carthag^e. Besides these 
 two cities of foreigners, were the native Libyan 
 peoples, which the historian is now going to tell- 
 of and to order after a fashion, which we shall 
 try to set forth. 
 
BOOK FOUBTH, 293 
 
 There are three tracts or zones of land extend- 
 ing across Northern Libya ill parallel lines (181 ). 
 First of these is the coast zone, then is the wild 
 beast zone, finally is the sand zone. In general, 
 this physical outline of Northern Africa holds 
 good to-day. The three zones exist but not so 
 regular and parallel as Herodotus seems to think; 
 nature has her order but also she has her caprices. 
 The second zone (here called the wild beast 
 tract) is really a hilly country, whose product is 
 chiefly dates, according to modern travelers. 
 The desert of Sahara may in general pass for the 
 third zone, though Herodotus hardly knew of 
 its extent. The greatest modern geographers, 
 Kitter and Humboldt, divide Northern Africa 
 into three belts, somewhat after the fashion of 
 our historian, with the correction of minor 
 details . 
 
 ( 1 ) The beginning is made with Egypt, from 
 which the account moves westward to lake Tri- 
 tonis, giving the coast zone of peoples ( 168-80), 
 all of which are nomads. But beyond these, to 
 the west of lake Tritonis dwell the Libyans who 
 are agriculturists (191-5). The name of this 
 lake calls up a fund of Greek legend; the omni- 
 present Argo sailed thither, and a Triton ap- 
 peared to Jason, announcing that *' a hundred 
 Greek cities would be built around lake Tritonis " 
 in a certain case, which never came to pass, 
 however* One of these Libyan tribes claimed to 
 
294 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 be descended from Trojan fugitives (191); a 
 similar claim was afterward made for Romans 
 and other Italians, and was elaborated by the 
 poet Virgil. Greek story is evidently hiterweav- 
 ing Libya ; Greek explorers had probably looked 
 at the region about lake Tritonis as a suitable 
 spot for extensive colonization ; an oracle had 
 commanded the Lacedemonians to colonize an 
 island in the lake; but the plan was never real- 
 ized. It is interestino^ to note this outlook of 
 Hellenic civilization on the African coast. 
 
 (2) The wild beast zone is not very distinctly 
 described by Herodotus, though he plainly desig- 
 nates it as lying inland, beyond the coast line 
 ( 181 ) . But when he comes to tell about western 
 Libya ( 191 ), he speaks of the region of the agri- 
 cultural Libyans (the Maxyes) as abounding in 
 wild beasts, thickly wooded and mountainous. 
 Thus the western coast tract and the parallel wild 
 beast tract seem to run together in his descrip- 
 tion. In the main his account of the animals, 
 huge serpents and physical characteristics of this 
 region is correct, though it goes over into the 
 fabulous in the case of " men with no heads, 
 having their eyes in their breasts." He claims 
 to have investigated the matter with the greatest 
 care (192), he shows the scientific spirit, and it 
 is interestins: to note the confirmation of his 
 statements by modern travelers in the essential 
 points. 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 295 
 
 (3) The next parallel band is the sand zone 
 (181 ) which '' extends from Egyptian Thebes to 
 the Pillars of Hercules," that is, from the Nile 
 to the Atlantic Ocean. Here again the regularity 
 is striking. " At intervals of a ten days' jour- 
 ney over this sand ridge, are pieces of salt in 
 large lumps on hills; on the top of each hill, out 
 of the salt, a spring gushes forth, of water cold 
 and sweet." Here dwell the men of the desert. 
 The first of these stations, or oases, is that of . 
 the Ammonians, where is the shrine of Jupiter 
 Amnion, Jupiter with the head of a ram, which 
 image penetrated Egyptian and even Greek 
 mythology. 
 
 Modern researches have shown that the state- 
 ments of Herodotus in regard to the springs, and 
 salt, and distances are based on fact, though not 
 always accurate. He describes substantially a 
 caravan route through the desert, passing from 
 oasis to oasis. The general aspect of the coun- 
 try, the salt houses, the peoples can still be 
 verified ; even the Troglodytes, the cave-dwellers, 
 very swift of foot, are pointed out in the Tib- 
 boos, living in the mountain-caves south of 
 Fezzan. The zone continues to the Atlantes, 
 a people named from Mount Atlas near by; with 
 which mountain the narrative enters the realm of 
 Greek mythology, since Atlas is celebrated in 
 the Greek poets (Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus) as 
 the giant holding the pillars of Heaven. Thus 
 
296 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 does the actual run over into the fabulous on the 
 borders of the world. 
 
 It may be said that nature herself has a fabu- 
 lous aspect in this part of the globe, and that 
 , the historian had some provocation for lapsing 
 into the mythical through the very form of the 
 actual. The man in these regions approaches 
 the animal, as the Troglodyte ; then the animal 
 approaches man, as the gorilla and the chim- 
 panzee; there is the small man, the pigmy, and 
 the prodigious animal, snake, crocodile or lizard. 
 The wonders of nature are real in this southern 
 latitude ; while in the cold north they are more 
 or less fictitious. Possibly it was through his 
 Libyan and Egyptian experience that Herodotus 
 came to believe that the extremes of the earth 
 produce marvels. 
 
 It has been already noted that the Greek cities 
 have a tendency to become Africanized. The 
 women of Cyrene, native and mixed, will not 
 eat of the flesh of the cow, since it is sacred to 
 Isis; nor will the women of Barke partake of 
 swine's flesh — both pointing to customs like 
 those of Egypt. The Greek colonists in many 
 cases married native women, though the men 
 were continually reinforced by newcomers from 
 Greece. Particularly the royal houses of Cyrene 
 and Barke show an African strain. 
 
 On the other hand we observe everywhere 
 graces of the Hellenizatiou of the indigenous 
 
BOOK FOUBTH, 297 
 
 Libyan races. Just as in the North, the barbar- 
 ous peopl-es of the South could not help being 
 influenced by Greek civilization. Commerce led 
 the way ; Greek trinkets were a training out of 
 savagery, Greek art and Greek mythology found 
 their way into the African soul. Especially the 
 tribes along the coast manifest something of the 
 Greek presence. 
 
 But the greatest, most important and most 
 celebrated city that ever existed in Northern 
 Africa Herodotus gives no account of, though 
 he alludes to it — Carthage. When he passes 
 beyond lake Tritonis westward (191-5), he ap- 
 proaches this city, but instead of a detailed 
 description, he only cites what the Carthaginians 
 say about some other countries besides their 
 own. A plain avoidance of the subject; why? 
 It tallies with his treatment of the Phoenicians, 
 who colonized Carthage, yet he visited the cities 
 of Phoenicia, and may have visited Carthage. 
 The statements of Carthaginians are quoted as if 
 he had heard them personally; where or how? 
 Silence ; the result is that the distinctive Semitic 
 thread of the world's civilization quite drops out 
 of his history ; Judea, Phoenicia, Syria, Carthage 
 have no adequate showing therein. 
 
 The historian evidently visited Cyrene, he 
 speaks of a statue which he saw there (II. 181). 
 In this city he probably obtained a good deal 
 of bis knowledge of the interior. Concerning 
 
298 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 the sand zone and its characteristics the natural 
 place for information was Egypt ; doubtless some 
 of the Greeks of Naucratis had made the journey 
 by caravan, and would be ready to recount their 
 travels to an inquisitive countrj^man. A guide- 
 book also may have been accessible, and books 
 of former travelers had been written for a reading- 
 public . 
 
 3. The Persico-Lihyan Thread (200-5). 
 The Persian satrap Aryandes moves from Egypt 
 against the Greek city, Barke, but his expedi- 
 tion is intended to conquer the Libyans. Such is 
 the general ground of the war, though a personal 
 reason is also assigned, as usual — the revenge 
 of a woman, Pheretime, who had fled to Egypt 
 (165) on the death of her son at the hands of the 
 Barkaeans. There she was a suppliant to the 
 satrap, saying that her son had lost his life in 
 consequence of his attachment to the Persians, 
 whose policy was to support the tyrants of the 
 Greek cities against popular government. Al- 
 ready this son, when king of Gyrene, had given 
 the city up to Cambyses, and had thereby with- 
 out doubt caused a revulsion among the people. 
 So the tyrants looked to Persia, and Persia sup- 
 ported the tyrants (see the speech of Histiaeus, 
 tyrant of Miletus, 137). In like manner the in- 
 vasion of Scythia was attributed to a personal 
 ofround: Darius wished to avenore the Scythian 
 invasion of Asia. But such individual motives. 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 299 
 
 even if they exist, play upon the surface of 
 great events, which spring from a far deeper 
 source. 
 
 The Barkaeans fought bravely against the Per- 
 sians, who, under the lead of Amasis (soon to be 
 king of Egypt) were able finally to capture the 
 city by a lying stratagem ; thus again those 
 truth-loving Persians resort to falsehood and 
 breach of faith. The conduct of Cyrene in this 
 affair is exceedingly dubious ; perhaps she was 
 willing to see a rival city destroyed — a too fre- 
 quent Greek characteristic. When Barke was 
 undone, Cyrene was eager to get the Egyptians 
 out of her territory. The expedition on its 
 march homewards was much harassed by the 
 Libyans, and ended with little glory; even 
 Pheretime soon fled back to Egypt, for she prob- 
 ably did not feel safe in her own country after 
 her terrible revenge, worthy of an African queen. 
 She impaled her male enemies around the city, 
 and, cutting off the breasts of their wives, hung 
 them upon its walls. She did not, however, end 
 her life happily ; see became diseased, and her 
 body, while living, swarmed with maggots — a 
 malady which afflicted other heroes of cruelty in 
 antiquity (Herod, Sulla). ''Hateful to the 
 Gods are the extremes of human vengeance," 
 saith our historian in his moralizinsf vein. Both 
 
 't-5 
 
 son and mother get their own — wherewith the 
 section ends. 
 
300 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Those of the unhappy Barkaeans, who re- 
 mained alive, were transported to Bactria, to the 
 remotest country on the other side of the Persian 
 Empire, where they inhabited a town called 
 Barke, ** still down to my day" says the his- 
 torian, over half a century afterwards. Possibly 
 Herodotus visited the town; he seems to have 
 taken especial interest in those unfortunate 
 countrymen of his who had been torn from 
 Hellas and hopelessly transplanted into distant 
 Asia, still retaining their language, and probably 
 their customs and their worship. (See the case 
 of Eretria, VI. 119.) 
 
 Pheretime, in spite of her Greek name, shows 
 her non-Greek tendency by not appealing to the 
 Delphic Oracle in her emergency, but to the Per- 
 sian power. Even her son had consulted the 
 Pythia, and had received a favorable response, 
 but when he had succeeded he did not obey the 
 oracular warning. So she in this regard violates 
 the grand precedent of Gyrene, both of rulers 
 and people. 
 
 The Oracle declares that there will be eight 
 kings of this royal house (Battiadae), four by 
 the name of Battus and four by the name 
 of Arcesilaus (163). The chronology of these 
 eight kings is not ascertainable to the 
 year, but its general outline can be determined. 
 Solinus gives the date 597 B. G. for the found- 
 ing of Gyrene, Eusebius places it earlier, in 631 
 
BOOIi FOUBTff, SOI 
 
 B. C. The latter date seems to be preferable 
 (see Rawlinson, note to IV. 163). The follow- 
 ing table furnishes an approximation : — 
 
 Battus I. (founder of the city), reigned 40 years.. 631 B. C. 
 
 Arcesilaus I. (his son), reigned 16 j^ears (159) 591 B. C. 
 
 Battus II. (called the Happy — great increase in popu- 
 lation) 575 B. C. 
 
 Arcesilaus XL (trouble in the royal family — Barke 
 
 founded) 555 B. C. 
 
 Battus III. (the Lame — Demonax, the lawgiver) . . . 540 B. C. 
 
 Arcesilaus HI. (refuses to accept the new constitu- 
 tion) 530 B. C. 
 
 Battus IV. (period of Pheretime as regent, king's 
 
 grandmother) 514 B. C. 
 
 Arcesilaus IV. (time of Herodotus) 470 B. C. 
 
 The historian probably saw the end of the 
 dynasty in his own day, and the fulfilment of the 
 oracle. 
 
GENERAL OBSEBVATIONS. 
 
 With the conclusion of the Fourth Book we 
 have reached a distinct turning-point in the total 
 History of Herodotus. We pass, gradually it 
 is true, into a new stage of its unfolding; in a 
 sense, all that is gone before is but a vast j^rep- 
 aration for what is to follow. The conflict be- 
 tween Hellas and Persia, between Occident and 
 Orient, hitherto more or less latent, now becomes 
 open, explicit, the plain, historic fact. 
 
 Moreover, the work of Herodotus is divided 
 into two parts very nearly equal at the line of 
 separation between the Fourth and Fifth Books. 
 That is, the first half of the work is done, the 
 second half must next begin. It is well to observe 
 this proportion even in the matter of quantity, 
 for we have already noticed that our historian 
 was thoughtful of it apparently in limiting his ac- 
 count to Lower Egypt (Book II), and in omitting 
 his entire Assyrian history (Book I). So we 
 may take pleasure in this evidence of artistic 
 (302) 
 
BOOK FOURTH. 303 
 
 symmetry, conscious or unconscious, shown by 
 the old historian. 
 
 I. The Preceding Four Books. A. look 
 backward at some of the leading points which 
 have been brought to light, may now be taken. 
 A certain unity we shall find in the first four 
 Books considered by themselves ; certain impor- 
 tant matters are concluded, while certain others 
 begin or assume a new prominence. 
 
 1. The Rim of Barbary has quite fully un- 
 folded itself, and will hereafter almost disappear 
 from the movement of the History, or be men- 
 tioned in a subordinate way. Still it is implied. 
 In the Fourth Book, as just developed, we saw 
 in strong outline the demarkation of the Scythian 
 Rim in the North and the Libyan Rim in the 
 South ; in the previous Books he have taken note 
 of Eastern portions of the Rim, and even of 
 Western. This uncivilized Rim, surrounding 
 the whole civilized world of antiquity, Greek as 
 well as Persian, suggests the limit to that world, 
 and its chief future conflict. 
 
 2. We have witnessed, in the preceding Books, 
 the dealings of the Persian with the barbarous 
 border encompassing him on nearly every side. 
 He, fretting against all external limitation, 
 has sought to subject this Rim of Barbary, but 
 he has been thrown back from it with violence 
 at every point attempted. The entire series 
 of Persian monarchs — Cyrus, Cambyses, 
 
304 THS FATHER OP mSTO^T 
 
 Darius — have tried their hand in this business, 
 and have had their bounds drawn against them, 
 external primarily, but also internal. There 
 remains the civilized bound, that of Hellas, 
 about which will transpire the coming conflict of 
 this History. 
 
 3. A great movement of the World's History 
 pertains to the treatment of this Rim of uncivil- 
 ized peoples. The Greek knew the fact and 
 called those outside of his pale by the name of 
 Barbarians ; the Jew knew it also and designated 
 the outsider as a Gentile; the Christian, despite 
 his missionary spirit ( or possibly in consequence 
 of it) still finds his Rim of Barbary in the name 
 and fact of Heathendom. So the old Historian 
 has laid down a line which has not yet vanished, 
 and will not vanish for some time to come. What 
 shall be done with the Barbarian (the Turk just 
 at present) is still something of a practical prob- 
 lem in Historj^ ; and the question, Which are the 
 Heathen, has yet to be fully answered. 
 
 4. In the previous four Books we have wit- 
 nessed the growth and consolidation of the Per- 
 sian Empire which has united under one absolute 
 monarch the whole of Western and Middle Asia. 
 The First Book showed us the rise and conquests 
 of the founder, Cyrus ; the Third Book told 
 of the addition of Eg3^pt by Cambyses as well 
 as the subjection of Samos; the Fourth Book 
 shows still further conquest and inner organiza- 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 305 
 
 lion tbrough Darius. Such is the Persian, or 
 the movement of Persia, which, however, has 
 taken phice inside the Rim of Barbary, from 
 which the mighty empire has been thrown back, 
 as from a vast wall of circumvallation: 
 
 5. The result is, as already hinted, the grand 
 conflict between Hellas and Asia has become 
 sharply drawn, and the line of battle in a general 
 way has been laid down. The two combatants 
 have begun to array themselves along that line, 
 which will indeed fluctuate, yet will become more 
 and more distinct as the decisive time approaches. 
 Both sides are conscious of the cominsf struo:o:le. 
 
 II. The Following Five Books. The careful 
 reader will feel that the movement from the Fifth 
 to the end of the Ninth Book has a character 
 and content of its own, though very intimately and 
 organically connected with the preceding Books. 
 The consolidation of the Persian Empire is com- 
 pleted, there will be no more interweaving of 
 Oriental peoples conquered by Persia. In fact, 
 the distinctively Oriental portion of the History 
 is done, the stress will be henceforth upon the 
 Hellenic portion. To be sure, there has been a 
 Greek Thread from the beginning, still it has 
 been, on the whole, subordinate to the Oriental 
 element; it was undeveloped, as Greece herself 
 was not yet developed, but is now to be developed. 
 Likewise there will be still an Oriental Thread, 
 very important; Greece, however, is the center 
 
 20 ' 
 
306 THE FATHER OF HISTOEY. 
 
 of interest, and determines the whole historical 
 character of the period, while previously the 
 Orient was in the main the determining principle. 
 Such is the transition, here to be noted, yet 
 hereafter to be gradually unfolded into its full 
 significance. 
 
 1. The locality of the historical action is hence- 
 forth to be essentially the same throughout, not 
 scattered over Asia and Africa, and also over 
 Greece, as has been the case hitherto. There 
 is now a general movement of concentration, 
 in space as well as in the thing to be done ; Per- 
 sia is solidified, even the Greek States begin to 
 show some signs of unity and co-operation. The 
 place where the conflict is to transpire is getting 
 marked out, and we begin to see the battle line 
 between Orient and Occident drawn round the 
 shores of the Aegaean. Also the contending 
 forces are gradually taking their positions. The 
 three grand acts of the coming drama, the Ionic 
 Revolt, the battle of Marathon, the expedition 
 of Xerxes show indeed the three unities of Place, 
 Time and Action, to which may be added a clear 
 defining of the principle involved in the conflict. 
 
 2. Herewith the historic character of the work 
 becomes more pronounced, the mythical ele- 
 ment recedes into the background, though it 
 by no means vanishes wholly. As the author 
 comes back home to his Hellas, the center 
 of intelligence, the consciousness of History 
 
BOOK FOUBTH. 307 
 
 grows clearer and dominates his spirit; as he 
 withdraws from ** the extremities of the world," 
 from the distant in Space as well as from the 
 remote in Time, Fableland with its twilight 
 passes away before the rising smi of Greece. 
 Still he would not be the Father of History, un- 
 less he were so responsive to the mythical, imag- 
 inative element which is antecedent to History ; 
 thus he can construct a bridge in himself and in 
 his work out of the prehistoric into the historic 
 world, of which bridge we are perchance now 
 passing the topmost arch. 
 
 3. There is no doubt that the style changes in 
 subtle correspondence with the change of the 
 theme. There is still the love of the marvelous, 
 but the direct historic fact rules the narrative, 
 though the miracle is not left away. The Oracle 
 has still its part, but it must be rightly interpreted 
 by intelligence, especially at Athens. The pre- 
 vious Books show more the traveler, the suc- 
 ceeding Books show more the historian. Not so 
 much a description of places and of tribes, as the 
 record of events are we henceforth to have; the 
 human deed is told, while the superhuman mar- 
 vel hovers still around it, in a ghostly way. The 
 main charm of the style is this naive responsive- 
 ness to all the changeful hues shooting through 
 the movement of a great epoch. 
 
 4. We observe still the mighty necessity of 
 the Persian to find his limit on every side. Bar- 
 
308 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 barism conquers him chiefly by its desolation, 
 almost by its yielding passivity; but now he 
 meets a people who are going to conquer him by 
 their activity. That Persian people — what a 
 task was put upon them and how faithfully they 
 labored at it ! For they too had a national idea 
 which fought valiantly for a place in the World's 
 History ; that idea was somehow to realize the 
 Universal in Space ; the infinitude of mind they 
 tried to make actual by destroying every external 
 limit. So they surge forth against every bound- 
 ary, civilized and barbarous, trying to find the 
 great boon, the Universal, outside of themselves, 
 and therein fighting for their very existence. 
 Desperate was their final attempt to obtain that 
 beautiful Hellas, the future inheritance of the 
 race. A small, poor, stony, mountainous coun- 
 try ; what was it worth ? One cannot help admir- 
 ing the right instinct of Persia in trying to get 
 hold of this grand spiritual treasure; but she 
 thought she could seize it externally — a great 
 mistake. Thus little Hellas became the miHit- 
 iest limit to Persia and the Orient, a limit 
 of spirit, for in that petty, barren country 
 had risen the principle of the Individual with 
 his idea of freedom, who alone can resist 
 the all-devouring Universal of the Orient. 
 Nay, the Greek will begin to take up 
 into himself that Universal, making it internal 
 for all time in thought through poetry and phi- 
 
BOOK FOUETH. 309 
 
 losophy, but politically and socially he will go to 
 pieces in the process. 
 
 But now we are to see Persia toiling at her 
 problem with an enormous outlay of power, with 
 a truly Oriental colossality in her endeavor. 
 The Occidental reader very naturally sympathizes 
 with Greece, almost to the point of patriotic fer- 
 vor ; but let him also try to see that Persia as well 
 as Greece was seeking to fulfill her world-historical 
 destiny with untold labor and sacrifice; Persia, 
 too, was fighting for an idea; this idea, likewise, 
 we should understand, make our own, nay, sym- 
 pathize with up to a certain point. Let us not 
 take sides too ardently in this old war, lest we lose 
 sight of the reality of the conflict; let us appre- 
 ciate both contestants and behold in them the 
 representatives of two world-historical ideas in a 
 grand collision, both of which have validity, yet 
 one has greater validity than the other. 
 
 Greek spirit so dominates us still that the 
 Orient fares badly on this side of that old battle- 
 line. The greater effort is necessary to assume 
 the attitude of world-judge, which is the stand- 
 point of the World's History. 
 
 5. In advance it may be hinted to the reader 
 that he should be on the lookout for the structural 
 elements in the following Books. Manifestly 
 the Fifth and the Sixth Books belong together in 
 one great sweep from revolt against the Persian 
 through defeat of the Greek, back again to vie- 
 
310 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 tory at Marathon. Then comes a new and far 
 larger oscillation, from invasion through defeat 
 at Thermopylae to the victorious rise at Salamis 
 and Platea; this is contained in the final Books — 
 Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth. The full develop- 
 ment of these structural hints will be given later. 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 
 
 The expedition to Scythia has not been with- 
 out effect upon the Persian. Through that 
 humiliating experience he has learned one thing 
 at least: he can cross into Europe on foot. A 
 bridge of boats can be thrown over the Helles- 
 pont as well as over the Bosphorus, over the 
 Strymon as well as over the Danube. The Per- 
 sian was no sailor. In his native land he was not 
 called upon to grapple with the sea, to master it, 
 to make it subservient to his ends. He had a 
 terror of it, or at least no confidence in it ; he 
 distrusted its billowy uncertainty, its infinite 
 movableness. He distrusted likewise its chil- 
 dren, those dexterous seamen, the Greeks. 
 
 Hence it came that the Aegaean kept him 
 hovering so long around its borders. Here was 
 an element, hostile, unconquerable, or which re- 
 
 (311) 
 
312 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 quired another kind of conquest tlian his kind ; 
 water puts out fire, and the Persian was a fire 
 worshiper. He went like a consuming blaze 
 through Western Asia, but stopped at the border 
 of the sea. 
 
 Greek spirit was determined fully as much by 
 the sea as by the land. Persian spirit was first 
 halted, then rolled back, and finally overwhelmed 
 bv Greek watermen. The Aes^aean is the ffrand 
 Hellenic wall against the Orient, not only train- 
 ing, but protecting its children. Three lines of 
 relationship to it on the part of the Greeks may 
 be marked out. First, it protected the cities on 
 the coast of Asia Minor, being to them an inlet 
 of sustenance in case of siege by land, as well as 
 a means of escape in case of dire necessity. 
 Secondly, it protected the islands, of whidh it is 
 full, and which may be regarded as its spe- 
 cial progeny. Thirdly, it protected continental 
 Greece, being a mighty wall of water manned 
 with floating defenders, whom the enemy could 
 not reach by land. Truly it may be said that 
 without the Aegaean, Europe and its civilization 
 could not have been ; both would have been con- 
 sumed in that Asiatic prairie-fire which was 
 sweeping westward over the world just at the 
 budding of Hellas. 
 
 But the Persian has now learned of the path 
 round the Aegaean ; he can pass into Europe on 
 foot by bridging a narrow strait. Such is the 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 313 
 
 grand point at present gained, which will lead to 
 the expedition of Xerxes. The king will not 
 have to trust that fickle, treacherous element 
 of water, or but slightly trust it ; at least, it will 
 not be his chief reliance, nor will its children, 
 unsteady like itself, be his main help for reaching 
 the new realm of conquest. 
 
 Still, we may here premise, the sea will vindi- 
 cate itself against the Persian, will not be cir- 
 cumvented by him, but will overwhelm him with 
 its waters, with its winds and rocks, and finally 
 through the skill and streno^th of its children. 
 The path round the Aegaean is not the subjection 
 of the Aegaean by any means, and, after all, the 
 Persian will be found to have made his journey 
 afoot to Greece in vain. Salamis strikes the key- 
 note, he cannot subjugate the sea even if he does 
 the land ; the watery wall cannot be surmounted, 
 this time at least, by the Oriental. 
 
 The Persian has, however, discovered the way 
 round, and is going to make the most of it. He 
 follows on the track of the old Aryan migration 
 into Europe, which must have crossed chiefly at 
 the Bosphorus and Hellespont. For we still have 
 to think that the Aryans, in their early move- 
 ments, came from Asia into their European 
 abodes, though this view has been stoutly as- 
 sailed in recent years. The Persian, then, get- 
 ting into this old road from Asia into Europe, 
 begins to see the path leading toward Hellas. 
 
314 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 We are now to witness the preliminary fluctua- 
 tions of the orreat conflict. The Persian will 
 first seek to remove the obstacles northward in 
 his road round the Aegaean, wherein he will 
 easily succeed. Then will come a great reaction 
 against him in the south, on the part of the 
 people of the sea, who revolt, quite along the 
 entire border between Asia and Europe. But 
 these Asiatic Greeks will be put down, they 
 are not the true bearers of the new world-idea. 
 Meanwhile, however, its real representative is 
 brouo^ht to lio^ht in the throes of the struo^s^le. 
 
 The sweep of the Fifth Book will be best seen 
 by dividing it into three masses, each of which 
 has its distinct meaning, yet all stand in organic 
 connection with one another. 
 
 I. The Persian is occupied in conquering the 
 lands and cities around the Propontis. The bar- 
 barous peoples, of which a short account is given, 
 and the Greek settlements in that northern 
 region are put under Persian supremacy. This 
 is the o^ettino: and the s^uardinoj the road round 
 the Aegaean for the future (1-27). 
 
 II. The longest of the three portions (28-98). 
 A great many matters are introduced, but the 
 setting in which all are placed is the Ionic revolt, 
 or the grand reaction of the Greek-Asiatic cities 
 and islands against Persian rule. More distinctly 
 than before comes out the meaning of the con- 
 flict; it is Orient against Occident, absolutism 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 315 
 
 against freedom ; it is the grand protest of the 
 new-born individual in favor of the rig^ht of 
 individuality. Sparta and Athens, the future 
 vindicators of this right, appear, not yet as 
 involved combatants, though Athens sends 
 ships, but as interested spectators, standing 
 at present in the background and getting ready 
 to participate in the mightier contest which is 
 certainly coming. Athens, in particular, has its 
 genesis into democracy unfolded, and is shown 
 to be in the process of becoming the true bearer 
 of the new movement, thouo^h at Dresent she 
 withdraws from the conflict. 
 
 III. The fight rages all along the line of what 
 may be called the Greek-Asiatic border, dividing 
 Orient from Occident, yet at the same time 
 intermingling the two (99-126). From the 
 Hellespont to the island of Cyprus, nearly the 
 full length of the chain of Hellenic colonization 
 to the East, is there an uprising against the hated 
 Persian rule. But it is plain from the start 
 that the revolt is doomed; its leaders are tyrants, 
 and to pass from a Greek to a Persian tyrant, 
 what is the gain? The principle cannot thus be 
 won, and the World's History fights for a princi- 
 ple, though individuals may fight for personal 
 ends. So Athens retires, her time is not yet 
 come; indeed how can she shed her blood for 
 tyrants, the like of whom she has recently ex- 
 pelled ^ 
 
316 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 Such is the general bearing of the Fifth Book, 
 which shows both the movement of Persian power 
 toward continental Greece, as well as the pre- 
 liminary conflict in the Ionic revolt. We shall 
 now set forth more fully the heads above indi- 
 cated, following the text of the historian. 
 
 I. 
 
 Darius, when he returned from his Scythian 
 expedition, left a general in Europe, named Mega- 
 bazus, who was expressly ordered to conquer 
 both the barbarous nations and the Greek settle- 
 ments in the Thracian res^ion. The leadino^ ob- 
 ject of this conquest has been already stated : it 
 was to get possession of a way by land into Greece 
 and Europe. The Greek town Perinthus was the 
 first one overwhelmed ** by numbers," after hav- 
 ing shown itself ' * valorous for liberty. ' ' The Per- 
 sian general then moved his army through Thrace, 
 ** subjugating every tribe and every city to the 
 king, for such had been the latter's command." 
 
 At this point the historian gives a brief account 
 of the Thracian nation, which he declares to be 
 "the greatest among men except the Indians." 
 Several of the tribes are described in order, 
 among which we may here notice the Getae, usu- 
 ally held to be the ancient Goths, probably the 
 ancestors of the present Teutonic race in part. 
 We can observe in the historian the same tend- 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 317 
 
 ency, already remarked several times, to lapse 
 into the fabulous, when the extreme portions of 
 the earth are supposed to be reached. ''Nobody 
 can say who dwell north of the Ister (Danube), 
 but it seems a desert tract and boundless*." 
 Surely a realm for the imagination : *' The Thra- 
 cians say that bees hold possession of those 
 regions, and prevent people from going further," 
 possibly by stinging them with cold. As we 
 have had (see previous Book) a snow storm 
 suggested by the air being full of feathers in the 
 North, why should we not have another quality 
 of such a storm hinted in a swarm of bees? The 
 reader will not leave out of Herodotus this play 
 of mythical fancy, since it is a native ingredient 
 of the work. Of course the Persian general did 
 not seek to penetrate into those distant northern 
 regions again, but kept close to the line of the 
 sea- coast and of civilization. 
 
 The Paeonians, one of these Thracian peoples, 
 were in part transported into Asia by command 
 of Darius. Here we come upon a fact very in- 
 teresting in the light of recent researches : some 
 of these Paeonians were lake-dwellers, "inhabit- 
 ing the lake " (16). Houses were built on piles 
 over the water, and connected with the land by 
 narrow bridges. Thus a village stands in the 
 middle of the lake, and " the young children 
 have a string tied to the foot to keep them from 
 tumbling into the water." Many lakes in west- 
 
318 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 ern Europe show traces of having had similar 
 dwellers, whose piles can often be seen at low 
 water. The Swiss lakes in particular have been 
 carefully investigated, and quite a fund of antiq- 
 uities and facts brous^ht to lio^ht. It is opener- 
 ally supposed that these lake-dwellers were a 
 primitive Turanian people inhabiting Europe 
 before the advent of the earliest Aryans, and 
 were probably driven to dwell in the lake by 
 their advancing enemies. A new Aryan wave of 
 conquest now strikes these most ancient Euro- 
 peans dwelling in Lake Prasias, but the general 
 Megabazus is not able to conquer them in their 
 pile-buildings ( Pfahlbauten), though he tried. 
 
 The next nation which Megabazus acquires, is 
 the Macedonians, a people semi-Hellenic, and 
 claiming Greek kinship, still they give the sym- 
 bolic " earth and water " to the Persian embas- 
 sadors on demand. The latter, however, grow 
 insolent, and young Alexander (ominous name 
 for Persia) who is son to the Macedonian king, 
 causes the entire seven with their retinue to be 
 slain. One thinks this young prince prognos- 
 ticates the great Alexander, who, nearly two 
 centuries afterwards, had a final reckoning with 
 Persia. 
 
 Thus Megabazus has made a clear path round 
 the Aegaean to the borders of Thessaly. One 
 thing, however, stands in his way and excites his 
 jealousy. Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, who 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 319 
 
 saved the bridge over the Danube, and thereby 
 preserved the king and his army, obtained as a 
 reward from Darius the rio^ht of colonizing and 
 fortifying a town near the river Strymon in 
 Thrace, which town stood right in the Persian path 
 toward Hellas. The result is a secret accusation 
 from Megabazus to the king, who evidently gets 
 suspicious and by a stratagem has Histiaeus go to 
 Susa, where he is detained in a kind of honorable 
 captivity. The appeal of Megabazus brings out 
 the ground of suspicion. ** O king, what have 
 you done in letting a cunning Greek possess a city 
 in Thrace, where there is plenty of wood for 
 ship-building and for oars, with silver mines and 
 a large crowd of Greeks and Barbarians ready to 
 follow him in any enterprise? " Such was in- 
 deed the real danger, a new maritime power was 
 about to spring up on the line of the Persian 
 march. 
 
 Darius removed Megabazus also, and appointed 
 Otanes in his place ; there was evidently trouble 
 between the Greek tyrant and the Persian gen- 
 eral ; so both are sent out of Thrace and Asia 
 Minor. Otanes, the new general, pursues the 
 same policy in the North ; he takes various Greek 
 cities, and also the islands, Lemnos and Imbros. 
 Indeed the plan seems to be to reduce all those 
 Greek islands of the Aegaean which have not yet 
 acknowledged Persian authority. The group 
 known as the Cyclades have not yet submitted; 
 
320 TEE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 the largest of the group, Naxos, is first to be 
 attacked. But herewith is coupled a wholly new 
 turn in affairs, which leads to the Ionic revolt. 
 
 II. 
 
 The king had two, and sometimes three sets of 
 ao:ents in the maritime districts of Asia Minor: 
 the satrap, always a Persian; the tyrant, always 
 a Greek in a Greek city; the military com- 
 mander, usually a Persian. The matter was 
 further complicated by two satraps, whose 
 authority extended to the coast; one had his 
 seat of government at Sardes, the other at Das- 
 cyleium. The result was frequent conflict of 
 authority between these various officials, as well 
 as jealousies and much underhand plotting and 
 counter-plotting . 
 
 In general the Persian would be apt to 
 distrust the Greek, whereof an instance has 
 already been seen in the case of Histiaeus. 
 At the same time the Greek would not fail 
 to have a high opinion of' his services in 
 the cause of the king. Did not the Greek 
 tyrants save the Persian monarch and his army 
 at the bridge over the Danube? Did not Greek 
 architects make the two bridges, and Greek 
 sailors man the ships in that expedition, of which 
 the unsuccessful part was the Persian part? 
 There was a good deal in the Scythian campaign 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 821 
 
 to inspire the Greek tyrant with a lofty notion 
 of his importance and power, and that Greek 
 tongue of his would not fail to let the matter be 
 known. Many shortcomings have been charged 
 upon the Greeks all the way down the ages, but 
 nobody has ever accused them of failing to blow 
 their own trumpet. We can well imagine that 
 Greek vainglory and boasting were not wanting 
 to Histiaeus, and roused both suspicion and hate 
 against him in the breast of the Persian author- 
 ities. When hereafter he falls into the hands 
 of a satrap, the latter will put him to death on 
 the spot, without waiting far orders from the 
 king, who would out of gratitude have pardoned 
 him, if he had been spared, and even have con- 
 sulted him on Greek affairs. 
 
 A new name is now introduced (30), which 
 dominates the present Book : it is that of Aristo- 
 goras, successor to Histiaeus in the tyranny of 
 Miletus, also the latter's son-in-law and cousin. 
 Aristagoras well knew the Persian's desire of get- 
 ting possession of the Cyclades, a very important 
 station in the way across the sea to Greece. 
 
 An opportunity of seizing Naxos, the largest 
 and richest island of the group, presented itself; 
 the tyrant at once communicated with the 
 satrap Artaphernes at Sardes, who eagerly en- 
 tered into the scheme, which was also indorsed 
 by the king. 
 
 A special general was appointed by the satrap 
 
 21 
 
322 THE PATH En OF HISTOBY. 
 
 for this expedition ; he was a Persian of the royal 
 family, by the name of Megabates. Thus the 
 Greek tyrant and the Persian general are brought 
 together, with no clearly defined subordination 
 of one to the other apparently ; the result is a clash 
 of authority at the very start. Aristagoras 
 releases a friend of his, captain of a Myndian 
 ship, from a punishment inflicted by Megabates on 
 account of a breach of discipline. The two, the 
 general and the tyrant, come to high words about 
 the matter ; the latter says with a strong assump- 
 tion of authority: " Did not Artaphernes send 
 you to obey me, and to sail wheresoever I shall 
 command ? ' ' Here we see the difficulty set forth, 
 a difficulty which is at present common in Asia 
 Minor and the Islands. 
 
 The Naxians are forewarned by the Persian 
 general, the expedition fails, Aristagoras begins 
 to meditate revolt. Also a messao^e comes from 
 Histiaeus (pricked on the head of a slave in order 
 to escape detection) urging the same measure. 
 Aristagoras called together his partisans and con- 
 sulted ; all concurred except one, Hecataeus the 
 historian, who saw no hope of success in rebel- 
 ling against Persia. The outcome will show that 
 he was right; Miletus was not the city, nor was 
 its tyrant the man, to head a great movement 
 against Oriental supremacy. 
 
 Still we must give the credit to Aristagoras 
 that he saw what the conflict meant, and that he 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 323 
 
 comprehended the spirit of the time. The world- 
 idea fermenting thus early in those Greek com- 
 munities was that of democracy. A revolt from 
 Persia could only mean a revolt from one-man 
 power, it would be utterly senseless to pass from 
 a Persian to a Greek tyrant. Hence Aristagoras 
 laid down his own tyranny at Miletus and '* estab- 
 lished equality before the law (isonomia), in 
 order that the Milesians might be willing to sus- 
 tain him . ' ' Then he drove out other tyrants from 
 the cities of Ionia; he even laid a trap and 
 caugcht a lot of them too^ether in the Persian fleet. 
 These he handed over to their respective cities, 
 *' wishino; to do these cities a great favor." Thus 
 Aristagoras, feeling the pulse-beat of the time, 
 acted, and brought about a tremendous upheaval ; 
 the movement, as we shall see, spread along the 
 entire Greek-Asiatic line, from the Euxine to 
 Cyprus. Such was the response of the popular 
 heart against the Oriental and the Greek tyrant. 
 But the most significant act of Aristagoras is 
 his visit to Sparta and Athens, both belonging to 
 European Greece, both tyrant-haters, yet each 
 very different from the other. The historian 
 will seize the opportunity to unfold this differ- 
 ence which has already repeatedly appeared in 
 previous Books. These two cities are really the 
 object of Persian attack; they are the grand 
 enemies of the Persian principle. Specially is 
 this the case with Athens. 
 
324 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Sparta. When Aristagoras reached Sparta, it 
 was under the rule of Cleomenes, who was of 
 the senior or Eurysthenid line of Spartan sov- 
 ereigns. The father of Cleomenes had two sets 
 of children, from two different waives ; strong is 
 the contrast drawn by the historian between 
 them. Cleomenes was not of sound mind, still 
 he was made ruler in accord w^ith rigid Spartan 
 custom ; while Dorieus, born of a different mother, 
 3^et legitimate, '* was the first of the young men 
 of his age." Still there w^as little chance of the 
 best man obtaining the sovereignty at Sparta; 
 so the moon-calf was made king w^hen the 
 worthiest was at hand and in royal line of suc- 
 cession. Such is one marked difference from 
 Athens, where the men who can do the work step 
 to the front and give command. 
 
 Aristagoras in his speech first appeals to that 
 idea of freedom, which is now the common bond 
 of all Greece, and which the Spartans as the head 
 of the Greeks ought to vindicate against Persia. 
 " I adjure you, by the Greek Gods, rescue the 
 lonians from slavery, who are of your own 
 blood." Then the speaker spoke of the wealth 
 of the barbarians, playing upon Spartan cupid- 
 ity. Finally he produced a map, pointing out on 
 it the many nations along the road to Susa, the 
 Persian capital. This map is a most interesting 
 fact, suggesting the intellectual life of those 
 Asiatic Greeks. The first map is said to have 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 325 
 
 been made by the Ionic philosopher Anaximander, 
 and to have been used before the time of He- 
 rodotus by the historian Hecataeus. The earth 
 was conceived as a plane, and this led more 
 easily to making a picture of it on a plane sur- 
 face. 
 
 One unfortunate answer ruined the prospects 
 of Aristagoras with the Spartan king. The lat- 
 ter asked, how many days' journey from the 
 coast of Ionia to Susa? Aristagoras answered, a 
 three months' journey. That was enough ; at 
 once the order came: ''Milesian guest, depart 
 from Sparta before sunset." The thought of 
 ofoino- such a distance from home was revoltino^ to 
 the Spartan, the least enterprising and aspiring 
 of the Greeks. Herodotus, the traveler, evi- 
 dently has his furtive laugh in this passage. 
 Aristagoras with his map and with his boundless 
 ideas was curtly dismissed by Cleomenes ; his 
 final attempt at bribery was also thwarted. 
 
 In these outlines we catch something of the 
 Spartan character, its backwardness, its igno- 
 rance, its fixedness in it^ own limits. To be sure, 
 Cleomenes is a little crazy, still he is a genuine 
 Spartan, crystallized in the rigid Lycurgean disci- 
 pline, unable to leave his native rocks. Now we 
 pass to a city of quite the opposite character, to 
 which Aristagoras next betakes himself. 
 
 Athens, This may be called the new Athens, 
 for she had been reborn after the expulsion of 
 
326 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 her tyrants, the Pisistratidae. The spirit begot- 
 ten of that conflict has roused every dormant 
 energy, and revealed her as the true leader in the 
 approaching struggle with Persia. That new 
 form of government of hers — democracy — is 
 the first great breaking away from the paternal- 
 ism of the Orient, and is the most important 
 manifestation in Greek political history. She 
 started that unfolding of the people's rule, not 
 by any means ended yet. Athens is the typical 
 Greek city, most Greek of the Greeks ; without 
 Athens the rest of the Greeks would be little 
 known and of little account. Here, then, democ- 
 racy had its birth, and here are the fires at which 
 it is always kindled afresh. In this sketch of 
 Herodotus (55-97) is contained the unfolding of 
 democratic Athens, its movement from a tyrann}^ 
 to a popular form of government. Note also 
 that Sparta is, to a large extent, the unintentional 
 instrument of this movement. 
 
 1 . The first thing here recounted is the Athe- 
 nian movement against the tyrant Hippias. His 
 brother Hipparchus is slain by Harmodius and 
 Aristogeiton, the glorified tyrannicides in the eyes 
 of the Athenian people, long celebrated in story, 
 song, and plastic art. The historian gives 
 quite a full account of these two youths as re- 
 gards their ancestry, stating that they were 
 descended from Phoenicians *' who came with 
 Cadmus." It is one of the strange omissions in 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 327 
 
 this history of Herodotus, that he has so little to 
 say of this important people. But here is a 
 notable paragraph: '* These Phoenicians intro- 
 duced among the Greeks many other kinds of 
 useful knowledge, particularly letters." 
 
 Far more important was the influence of the 
 Alcmaeonidae in banishing the tyrant of Athens. 
 They built the temple of Delphi when it had 
 been burned, and they were the chief influence 
 which caused the Lacedemonians to make an 
 expedition against him, the Oracle always bid- 
 dino^ them liberate Athens. The first time the 
 attempt failed, but the second time Hippias was 
 expelled, with the help of Cleomenes the Spar- 
 tan king, who is thus an unwitting means of 
 Athenian freedom. 
 
 2. The rise of the Athenian democracy at once 
 begins, under the leadership of Clisthenes, who, 
 however, has a long conflict with a rival, Isago- 
 ras. The Spartans wish to undo their work, and 
 their king makes two expeditions, but he is at 
 last foiled. No doubt this Spartan opposition 
 solidified and intensified the democratic spirit. 
 Once in their desperation the Athenians sent an 
 embassy and offered to make an alliance with 
 the Persian, but the latter demanded ''earth and 
 water," that is, submission, which the Athenians 
 could not grant, having just gotten rid of one 
 tyrant. 
 
 Manv small troubles Athens has with her 
 
328 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 nejorhbors — Boeotians, Chalcicleans, Eo^inetans — 
 
 O ^ ■'CD 
 
 whereof the historian has thought best to give a 
 good many details. They all show the city grow- 
 ing strong, getting trained, preparing for a great 
 fulfillment of its destiny. 
 
 Finally Sparta returns and tries a third time 
 to thwart the realization of Athenian greatness, 
 actually proposing to restore the tyrant Hippias, 
 who is brought from the Hellespont for this 
 purpose. It is curious to see how Sparta has a 
 presentiment of what is coming, and seeks to 
 suppress in advance its future rival. But such 
 a proceeding benefited rather than injured 
 Athens, it was so entirely antagonistic to the 
 Greek feeling of the time. Sosicles the Corin- 
 thian voices the latter, making a speech (92) 
 against tyrants, which wins the applause of the 
 assembled confederates. Thus the enterprise 
 goes to pieces of itself and Hippias returns to 
 his town on the Hellespont (Sigeium). 
 
 In such fashion Sparta sought to undo her 
 action in expelling the Athenian tryant. But her 
 whole conduct has only developed and strength- 
 ened the democracy which she sought to destro3^ 
 From the beo^innino^ she is made the unconscious 
 instrument of the development of Athens. The 
 rule of the people has become established, Sparta 
 has compelled it to work. The petty conflicts 
 with the neighbors have schooled the citizens and 
 brought out their latent power. Well does 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 329 
 
 Athens deserve the enthusiastic comment of the 
 historian: *' The Athenians, accordingly, in- 
 creased in power, and freedom shows, not in one 
 instance only but in every way, what an excellent 
 thing it is ; for the Athenians, when governed by 
 tyrants, were superior in war to none of their 
 neighbors, but when freed of the tyrant became 
 by far the first * * * since each man was 
 eager to labor in his own cause " (78). Such is 
 the grand new incentive to the individual; his 
 government is now for himself and by himself. 
 To this Athens, as hereinbefore described, 
 Aristagoras comes to ask for help, after being 
 driven away from Sparta. He told again what 
 he had already declared to Cleomenes, illustrating 
 with his map ; he must have found in every way 
 a more intelliofent audience. He moreover added 
 that Miletus was a colony of Athens ; kinship 
 roused simpathy. Aristagoras won his point; 
 the comment of the historian upon this fact is 
 peculiar: "It seems to be easier to hoodwink 
 many men than one, if Aristagoras was not able 
 to deceive Cleomenes, a single Spartan, but to 
 delude thirty thousand Athenians." The truth 
 is, however, that the Athenians were not hood- 
 winked, they felt deeply the approaching contest 
 with Asia, which the stolid Spartan did not ; the 
 whole transaction shows that they were keenly 
 alive to the great problem of the time, and were 
 ready to meet it in advance. Accordingly they 
 
330 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 SGDt twenty triremes to Asia Minor, to aid the 
 revolters, in what they deemed very justly to be 
 their own cause. 
 
 The fact, however, will have to be confessed 
 that Aristagoras is not the man and the Milesians 
 not the people to be the representatives of Hellas 
 against Persia, of Occident against Orient. We 
 observe that Aristagoras has not really laid aside 
 his absolute power, he still does as he pleases in 
 administering affairs, he shows no trace of ac- 
 countability to his city or people. On the other 
 handy the Milesians never won their freedom by 
 expelling their tyrant, as did the Athenians ; they 
 never wrous^ht out for themselves their democ- 
 racy ; the result is they have' it not, or have a 
 little of it, at the grace of their tyrant. Now it 
 is probably for this reason that the Athenians, 
 as soon as they found out the truth of the situ- 
 ation, quietly abandoned the revolters and sailed 
 home. Not a very noble or devoted act assuredly, 
 still a prudential one; Miletus cannot win, or if 
 she should win with Histiaeus or even with Aris- 
 tagoras, where would be the gain? 
 
 Looking back through this history, we observe 
 that it is the third time that the question has 
 arisen, who shall be the bearer of the Greek 
 world against the Oriental? First was Croesus, 
 himself an Asiatic, though partially Hellenized; 
 also an absolute monarch, quite as much as 
 Cyrus, who overthrew him (Book I). Then 
 
BOOK FIFTH. 331 
 
 Samos with its Greek tyrant Polycrates comes 
 between Greece and Persia (B6ok III), but is 
 swallowed by the latter, since it belongs there. 
 The third is now Aristagoras, who gave up, in 
 appearance at least, his tyranical power, and 
 placed himself at the head of Greek democratic 
 aspiration, something which Polycrates did not 
 pretend to do. A gradation we may see in 
 these three events, a movement of the spirit of 
 the time which is seeking to find or to develop its 
 true representative. All the indications are 
 pointing toward the Athenians as the people most 
 fully imbued with the underlying principle of the 
 age, and most responsive to its call. 
 
 III. 
 
 The last portion of the Book is devoted to the 
 war ; the entire Greek-Asiatic border is ablaze 
 (99-126). Sardes, the residence of the Persian 
 satrap, is burnt, then the lonians retreat to their 
 ships. The island of Cyprus, always a meeting 
 ground between the East and West, was divided 
 within itself, but its Greek inhabitants especially 
 joined the revolt. Note that it is *'the tyrants 
 of Cyprus," who wish to be free, that is, to be 
 free of the Persian tyrant (109). Such an ex- 
 pression indicates the character of the conflict as 
 well as the fundamental reason why it cannot 
 succeed. 
 
332 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 So the war rages along the line — Cyprus, 
 Caria, Caunus, Miletus, up to the Hellespont and 
 Byzantium. After the first shock of the revolt, 
 the Persians rally and gradually get the better, 
 though they meet once with a heavy repulse at 
 the hands of the Carians. Plainly this battle- 
 line is drawn in the wrong place for the Greeks, 
 being in Asia essentially. But what is more to 
 their detriment, the new idea is not pure among 
 the revolters ; their leaders are tyrants, who, if 
 victorious, will seize or keep the government, 
 and nothing will be settled. 
 
 Typical of the whole outcome is the fate of 
 Aristagoras who is the representative man in 
 this revolt. He gave up the cause and fled to 
 Thrace, '* having intrusted Miletus to Pytha- 
 goras, a citizen of distinction," in which state- 
 ment we see that he was practically still the one- 
 man power in Miletus. In his new enterprise he 
 and all who were with him perished at the hands 
 of the Thracians, one of whose cities he was 
 besieging. 
 
 Histiaeus, the former tyrant of Miletus, has 
 also appeared in Asia Minor, being sent down b}^ 
 the king from Susa to reconcile matters. He 
 turns out a common freebooter, worse than Aris- 
 tagoras, who at least recognized the new idea and 
 partially affiliated himself with it, doubtless for 
 his own personal ends, and so it could not take 
 him as its true representative. But Histiaeus, 
 
BOOK FIFTH, 
 
 while he advised the revolt, was wholly adverse 
 to its democratic tendency ; this the Milesians 
 knew and shut him out of their city. He must 
 have strongly disapproved of the policy of Arista- 
 goras ; his evident object was to construct a pow- 
 erful Greek tyranny as a counterpoise to the 
 Persian. The fate of such a person in such a 
 crisis is again typical ; he fell into the hands of 
 the Persians, where he belonged, and the satrap 
 put him at once to death. He was not Persian, 
 not Greek, really an enemy to both ; and he was 
 rejected by both. On the whole, the reader will 
 have more respect for Aristagoras than for His- 
 tiaeus, but will see in the destinies of both a 
 true nemesis of their deeds. 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 
 
 This Book is very closely related to the pre- 
 ceding one, it is, in fact, the direct continuation 
 thereof in a number of ways. Both have one 
 theme essentially : the struggle of the non-conti- 
 nental Greeks of the East against Persia, and 
 their failure. That is, the Greek world, except 
 Sparta and Athens with their immediate allies 
 (the Greek colonies of the West are out of the 
 way), is overwhelmed and subjected to the 
 Orient. The Persian line is reasserted in Asia 
 Minor and advanced to the islands of the Egean. 
 The Asiatic Greeks, headed by Miletus and her 
 tyrants, cannot make themselves the successful 
 bearers of the great world-historical conflict. 
 Nor have the Islanders the stuff in them for such 
 a deed ^ they surrender their freedom ; even 
 Egina, at the very door of Athens, sends earth 
 and water to the Great King. 
 (334) 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 335 
 
 Still the most emphatic point in the present 
 Book is, that the Persian begins to find his limit 
 in the Greek race. He impinges upon the 
 European continent, aiming a blow at Athens ; 
 the response of the Athenians is Marathon, verit-, 
 ablj the most important battle yet fought upon 
 the face of this planet, as far as mortal eye can 
 see into the meaning of events. This is, there- 
 fore the Marathonian Book, recording really all 
 that we know of that epoch-bearing occurrence, 
 and giving it in the order of circumstances which 
 brought it about. It is the first bound put upon 
 Persia by a civilized country ; she had swept 
 around her borders and found her limit in bar- 
 barous lands, such as Scythia and Libya. But 
 this is a new kind of limit, that between Asia 
 and Europe, Orient and Occident. Marathon is 
 the birth of a new world, specially as distin- 
 guished from the East. Premonitions of such a 
 birth we find, indeed, long before Marathon, 
 even in the Iliad ; but now it comes to light as 
 the historic fact. 
 
 In structure the present Book is much like the 
 preceding one, is essentially a repetition of the 
 same — wherein we may again remark that these 
 two Books have the appearance of being halves of 
 one laro^e Book. There are three main divisions : — 
 
 I. The Persian Thread, showing the Persian 
 conquering the outlying Greeks, putting down 
 the revolt and subjugating the Islanders (1-47). 
 
386 THE FATHER OF BISTOBY. 
 
 II. The Greek Thread, continuing from the 
 preceding Book the history of the continental 
 Greeks — specially Sparta and Athens, each of 
 which is tested by Darius *' with earth and 
 water" (48-93). 
 
 III. The conflict — the line of battle being 
 removed to continental Greece at Marathon, 
 together with events at Athens succeeding the 
 battle (94-140). 
 
 The sweep of the Book has in it a grand 
 upward movement from defeat to victory, from 
 a race's sorrow and despair to a new joy and 
 hope. All Hellas must have shared deeply in 
 this feeling, in this rise from despondency to 
 exultation. But the whole movement took place 
 historically within the Ionic tribe, though a few 
 Dorians and a few more , Aeolians were directly 
 involved. The lonians of Asia Minor and of the 
 Islands were the subjugated ones chiefly, and felt 
 the brunt of Persian vengeance for the revolt ; 
 these, too, were the ones who disgraced them- 
 selves by their conduct in the sea-fight, the grand 
 crisis. But the Athenians were also Ionic, and 
 to their credit and to theirs alone stands the 
 deed of Marathon. Thus both the fall and the 
 rise in the present Book belong to the Ionic 
 stock. 
 
 Once more we may contrast this sweep with 
 that of the preceding Book. There we find the 
 course of Persian conquest interrupted by the 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 337 
 
 Ionic revolt, which at first was successful, giving 
 freedom to many Greek cities, holding at bay 
 the Persian for a time, and destroying Sardes, a 
 satrap's capital. Such was the sudden outburst 
 of victory which, however, soon began to turn 
 to defeat; the new-born hope of Hellas sank 
 down into despair, as the Persian supremacy 
 reasserted itself, and the Book ends in gloom. 
 Thus the two Books together show a descent and 
 an ascent, a sweep down and up again, rising at 
 last to the dizzy height of Marathon. 
 
 I. 
 
 We call this first portion of the Book the Per- 
 sian Thread, since Persia is the determining prin- 
 ciple, though Greeks (of Asia Minor and the 
 Islands) are involved and give the historian occa- 
 sion for a number of amplifications. It shows 
 the complete conquest of the revolt together with 
 some additional conquests on land and sea. The 
 struggle for the supremacy over the Aegaean is 
 decided in favor of Persia; a narrow strip along 
 continental Greece is all that remains free. Thus 
 the marine element is almost wholly, though not 
 quite, subjected — that element to which Greece 
 owed so much of her independence. 
 
 We have already noted the insufficiency of the 
 leaders and of the peoples engaged in the Ionic 
 revolt. They did not, and indeed could not, rep- 
 
 22 
 
338 THE FATHEB OP HIS TOBY. 
 
 resent tne vital principle at stake between Hellas 
 and Persia; they stood for neither side in its 
 purity ; they were but another batch of those 
 intermediate contestants who had to be gotten 
 out of the way before the real protagonists 
 stepped forth into the arena. This fact is now 
 made manifest in its completeness by the con- 
 quest of the whole Greco-Asiatic line through 
 Persia, as well as by the Persian preparation to 
 advance to the new line, the Greco-European 
 (1-47). 
 
 The Persian suppression of the Ionic revolt 
 may next be noted in its main stages. 
 
 1. Histiaeus. The account is introduced by 
 bringing before the reader this former Greek 
 tyrant, who has just arrived at Sardes from 
 Persia. His case is typical; he is really the 
 instigator of the revolt, though he pretends to 
 know nothing about it ; he is the wily, intriguing 
 Asiatic Greek, double-faced, yet with activity 
 and ability. He is playing his two-sided game 
 now, but he has been found out by the Persian 
 satrap Artaphernes, who tells him to his face : 
 *' You stitched the shoe, Aristagoras put it on." 
 Thus Histiaeus is rejected by the Persian ; it is 
 no wonder that he takes to flis^ht and ofoes over 
 to the lonians. 
 
 A number of adventures he has (2-4), all of 
 them characterized by successful lying and slip- 
 pery cunning ; he dances visions of conquest 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 339 
 
 before the lonians, and even in his absence he 
 succeeds in turning Sardes upside down and mak- 
 ing the hostile satrap's court a scene of confusion 
 and blood. Then he makes an attempt to return 
 to Miletus, which, however, " having got rid of 
 Aristagoras, did not want another tyrant;" so 
 he is repelled from his own city after receiving a 
 wound. Next he turns corsair, taking station at 
 Byzantium and capturing every ship that came out 
 of the Euxine, unless it submitted to him. Thus 
 Histiaeus is cast off by both sides, Persian and 
 Greek, and becomes a common enemy, buccaneer, 
 yet for himself still. 
 
 His end may be given here, though it is nar- 
 rated later (26-30). After the defeat of the 
 lonians in the sea-fight, he thinks he has a 
 chance in the general hubbub, and so comes 
 down from his perch, seizing the weakened 
 Chians and attacking Thasos. But at last he is 
 taken prisoner by the Persians, is brought to 
 his arch-enemy Artaphernes, and is impaled on 
 the spot, his head being embalmed and sent as a 
 present to his friend Darius at Susa — a grim 
 piece of humor on the part of the satrap. 
 
 We have already expressed the opinion that 
 Histiaeus is a typical man of the present Ionic 
 revolt ; he is a tyrant, yet turns against the 
 Persian tyrant, when the latter no longer sub- 
 serves his purpose. He does not intend to estab- 
 lish a free Hellas, but his own tyranny ; really 
 
340 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 he is neither for Greece nor for Persia, but for 
 himself. Yet he is representative; his success 
 in winning over so many of the Greek islanders, 
 after his flight from Sardes, shows how much 
 they resembled him. Though personally re- 
 jected by his own city, it is too like him to win 
 in the present conflict. Not only his character 
 but also his fate is typical ; he perishes at the 
 hands of the Persians, which is also the destiny 
 of this Ionic revolt. We may, therefore, see 
 why the historian, with his Greek artistic in- 
 stinct, opens the Book with Histiaeus, as a kind 
 of overture or prefigurement of what is to follow. 
 
 2. The sea-figlit off Miletus and its conse- 
 quences. The Asiatic Greeks seem to have quite 
 given up the attempt of defending the mainland 
 against the Persian, though Miletus and some 
 other cities on the coast had not yet been taken. 
 The great struggle is to be a naval battle, very 
 properly too, since the question now is. Shall 
 the Aeo^aean become a Persian sea? The roll of 
 States furnishing ships is called, it is a patriotic 
 deed forever to be remembered by all Greeks. 
 The Persian generals, with almost double the 
 number of vessels, are nevertheless afraid of 
 defeat; so they employ intrigue also, with effect, 
 as we shall see. 
 
 But in that fleet the hero appears in full 
 splendor, Dionysius, the Phocaean. He sees the 
 lack of discipline, he also sees the certainty of 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 341 
 
 victory, if only the fleet, made up of contingents 
 from many different States with many different 
 heads, be gotten well in hand and be subjected to 
 training. He is chosen leader and practices the 
 ships in maneuvering; for seven days the lonians 
 hold out, then they break to pieces, refuse to 
 obev and take to the shade instead of toilins: in 
 the hot sun. They are unwilling to sacrifice 
 their Asiatic ease, they prefer submission to 
 hardship, they are unfit to be the defenders of 
 freedom. A Militades has appeared among those 
 lonians, but he has no Athenian spirit to back 
 him ; the outcome is signified clearly in this 
 incident. 
 
 The historian has duly recorded the degree of 
 merit and demerit belono^ino: to the different con- 
 tingents. He clearly regards the behavior of 
 the Samians as the worst, they started the stam- 
 pede, though eleven of their ships stayed and 
 fought with honor. The Chians, however, were 
 the true heroes of the battle, remainins: when the 
 rest had fled, and fighting to the bitter end. 
 Herodotus speaks of their many calamities with 
 deep sympathy; this was indeed a tragic time 
 for unfortunate Chios. The schoolmaster will 
 note with interest the school house in the city of 
 Chios, with its one hundred and twenty boys 
 learning to read ; evidently public schools were 
 already in existence before 500 B. C, and were 
 well attended, in these Greek islands (27). 
 
342 THE FATREB OF HISTORY. 
 
 Herodotus speaks of the lonians in a tone of 
 disparagement when he describes this sea-fight ; 
 a touch of Doric feeling or prejudice makes it- 
 self felt in his words. For the heroic Chians 
 were Ionic, while the Lesbians, who were 
 Aeolians, behaved badly too ; in fact they were 
 in some respects the worst of the lot, since they 
 were the chief supporters of the freebooter 
 Histiaeus, and attacked the Chians when the 
 latter were disabled by their sacrifices for the 
 common cause in the sea-fight — a most das- 
 tardly act. Then the hero looming up over all 
 is an Ionian, Dionysius, the Phocaean, whose 
 city has already been celebated for its heroic 
 resolution in the first Persian invasion (Book I, 
 164-6). At that time a large portion of the city 
 quit Asia, *' detesting slavery;" the remnant 
 that stayed can now furnish only three ships, but 
 it shows still the old spirit. 
 
 The part .of Samos in the sea-fight with its con- 
 sequences is given more fully by the historian 
 than that of any other State or city ; evidently 
 he obtained his materials for this period through 
 his connection with the Samians, which has been 
 already set forth (Book III). He says as much 
 good of them as he can in honor; he reports 
 their bad conduct in the battle, but tells also the 
 circumstances which may mitigate the ill opinion 
 of the reader. The best Samians did not approve 
 of the action of their generals, and resolve to 
 
BOOK SIXTH, 343 
 
 miofrate rather than live *' as slaves under the 
 Mede and the tyrant Aeaces." So they go to 
 Sicily, where they get possession of Zancle, the 
 city which had invited them to a new home, in a 
 manner cunning but not very honorable. Full 
 of treasons, stratagems, and spoils are these 
 Greeks, all of them; note too, the comment of 
 the historian upon this successful act of treachery : 
 '* Thus the Samians, being freedfrom the Medes, 
 gained without toil the very beautiful city of 
 Zancle " (Messina). Clearly Herodotus spares 
 a little too much his friends, the Samians; he 
 heard their side, doubtless from participants in 
 the events themselves, since he was born less 
 than twenty years after the Ionic revolt. Still it 
 cannot be said that he defends the Samians, he 
 tells enough for the reader to form a judgment 
 of the case. Evidently in his day they were 
 ashamed of their part in the sea-light, since all 
 Greece looked back at it through the glory of 
 Marathon and Salamis. 
 
 The Persians conquer with ease the Greek 
 cities on the mainland and the islands not far 
 from the coast (31) ; then they pass to the Cher- 
 sonese, where the family of Miltiades had sway; 
 of this family the historian now gives an account, 
 since it produced a number of distinguished men 
 (34-41 and 103). The genealogy is a little com- 
 plicated ; there are two by the name of Stesa- 
 goras, two by the name of Cimon, and two by 
 
344 THE FATHEB OF HI 8 TOBY. 
 
 the name of Miltiades. The first Miltiades son 
 of Cypselus was the first Athenian colonizer of 
 the Chersonese, going back to the time of Croesus 
 (say 550 B. C). The line of Cypselus ceases 
 with him; but the first Stesagoras (see 103) con- 
 tinues the family through marrying the wife of 
 Cypselus and mother of the first Miltiades. The 
 line now runs : Stesagoras I, whose son is Cimon 
 I, exiled by the tyrant Peisistratus and owner of 
 the mares which won three Olympic prizes ; the 
 latter's sons are Stesagoras II (killed by the blow 
 of an axe in the hand of an enemy) and Miltia- 
 des II (the Great, victor at Marathon) whose son 
 is Cimon II, who paid his father's fine (136). A 
 very distinguished line of men, evidently oppo- 
 nents of the tyrant Pisistratus, tyrant-haters at 
 Athens, yet tyrants themselves in the Chersonese ; 
 likewise foes of Persian supremacy ; we remember 
 that this Miltiades II had proposed to break down 
 the bridge over the Danube, and leave Darius 
 without escape from the Scythians. 
 
 3. N'ew Persian policy (42). The war has 
 plainly taught the Persians that they must organ- 
 ize anew their conquered territory if they wish 
 to obtain its greatest value. We read that the 
 satrap Artaphernes established law among the 
 Ionic cities, taking away their privilege of pillag- 
 ing one another ; apparently he forms a central 
 legal tribunal, to which appeal has to be made in 
 case of differences. Before this the cities prob- 
 
BOOK SIXTH, 345 
 
 ably could avenge their private grievances; if 
 they paid their tribute to Persia, she did not care 
 about their squabbles with one another. A great 
 advance toward stable government is such a 
 measure ; a tighter grip, too, is taken on the 
 subject-cities, so that they cannot so easily get 
 up a fresh revolt. Another important measure 
 secured regularity in taxation by a fixed assess- 
 ment, which, the historian declares, continued till 
 his day. Truly the Persians have learned some- 
 what by their recent experience, and Artaphernes 
 shows himself a statesman. 
 
 But the most surprising change of policy is 
 that instituted by Mardonius, the new general : 
 he deposed the tyrants of the Ionic cities and 
 established democracies, of course under Persian 
 authority. Undoubtedly this was a recognition 
 of the spirit of the time, and a conciliatory 
 step ; still the Persians were led to it in part 
 by their experience with Histiaeus and Arista- 
 goras, both of them Greek tyrants and f omenters 
 of the revolt. So .the other party, the demo- 
 cratic, was tried, inasmuch as a Greek tyrant 
 was not necessarily a supporter of Persia, though 
 there was an undoubted affinity between the two. 
 One cannot help thinking that in all these meas- 
 ures the wisdom and administrative ability of the 
 Persian officials are shown ; they are true follow- 
 ers of Darius, who was the great organizer of the 
 vast, chaotic empire left by Cyrus and disordered 
 by Cambyses. 
 
346 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 Herodotus repeatedly marks the activity and 
 zeal of the Phoenicians in this war. There can 
 hardly be a doubt that they hoped, under the 
 Persian, to regain something of their ancient 
 supremacy in the Aegaean, which had been totally 
 annihilated by the lonians. This was their war, 
 especially as regards its naval aspect; in the 
 later Persian invasion they will be equally zeal- 
 ous. One of the most surprising omissions in 
 the present History is that Herodotus gives no 
 special account of the Phoenicians, whom he 
 must have known well and whose country he 
 visited. Why such an omission? Did he dislike 
 them for the part they took against Greece? 
 Did he, as a Greek, feel a touch of the old com- 
 mercial rivalry? He introduces them by the 
 way, when his narrative demands it, otherwise 
 he leaves them alone. 
 
 The Persian Thread now begins to pass into 
 the Greek Thread (48) specially — to that part 
 of the Greek world which is in European Greece ; 
 we may call it Greco-European in contrast to the 
 islanders and Asiatic Greeks. 
 
 n. 
 
 The Persian king sends heralds to different 
 parts of Greece demanding " earth and water" 
 in token of submission. Many inhabitants of 
 the Greek mainland complied ([)articularly in 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 347 
 
 Northern Greece) and all the islanders includ- 
 ing Egina, an island close to Athens, not 
 far from the coast and almost a part of the con- 
 tinent. At once Athens seizes the opportunity 
 and makes complaint to Sparta that the Eginetans 
 have betrayed Hellas. With this brief introduction 
 the second portion of the present Book begins, 
 and we pass to the internal affairs of Greece, 
 mainly those of Sparta and Athens (48-93). 
 
 In this incident, however, two points may be 
 noticed. The first is that Athens distinctly rec- 
 ognizes the headship of Sparta (hegemony) and 
 at the same time insists that she do the duty 
 belonging to her position. Sparta in turn rec- 
 ognizes the duty and proceeds to its fullfillment. 
 Thus we see a working basis of unity between 
 the two leading States; this headship will be 
 acknowledged by Athens throughout the coming 
 war. The second point is that the continental 
 Greeks have drawn a sort of boundary line; the 
 other islanders out in the Aegaean can give 
 ** earth and water" if they choose, but not 
 Egina, which cannot be Persian without making 
 the Saronic Gulf Persian, and jeopardizing Athens 
 as well as the rest of the mainland in the neio:h- 
 borhood. 
 
 Upon the drawing of this Greco-European 
 line against the enemy, Sparta and Athens are 
 substantially agreed. Both refuse to give " earth 
 and water " to the Great King, and both destroy 
 
348 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 the Persian envoys, both are, therefore, equally 
 offenders — a fact which unites them all the more, 
 when they see the impending punishment. What 
 is the internal condition of these two cities — 
 are they ready? The historian at this point 
 diverges into an account of Sparta and Athens, 
 especially their recent history. In the present 
 Book Sparta receives the most attention, as 
 Athens did in the preceding Book ; particularly 
 is the chief defect of the Spartan Constitution 
 (the double kingship) brought out in strong 
 colors. 
 
 Sparta (50-86). Cleomenes, one of the Spar- 
 tan kings, goes to Egina, to seize the guilty ones, 
 who, however, resist, declaring that he was 
 acting not only illegally but corruptly in not 
 brin«:ino^ the other kino; with him on such an 
 occasion. Here the Eginetans touch the Spar- 
 tan difficulty, being incited thereto by Demar- 
 ratus (the other king), who succeeds in thwart- 
 ing the enterprise for the present. This striking 
 circumstance leads the historian to tell how the 
 dual authority came to be. 
 
 Formerly the Spartans had a single king; 
 one of these early kings died, leaving two 
 sons, Eurysthenes and Procles, twins, both 
 of whom through a stratao^em of the mother 
 and through a response of the Delphic Ora- 
 cle, were made kings, though one line, that 
 of Eurysthenes, was more honored, because he 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 349 
 
 was held to be the elder of the twins. It is 
 observed that they, though brothers, were always 
 at variance with each other throughout their 
 lives, and that their royal descendants have not 
 failed to keep up the strife. Thus our historian 
 gives a story to account for a very peculiar polit- 
 ical arrangement, which has been said to be the 
 only case in all history; the sole nation with 
 two kings ruling over it is declared to be the 
 Spartan. But there are analogous cases; the 
 two Roman consuls have doubtless the same 
 purpose. It is indeed a very simple scheme to 
 split in two the headship, when it gets dangerous, 
 and so turn it against itself. A very primitive 
 political device unquestionably, still a political 
 device in favor of a rude freedom we must regard 
 it; a kind of Limited Monarchy, before the es- 
 tablished reign of Law, is this Spartan Monarchy 
 (or Duarchy), in which the Monarch is limited 
 by another Monarch. The device belongs to a 
 period antedating the lawgiver, Lycurgus, who 
 retained it as an old institution, but who sought 
 to correct in part its defect by establishing the 
 Ephors, in whom the unity of the State was 
 restored in a certain deo^ree. Still the two kings 
 had their own privileges and their sphere of 
 authority, whereof Herodotus gives quite a little 
 summary (56-60 ). Thus the dualism remains in 
 the Spartan commonwealth, which seems unable 
 to cure it or to shake it off ; the examples which 
 
350 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 follow set forth the trouble in a very significant 
 manner. 
 
 Thus one king had thwarted the other in the 
 Eginetan affair ; now a new scene is brought 
 before us in the drama of Cleomenes versus Dem- 
 aratus, which, we recollect, opened already in 
 the previous Book (V. 75) at Eleueis. Cleo- 
 menes returns to Sparta determined to get even 
 with his royal counterpart; he trumps up an old 
 story which threw a doubt upon the legitimacy 
 of Demaratus, and finds in Leutychides, a younger 
 member of the Procleid line, the instrument by 
 which he can oust Demaratus from the royalty. 
 Moreover the Delphic Oracle is brought through 
 corruption to declare that Demaratus is not the 
 son of Ariston. But this is not the end of the 
 matter. The mother of Demaratus is still living ; 
 he is determined to find out his origin; he puts 
 her under the most sacred form of oath and de- 
 mands that she tell the truth. Her answer can- 
 not be called straightforward, it is not satisfac- 
 tory to Demaratus himself, and he proposes to 
 leave the country. Indeed how could he stay at 
 Sparta with such a tale going the rounds, spiced 
 up with salacious puns (for instance that between 
 Astrabacus the hero and astrabelates the donkey- 
 driver) about his paternity? So Demaratus 
 quits Sparta, is pursued, but succeeds in getting 
 to Persia, where he obtains a place high in honor 
 with the king Darius. Hereafter we shall find 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 351 
 
 him one of the chief advisers of Xerxes in the 
 grand invasion of Greece. 
 
 The historian, faithful to his ethical view of 
 the world, does not fail to record the retribution 
 following these acts of successful wrong. Leu- 
 ty chides was afterwards expelled from his coun- 
 try for bribery and died in banishment (71-2); 
 «'he paid the penalty to Demaratus," getting 
 back what he gave. Still more terrible was the 
 fate of Cleomenes who literally hacked himself 
 to pieces. All the Greeks set about accounting 
 for the manner of the death of Cleomenes ; it is 
 curious to note these different opinions. The 
 Argives say that he died because of his deeds of 
 sacrilege committed during an invasion of Argos : 
 which fact leads the historian to give an account 
 of this invasion at some length (76-83). The 
 Athenians say the act of sacrilege was done at 
 Eleusis during his invasion of Attica. Another 
 view is that he was crazy ; still another that he 
 was drunk, having learned to drink "• unmixed 
 wine " from certain Scythians who sojourned for 
 a time at the Spartan capital. 
 
 In these accounts of the three Spartan kings — 
 Cleomenes, Demaratus and Leutychides — the 
 historian brings impressively before us the re- 
 sults of the two-headed government at Sparta. 
 The best man of the three — and he was not too 
 good — has been dispossessed of his kingship and 
 has been driven to take refuge in Persia. Next 
 
362 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 a short account of Athens is interwoven, the 
 counterpart of Sparta. 
 
 Athens {^b-^d,). Through the deed of Cleo- 
 menes and Leutychides at Egina ( the delivering 
 to the Athenians the Eginetan hostages) the 
 history of Sparta laps over and connects with 
 that of Athens. The Spartans, having found out 
 the truth after the death of Cleomenes, resolve 
 to hand their king, Leutychides, over to the 
 Eginetans, who goes with them to Athens and 
 demands the release of the hostages. But the 
 Athenians do not see their way to such an act, 
 saying that two kings had deposited the hostages, 
 and that it Avould not be right to give them up to 
 one king. Thus the Eginetans, who once refused 
 Cleomenes on the same grounds (50), have their 
 pretext turned back on themselves with effect. 
 
 But in the deeper view of the situation, were 
 the Athenians rio:ht in detainino^ the hostatjes? 
 These were securities that Egina would not go 
 over to the Persian, to whom she had once given 
 *' earth and water." Sparta, as head of Hellas, 
 had exacted these hostages, and the original 
 offense of Egina had not, as far as we are 
 aware, been atoned. The dano^er to all Greece 
 remained, particularly the danger to Athens, 
 who undoubtedly was looking out for herself 
 in the matter, but her interest was also that of 
 total Hellas. Egina, going to Sparta, had suc- 
 ceeded in changing Spartan policy, appealing 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 353 
 
 probably to the jealousy of Athens existing in 
 that city. Athens, therefore, appears in this 
 affair as the true supporter of the Greek world. 
 Leutychides, in order to enforce his request, 
 narrates the story of Glaucus, a Spartan who 
 had received a deposit on trust from a Milesian, 
 and then hesitated about returning it when de- 
 manded back. This may be called a Moral Tale, 
 intending to enforce some precept of right or 
 duty; it resembles somewhat that of Solon in 
 the First Book, which enforces the doctrine that 
 man cannot be deemed happy till death. A pur- 
 posed object, stated in the form of an abstract 
 maxim this story has, differing therein from the 
 Mythus and the Fairy Tale. The Delphic Oracle 
 is introduced, necessary to a genuine Spartan 
 story, setting forth the vengeance which comes 
 of perjury. For Glaucus proposed to swear him- 
 self free ** according to the laws of the Greeks," 
 if the Oracle would permit; that is, to swear 
 falsely, if the God would see him out. Even 
 stronger is the second response of the Pythia : 
 to tempt the God to connive at crime is the 
 same as committing the crime, and is punish- 
 able with like penalty. '« So no descendant of 
 Glaucus survives to this day," no domestic 
 hearth, no ancestral rites are his — a fearful 
 outlook for a Greek. Thus has Leutychides, in 
 spite of his moral violations, turned moralizer, 
 and gives a lecture to the Athenians, who did not 
 
 23 
 
354 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 appreciate it, nay, *' tliej^ did not even listen to 
 it." Who does? Then the Eginetans have not 
 offered any guarantees against *'medizing" — 
 which is the real point at issue ; so their hostages 
 cannot be given up in such a crisis. 
 
 The Eginetans, however, are bent on making 
 trouble, a petty war begins between them and the 
 Athenians (87 ). They captured in an ambuscade 
 the Theoris, the sacred ship of the Athenians, 
 "full of the first people of the city." Then 
 came a reprisal; the Athenians started a revolu- 
 tion in Egina, proposing evidently to democratize 
 the government, which was oligarchical — a policy 
 which could hardly be acceptable to Sparta. 
 The attempt fails in the city, but the chief revo- 
 lutionist, Nicodromus, with some other Eginetans 
 keep up the warfare from Sunium on the Attic 
 coast. The Eginetans take four Athenian ships 
 in a sea-fight — thus the miserable strife goes 
 on among the Greeks, with Darius at their door. 
 
 Still Athens has, on the whole, won the main 
 point. She acknowledges Spartan headship, 
 securing thereby a basis of unity and co-opera- 
 tion against the Persian. A great and worthy 
 act in Athens, who therein subordinates herself 
 to the cause; through it, too, she imposes duties 
 upon Sparta. Egina is held within the European 
 line, the Saronic Gulf does not become Persian, 
 Athens is ready for the battle at Marathon. She 
 shows at this period no such internal troubles as 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 855 
 
 those of Sparta; her people, through democracy, 
 have developed a mightiness of national spirit, 
 which is still the world's wonder. The test is 
 soon to be made, Darius is coming, no doubt of 
 it, here he is. 
 
 III. 
 
 We now reach the third portion of the present 
 Book (94—140) which takes up again the conflict 
 between Persia and Greece, and describes a very 
 important stage of it, the Marathonian stage. 
 Darius keeps advancing, incited by the Pisis- 
 tratids, and determined to subdue "those peo- 
 ple of Greece who had refused to give him earth 
 and water." That limit put upon Persia is not 
 only the greatest insult, but is the denial of her 
 national principle, which she feels she must de- 
 fend or perish. The coils keep slowly tightening, 
 the hugi^ constrictor seems on the point of crush- 
 ing its prey, which now is little Athens. 
 
 It is plain that the last battle-line is to be at- 
 tacked, which line had been established chiefly 
 by Athens when she prevented Egina from be- 
 coming a Persian outpost. Very important does 
 this act of hers turn out : the Eg^inetans remained 
 with the Greeks and fought bravely at Salamis ; 
 but if their island had been converted into a Per- 
 sian naval station, the danger would have been 
 great indeed, and there probably would have been 
 
356 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 no battle of Marathon, surely no battle of Salamis. 
 But now the Persians find it the better wa}^ to 
 attack the Greco-European line at its very heart — 
 Athens — not by sea but by land. Hippias, the 
 Pisistratid, favors the same method ; he had once 
 recovered the city by that route, and he naturally 
 thinks that his luck lies in the old direction. So 
 Egina, by herself almost the equal of Athens at 
 this period, remains quiet in the rear. 
 
 The present portion of the Book will show the 
 gradual approach of the Persians, then the fight 
 at Marathon, and finally certain important events 
 at Athens after the battle. The hero, the 
 Greek hero, rises to view victorious in the fight, 
 but tragic at last ; Miltiades will be seen on the 
 highest pinnacle of human glory, and then he 
 falls, utterly unable to stand up under his own 
 greatness. The State is saved, but the individ- 
 ual who has saved it goes down ; thus through 
 the grand Marathonian jubilation is wrought a 
 dark strain of destiny, tempering its triumph 
 with a deep undertone of tragedy. 
 
 1. The Persian approach. This is rapidly 
 told, it takes place by land and sea. Certain 
 islands of the Aegaean are first taken : Naxos 
 which had been the scene of Persian failure 
 (see preceding Book) is captured, though many 
 of the inhabitants escape to the mountains. 
 Delos, the sacred island, is spared, in part out 
 of regard for the feelings of the lonians, large 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 357 
 
 numbers of whom must have been in the fleet, 
 and in part doubtless out of a Persian reverence 
 for the sun and moon, with which Apollo and 
 Diana, born in Delos according to the legend, 
 were identified. The armament crosses the sea 
 and reaches Eretria in Euboea, a city in close 
 alliance with Athens, to which the latter had sent 
 4,000 men. But Eretria was betrayed into the 
 hands of the Persians, though the Athenians 
 escape. 
 
 The historian tells the names of the traitors, 
 setting a brand on them, which lasted while 
 Greece lasted, putting them into a kind of Inferno 
 for all time. Such he deemed to be his duty as 
 the recorder of the time. Nor does he foro^et to 
 mention the grand portent, the earthquake at 
 Delos, as the harbinger of the calamities of this 
 calamitous period. 
 
 2. The battle of Marathon, From Eretria 
 the Persians pass to the plain of Marathon, as it 
 lay most convenient in the direct line of the 
 movement toward Athens. Herodotus seems to 
 imply in addition that it was chosen as being 
 'Hhe most suitable spot in Attica for cavalry; " 
 but the cavalry never appears in the battle, before 
 it or after it, and one may Avell doubt if it was 
 ever landed in Attica, where there would be an 
 exceedingly small amount of forage for horses, 
 and very little use among the Attic rocks and 
 mountains for that arm of the service. This, 
 
358 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 however, is one of the much-disputed points of 
 the battle. 
 
 In the description of Herodotus one man is 
 protrayed as the soul of the entire Marathonian 
 struggle from beginning to end — Miltiades, who 
 had been chosen one of the ten generals of the 
 Athenian forces. This choice primarily was 
 made on account of his experience in Persian 
 warfare. We recollect that he commanded a 
 Greek contingent from the Chersonese in the 
 Scythian expedition of Darius, when he pro- 
 posed to break down the bridge over the 
 Ister; later he had fought against the Persian 
 power and had been dispossessed of his 
 sovereignty in the North. Probably none of 
 the generals had seen so much service, had shown 
 such leadership in war, or knew so well the weak 
 and the strong points of the enemy. Very 
 creditable to the democratic electors of Athens is 
 his selection at such a crisis, though there rested 
 on him the stigma of having been a tyrant in the 
 Chersonese, for which tyranny he had been pros- 
 ecuted on a capital charge and had escaped ( 104 ). 
 But he and his family had been the strongest 
 enemies of the Pisistratids, by whom his father 
 Cimon had been first banished and then slain. 
 His attitude toward Persia was well known on 
 account of his advice at the bridge over the 
 Ister and his later struggles with that power. 
 
 It is manifest when the Athenian army took up 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 359 
 
 its position on the declivity sloping down to the 
 pkiin of Marathon (doubtless at the modern 
 Vrana), Miltiades with his experienced eye took 
 in the situation at once, and he saw the advan- 
 tage of fighting then and there. But the tQn 
 generals were divided evenly ; Miltiades per- 
 suaded the Polemarch to give the casting vote by 
 assurances which sound indeed prophetic (109). 
 To a certain extent we can even at this distance 
 of time catch the outline of some of his solid 
 reasons. First was the very disadvantageous, 
 scattered position of the enemy with the 
 swamp in the rear, preventing both retreat and 
 succor, except by a long detour (see for further 
 details, the author's Walk in, Hellas), Second 
 was the absence of the Persian cavalry, much 
 feared at that time by the Greeks ; he could have 
 easily learned from Ionian deserters that it had 
 not yet been brought over the Euripus and was 
 not soon likely to be. Then there were internal 
 reasons : the partisans of Pisistratus were active 
 at Athens and even in the camp. " If we do not 
 fight, I expect some great dissension will shake 
 asunder the minds of the Athenians so that they 
 will medize'' (yield to the Mede). He waited 
 till his turn came to command ; delay was indeed 
 dangerous, but he probably thought he had better 
 take the risk in order to have his authority legal 
 beyond question, as he had already had a strong 
 taste of Athenian prosecution at law. 
 
360 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 In regard to the movement of the battle, its 
 outlines can, we think, be distinctly made out, 
 though many details are obscure. The first thing 
 to be considered is the character of the ground, 
 which is the oldest, most authoritative and least 
 contradictory of all documents pertaining to the 
 fight. Anybody walking over the ground and 
 •studying its main points Avill have at once a 
 natural image of the contest rise before him, 
 which will be easily filled out by the written doc- 
 uments. Note, then, the topographical sum- 
 mary : ( 1 ) the sea line where the ships were 
 drawn up; (2) the narrow coast of sand on 
 which a part of the Persian army was encamped ; 
 (3) the swamp behind this belt of sand, the most 
 important ally of the Greeks; (4) the firm 
 ground beyond the swamp on which the rest of 
 the Persians were encamped. 
 
 Now the very object of the Greek charge, 
 made at a run, was to drive these outlying Per- 
 sians into the swamp. The success was almost 
 complete, only the center suffered a temporary 
 check. Here the picture in the Poekile at 
 Athens, painted during the lifetime of Maratho- 
 nian soldiers, gives the most striking, and indeed 
 the capital fact of the victory: " the barbarians 
 are seen fleeing and pushing one another into the 
 swamp," as Pausanias describes the picture, 
 they being propelled thereto by the Athenian 
 charge. 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 361 
 
 The final stage was the battle at the ships, in 
 which the Persians made good their embarka- 
 tion with some loss to their assailants. The 
 swamp now, in turn, protected the Persians 
 camped along the sand line; the Athenians had 
 to make the detour, and penetrate a narrow pas- 
 sage, defended by enemies who had been fully 
 forewarned. The Persians then set sail for 
 Athens, apparently designing to attack it from a 
 near position on the sea; but the Athenians 
 march home with all speed, and take their 
 station in another precinct of Hercules; the 
 barbarians, however, soon sail off to Asia. 
 
 3. At Athens after the battle (121-140). A 
 shield had been held up from some high position 
 shortly after the battle, " when the Persians 
 were on board their ships.'' This was seen by 
 the Greeks also, and was interpreted as a sign 
 given to the Persians by domestic conspirators to 
 come and take possession of the city. At once 
 the Athenians started for home with all speed 
 from Marathon, and the Persian fleet did sail 
 round Sunium and anchor at Phalerum, the port 
 of Athens, but soon left. 
 
 At once the question was asked throughout the 
 city: Who put up that shield? Upon the point 
 arose the bitterest dispute between parties, with 
 charofes and countercharo^es. The historian im- 
 plies that the opinion prevailed that it was a part of 
 a plot of the Alcmaeonids to deliver the city to 
 
362 THE FJlTHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 the Pisistratids (115). Against such an accusa- 
 tion he takes occasion to make a strons^ defense 
 of that family, which had been so long distin- 
 guished for its hostility to tyrants, and had in 
 reality been the great means of freeing Athens 
 from the rule of the Pisistratids (121). The 
 question was still alive fifty years later, in the 
 time of Pericles who belonged to the family of 
 the Alcmaeonids, and whose political enemies 
 evidently brought this old charge against him 
 and his ancestors. In the defense here made 
 by the historian we may read a defense of his 
 friend Pericles, from whom he may have de- 
 rived much of the information about the Alc- 
 maeonids which he shows in his history, here 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 Another great family of Athens was that of 
 Miltiades, which we may call the Cypselids — 
 Cypselus was its founder but not its ancestor ; 
 this was really the wife of Cypselus through her 
 second husband Stesagoras (see 34-36, and the 
 genealogy of the family a few pages back). 
 Both the Cypselids and the Alcmaeonids were 
 great democratic families and furnished for 
 several generations eminent leaders to the 
 Athenian people. They agreed in their opposi- 
 tion to tyranny, but on questions of domestic 
 policy they were opposed to each other. There 
 is no doubt that the family of Miltiades took an 
 enormous stride forward in public esteem through 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 363 
 
 the events terminating in the battle of Marathon ; 
 it overshadowed for the time beino^ the Alcmaeo- 
 nids, to whom political partisanship ascribed 
 the putting-up of the shield. Moreover the 
 Alcmaeonids had been connected, by ties of blood 
 and marriage, with the Pisistratids — another 
 fact in which suspicion could breed. On the 
 other hand, Miltiades himself had a son who had 
 become a Persian, and who was married to a 
 Persian wife (41). That son could have been 
 at Marathon fighting against his father, though 
 there is no record of the kind ; and sons of that 
 son could have been at Salamis with the army 
 of Xerxes. The probability is that no member 
 of either family put up the shield, but some 
 secret partisan of the Pisistratids, who still had 
 a party at Athens. 
 
 As the Alcmaeonids were famous throuo^hout 
 Athenian history, a little account of the family 
 may be here set down. It starts with Alcmaeon, 
 who does many favors to the embassy of Croesus, 
 when the latter was consulting the Delphic Ora- 
 cle (see Book First). This Alcmaeon, according 
 to the tale (125), became rich through being per- 
 mitted to help himself to gold from the treasury 
 of the Lydian king. His son was Megacles, 
 whose political career in connection with Pisis- 
 tratus is given in the First Book (61-64). This 
 Megacles was an Athenian suitor for the hand of 
 the daughter of Clisthenes tyrant of Sicyon (see 
 
364 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 the Wooing of Agariste, soon to be recounted). 
 Meo^acles had two sons — Clisthenes the legisla- 
 tor at Athens (V. 6G-70), and Hippocrates(131 ) 
 whose grandson was Pericles through a daughter 
 Agariste, married to Xanthippus. This same 
 Hippocrates through his son Megacles ( second of 
 the name) had a great-grandson in Alcibiades 
 famous in the later history of Athens, after the 
 time of Herodotus. 
 
 Such, then, were the two great families now 
 at Athens, both of them producers of illustrious 
 men, both democratic yet both ambitious to rule 
 the democracy, and hence antagonistic to each 
 other — we may call them the Cypselids and the 
 Alcmaeonids. Here the historian interweaves a 
 tale or rather a novelette, which, when we look 
 into it closely, we shall find very suggestive. 
 
 4. The wooers of A.gariste (126—130). Clis- 
 thenes, the wealthy and polished tyrant of Sicyon, 
 published throughout Greece a grand contest 
 for his daughter Agariste, wishing to wed 
 her to '* the best man of all the Hellenes." 
 The wooers assemble from every part of the 
 land, their names are duly reported in the cat- 
 alogue; trial was made of ♦* their manly powers, 
 of their temper, of their culture, and of their 
 character;" their genealogy was duly inquired 
 into, and thus the testing went on for a year. 
 Two suitors from Athens were present, who took 
 precedence of all others ; one was Megacles son 
 
BOOir SIXTH. 365 
 
 of Alcmaeon, the other was Hippoclides, son of 
 Tisandei', and of the two the latter was the more 
 favored and had already won the maiden or the 
 maiden's father. But on the very day when 
 the marriage was to be decided and jiublicly 
 annomiced, Hippoclides began to dance and to 
 dance and to dance, and he ended by standing on 
 his head before the whole company and dancing 
 in that way, with his feet whirling in the air. 
 Clisthenes was shocked and made the announce- 
 ment; '* Son of Tisander you. have danced away 
 your marriage." There might have been still 
 hope with due apology, but Hippoclides 
 answered: *' Don't care." Therewith his rival 
 Megacles was given the bride, whom the latter 
 carried off to Athens. 
 
 This story was undoubtedly founded on fact, 
 yet, we may well suppose, it has some fictitious 
 elements. There is in it a kind of epical imita- 
 tion, reminding the reader of portions of the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey; one cannot help thinking 
 of the suitors of Penelope and of some of the 
 scenes at Ithaca, though in the present case the 
 woman is kept wholly in the background; 
 Agariste herself does not appear and has seem- 
 ingly nothing to say in the matter. Herein we 
 note a great difference from Homer; there has 
 come over Greece a remarkable changfe in the 
 position of woman since Homeric times. Yet 
 Herodotus is a chivalrous admirer of the fair sex 
 
366 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 and gives them what prominence he can; note 
 Artemesia, Tomyris, and other Eastern queens. 
 Listen also to the following passage of the pres- 
 ent Book (122): <« This Callias deserves to be 
 remembered everywhere by everybody, * * * 
 especially on account of his conduct toward his 
 daughters, of whom he had three; he gave to 
 each a magnificent dower, and permitted each to 
 marry that man of all the Athenians whom she 
 miofht choose for herself." Here is the rio^ht of 
 choice given to maiden long before Shakespeare 
 and the modern world; truly a far-off anticipa- 
 tion of the girl of to-day. We believe it to be a 
 genuine Herodotean sentiment, and deeply con- 
 sistent with the historian's character. Still, we 
 feel bound to say that the passage has been sus- 
 pected by critics, notably by Stein, who holds it 
 to be the work of some later interpolater ( see his 
 note ad loc). 
 
 But why should the story be inserted here 
 after the battle of Marathon? On looking into 
 the matter, we find that this Hippoclides who 
 " danced away his marriage," was very probably 
 a member of the great family to which Miltiades 
 belonged, namely the Athenian Cypselids, who 
 were related to the Corinthian Cypselids, Hip- 
 poclides being connected with the latter (128). 
 So this tale brings out two members of these 
 rival Athenian families competing for the fair 
 prize of all Hellas more than two generations 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 367 
 
 before the battle of Marathon, and reflects not 
 only the character of the persons concerned but 
 the character of the families. The more brill- 
 iant Cypselid has already won the precious 
 object, but throws it away when just in his hands 
 through lack of balance, while the more solid 
 Alcmaeonid carries off the bride, the very Helen 
 of the time. The tale will, therefore, suggest 
 Miltiades and in a less degree Xanthippus, who 
 was not an Alcmaeonid by birth but had married 
 into the family; possibly too, it will hint of 
 Cimon and Pericles belonging to the period after 
 the battle of Marathon, which was also the period 
 of our historian. Accordingly we are now to see 
 how Miltiades, having attained unexampled suc- 
 cess by his genius, " danced away his marriage," 
 and was put down by his rivals, especially by 
 Xanthippus, father of Pericles. 
 
 5. Fate of Miliiades (132). After the great 
 defeat of the Persians, «' Miltiades, who was pre- 
 viously held in high estimation rose into greater 
 repute than ever." Such is the grand climax of 
 danger for every Greek soul, the danger of suc- 
 cess. He asks and obtains of the Athenians 
 ships and money for what must be called a ma- 
 rauding expedition, playing before their imagina- 
 tions that ''he would make them rich if they 
 would follow him." That hfe of his in the Cher- 
 sonese, a life of forays on the border, he begins 
 anew from Athens ; he assails a Greek island, 
 
368 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 Paros, with the view of plunder mainly, and of 
 satisfying an old grudge against a Parian. The 
 expedition was a total failure, the hero of Mara- 
 thon came back to Athens with his glorious career 
 completely reversed — unsuccessful, unheroic, 
 wounded, dying. 
 
 His enemies, led by the Alcmaeonids, have now 
 their opportunity ; especially Xanthippus is active 
 in the case, prosecuting him on a capital charge 
 '* for deceiving the Athenians," who, of course, 
 would not have been deceived if the affair had 
 been a success. They show the same character 
 as Miltiades in this business — from Marathon 
 they descend to being freebooters in that very 
 Hellas which they have so gloriously helped to 
 liberate. Both the hero and his people reveal 
 the same limitation. 
 
 Miltiades was present at the trial; '* lying on 
 a couch with wound mortifying, he did not try 
 to defend himself." But friends he had who 
 did, citing his services at Marathon, and also in 
 the capture of Lemnos, '* which island he hav- 
 ing taken, inflicted vengeance on the Pelasgians, 
 and then gave it to the Athenians." So there 
 was one foray which had been successful, and of 
 which the Athenians received the advantage. 
 With this account the historian connects a notice 
 of the Pelasgians and their deeds in relation to 
 Athens ; repeatedly they have come up before 
 in the present narrative — that strangely vanish- 
 
BOOK SIXTH. 369 
 
 ing tribe of people which so often flits moment- 
 arily through the background of Grecian history. 
 
 Such, then, was the fate of Miltiades, the 
 Athenian, enemy of tyrants at home, but the 
 tyrant himself abroad, perishing through his own 
 inner contradiction. The family opposed the 
 Pisistratids at Athens, yet subjugated and ruled 
 irresponsibly not only Barbarians but Greeks in 
 the Chersonese. Yet they are not Oriental in 
 sympathy, they are profoundly Athenian and 
 even democratic in their hostility to the Persian 
 autocracy. A new sort of tyrant, yet supremely 
 typical of Athens herself, for she will hereafter 
 be a democracy at home, yet a tyrant abroad and 
 rule *' an Athenian Empire" in Hellas itself. 
 Nay, even now, just after Marathon, she has 
 shown herself perfectly willing to subjugate free 
 Greek communities in Paros; truly she is what 
 Miltiades is, her present greatest son, having the 
 same inner limitation and contradiction. 
 
 Miltiades is, accordingly, a tragic character, 
 revealing the conflict on the stage of his own soul, 
 which makes tragedy in real life or in the drama. 
 We must not forojet that this is the ao^e of 
 Aeschylus, supremely the poet of the tragic view 
 of the world, and that he was himself at the bat- 
 tle of Marathon, of which his brother was one of 
 the heroes. And Athens herself has the same 
 trao:ic orerm in her character, which later will 
 come to maturity, yet is at present foreshadowed 
 
 24 
 
370 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 in her deeds and in her literature. Both Athens 
 and her hero lack universality, which is the true 
 salvation from the tragedy of existence; not 
 universal was Miltiades, he loved liberty for 
 Athens, but not forParos, or for the Chersonese, 
 or forLemnos, and so he does the tras^ic act and 
 dies; not universal is Athens, loving her own 
 autonomy and defending it with heroic vigilance 
 and courage, but violating it too often in other 
 Greek cities. But the grand tragedy of Athens 
 is a later chapter of Greek history, not recounted 
 and probably not fully seen by Herodotus. 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 
 
 It has been already noticed that the history of 
 Herodotus as a whole divides itself into two parts, 
 the second part being made up of the last five 
 Books. This second part again falls into two 
 main divisions, the Fifth and Sixth Books con- 
 stituting one, the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth 
 the other. These last three Books, then, belong 
 together, giving the culmination of the Greco- 
 Persian conflict, the invasion of Xerxes ; a single 
 great drama we may deem it, in three acts, of 
 which the first act shows the Spartan tragedy on 
 land (Thermopylae); the second shows the 
 ti'iumph at sea, essentially Athenian (Salamis); 
 the third act shows the Greek victory on land 
 both in Europe (Platea) and in Asia (Mycale). 
 
 We see the entire Orient under Persia g^ettino^ 
 ready for the war. At Marathon, merely a small 
 
 (371) 
 
372 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Persian contingent was engaged on the one hand, 
 and on the other merely the Athenians (with the 
 Plateans); but now all the East is consolidated 
 and hurled against Greece, and all the Greeks 
 are summoned to save their w^orld, and must 
 aid or refuse to aid. Both sides are putting 
 forth their full strens^th ; when this has mani- 
 fested itself, the historian brings his work to a 
 close. 
 
 Comino^ to Book Seventh and inspectinoj with 
 care its structure, we find it organizing itself 
 naturally into three portions. First is the Mus- 
 tering of the Orient, showing the internal move- 
 ment in the mind of the absolute ruler of Xerxes, 
 and the external movement of the Persian 
 armament from Asia into Europe. Second is 
 the Mustering of the Greeks, showing the 
 internal movement toward unity against the 
 Oriental host (along with those Greeks who held 
 aloof from their nation's greatest struggle), and 
 the external movement of their army and navy. 
 Third is the preliminary conflict between the two 
 sides, with the first battle-lines on sea and land, 
 culminating in the fight at Thermopylae. 
 
 Such are the three general sweeps of the Book, 
 into w^hich are introduced here and there episod- 
 ical turns, stories, anecdotes, after the manner 
 of the historian. It is dominantly historical in 
 spirit, yet has its supernatural hints, omens, 
 oracles. The end of the Book is sad, tragic; 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 373 
 
 Leoniclas with his three hundred Spartans and 
 seven hundred Thespians, perish, suggesting the 
 possible tragedy of HeHas, unless there enters 
 some new savins: element. This element will be 
 introduced through Athens, and will be shown 
 in the last two Books. 
 
 I. 
 
 That which we have called the Mustering of 
 the Orient (1-131) is very artfully constructed; 
 into this structural element we must glance again 
 at the start. There are three stages, each of 
 them sharply marked by the introduction of a 
 dialogue in which Xerxes is the central speaker, 
 and in which are imaged the movements of the 
 monarch's mind, as well as, more remotely, the 
 movements of the Persian national spirit. These 
 three stages also occur at important places in the 
 advance toward the great end, Hellas : at home 
 in Persia, at the Asiatic border where the cross- 
 ing into Europe takes place, in Europe at Doris- 
 cus where the enumeration of the hosts is made. 
 
 In each of these stages there are two threads, 
 an internal and an external, in due correspond- 
 ence. The internal thread has as its leading 
 figure and interlocutor the king, Xerxes, in whom 
 and round whom the whole affair moves. We 
 are inducted into his thouo^ht, which, he beins: 
 unlimited sovereign, must rule all. Still he has 
 
374 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 his deep misgivings about the enterprise ; at first 
 he is not inclined to it, but he cannot hold back, 
 in spite of his absolute power; something drives 
 him forward, a strong necessity in the time, in 
 his people, in the Orient. The external thread 
 follows the internal one, with a further step 
 toward realization. 
 
 An outline of these three stages with their 
 corresponding threads we shall set down in the 
 form of a table. 
 
 1. The first stao^e of the Persian Musterino^ is 
 Asiatic, and takes place in Persia. Darius left 
 the revenge upon the Athenians for Marathon as 
 an inheritance to his son ; then certain Greeks at 
 court (the Pisistratidse, the Aleuadse, Demaratus) 
 were urging the war against their countrymen. 
 But these causes were merely incidental to the 
 real cause — the inherent conflict between Orient 
 and Occident, now to be imao^ed in the suro^ins^s 
 of the autocratic mind ( 1-45 ). 
 
 ( 1 ) The internal Thread is the movement in 
 the mind of Xerxes (a mustering of his pur- 
 pose) given most completely in his speech and in 
 that of Mardonius for the war and in that of 
 Artabanus against it. All opposition is over- 
 borne, and war is resolved on (8-18). The first 
 chapters (1-7) are introductory. 
 
 ( 2 ) The external Thread is the mustering of the 
 armament by land and by sea, and the march to 
 Abydus on the Asiatic border (19-45). 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 375 
 
 2. The second stage is the crossing from 
 Asia into Europe — the Orient seeks to get 
 possession of the Occident (46-100). 
 
 (1) The internal Thread; Xerxes is in tears 
 at the limit of life, which is death; but Arta- 
 banus admonishes him of other limits during^ life, 
 probably soon to be felt by the unlimited ruler, 
 and is sent home (46-53). Marked increase of 
 the king's fatuity. 
 
 (2) The external Thread; the army crosses 
 the bridges over the Hellespont " under the 
 lash;" the muster-roll of the army and navy 
 (54-100). 
 
 3. The third stage shows Xerxes in Europe, 
 after the enumeration and review of the errand 
 armament. He has crossed the border, the ter- 
 ritorial limit with all the Persian Orient ; can 
 there be any successful resistance to such a 
 force? (10,1-131.) 
 
 ( 1 ) The internal Thread ; Demaratus . the 
 Spartan is now called to give answer; yes, there 
 will be resistance to the death. Xerxes lausfhs 
 at him, but lets him go, manifesting the blindest 
 confidence in his masses (101—104). Thus, the 
 monarch, as he moves onward out of Asia into 
 Europe, is shown moving more and more into 
 infatuation, into a belief in his own unlimited self. 
 
 (2) The external thread; the army passes 
 from Doriscus toward Greece, sweeping along 
 with it all the nations on its path (105-131). 
 
376 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 Such is the movement of Persia into Europe, 
 once ag^ain crossing^ its western limit with a lars^e 
 armv, as previously Darius had done. More than 
 ever before the historian has sought to set forth 
 the Persian consciousness, specially as it shows 
 itself in the king, the unit of that consciousness. 
 From the one center everything moves, the vast 
 array is put in motion by one will, the stress is 
 upon unity. Others may advise, but the king 
 can choose his advice, he follows what he pleases. 
 No independent individuality but his; what a 
 contrast to the Greek ! 
 
 From this point of view we can see the histo- 
 rian's method of handling his subject. It is 
 Homeric, and Xerxes is the Zeus of his Iliad, 
 which is the culmination of the Persiad; he is 
 the supreme governing power of the world. Yet 
 there are inferior Gods who converse with him, 
 honestly telling him their opinion. So Xerxes 
 has his Mardonius, Artabanus, Demaratus, lesser 
 lights circling around him, yet controlled by him. 
 In like manner Homer has his Upper World of 
 deities moving the lower world of mortals before 
 Troy ; is not the grand expedition directed from 
 the Persian court with its central Ego ? The whole 
 manner of Herodotus in this part is epical, a 
 reproduction of Homer in History ; there is a 
 thread which is dialogue, the dialogue of the 
 Gods, giving the internal or spiritual principle 
 at work ; then there is the thread of outer 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 377 
 
 events, the manifestation of this principle in the 
 world. 
 
 Moreover there can be no doubt but that the 
 dialogic portions, the conversations of Xerxes 
 with those around him, are fictitious, composed 
 by the historian himself giving free rein to his 
 creative power. It is only another phase of his 
 mythical gift, which we have already so- often 
 noticed. Still, though the outer form be ficti- 
 tious, the essence is truth, in fact just the truth 
 of the whole Greco-Persian conflict. As Aris- 
 totle, another Greek, has said : poetry is truer 
 than history. But when the expedition itself 
 is treated, the narrative becomes historical, drop- 
 ping from poetry into prose, from fiction mto 
 fact. The above scheme we shall now develop 
 in detail. 
 
 1. The first staoje of the Persian movement is 
 the Asiatic, that is, it takes place in Asia, and 
 shows the advance toward Europe. After the 
 battle of Marathon, Darius was more determined 
 than ever to humble the Greeks of the continent ; 
 that limit which they had put upon Persia must 
 be removed. Accordingly '* Asia was thrown 
 into excitement for the space of three years, the 
 bravest being enrolled for the expedition against 
 Greece." Asia against Greece is indeed the con- 
 flict. A revolt breaking out in Egypt interfered 
 for a time; in the midst of the preparations 
 ao^ainst both countries, Darius died and was sue- 
 
378 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 ceeded by Xerxes, his son by Atossa, daughter 
 of Cyrus. 
 
 ( 1 ) The new king is the central figure of the 
 present Book. Around his presence the great 
 expedition moves toward its goal ; in his mind 
 the fluctuations of the mighty struggle from one 
 side to the other image themselves ; our historian 
 seeks to give both these sides swaying through the 
 soul of the monarch, and interweaves them in a 
 subtle web of connection. Xerxes ^vas at first 
 not inclined to make war upon Greece, but the 
 influence in favor of it was too strong for him. 
 
 This influence was mainly of two kinds, Greek 
 and Persian. Tyrants who had been driven out 
 of Grecian cities usually betook themselves to 
 Persia, where they constituted quite a little 
 group. The Aleuadae of Thessaly, the Pisistra- 
 tidae of Athens are mentioned, but the chief of 
 these expatriated Greeks was the Spartan 
 Demaratus, w4io will be introduced as one of the 
 spokesmen in the drama which follows. Still, 
 the main influence working upon Xerxes was 
 Persian, and was twofold, for and against the 
 invasion. 
 
 Mardonius represented the Persian influence 
 which favored the invasion. His leadino^ aro^u- 
 ment was that Persia must punish the Athenians 
 for Marathon ; national honor demanded ven- 
 gence. The historian adds that Mardonius had 
 a personal motive also: "he was eager for 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 379 
 
 new enterprises and wished to be governor of 
 Greece." 
 
 And now comes the speech of Xerxes (8), in 
 which the Persian spirit in regard to the war 
 is expressed. *' What deeds preceding kings, 
 Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius achieved, I must 
 try to equal." Vengeance upon Athens must 
 betaken. *'I intend to bridge the Hellespont, 
 to march an army through Europe against 
 Greece." But the most sii>:nilicant statement is 
 the following: ''if we subdue the Greeks, we 
 shall make the Persian land of equal bounds with 
 the air of heaven ; nor will the Sun look down 
 upon any territory bordering upon ours ; but I 
 shall make them all one land, marchinoc'throufifh 
 Europe. Thus both the guilty and the guilt- 
 less shall have to submit to the yoke of servi- 
 tude." 
 
 Such is indeed the utterance of Persian con- 
 sciousness, which can allow no external boundary 
 to be put upon itself. All must acknowledge its 
 supremacy, then they can live. Moreover this 
 consciousness is directly connected with the Sun, 
 which shines upon all, and whose limit is dark- 
 ness. The religion of the Persians was the re- 
 ligion of light and darkness, whose conflict was 
 their great symbol, the conflict between Ormuzd 
 and Ahriman. The Persian nation was the 
 light, the Sun, and any limitation of it was dark- 
 ness. So the war between Persia and Greece 
 
380 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY.' 
 
 was a conflict between Ormuzd andAhriman, and 
 must have had a religious meaning. 
 
 In this way we may bring before ourselves the 
 deeper ground of Persia's conduct. It was not 
 revenge alone, though that was one motive, not 
 desire for wealth, or for territory merely; the 
 Persian, as the true follower of Ormuzd, had to 
 try to remove the Occidental limit, which meant 
 darkness and extinction to him and to his deity. 
 Persia had to go forth into the fight in order to 
 be Persia. Xerxes at first was averse to the 
 struo^sle, but there can be no doubt that the 
 spirit of the Persian people pushed him forward. 
 They sought, and it was their spirit to seek, 
 unity, the unity of the world; to be sure this was 
 an external or territorial, and not an internal or 
 spiritual unity. Such is the strong side of their 
 cause, in striking contrast to the Greeks, who 
 have no unity, but the idea of freedom, of indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 The weak side of the Greeks is emphatically 
 brought out by Mardonius in his speech (9). 
 '* They are accustomed to undertake wars with- 
 out deliberation, fighting one another ; but they 
 ought, being of the same language, to adjust 
 their differences bv means of heralds and mes- 
 sengers, in any way rather by battle." Such is 
 indeed the fatal lack of unity in Greece, and from 
 this comes the danger. But the Persian takes 
 little account of individuals, he believes in vast 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 381 
 
 masses; he has to learn that one man may be 
 more than a multitude. Unity without freedom 
 is Persian, freedom without unity is Greek. 
 
 Still the Greek side is to find a representative 
 among the Persians — Artabanus, who is now to 
 give his opinion (10). This high-born Persian, 
 brother of Darius and uncle of Xerxes, voices 
 the difficulties of the invasion. He distrusts the 
 bridge of boats over the Hellespont, and recalls 
 the bridge of the same kind over the Danube, 
 at which Darius so narrowly escaped. Then 
 from the action at Marathon he is inclined to 
 draw a deterrino^ inference. But his chief argu- 
 ment is the religious one: *' Dost thou not see 
 how the God smites, with his thunderbolt, the 
 overtowering animals, and does not suffer them 
 to grow insolent? So a large army is over- 
 whelmed by a small one; since the deity 
 through envy strikes them, not permitting any- 
 one but himself to cherish o^reat thous^hts." 
 Thus says Artabanus, through whom the his- 
 torian is speaking his own opinions, affirming his 
 well-known doctrine of divine envy. 
 
 The views here set forth constitute a kind of 
 a Philosophy of Histor}^, as Herodotus had con- 
 ceived it in relation to the Persian War. What 
 is the ultimate ground of the destruction of such 
 a large force by such a small one? It is carried 
 back to the divinity, who is jealous of the colos- 
 sal, the enormous, the excessive in any shape. 
 
382 THE FAT HE E OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Truly Greek is the idea of moderation, and the 
 Greek God must bring down in some waj this 
 immoderate Asiatic king, army, people. Mere 
 magnitude is undivine, the Giants were hurled 
 into Tartarus by the Olympians in the old My- 
 thus. Such is the principle ; again the Hellenic 
 spirit is fighting a Gigantomachia, historical, not 
 mythical. The envy of the God is his hate of 
 the chaotic mass overwhelminof the free individ- 
 uah Artabanus (or Herodotus) is the Greek 
 soul in Persia, having a presentiment of wdiat is 
 to come, uttering the warning of the seer. The 
 Greek God also is a leveler, democratic; he will 
 level the haughty monarch, even the Persian 
 King, highest of mortals. 
 
 Xerxes gave an angry, scornful answer to the 
 frank declarations of Artabanus; still the king 
 soon felt similar forebodino^s, and even chancred 
 for a time his resolution to invade Greece. Then 
 came the dream urging him forw^ard again ; a 
 specter stood beside him in the night and spoke : 
 '' You do not well to change yonv mind, nor is 
 there any one here in Persia who will approve." 
 The last sentence expresses the meaning of the 
 ghost; the spirit of Persia it is, which appears 
 to him in his unconscious moments and bids him 
 not recede. The same ghost appears soon to 
 Artabanus, threatening *' to burn out his eyes with 
 hot irons," if he persists in his advice. So he 
 too yields, concluding that '* some divine impulse 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 383 
 
 has sprung up," and that *' some God-sent de- 
 struction is on the point of overtaking Greece." 
 Such is the vivid picture of the historian, setting 
 forth the spirit of Persia, in its religion and its 
 national idea, as it works upon the unwilling 
 Xerxes first, then upon the unwilling Artaba- 
 nus, and forces both out of their opposition 
 into acquiescence. Note here in what way Her- 
 odotus employs the dream, conveying a great 
 and important fact in a fictitious or unusual 
 form. A second vision Xerxes has, far less 
 siofnificant than the first; he dreams that he is 
 crowned with a branch of the olive tree, which 
 branch then suddenly vanishes. This dream is 
 evidently made to order, foreshadowing his cap- 
 ture of and flight from Athens, the sacred 
 home of the olive. 
 
 Such is the inner movement, that of the mind, 
 of Xerxes, in his fluctuations from unwillingness 
 to resolution. Manifestly the spirit of the Persian 
 nation overbore him in favor of the war, which 
 was a deep necessity of Persian spirit. The, lat- 
 ter could not quietly endure the Greek limit and 
 remain itself. It may be here noted that this 
 use of the ghost is very similat to Shakespeare's 
 use of it in his Julius Caesar, 
 
 (2) Now we pass to the external movement of 
 the king, who starts from his capital, Susa, for 
 Greece to lead in person the expedition. He 
 commands a canal to be cut across the peninsula 
 
384 THE FATHEB OF HISTOBY. 
 
 of Mount Athos (22), not so much for its utility 
 as out of a feeling of pride, thinks our historian. 
 Also the Hellespont was bridged, stores of pro- 
 visions were gathered along the proposed route, 
 and the march begins from a city called Critalla 
 in Cappadocia. Xerxes on reaching Sardes, 
 sends heralds to the cities of Greece demanding 
 earth and water, but no heralds were sent to 
 Athens or Sparta. 
 
 Several anecdotes illustrate the character of 
 Xerxes. He can be very kind and generous, yet 
 also very cruel and ignoble. As long as no limit 
 is put upon him by man or nature, he is exceed- 
 ingly gracious. His conduct when a storm broke 
 up the bridge over the Hellespont shows his dis- 
 position. He ordered the water to be whipped with 
 a scourge, and a pair of fetters to be let down 
 into the sea. The winds and waves refused to 
 obey him, so he rises in wrath against the limit 
 they place to his power. 
 
 Xerxes leaves Sardes in 480 B. C, and passes 
 towards Abydus on the Hellespont. On the way 
 he goes through the plain of Troy, and visits the 
 Trojan citadel. He learns of the famous war 
 once waged on this plain, where the great battle 
 .between Orient and Occident was first fought. 
 He must have felt some tie connecting him and 
 his expedition with the place ; he sacrifices a 
 thousand oxen to Trojan Minerva, and the Magi 
 pour out libations to the heroes, the Trojan ones 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 885 
 
 doubtless. Terror fell upon the camp in the 
 nioht duriniy these ceremonies; Greek heroes 
 also haunted the locality probably. Famous 
 Scamander was drinik dry by this army. The 
 Asiatic boundary is reached at Abydus, the king 
 is now to leave his Orient and to pass into Europe. 
 But first he takes a survey of his forces (44) on 
 both sea and land. ** And when he saw the 
 whole Hellespont covered by the ships and all the 
 shores and plains of Abydus full of men, Xerxes 
 thereupon pronounced himself happy, but after- 
 ward shed tears." The proud monarch, in the 
 height of his glory, shows the finite man, and 
 feels the transitoriness of himself and of all his 
 host: " In a hundred years hence not one of 
 them will be alive." 
 
 2. Here we have reached the second stage of 
 this movement of Xerxes, inner and outer. He 
 beholds both his naval and military power at the 
 crossing into the new world ; he passes over the 
 border line between Orient and Occident. 
 
 (1) His internal state is shown by another 
 conversation with Artabanus, whom after all he 
 took with himself on this expedition. Again 
 Artabanus enacts his former part, he is monitor 
 to the young king, holding up before the latter 
 the just limits of power, and calling to mind the 
 difficulties in the way of the present enterprise. 
 The first grand obstacle is the water, an uncer- 
 tainty and a terror to the Persians, who were not 
 
 25 
 
386 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 a sea-faring people ; moreover these Ionian sailors 
 are very dubious in their loyalty, being compelled 
 to serve against their own kindred. The second 
 orrand obstacle is the land with its dans^ers and 
 hardships. Thus Artabanus acts as limit-placer 
 upon Xerxes, who is more impatient of restraint 
 than ever; so he sends Artabanus back to Susa, 
 and o^ets rid of his disao:reeable monitor. Herein 
 we may note a step further in arrogance on part 
 of the kino^, and for the future he has no uncle 
 to warn him. When he passes out of the Asiatic 
 bound into Europe, he has transgressed his limit, 
 both within and without; the Orient is the field 
 for the Persian, it is really a going beyond the 
 bound of Persian spirit to pass out of Asia. But 
 Xerxes is now absolute, without the check of 
 Artabanus. 
 
 (2) The passage over the Hellespont is accom- 
 panied with significant religious ceremonies, 
 which mark its importance in the eyes of the 
 king. He felt that it was a prodigious step, 
 and very uncertain. The Persian Gods are 
 invoked with prayer; especially the Sun, the 
 deity of Light, is petitioned and placated with 
 sacrifices ; the army marches over the bridge 
 from East to West along Avith the movement of 
 the great luminary. 
 
 Now the king is in Europe and skirts the coast 
 of the sea till he comes to Doriscus, which is a 
 shore and plain in Thrace (59). Here the enu- 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 387 
 
 meration takes place. The muster-roll of the 
 Persian army is given ; all the subject-peoples of 
 Asia pass in review before their march against 
 Greece. The land forces are computed at seven- 
 teen hundred thousand. The number of triremes 
 is placed at twelve hundred and seven. It is a 
 huge Asiatic mass, not well organized, utterly 
 heterogeneous compared with the Greek, and 
 forced to its task by the whip. 
 
 3. When the enumeration was finished, and 
 Xerxes had made a complete inspection of his 
 and army and his navy (100), he enters upon 
 the third stage of his movement from Asia to 
 Greece. He calls to himself a Greek now, Dema- 
 ratus, the Spartan, who is to hold up before the 
 king the character of the Greeks, specially of 
 his countrymen. *« Will they fight this vast 
 army? " asks the king. '' Certainly; if only a 
 thousand, they will give you battle." The thing 
 seems impossible to Xerxes, who has merely the 
 notion of a vast overwhelming mass, like nature's 
 avalanche; he has no conception of the dis- 
 ciplined army of small numbers. Still less can 
 he see how the free individual can be under 
 authority, and obey without the whip. The 
 statement of Demaratus gives the Greek view: 
 '* The Lacedemonians fighting singly are inferior 
 to no men, but fighting together they are the 
 bravest of all men." Such is the result of their 
 military life and training, which organizes the 
 
388 THE FATHEB OF HI iS TOBY. 
 
 mass. Again : " they are free but not free in all 
 things : over them Law is niilster, who always 
 demands the same thing," and thus they are 
 not subjected to the caprice of an absolute mon- 
 arch. So the Spartans will not flee before any 
 number of men, but will " remain in their ranks, 
 and conquer or die." 
 
 The words of Demaratus are a prelude to the 
 war, specially the Spartan prelude to the battle 
 of Thermopylae. This dramatic preparation goes 
 before the real struggle and prefigures the result. 
 Very sharp is the contrast drawn between the 
 Spartan and the Persian ideas, which are about 
 to grapple. 
 
 (1) The inner movement of the mind of 
 Xerxes, is to be noted in this interview. He 
 again receives a warning, not now from a Per- 
 sian but from a Greek, a Spartan, who announces 
 the fact which the king may soon expect. But 
 Xerxes cannot acceptthe view presented; the 
 vast army, now known by the enumeration, has 
 increased his infatuation to the point of blind- 
 ness ; next will come the shock, the blow from 
 the outside, which will verify the words of 
 Demaratus. 
 
 Thus Xerxes has passed through three stages, 
 movins: more and more toward his fateful condi- 
 tion. Far back in Susa he listened to the warn- 
 ing of Artabanus, but both himself and his mon- 
 itor were overborne ; in Abydus on the border, 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 389 
 
 where the king first saw his vast army, he dis- 
 missed Artabanus; at Doriscus, when he knows 
 the numbers of his host, he will not believe 
 Demaratus, the Spartan telling of the Spartans. 
 The reader will not fail to observe a continuous 
 increase in the fatuity of Xerxes, marked off in 
 three main gradations. 
 
 (2) The external movement is resumed from 
 Doriscus toward Greece (105). Our historian 
 has carefully noted the places through which the 
 army passed, along with many incidents of the 
 march. As the wave rolled on, additions were 
 made to it from the nations along its path ; many 
 ships were also added to the naval armament. 
 The army marched in three divisions, along three 
 different roads ; one moved by the coast, another 
 inland, and one between these two ; with the 
 latter Xerxes went. A vast swarm of human 
 grasshoppers devouring everything in its way ; 
 it sweeps around the Thermaic Gulf, turns south- 
 ward through Thessaly, and begins to draw 
 toward the Greek battle-line. 
 
 II. 
 
 Such is the Persian host mustering and ad- 
 vancing against Greece; what is the latter doing? 
 Next we are to have the musterinoj of the Greeks 
 and their advance against the invading host 
 (131-178). 
 
390 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Strikino^ is the difference between the two 
 sides, not only in numbers but in character. The 
 Persian army has one will at the center, all other 
 wills are absorbed or unified in that one will. 
 The Greek host has man}^ w^lls, each self-deter- 
 mining and independent; hence its character is 
 first that of separation, scission, discord. But 
 when it gets united, the union is an internal one, 
 that of the spirit. As their fight is for freedom 
 their union must be essentially a free act on the 
 jDart of the individual, city, and State. If ex- 
 ternal force were employed to produce conform- 
 ity, the Greek army would be like the Persian, 
 wdiose symbol of unity is the whip. Bat all the 
 Greeks are not at one, accordingly we are to see 
 how both the hostile and the indifferent elements 
 slough themselves off from the great enterprise. 
 
 In this Greek portion both structure and style 
 change in the historian's narrative. In the pre- 
 ceding Persian portion of the present Book there 
 was the internal movement in the mind of the 
 king, and then the external movement of the 
 army, with little volition of its own. But now^ 
 there are many internal movements, each leader, 
 city and State has its own, and the Oriental one- 
 ness seems shivered into an endless Greek multi- 
 plicity of individuals which have to get their 
 unity through themselves. That external, rather 
 jejune and mechanical account of the army's 
 march falls away ; also the internal movements 
 
BOOK SEVENTH, 391 
 
 of the one ruling will have no place here ; on the 
 contrary, life, struggle in all variety wakens a 
 fresh interest, which is imaged in the style of the 
 historian. Free activity of the man is now at 
 the front, and makes tense every muscle ; the 
 enslaved activity of the Persian portion has im- 
 parted itself to the words in which it is told, and 
 the form which the whole account takes on. 
 
 These points will be best seen just now by a 
 survey of the structure of this portion of the 
 Seventh Book. Note how it starts with Greek 
 division, not with Persian solidarity ; the Greeks 
 will also come to unity, but not through external 
 might; those who refuse to unite, however, must 
 take the responsibility of their act. The move- 
 ment of this Greek portion is, therefore, through 
 the separation and diversity involved in many 
 free-wills to their unity based upon their choice. 
 The form which their problem takes here is, 
 Shall we give earth and water to the Persian, 
 symbols of submission ? 
 
 1. The first division into two opposites — those 
 who grant and those who defy the Persian de- 
 mand (132-147). 
 
 ( 1 ) The list of those who gave earth and 
 water (132); quite all of these peoples lie out- 
 side of the Greek battle-line, in or toward Thes- 
 saly, and hence exposed helplessly to the Persian. 
 So much for their excuse ; but they had not the 
 stuff of the Athenians, who still kept up the fight 
 
392 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 after losing home and country. Yet this excuse 
 does not hold good for the Thebans and Boeo- 
 tians. The penalty is a tithe to the God at 
 Delphi. 
 
 (2) The list of States which not only refused 
 earth and water but destroyed the Persian her- 
 alds demanding the same — Athens and Sparta, 
 to which we must add their allies (133-144). 
 This destruction of the heralds was, however, a 
 violation of the Gods (and of the law of nations 
 then beginmng to be acknowledged) ; for which 
 violation the religious Spartans are laid under a 
 divine judgment, while the Athenians did not 
 suffer any penalty for the same offense, in the 
 opinion of the historian (133). 
 
 2. The list of the neutrals — the important 
 Greek States which neither submitted to Persia, 
 nor aided Greece. Four such States are spe- 
 cially mentioned, in which we may note two 
 classes, according to locality (148-171). 
 
 ( 1 ) The central Greek State which stood aloof 
 was Argos. Various reasons assigned for her 
 attitude (148-52). 
 
 ( 2 ) The remoter Greek States which refused 
 aid — Sicily, Crete, Corcyra (153-71). 
 
 3. Now we are to see those who are really 
 united in the defense of Greece taking their 
 position in the line of battle, and thus showing 
 their spirit. The sifting has taken place ; the 
 hostile, weak, and indifferent Greeks are sifted 
 
BOOK SEVENTH, 393 
 
 out, probably to the advantage of the cause. 
 Two battle lines and another sifting (172-8). 
 
 (1) The first battle-line includes Thessaly, 
 whose peoples have not the grit of the true Greek 
 soul, and cannot stand the test. *' If you do not 
 send us an army to guard the pass of Olympus, 
 we shall make terms with the Persian." Not the 
 true ring; so in the end they did go over and 
 *' proved most useful to the king. ' ' No such back- 
 ing can help in the long run, so Thessaly must be 
 sifted out (172-4). 
 
 ( 2 ) The second battle-line at Thermopylae and 
 at Artemisium — the first being the station on 
 land, the second being the station on the sea, and 
 both near togfether. The Greek belono^s to the 
 sea as much as to the land ; both his elements are 
 here united to his advantage, the Persian himself 
 not being a seaman (175-7). Delphi (178). 
 
 The movement of this Greek portion will there- 
 fore start with difference, with separation among 
 the Greeks in its various shapes, and show the 
 process of eliminating the unworthy who stood 
 aloof through fear or enmity, or indifference. 
 
 1, The first ground of separation, then, is the 
 giving of earth and water to the Persian messen- 
 gers who were sent by Xerxes from Sardes to all 
 the Greek cities. Those who complied are here 
 mentioned, while Athens and Sparta on a former 
 occasion had destroyed mercilessly the envoys 
 sent to them on the same errand. 
 
394 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 Of these two the Athenians were altogether 
 the most active, and, though Sparta was the 
 leader they (the Athenians) had made themselves 
 the bearers of the great cause. The historian 
 declares emphatically that if they had abandoned 
 their country, or, remaining in it, had surrendered 
 themselves to the Persian, the Greeks would have 
 lost. They controlled the sea, and roused the 
 other Greeks; they were, next to the Gods, the 
 saviors of Greece. So speaks Herodotus, though 
 he knows that he will excite great envy by the 
 statement from the many enemies of the Athen- 
 ians and their supremacy. 
 
 He goes on to tell how even the Delphic 
 Oracle, when consulted by them, could not dis- 
 courage them with an unfavorable response bid- 
 ding them '* leave their city and flee to the ends 
 of the earth." Such was the first response, 
 which the Athenian deputies would not accept 
 as final ; so they sought and obtained a second 
 response, which said that " Zeus gives to Athena 
 a loooden walU impregnable, which will save thee 
 and thy children." But what does this wooden 
 wall mean? Still further: " O, divine Salamis, 
 thou shalt cause the children of women to 
 perish, whether the harvest be scattered or 
 ojathered." Here the Oracle is at least ambisf- 
 uous, previouslj^ it was unambiguous in its dire 
 announcement. This ambiguity then is a clear 
 gain, the response is carried to Athens where 
 
BOOK SEVENTH, ,395 
 
 the man is on hand who can interpret it, for 
 the interpretation is at present the main 
 thing. This man we now hear of for the 
 first time: Themistocles, son of Neocles, 
 'Mately risen to eminence;" he says that the 
 wooden wall means the ships, to which the 
 Athenians must betake themselves in case of 
 invasion. Already the same man had persuaded 
 the Athenians to build two hundred triremes, 
 and master the sea in the war with Egina; so 
 they have the wooden wall ready. 
 
 Such is the new man appearing above the 
 turmoil, interpreter of ambiguous oracles, and 
 thereby clearly placing himself above the Delphic 
 Oracle. It is the dawn of the era of intelligence, 
 which is henceforth to rule, though not in formal 
 authority. Athens is the great positive upholder 
 of the Greek idea against the Persian, and 
 Themistocles is the incarnation of Athenian spirit 
 at present. 
 
 Such is the first grand distinction among the 
 Greeks, showing those who submit by sending 
 earth and water and those who will not submit, 
 even though discouraged by their own Oracle. 
 Have they not become their own Oracle? 
 
 2. We are now to have a list of a somewhat 
 different class of Greeks, who did not send earth 
 and water to the Persians, but who stood aloof 
 in the great crisis, from one pretext or other. 
 They are the neutrals in the grand conflict which 
 
396 THE FA THEE OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 determined the destiny not only of Greece but 
 of the whole Occident. Four important States 
 are mentioned, each one of which could have 
 rendered assistance. 
 
 The case of Argos evidently caused much dis- 
 cussion in aftertimes ; the historian gives three 
 accounts. But one thinof is certain : the Archives 
 took no hand in the repulse of' the Persian, and 
 the suspicion hangs over them that they secretly 
 favored the invaders of Hellas. 
 
 The case of Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, was also 
 variously reported. His power was greater than 
 that of any other Greek State, and to him am- 
 bassadors were sent asking for assistance. Gelon 
 did not appear, and it is manifest that he had a 
 good reason. The same day on which the battle of 
 Salamis (480 B. C.) was fought, there was a great 
 battle with the Carthaginians who had invaded 
 Sicily with a vast army, and Gelon had his hands 
 full at home. Probably there was some kind of co- 
 operation between Carthage and Persia ; but from 
 Greek Sicily the Oriental wave was rolled back, 
 as in Greece proper. So we may excuse Gelon, 
 at least he has the best excuse of all these States. 
 
 The Corcyraeans were also solicited to help the 
 cause, and they said they would, but they did not 
 fulfill and did not intend to fulfill their promise. 
 They manned sixty ships and put to sea, but 
 were careful not to reach Salamis. Their case is 
 rather the worst of the four cited. 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 397 
 
 The Cretans were likewise invited to send as- 
 sistance to their Greek brothers, and they con- 
 sulted the God at Delphi as to what they should 
 do. The answer of the Oracle was not very dis- 
 tinct, but the Cretans were evidently ready to in- 
 terpret it as dissuasive, wherein they doubtless 
 showed their inclination. Very different was the 
 interpretation of an ambiguous response by the 
 Athenians. So we shall have to place the Cretans 
 in the list of the shirkers — where the historian 
 places them evidently. 
 
 The Delphic Oracle in this Book has been play- 
 ing a curious part. It dismayed the Athenians, 
 giving the great upholders of the Greek cause 
 little comfort ; it dissuaded the Argives, who, 
 however, were ready to set it aside; it gave a 
 pretext to the Cretans for holding off. The 
 Pythia is evidently somewhat demoralized, re- 
 flecting the prevalent terror and uncertainty of 
 the Hellenic world. It is true that the Oracle 
 told the Delphians to pray to the Winds (178), 
 and the Winds did descend with vengeance upon 
 the Persian fleet — which the Delphians seemed 
 to have claimed as their special contribution to 
 the cause. 
 
 To the above list of shirkers and refusers the 
 Thessalians but partially belong, inasmuch as 
 they yielded under necessity. Herewith we 
 come to the Greek battle-line. 
 
 3. This was first in Thessaly, the Greeks 
 
398 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 having resolved to defend the pass of Olympus, 
 to which Athenian and Lacedemonian soldiers 
 were sent. Then it was abandoned, as soon as it 
 became known to them that there was another 
 pass by which their position was rendered unten- 
 able. Themistocles was in command of the 
 Athenians and we may suppose that he saw no 
 hope in the situation. 
 
 Next the Greeks settle upon a new line of 
 defense; they were to hold the pass at Ther- 
 mopylae by land, and to occupy the strait at 
 Artemisium by sea. These two places were not 
 far from each other, and both were narrow and 
 defensible by a small number of men. Such was 
 the battle-line settled upon by the Greeks, where 
 ** they resolved to await the barbarian." 
 
 The fiery ordeal applied to the Greek world in 
 this account of its mustering brings out strongly 
 who are the true bearers of the Greek idea. The 
 sifting is relentless, being the work of the spirit 
 itself ; some unite with the Persian through 
 sympathy and some through fear; others refuse 
 to co-operate with their countrymen through 
 selfishness, through indifference, through too 
 great an opinion of their importance. All such 
 are remorselessly stricken from the roll of honor, 
 and the historian is seen fulfilling his great task 
 as a kind of worl'd-judge, who calmly and impar- 
 tially sets down the names of the guilty and 
 transmits them to all time. For in this record 
 
BOOK SEVENTH, 399 
 
 there is most emphatically a judgment, a sort of 
 Last Judgment which separates the noble from 
 the ignoble, and puts the one set into its historic 
 Paradise, and the other into its historic Inferno. 
 Weltgeschichte is Weltgericht, says a famous 
 German philosopher; World-History is World- 
 Judgment. So Herodotus in his way metes out 
 reward and punishment for eternity. 
 
 W^e observe that the great conquest of the 
 Athenians in this Book is the conquest of the 
 Delphic Oracle, which they compel (the word is 
 not too strong) to take back the unfavorable 
 response. This fact hints that Athens is really 
 greater than the Oracle and truer to Greek spirit, 
 and prophesies that the Oracle of new Greece 
 will be at Athens, vet in the form of something 
 higher than the Oracle (say art, poetry, phi- 
 losophy). The Athenian will no longer accept 
 the Delphic utterance as final for them ; and if 
 it be accepted (as in case of the ^' wooden wall " ) 
 it must be interpreted into their spirit. Clearly 
 Athens has transcended Delphi, and will soon 
 manifest its rise out of the oracular into the 
 artistic and philosophic expression of the Hellenic 
 soul. 
 
 HI. 
 
 Very distinctly does this Seventh Book show 
 the two Musterings, Persian and Greek, with the 
 advance of each toward the actual battle-line in 
 
400 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 its twofold character, on land and sea. The 
 Greeks have already taken position on this line 
 and the Persians advance to the conflict. The 
 Greeks will be compelled to abandon both their 
 stations, on land and on sea ; the enemy cannot 
 be barred out of G,reece at the border. Spartan 
 bravery alone cannot save the Hellenic world. 
 The grand event now to be narrated is the battle 
 of Thermopylae ; but before it takes place, the 
 historian describes a number of preliminary oc- 
 currences. This third portion embraces the rest 
 of the Book (179-238). 
 
 1. These preliminary movements and events 
 may be thrown into four groups in successive 
 order; they being concluded, the two armies will 
 stand face to face, and the battle will begin 
 (179-200). 
 
 ( 1 ) The first blood of the war is spilled on 
 the sea. The Persian fleet sets out from Therma, 
 ten of the fastest vessels overtake three Greek 
 ships, which are acting as sentinels at the island 
 Sciathus ; all three Greek ships are captured by 
 the barbarians though the crew of the Athenian 
 vessel escape by running their craft ashore. 
 Rather an ominous encounter for a beginning; 
 the Greeks are alarmed and retire from their 
 station at Artemisium into the straits called the 
 Euripus, which they prepare to defend ( 179-83). 
 
 (2) We now pass to the Persian land force 
 (184), of which the historian here gives the 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 401 
 
 numbers. Likewise he enumerates the naval 
 force. The sum total of fighting men he places 
 at th'e enormous figure 2,641,610; he reckons 
 the non-combatants to have been as many more. 
 Very naturally these numbers are distrusted by 
 modern historians, who have conjectured various 
 devices for lessening them. This enumeration 
 ( 184-7) has been preceded by the one at Doris- 
 cus (60). Since then, however, there have been 
 many additions from the countries lying along 
 the line of march. Just at present the Persian 
 host has reached its hio^hest fio^ure; storms 
 will soon lessen it, and combats by land and 
 sea, and doubtless desertions, especially from 
 the European contingents. So . the enumera- 
 tion is given at the flood-tide of the invasion, 
 when it first strikes the Greek battle-line, at 
 Thermopylae and Sepias (the latter being the 
 Persian naval station). 
 
 It is, of course, a very difiScult matter to ascer- 
 tain whence Herodotus derived these numbers. 
 Did he have access to any Persian documents on 
 the subject? Or were they gathered by him from 
 hearsay? He must have conversed w^ith many 
 people, both Persian and Greek, who took part 
 in the expedition. The method of that enumera- 
 tion at Doriscus remains very suspicious ; it seems 
 to imply that there were no muster-rolls, and 
 no daily reports of numbers present. 
 
 26 
 
402 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 (3) We next turn to the movement of the 
 fleet (188-195), which has a double experience'. 
 Along the coast of Sepias the Persian fleet was 
 overtaken by a terrific storm which did great 
 injury, " destroying not less than four hundred 
 ships, innumerable lives, and an untold amount 
 of treasure." To the Greeks this was clearly 
 a divine intervention in their favor; but who 
 was the God? The Athenians claimed it as the 
 work of their '* son-in-law Boreas ; ' ' Poseidon the 
 Deliverer had a share in the honor ; the Persian 
 Magi, by the instruction of the lonians, sacrificed 
 to Thetis and the Nereids, to whom all the coast 
 of Sepias belonged; the Delphians also had a 
 claim, having prayed to the winds. No outsider 
 can settle the controversy ; but one may well note 
 that the Greek Gods are going to take a hand in 
 the conflict, as they did of old ( in the Iliad, for 
 instance); the providential side has strongly 
 asserted itself without any question, neither the 
 ancient historian nor the modern reader can 
 neglect it. 
 
 A second experience of that ill-fated Persian 
 fleet: fifteen of its ships sail by mistake into the 
 midst of the Greek squadron which had hastilv 
 returned to Artemisium (their naval station on 
 the northern coast of Euboea), and are easily 
 captured. Another providential gift, thinks the 
 Greek; very encouraging it must be to seethe 
 Gods entering the struggle against the Orient 
 
BOOK SEVENTH, 403 
 
 once more (for that is what they did in the 
 ancient Trojan War). 
 
 (4) The movement by land is next taken up 
 (196-201); Xerxes marches forward through 
 Thessaly till he comes to Malis opposite the pass 
 of Thermopylae, where he pitches camp. The 
 two sides now stand in each other's presence, the 
 battle is about to take place. 
 
 In the background the historian has not failed 
 to set forth the m3^thical element of which this 
 Thessalian region is the scene, both by land and 
 sea. The coast of Sepias is the home of the sea- 
 goddess Thetis, whom Peleus carried off from 
 these parts, and Thetis was the mother of Achil- 
 les, the hero of the Iliad. Not far away is the 
 spot where Jason is said to have abandoned Her- 
 cules, in the famous Argonautic expedition, which 
 was also directed against a part of Asia. Xerxes 
 himself listens to Greek legends told him at Alos 
 in Achaea (197) ; near by his camp, in the Trach- 
 inian territory, is the place where Hercules died 
 (on Mount Oeta); the legend declares that the 
 stream Dyras just here rose up from the earth in 
 order "to assist him when burning" (198). 
 Thus the locality of Thermopylae is full of Greek 
 heroic legend ; the two great mythical expeditions 
 against Asia, the Argonautic and the Trojan, are 
 suggested, and every Greek soul has this legend- 
 ary stream pouring through it and mingling with 
 the present. Now the Asiatic has invaded the 
 
404 THE FATHEB OF RISTOBY. 
 
 very territory of the heroes ; surely the hitter 
 will assist their people in the present emergency. 
 In such fashion does the mythical background 
 fuse with the historical reality. 
 
 2. The battle of Thermopylae is recorded 
 (201-233) with its immediate antecedents and 
 results. 
 
 ( 1 ) The historian first calls the muster-roll of 
 the Greeks who are present ; all are commanded 
 by Leonidas, the Spartan king, who has with 
 him three hundred Spartans. At first he thinks 
 of retreating to the Isthmus (of Corinth), but 
 gives up the idea when he sees that the Phocians 
 and Locrians, whose countries would thus be left 
 to the Persian (207), w^ere deeply indignant at 
 the proposition. 
 
 In contrast with this historical statement, 
 Xerxes is here introduced havins^ a conversation 
 withDemaratus, who assures him that these men 
 are going to fight. An epical touch again, pre- 
 paratory to the conflict at hand ; it corresponds 
 in style to the first portion of the Book. 
 
 Thus the two different ways of literary hand- 
 ling (Persian and Greek) as already exemplified 
 in the two previous portions of the Book, are 
 here put together (202-9). 
 
 (2) The special account of the battle and of its 
 various stages is given with distinctness, (a) 
 The assault of the Medes and Cisseans; first dajs 
 Persian defeat (210). The assault by the Per- 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 405 
 
 siaii '* Immortals ;" again a Persian defeat. In 
 this account the strong difference between the 
 Persian mass and the Greek order is brought out 
 (211-2) ; the king " leaps twice from his throne" 
 as he witnesses the fight, {h) The road over the 
 mountains flanking the Greek position is discov- 
 ered to the Persian by a Greek named Ephialtes, 
 accursed to all time for his traitorious act ( 213-8). 
 The Phocians guarding this road retreat and let 
 the Persians pass, (c) The fact is made known 
 to the Greeks that they are flanked. The Spar- 
 tans stay, the rest of the Greeks depart ; whether 
 they left of their accord or were sent away by 
 Leonidas, remained an unsettled question in the 
 historian's time. But the seven hundred Thes- 
 pians refused to leave, they stayed and perished 
 with the three hundred Spartans (219-222). 
 Also Megistias, the augur, stayed, though dis- 
 missed by Leonidas. (d) The final struggle 
 takes place (223-5). The Greeks with reckless 
 bravery leave the wall at the narrow part of the 
 pass between the mountains and the s^a, and 
 advance into the wdde part of the defile. Here 
 the battle continues till the Persians wdth Ephial- 
 tes approach in the rear. Then the Greeks 
 except the Thebans, retreat to a hillock, *^ on 
 wdiich the stone lion now stands to the memorv 
 of Leonidas," Avhere they perish to the last man. 
 (e) Special mention (226-33). Herodotus is 
 fond of giving the name of the doer of the deed. 
 
406 THE FATHEE OF HISTORY. 
 
 be it good or bad; he individualizes. The 
 Greeks are not an indiscriminate mass like the 
 Persian army, where '* no regard was paid to the 
 individual perishing." One Spartan survived, 
 his name and fate are given. *' I have ascer- 
 tained the names of the whole three hundred," 
 which were engraved on a monument at Sparta 
 erected about the year 440 B. C. (still seen 
 by the traveler Pausanias). Herodotus prob- 
 ably saw this monument not long after its 
 erection, indeed he may have been present 
 at the ceremonies over the remains of Leo- 
 nidas, when they were brought back to Sparta 
 in the mentioned year. That would have 
 furnished a good opportunity for collecting his- 
 toric facts and anecdotes about the battle, and 
 the historian probably seized it. Certainly he 
 has a much clearer conception of the battle of 
 Thermopylae, than he has of Marathon. It is 
 likely, too, that he visited the battle-ground and 
 studied its topography. 
 
 3. The historian passes to the Persian side and 
 shows the inner workinofs there in a dialog-ue 
 (234-8). That is, the epical manner is again 
 introduced; Xerxes sends for Demaratus, the 
 Spartan, and asks concerning these Spartan war- 
 riors, whose numbers are placed by the latter at 
 eight thousand (not including the Lacedemonians 
 and the Helots). " In what way shall we conquer 
 them with the least trouble? " asks the king. 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 407 
 
 Such a question does indeed imply a change in 
 his temper. Demaratus gives the best advice 
 possible: Take the island Cyth era off the La- 
 conic coast, and harass them from that point. 
 But Achaemenes, brother of Xerxes, thwarts this 
 project and tries to undermine the influence of 
 Demaratus, charging all the Greeks with being 
 envious, which is just the trait which he shows 
 himself. 
 
 In this dialogue (237), Xerxes states his view 
 of citizenship and friendship: ** The citizen 
 envies his fellow-citizen who is prosperous, but 
 a friend (or guest) is delighted at the prosperity 
 of his fellow-friend." An Oriental view surely; 
 the Persian had no use for Greek citizenship 
 with its equality, begetter of envy; but friend- 
 ship could exist between master and slave. 
 
 Thus the Book ends with the attempt to set 
 forth in fictitious form the movement in the mind 
 of the Persian monarch, after the strui^o^le at 
 Thermopylae. Xerxes overrules Spartan advice 
 in reference to Sparta, and takes the resolution 
 not to separate the naval force, but to let it 
 advance in the same way as before. The abso- 
 lute sovereign directs all, as will be seen, to his 
 own fatality. So the Seventh Book opens and 
 concludes in epic fashion, yet with an introduc- 
 tion and an appendix. 
 
 This appendix (239) simply brings up a part 
 of the account which was previously left out in 
 
408 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 its proper place. It tells how the Spartans, first 
 of all the Greeks, came to know of the intended 
 expedition through Demaratus. But it must 
 have been generally felt throughout the Greek 
 world that a Persian invasion was likely to take 
 place at any time. The conflict was at hand and 
 had been intensifying for generations. The story 
 of the waxen tablet of Demaratus, whose purport 
 was divined by a woman, Gorgo, wife otLeoni- 
 das, is one of those entertaining personal anec- 
 dotes, which the historian has the habit of taking 
 up into his narrative, and which seemg to be 
 derived from his visit to Sparta. 
 
 As regards the battle of Thermopylae, the 
 reader is moved most powerfully to both feeling 
 and reflection. Leonidas and his Three Hundred, 
 who fought here, have produced a profound im- 
 pression through all the ages since ; we are not 
 to forget, however, that seven hundred Thespians 
 stayed and perished with them. Why not a 
 greater force present? The Spartans were cele- 
 brating one of their festivals (the Carnean), and 
 the Olympic games were also being held at the 
 time. Very curious is the fact: the religious 
 functions must be performed though the enemy 
 be at the gates of Greece. Consequently an 
 advance s^uard is sent, the rest are to follow. 
 
 It is not necessary to tell this story after Her- 
 odotus whose account has taken a lasting place 
 in Uoiversal History. What is the reason of itr 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 409 
 
 power? Here is the idea of sacrifice for the 
 great cause; not one man merely, but a band of 
 men. It was their sacrifice to their conception 
 of dut}^ ; the law was their master, the monarch 
 was within, hence the strong contrast with the 
 Persian mass. 
 
 Still, Thermopylae did not save, anything ; it 
 was a sacrifice indeed, but an unnecessary sacri- 
 fice. Greece is tragic if its destiny be read by 
 the light of Thermopylae; it will die bravely 
 lighting, and that will be the end of it. The 
 Orient will take possession of the Greek heritage 
 as far as the Spartan deed is concerned. 
 
 Leonidas follows the Oracle literally, which 
 says that one of the kings must perish. There 
 is no interpretation of the Oracle, such as The- 
 mistocles gave; the letter is adhered to, though 
 it killeth. So the Carnean festival and the 
 Olympic games cannot be omitted or deferred ; 
 law has become a despot in the Spartan soul. 
 
 To be sure, there was a tendency in the Greek 
 to play everything ideally in order to prepare 
 himself for the reality. War was a kind of fest- 
 ival, with its contest, its victors, its crown, its 
 personal skill and bravery. At Thermopylae the 
 bravest man is designated by name, though he 
 be merely a private man in the ranks ; the palm 
 of excellence is bestowed for all time. This his- 
 tory of Herodotus as alread}^ remarked, is a kind 
 of judgment on the participants of the great 
 
410 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 Olympic game called the Persian war; in many 
 ways it adjusts itself to such a conception present 
 to every Greek. 
 
 We mav well call this Seventh Book endino: in 
 Thermopylae the Spartan Book of the present 
 History. It shows Spartan character at its best, 
 yet w^ith all its limits. These limits the rigid 
 hide-bound Spartan cannot of himself trans- 
 cend, yet they must be transcended, if Greece is 
 not to be tragic. The Athenian will reach 
 over the Spartan limit, and lead Greece out of 
 its impending tragic destiny to victory. 
 
 What impression has all this produced upon 
 the Persian monarch? There is a distinct letting 
 down of pride; here are men w^ho cannot be 
 made slaves. Again he feels the limitation; all 
 his power can merely inflict death upon the free- 
 man. Demaratus is once more introduced <2fivino: 
 advice, after it is asked for, since Xerxes is now 
 ready to listen. But the advice is not follow^ed 
 by the king, cannot be; the seizing of Cythera 
 and the threatening of the Spartan territory 
 would make it a w-ar of skill, and the king would 
 give up his principle of conquering directly by 
 mass. So the king follow^s the counsel of 
 Achaemenes, his brother, Avho still clings to the 
 Persian view of the invincibilitv of number, in 
 spite of the strong object lesson just received. 
 
 The reader is recommended to pay special at- 
 tention to the structure of the present Book in 
 
BOOK SEVENTH, 411 
 
 order to catch its art as well as its meaning. 
 For a further help, we shall set down in the form 
 of a brief tabular outline the three divisions just 
 given and their leading subdivisions. 
 
 I. The Mustering of the Orient (1-131). 
 
 1. Xerxes in Asia (1-45). 
 
 (1) Internal Thread. The mind 
 
 of the king (1-18). 
 Speeches for and against 
 the invasion. 
 
 (2) External Thread. From Susa 
 
 to Abydus (19-45). 
 
 2. The crossing of Xerxes from Asia 
 
 into Europe (46-100). 
 
 (1) Internal Thread. The mind 
 
 of the king (46-53). Talk 
 with Artabarius. 
 
 (2) External Thread. Across the 
 
 Hellespont (54-100). 
 
 3. Xerxes in Europe (101-131). 
 
 (1) Internal Thread. The mind 
 
 of the king (101-104). 
 Talk with Demaratus. 
 
 (2) External Thread. From 
 
 Doriscus toward Greece 
 (105-131). 
 II. The Mustering of the Greeks (132-178). 
 1. Those who give and those who re- 
 fuse earth and water to the Persian 
 (132-147). 
 
412 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 2. The Neutrals who neither submit 
 
 nor refuse to submit (148-171). 
 
 3. The true defenders of Hellas bein^^ 
 
 sifted out, rally on their two bat- 
 tle lines (172-8). 
 III. The battle of Thermopylae, with attend- 
 ant circumstances before and after 
 (179-238). 
 
 1. Various preliminary movements on 
 
 sea and land (179-200). 
 
 2. Thermopylae — the locality, the 
 
 contestants, and the contest (201- 
 233). 
 
 3. Epical conclusion of the Book. The 
 
 mind of Xerxes. Dialogue with 
 Demaratus and Achaemenes ( 234- 
 8). Anecdote of Demaratus ( 239). 
 
 Thus, in its conclusion, the Book seems to 
 come back to the epical manner of its beginning, 
 the object of which is to set forth the mind of 
 Xerxes in its special workings, as well as to hint 
 in a general way the total Persian consciousness. 
 It is manifest that the pride of the Oriental 
 monarch has' received something of a shock by 
 the contest at Thermopylae; a very rational ques- 
 tion he asks Demaratus about the way to con- 
 quer the Spartans, but he relapses soon into his 
 Persian fatuity through the words of his brother 
 Achaemenes. 
 
BOOK SEVENTH. 413 
 
 The reader will note with what care and repe- 
 tition, and sometimes repeated repetition, we 
 have sought to impress upon his mind the struc- 
 tural movement of the present Book. Let not his 
 patience fail at the anxiety of the author to help 
 him grasp what is fundamental in this very im- 
 portant stage of the History. We hold that the 
 architectonic power of the historian reaches its 
 highest point in the Seventh Book, though other 
 Books and indeed the whole w^ork are grand man- 
 ifestations of that same power. But now the 
 mighty event, for which the whole previous His- 
 tory is only a vast preparation, is about to trans- 
 pire, and it must be recorded w^orthily ; the his- 
 torian must show himself the true successor of 
 the poet of Iliad, whose theme is also at bottom 
 just this same conflict between Orient and Occi- 
 dent. Most marvelously interwrought are the 
 epical and the historical elements, though, of 
 course, the whole is History, not Poetry. A true 
 child of Homer is this Herodotus ; his construc- 
 tive ability is poetic, w^hile his material is the 
 historic fact. 
 
BOOK EIGHTH, 
 
 In a number of respects this Book shows a 
 contrast with the preceding one, which ended, as 
 ah'eady stated, in a tragic manner. Surely there 
 is no salvation for Greece, if Thermopylae gives 
 the keynote of the war. The Spartans had con- 
 trol, not one Athenian was present in the fight 
 apparently. But now we come again to an 
 Athenian Book, and the decision of the struggle 
 passes from land to sea, from Sparta to Athens. 
 Xerxes at present controls Greek territory to the 
 Isthmus of Corinth, the Spartans have not kept 
 him back though they have died. But the Per-* 
 sian king does not control the sea, and, as we 
 shall soon discover, cannot control it; this is the 
 fact that settles the success of the invasion. 
 
 The Athenians have become a marine people, 
 their character has been trained by the sea, 
 whose mastery requires skill, versatility, courage, 
 (414) 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 415 
 
 readiness to meet new dangers. The Persians 
 are a land people, so are the Lacedemonians; 
 the greater has at Thermopylae overwhelmed the 
 lesser. The Athenians are, however, both a 
 land people and a sea people, we may say; they 
 show, in the present conflict, the solidity and 
 persistence of the former, the adjustability and 
 resomxefulness of the latter. Already at Mara- 
 thon they manifested what they could do on land ; 
 now they are to reveal what they are able to do 
 by sea. 
 
 The Athenian character concentrates and cul- 
 minates in a most marvelous individual, which 
 the time calls forth as the leader — Themistocles. 
 Hardly has a greater man appeared in history. 
 We have already seen him commanding the 
 Athenian contingent in Thessaly and retiring 
 before the Persian advance. He must have felt 
 then that the land was no place to make head- 
 way against Persia. He was the father of the 
 Athenian navy, and now he takes his own off- 
 spring in hand. Of all men the most resource- 
 ful he appears, yet he has the moral drawbacks 
 which seem to come with such a character; he 
 will take and give bribes, he looks out for him- 
 self in his bravest moments ; while destroying 
 the Persian army, he makes friends with the 
 Persians. Herodotus has remorselessly set 
 down all his moral offenses, and seems to take 
 special care to put behind every great deed of his 
 
416 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 some selfish motive. For this reason it has been 
 questioned whether our historian has given a 
 wholly fair picture of Themistocles. Still the 
 place of the latter in the struggle is shown to be 
 supreme, altogether overtopping any Greek or any 
 Persian, for he is first victorious over his own 
 side, and then over the enemy. 
 
 This Book is, accordingl}^ the Book of Salami.-;, 
 of the sea-fight, which really put a stop to the 
 movement of the Persian nation westward. More- 
 over it heralds a new kind of warfare, which be- 
 longs peculiarly to the Occident. Sea-fights had 
 occurred long before Salamis, but here it is naval 
 
 skill which rises into prominence, and decides 
 
 * 
 
 the contest. The Book falls into the following 
 order : — 
 
 I. The movements on sea and land from the 
 battle of Artemisium till after the 
 battle of Salamis ( 1-9(5 ). 
 
 1. The first stage of affairs after Ther- 
 
 mopylae ( 1-39 ) . 
 
 ( 1 ) On the sea ; battle of Arte- 
 
 misium (1-23). 
 
 (2) On land; Persian army 
 
 divides: one part reaches 
 Delphi (24-39). 
 
 2. The second stage ; movement on both 
 
 sides to Attica (40-55). 
 (1) On the sea; Geeeks retire to 
 Salamis (40-9). 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 417 
 
 (2) Oil land; Xerxes marches to 
 Athens (50-55). 
 3. Third stage ; the battle of Salamis with 
 the doings of Themistocles (56-96). 
 
 1. Greek commanders first resolve 
 
 to fight at Salamis, and then 
 change their mind. Persian 
 fleet comes up (56-74). 
 
 2. Themistocles compels the fight 
 
 on both sides ( 75-96 ) , choos- 
 ing time and place. 
 II. After the battle is an intermediate period 
 of relaxation and of readjusting move- 
 ments on both sides (97-132). 
 
 1. First stage; a mutual relaxation of 
 
 the grip on both sides (97-112). 
 
 (1) Persian; the flight of Xer- 
 
 xes resolved on (97-107). 
 
 ( 2 ) Greek ; the victors withdraw 
 
 from pursuit (108-112). 
 
 2. Second stage; both sides at rest 
 
 (113-125). 
 
 ( 1 ) Persian ; the army retires from 
 
 Athens to Thessaly. Mar- 
 donius with select troops 
 remains. Xerxes flees for 
 Asia (113-120). 
 
 (2) Greek; fleet returns to Sal- 
 
 amis ; rewards distributed 
 (121-5). 
 27 
 
418 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 3. Third stas^e ; some distant echoes of 
 the struggle ; complete final separa- 
 tion of the contestants (126-132). 
 
 (1) Persian; some fighting along 
 
 the line in the north ; the 
 crossing into Asia (126- 
 30). 
 
 (2) Greek ; fleet refuses to go fur- 
 
 ther than Delos (131-2). 
 III. Beginnings of the new conflict under 
 Mardonius (133-144). 
 
 1. The Persian consults Greek Oracles 
 
 (133-5). 
 
 2. The Persian attempts to detach the 
 
 Athenians from the rest of the 
 Greeks (136-144). 
 
 Thus we catch the bearing of the present Book, 
 the great positive fact of which is the battle of 
 Salamis, with movements before and after. In- 
 deed this battle is the culmination of the whole 
 war, which has swept steadily forward from Asia 
 through Europe up to Salamis, where the blow 
 is delivered which causes the mighty armament 
 both naval and military, to reel back inta Asia, 
 whence it came. Even further we mav extend 
 our thought of this event, and regard it as the 
 decisive action which proclaims that the Orient 
 is not to rule the Occident. To be sure, the war 
 is not yet over, though it is decided ; the Greeks 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 419 
 
 possess the sea, and therewith are saved. The 
 islands of the Aegaean can be held only by 
 naval supremacy, which is now lost to the 
 Persian. 
 
 The above divisions of the Book, we shall de- 
 velop into fuller detail, following the text of the 
 historian. 
 
 I. 
 
 As already indicated, the first portion gives 
 the movement by sea and by land from Artemis- 
 ium and Thermopylae to Athens and Salamis. 
 The first battle-line is broken through by the 
 Persians and abandoned by the Greeks ; both 
 sides come together in and around Salamis where 
 the naval struggle takes place. 
 
 The structure of this portion of the Eighth 
 Book is somewhat intricate and resembles the 
 structure of the first portion of the Seventh 
 Book. There are two threads, the sea and the 
 land, each with its own movement, which has 
 three distinct stages, in the sweep from the 
 northern battle-line to Salamis. 
 
 1. The first stage shows the situation by sea 
 and land after Thermopylae together with the 
 naval conflict. The latter is narrated first, and 
 is called the battle of Artemisium, being the 
 prelude to Salamis. 
 
 (1) The muster-roll of the Greek ships is 
 given in which Athens is seen to have the 
 
420 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 greater number (counting the twenty furnished 
 by them to the Chalcidians) at the start, 
 and a still larger preponderance at the end. In 
 addition she furnishes the spirit and the brain, 
 still she has not the chief command, which she 
 I'esigns for the sake of unity. This mighty act 
 of renunciation is her chief glory, and really 
 gives her the secret, compelling power of the 
 time. She possesses also the intellect of Greece 
 in the person of her commander Themistocles, 
 who sees that the right place to fight the battle is 
 the narrow strait in which the number of the 
 enemy's ships is the enemy's disadvantage. 
 Still he has to conquer his own side first ; his 
 allies must be deceived into doing the right thing, 
 or be bribed into doing it. The trouble is, 
 authority and capacity are divorced, the com- 
 mander and the wise man are two different per- 
 sons. Athens is the soul of the fleet, and Them- 
 istocles is its mind. He takes his means to 
 accomplish his end, the question being, shall I 
 be a moralist or a patriot? 
 
 So the fight by sea starts. First a little rush 
 in the late of afternoon for a test ; the Greeks 
 take thirty ships, surely a good omen. Then 
 comes a terrific storm whose violence chiefly falls 
 upon the unprotected vessels of the barbarians ; 
 the Gods are undoubtedly taking a hand in the 
 contest. Finally on the third day, a severe battle 
 is fought, apparently with the balance in favor 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 421 
 
 of the Greeks. But Thermopylae being lost, 
 they have to withdraw southward to Greece. 
 
 Such is the preliminary naval conflict, in which 
 several things come out clear. The Athenians 
 are essentially the masters of the situation, the 
 sea is to them no Thermopylae, andThemistocles 
 is no Leonidas. The manner of overcomino^ the 
 Persian fleet is taught by experience ; it must be 
 attacked in a strait where its numbers will simply 
 be an impediment. Where is such a place? Sala- 
 mis, whose battle will be a repetition of Arte- 
 misium. Such is the experience here gained, 
 very useful ; one can well imagine that the 
 Athenians sailed homeward with forebodins^s 
 dark enough for their city, yet seeing rifts in the 
 clouds, which let some rays of golden hope drop 
 down over the sea. 
 
 (2) The narrative next passes to the land (24), 
 and recounts the doings of Xerxes and his host 
 after the battle of Thermopylae. He permits 
 whoever wishes, to pass from the fleet to the 
 land and take a view of the dead Spartans, '* the 
 senseless men who hoped to overthrow the king's 
 power." Still he employs a trick to conceal his 
 own loss. 
 
 The land march for Greece then begins, and 
 the army reaches Panopeae in Phocis, where it 
 divides, part going to Delphi and the rest mov- 
 ing towards Athens. These two places may 
 indeed be called the two centers of Greek civili- 
 
422 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 zation — the one is the instinctive Oracle, passing 
 out, the other is self-conscious Intelligence, 
 coming in. The Persian struck at both, and 
 failed in both blows. 
 
 Yet very different is the character of the two 
 repulses. At Delphi the God himself enters the 
 conflict, the sacred arms " which it was not law- 
 ful for an}^ mortal to touch," were miraculously 
 taken down and lay before the temple; crags 
 fell from the mountains above, a war-shout came 
 from Minerva's fane, and the enemy fled in a 
 great panic. The repulse from Delphi was 
 supernatural, the work of the God without human 
 aid, for he declared that he would "look after 
 his own," and nearly all theDelphians ran away. 
 Very different is the repulse of the Persian at 
 x^thenian Salamis, as we shall see; that is su- 
 premely the work of man's intelligence; nay, the 
 Oracle first with its discoura^inof and then with 
 its ambiguous responses had to be interpreted and 
 transcended by those epoch-making Athenians. 
 The transition from the old to the new Hellas we 
 may read in the battles at Delphi and at 
 Salamis. 
 
 2. The historian brings before us the sea 
 forces of the Greeks and the land forces of the 
 Persians at a common point in Attica (40-55). 
 The kins: takes the external Athens, its houses 
 and locality, but the Athenians are in their ships, 
 out of his reach, yet in sight. In the strongest 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 423 
 
 way the situation shows the triumph of mind; 
 let the king burn their city, they can and will 
 build another and a better. Such is the protec- 
 tion now given by those wooden walls which 
 Themistocles has caused them to construct. 
 
 ( 1 ) The Grecian fleet moves from Artemisium 
 to Salamis ** at the request of the Athenians," 
 who find the selfish Peloponnesians fortifying 
 the Isthmus and leaving Athens to her fate. 
 But a number of new ships appear, and again the 
 muster-roll is given. The Peloponnesians of 
 the fleet propose to desert Salamis, as they de- 
 serted Athens on land. Here is the problem 
 which Themistocles has to meet ; he must con- 
 quer his own people and compel them to give 
 battle in the right place (40-49). 
 
 (2) The army of Xerxes reaches Athens (50) 
 where a few citizens have chosen to remain and 
 defend themselves in the Acropolis behind some 
 planks and stakes, deeming such to be the wooden 
 wall intended by the Oracle. But they are cap- 
 tured and destroyed, after a valiant defense; 
 they did not interpret the Oracle aright, taking it 
 altogether too literally. So they died the death 
 of heroes, like the Spartans at Thermopylae. 
 Here too miracles transpire : the sacred serpent 
 leaves the Acropolis, and the sacred olive, burnt 
 in the conflagration of the temple, sends up a 
 new shoot a cubit long in a day. 
 
 3. In the two previous stages of the n:iove- 
 
424 TEE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 ment to Salamis we have followed the sea and 
 the land in regular order; but in the third stage 
 at which we have now arrived, the structure 
 changes somewhat, the same elements are pres- 
 ent, but are brought before us in a different 
 order. Xerxes is here, active, yet rather help- 
 less, with his enemies in their ships, out of his 
 way; the Persian fleet comes up, and takes posi- 
 tion ; the Peloponnesians complete their wall at 
 the Isthmus. It is a very lively picture, with 
 strong dramatic coloring; narrative repeatedly 
 goes over into dialogue. 
 
 There is one person around whom the move- 
 ment gathers irresistibly. Not the Greek king, 
 not the Spartan commander, it is Themistocles, 
 who becomes the hero more than ever. He, 
 though not the official admiral, compels the un- 
 willing Peloponnesian to fight where and when he 
 wishes ; for the Persian enemy likewise he selects 
 the time and place for the battle. 
 
 This part of the Book will naturally organize 
 itself along the line of Themistocles' doings, 
 since he is really the moving power. A great 
 variety of matters go to make up the picture, but 
 he is the central figure, the one greatest man, 
 bearer of the World- Spirit, and not alone of 
 nationality. 
 
 (1) The Greeks at Salamis have had a council, 
 and have resolved to go to the Isthmus and fight 
 there. The spirit is that each contingent wishes 
 
BOOK EIGHTH, 425 
 
 to fight for its own separate city, and not for all 
 Greece. The spirit of individualism is tearing 
 them to pieces ; one people alone, the Athenians, 
 seem animated with a Pan-Hellenic feeling, and 
 Themistocles just now is its representative. At 
 once he starts to work to annul the decree, " for 
 if the Peloponnesians remove the fleet from 
 Salamis, they will, each, betake themselves to 
 their own cities." Such is the true view of 
 Athenian Mnesiphilus, here recorded. In the 
 second council Themistocles makes a great 
 speech, stating the innermost fact of the 
 situation that "the whole success of the 
 war depends on our fleet," and threatening 
 that the Athenians will quit Greece altogether 
 and go to Siris in Italy, *' which, the oracles say, 
 is to be inhabited by us " — which oracles, how- 
 ever, were never verified. But Themistocles 
 gains his point; Eurybiades, the Spartan ad- 
 miral, resolves to stay. Nor must we forget 
 that characteristic sentence of his. ** To those 
 deliberating reasonably, success usually comes; 
 but if men deliberate unreasonably, not even the 
 God will come to the aid of human caprices." 
 
 As the counterpart to this speech, follow divine 
 signs, miracles, prayers, holy ceremonies. There 
 was an earthquake, all the Gods were invoked 
 and specially the local heroes of Salamis; the 
 local heroes of Egina the Aeacidae, were sent 
 for and brought in a ship ; above all the mystic 
 
426 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 procession was heard, and a great cloud of dust 
 rose along the sacred way of Eleusis, *' as if of 
 thirty thousand men." So the supernatural ele- 
 ment is not wanting in this mighty conflict; nor 
 is the rational principle lacking ; indeed both are 
 co-operating for the one great end. 
 
 The Persian fleet passes from Artemisium to 
 Athens, where the army had already arrived. 
 Here we have a consultation on the Persian side, 
 the question being, Shall we fight the Greek fleet 
 in this place? One person only, Artemisia the 
 queen of Halicarnassus, gave a dissuasive answer, 
 stating the difiiculties with great frankness, 
 which pleased the king. Still the latter issued 
 orders for the battle to take place. 
 
 (2) In the Greek fleet the discontent of the 
 Peloponnesians breaks out into open reproaches, 
 and a new council is called in which the former 
 resolution to stay at Salamis is overruled. Now 
 comes the master stroke of Themistocles to 
 make them stay and fight there. He sent a 
 trusted servant, Sicinnus by name, to the Per- 
 sians with a message. The result was threefold : 
 first, the Persian fleet at once prepared for a 
 battle on the morrow ; second, the Greek fleet 
 was surrounded in the night by the enemj^'s 
 ships and could not escape ; third, Themistocles 
 pretended to the Persians to send the message in 
 the interest of the king, from whom, in case of 
 necessity, he might claim hereafter the reward 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 427 
 
 of a benefactor. Thus he was already preparing 
 a place to leap upon, should matters turn out 
 amiss. 
 
 The council was still sitting when word came 
 that the passage outward was no longer open. 
 Aristides first brings the news, then a Tenian ship 
 deserting: from the Persian, confirms it. Three 
 different councils have been held, but all have at 
 last to do what Themistocles says. His strata- 
 2:em forces the Greeks into union and into a 
 battle for the whole country ; he must save them 
 against their own folly. The Spartan has a sin- 
 gle means, the Athenian has many means ; the 
 one perishes, the other triumphs. Themistocles 
 has no moral sense, jQt he has patriotism in the 
 highest degree, when the crisis is on ; but when 
 the conflict is over, he must look out for a day 
 of reckoning for his moral delinquencies. So 
 wdiile hittino^ the Persian on the head a blow 
 which sends him reeling out of Europe, Themis- 
 tocles prepares for a future emergency, a possi- 
 ble flight to Persia, which will indeed become 
 actual. Such is the duplicity of intellect in this 
 man, he sees the two sides in everything; his 
 advice to fight is made good for both sides, and 
 his later advice to Xerxes to flee is good for 
 Greek and Persian. Sophist that he is, he can 
 give the best reason to each party, and make 
 both believe him and follow him. 
 
 The conflict takes place (83-96), must take 
 
428 THE FATHEB OF EI8T0BY. 
 
 place. . Themistocles is the gigantic figure com- 
 pelling and controlling the action ; he holds the 
 heads of both contestants in his hands and knocks 
 them together. To be sure, he strikes the harder 
 blow against the Persian, who now finds out that 
 he cannot conquer Greece. The battle of Sala- 
 mis is essentially the work of Themistocles, 
 backed, of course, mightily by the Athenians. 
 What constitutes a people was never ipore truly 
 seen than when they, without city and country, 
 stood on board their ships, their wooden walls, 
 and conquered. The spirit was there, and had 
 built those walls and would build new walls and 
 a city anywhere. Already we have noted that 
 they represented something far beyond them- 
 selves, something of which they were hardly con- 
 scious ; they were the instruments of a new stage 
 of the World's progress. 
 
 II. 
 
 The battle having been fought, the historian 
 gives an account of what takes place on both 
 sides, Persian and Greek, after the great victory. 
 The fio:ht was a terrible strain for both, and it is 
 no wonder that a kind of relaxation and unwill- 
 insrness to act set in afterwards : the result was 
 
 & 
 
 indeed so stunnins^ that both antasfonists suffered 
 for a time a sort of paralysis of will. Moreover 
 winter was approaching and the season invited to 
 rest. Our historian will trace this period in a 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 429 
 
 series of short sketches, passing rapidly from one 
 side to the other three times, and thereby show- 
 ing both the succession and the contemporaneous- 
 ness of certain events (97-132). 
 
 1. Both sides, Persian and Greek, are seen 
 slowly letting go their hold of each other, and 
 drawing back after their great effort (97-112). 
 
 (1) On the Persian side, this fact comes out 
 plainly in the present attitude of the king, who 
 seems to have been thoroughly frightened and 
 demoralized by the unexpected outcome of the 
 battle. He is afraid *' of being shut up in 
 Europe;" no wonder that he feels uncomfort- 
 able; he now fully realizes that Europe does not 
 belong to him, and he wishes to get out of it as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 Again we have an epical treatment of the situ- 
 ation, which reveals the inner workings of the 
 mind of the king. Mardonius addresses him, 
 craftily advising flight, " with the greatest part 
 of the army ; " but the same general also declares, 
 *' I shall deliver to you Greece enslaved, having 
 selected from the. Persian host three hundred 
 thousand men." Mardonius sees his opportun- 
 ity, as his ambition is to make himself ** satrap 
 of Hellas." Queen Artemisia is also introduced 
 with her advice at this juncture of events ; she 
 flatters her royal master with that delicate touch 
 of '' having burned Athens, for which you under- 
 took the expedition," and advises him to return 
 
430 THE FAT HE B OF HISTORY. 
 
 home. Xerxes was of course *' pleased with 
 her advice, for she happened to say the very 
 things which he designed." Clearly Artemisia 
 knows her man, that Halicarnassian queen is not 
 devoid of a subtle insight into character. So the 
 king honors her specially, for she has coated 
 over the bitter pill of humiliation with the sweet- 
 est covering of adulation, w^oman that she is as 
 well as Oriental warrior. 
 
 It is highly probable that Herodotus picked 
 up this story of Artemisia and Xerxes in 
 his native Halicarnassus. The exploits of the 
 queen must have been the talk of the town, 
 embellished doubtless with many fictitious turns. 
 Also the story of the vengeance of Hermotimus, 
 interwoven at this point ( 105), is in the nature of 
 a current anecdote, showing the hostility of the 
 popular mind to certain Persian customs. Peda- 
 sus, the native place of Hermotimus, was not far 
 from Halicarnassus. 
 
 (2) The Greeks (108-112) expected to con- 
 tinue the fiofhtino^ off Salamis, but the fleet of the 
 enemy fled rapidly, by the king's order, to pro- 
 tect the bridges at the Hellespont. The Greeks 
 pursued for a short distance and Themistocles 
 favored going at once to the Hellespont and 
 destroying the bridges; but the Peloponne- 
 sians thought of home, and preferred to let the 
 Persians get out of Europe. Hereupon Them- 
 istocles changes his tactics, and helps on the 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 431 
 
 flight of the Persians by a secret message, seek- 
 ing to secure their favor hereafter "if any 
 thing should happen to him from the Athenians." 
 Such is the motive here assigned to him by the 
 historian ; but a doubt will always arise in the 
 mind of the reader about its correctness. From 
 what sources did Herodotus get all these facts 
 concerning Themistocles ? Unquestionably from 
 the society surrounding him during his stay in 
 Athens. 
 
 It is quite clear, however, that Themistocles 
 with his powerful fleet, besieged Andros and 
 extorted large sums of money from the islanders. 
 Again we behold the greatest Athenian general, 
 after heroic devotion and self-denial, turnino:into 
 a freebooter, though he has the pretext against 
 these towns and islands that they had " med- 
 ized." The same fatality lies in him which we 
 saw in Miltiades after Marathon. Themistocles 
 also will vanish out of sight after this one grand 
 success, and at last he himself will *• medize," 
 will flee to Persia, seekini>- to undo his pfreatdeed. 
 Tragic as Miltiades he is, though the manner of 
 his ending be different. This part of his storj^ 
 however, is not told by Herodotus, but by the 
 latter's o^reat successor, Thucvdides. Somethins: 
 of the same character is in Athens herself, which 
 character will develop more and more with time, 
 and furnish the leading theme of a later portion 
 of Greek history. 
 
432 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 2. In this second stage (113-125) both sides 
 are briefly brought before us withdrawing from 
 conflict and passing into a state of rest. 
 
 (1) Mardonius with his chosen troops goes 
 into winter quarters in Thessaly. Xerxes con- 
 tinues his flight, crosses the Hellespont in haste, 
 and at last reaches Sardes, in Asia Minor, where 
 for the first time apparently since the battle of Sal- 
 amis he takes an easy breath. The most humil- 
 iating spectacle known to history probably is this 
 flight of Xerxes. Considering the way he came 
 into Europe and the way he went out, one thinks 
 that the contrast could not be greater. The 
 former flight of Darius from Scythia is small in 
 comparison, and the Moscow retreat is a lesser 
 parallel. 
 
 (2) The Greeks return to Salamis (121-5), 
 and divide the booty between the Gods and them- 
 selves, for the Gods unquestionably lent a hand 
 in the fight. Then the fleet sails to the Isthmus 
 in order to award the prize of valor to the most 
 deserving Greek. Each general voted the first 
 prize to himself, for each *' thought himself the 
 most valiant; " but a majority voted the second 
 prize to' Themistocles. Too good a story to be 
 exactly true, one thinks ; but we may accept the 
 statement that " the Greeks would not deter- 
 mine the matter out of envy," though public 
 opinion throughout Greece gave emphatically 
 the honor to the right man, Themistocles (124). 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 433 
 
 3. For the third time the historian introduces 
 the two armaments in a short section (126-32), 
 which shows some of the side issues of the great 
 contest, while the main forces of the two antag- 
 onists are quiet and wholly separated from each 
 other. 
 
 1. The Persian contingent under Artabazus 
 (126), having escorted Xerxes to the Hellespont, 
 was on its way back to Mardonius, when it 
 sought to suppress revolts of Greek cities in the 
 North, as Potidaeaand Olynthus. The battle of 
 Salamis had stirred evidently the Greek towns 
 along the Persian line of march, indeed the 
 whole Hellenic world saw a new destiny for them- 
 selves through that victory over the Orient; in 
 their spirits the Occident had really dawned. 
 Artabazus meets with a disaster, and is repelled 
 from Potidaea with loss (129) by the allied 
 Greeks of that region. Meanwhile the Persian 
 fleet kept timidly at Samos, watching over Ionia, 
 *'lest it should revolt;" for all the Greek islands 
 and the Greek settlements along: the coast of Asia 
 Minor had heard of the great victory and were 
 fermenting. We read that '* most of the marines 
 wereMedes and Persians," a land-people, without 
 experience of the sea, and hence " they despaired 
 of success" against the Athenians; nor could 
 they trust to the Ionic sailors of the Aegaean. 
 
 (2) The Greeks began to assemble their fleet 
 in the spring atEgina (131), with a new Lacede- 
 
 28 
 
434 THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 
 
 monian admiral, Leoty chides; the Athenians also 
 have a new commander, Xanthippus, the father 
 of Pericles. Themistocles now disappears from 
 this history ; it is highly probable that his day 
 of reckoning had come, which indeed he was 
 always expecting, as we have seen by his dealings 
 with the Persians. His successor, Xanthippus, 
 is the same who prosecuted Miltiades on a capital 
 charge (VI. 136). We have already noted that 
 Herodotus had probably access to the Periclean 
 circle during his visit to Athens; in that quarter 
 he obtained, it may be supposed, his main facts 
 about Themistocles. 
 
 The Greek fleet does not show its old nerve and 
 asrsressiveness ; on the contrary it seems lethar- 
 ofic and even terrified. What is the reason? No 
 Themistocles in it now, the one man who is all, 
 and without whom all are none. Embassadors 
 come from Chios and beseech the Greek com- 
 manders '*to liberate Ionia;" in vain. The 
 Greeks with diflSculty are prevailed on '' to ad- 
 vance as far as Delos;" they are afraid to go 
 further (132) ; Samos seems to them '* as far as 
 the pillars of Hercules." What ^5 the matter? 
 Our answer is, they have no Themistocles, but a 
 Xanthippus, who is a good accuser evidently, but 
 a poor doer. 
 
 Herodotus, son of Basilides, was one of these 
 embassadors from Chios, the only one of them 
 mentioned by name here. It has been conject- 
 
BOOK EIGHTH. 435 
 
 ured that he was in some way connected with our 
 historian, bearing the same name, and being so 
 specially designated by his kinsman in the present 
 passage. 
 
 III. 
 
 We have in the concluding chapters of the 
 present Book, the beginning of the rise out of 
 this inactive condition, particularly on the part 
 of the Persian, who are indeed a great will-people. 
 Mardonius from his quarters in Thessaly seeks 
 to do two things here recorded, by way of prep- 
 aration for his future campaign against Greece 
 (133-144). 
 
 1. He sends a man by the name of Mys to con- 
 sult the Greek Oracles. Exactly what the motive 
 of Mardonius was in this matter, our historian 
 does not pretend to say ; but there must have 
 been naturally some feeling in the Persian mind 
 that the Greek Gods had shown themselves the 
 stronger in the present conflict. Could not the 
 secret of the future be discovered? Could they 
 not somehow be conciliated? We recollect how 
 that Croesus (in the First Book) sought to har- 
 monize himself with Greek religious conceptions, 
 and to win the favor of the God by his rich offer- 
 ings at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. Not 
 niuch is told, and the whole winds up in a mira- 
 cle, *' an answer given in the Carian tongue " 
 by a Greek priestess apparently, whereat the 
 
436 THE FATHER OF HISTOBY. 
 
 messenger returns to Thessaly with the response 
 written down by himself. Very wonderful in- 
 deed ; but what of it ? 
 
 2. The other effort of Mardonius here recorded 
 is far more noteworthy ; it is his attempt to de- 
 tach Athens from the Greek league by means of 
 Alexander, a native of Macedon, who was a friend 
 and benefactor of the Athenians. Herein the 
 Persian commander undoubtedly shows his in- 
 sight; he selects the very soul of opposition to 
 his sway. The offer is certainly tempting ; the 
 Lacedemonian embassadors are present and make 
 counter promises. The answer of the Athenians 
 to Alexander has in it an energy which thrills 
 through all time: " Go tell Mardonius that the 
 Athenians say that never, as long as the sun 
 continues to shine in the same course as now, 
 shall we come to terms with the Persians." 
 Then to the Lacedemonian embassadors they 
 reiterate the same sentiment with almost equal 
 emphasis. They only ask that the Greek army 
 be sent to their support with all reasonable ex- 
 pedition, in order to attack the enemy in Boeotia, 
 " before he has reached Attica," as they expected 
 a new invasion of their territory. This moderate 
 request, whose fulfillment would be as advanta- 
 geous to the rest of the Greeks as to the Athen- 
 ians, is not faithfully complied with by the Lace- 
 demonians, who delay their armament, till Athens 
 is captured a second time (see next Book). 
 
BOOK NINTH. 
 
 The connection between this and the preced- 
 ing Book is direct ; tlie Persians are now to be 
 swept out of Europe into Asia, and this process 
 is to take place both by land and sea. It is the 
 third act of the drama, bes^innino^ with Ther- 
 mopylae. Salamis is really the central struggle ; 
 if the Persians cannot control the Greek sea, they 
 cannot control the Greek people, who are of the 
 sea as much as of the land. Especially is this 
 the case with the Athenians, who pass from their 
 city to their ships with facility. Salamis is the 
 test fight, the mediating victory, which is now to 
 bring about the final triumph, passing to the 
 land with the Athenians, who are also in thefio^ht 
 on shore. 
 
 But there is one strange difference between 
 the two Books. The hero of the Eio^hth Book — 
 Themistocles — has somehow vanished com- 
 
 (437J 
 
438 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 pleteh^, his name is not mentioned, nor has he 
 any command. Aristides is just mentioned as 
 the commander of the Athenians at Platea, but 
 his personality is not prominent in the battle. 
 Indeed, no strong individual now rises out promi- 
 nently from the main body of Athenians. The 
 Spartan Pausanias is the most conspicuous indi- 
 vidual at Platea, and his greatest trait is that he 
 is free of the ordinary hide-hound Spartan stub- 
 bornness and egoism, and calls for the Athenians 
 in critical cases, whom he certainly appreciates. 
 Such is his chief merit which makes a great im- 
 provement upon Leonidas ; he supplements Spar- 
 tan defects with Athenian excellences, and renders 
 victory inevitable. 
 
 The Book has three portions : 1st. Platea; de- 
 feat by land of Persians and Asiatics, who are 
 mostly destroyed, except a body which hurries out 
 of Europe (1-89); 2d. Mycale; the Persian 
 fleet is driven off the sea and burnt ; end of the 
 Persian navy and the sequel to Salamis (90- 
 113 ) ; 3d. Sestos is taken in the North, the cables 
 of the great bridge which connected Europe and 
 Asia f orthe barbarian are captured and dedicated ; 
 the Homeric hero Protesilaus is avenged (114- 
 123). 
 
 I. 
 
 The first portion deals with the land battle 
 at Platea (1-89). A very full account on the 
 
BOOK NINTH. 439 
 
 whole; our historian had made extensive inquir- 
 ies among all parties engaged, specially at Platea, 
 where he inspected the monuments of the con- 
 flict. The central thing for comprehending the 
 battle is to grasp and follow the different pos- 
 itions of the Greeks. 
 
 1 . Preliminary ( 1— 18 ) . Mardonius seeks again 
 to detach Athens, which refuses with even 
 greater emphasis than before. Yet the Greek 
 allies delay, so that the Athenians have to desert 
 a second time their city, which is again taken and 
 laid waste. Athenian embassadors at Sparta 
 protest, but there is still delay; a festival, the 
 Hyacinthia, is the pretext. The speech of the 
 Athenia.n is very keen and even threatening, and 
 at last the Lacedemonians start. 
 
 Unquestionably the charge of delay holds 
 against the Lacedemonians, yet not to the extent 
 here indicated. There is hardly a doubt but 
 that they intended to help Athens at last. The 
 ten days' delay and the silence of the Ephors can 
 be accounted for by what we find in the text of 
 Herodotus. It takes time to mobilize such a 
 large force — the largest Sparta ever sent out. 
 It was indeed for her a tremendous effort. It was 
 hardly Chileus, the Tegean, who roused them by 
 his warning words, for they could by no means 
 have done all this work in a night. Reasons for 
 such secrecy can be given : the Spartan character 
 and policy, which sought to keep their army's 
 
440 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 ** numbers hid from strangers (Thuc. V. 68)." 
 It was also an object to pass by Argos without 
 trouble or delay (see later). It is plain, there- 
 fore, that while the Ephors were putting off the 
 Athenian embassy, they were making all prepa- 
 rations. So far we may correct Herodotus by his 
 own text. 
 
 Still the charge of undue delay holds. Every 
 feeling of honor and the faith of promises ought 
 to have bound the Lacedemonians not to permit 
 Athens to be deserted a second time, but to fio:ht 
 the enemy in Boeotia where at last the battle did 
 take place. In a sense, however, all these events 
 showed the Athenians absolutely independent of 
 the Peloponnesians, for Salamis could be held 
 easily against the Persian. Just that island and 
 its narrow strait rendered Greek history possible 
 by saving Athens, which now really rules the 
 sea, and with it holds in her hand Greek destiny. 
 
 On the Persian side Mardonius retires to 
 Boeotia. Observe two typical events : the enter- 
 tainment at Thebes and the presentiment of 
 defeat among the Persians, there being good 
 grounds for it ; also the affair with the Phocians 
 and the working of the Pheme (the premonitory 
 voice). 
 
 2. March of the Greeks to the first position (19- 
 24). The Peloponnesians gather at the Isthmus, 
 but no Athenians ; so the allies have to do as the 
 Athenians said; the latter join the army at 
 
BOOK NINTH. 441 
 
 Eleasis in Attica, crossing over from Salamis, 
 where they were out of danger, while the Pelop- 
 onnesians were certainly not. Those Athenians 
 most nobly were again giving themselves to the 
 cause, after bad treatment. Perhaps a little 
 sulky at first, but they bring the spirit of victory 
 with them. So they reach the first position at 
 Erythrae in Boeotia while the enemy lies along 
 the river Asopus. 
 
 The Greeks keep the high ground, shun the 
 plain on account of Persian cavalry, which as- 
 sails them notwithstandino^ ; the Mesfarians call 
 for help, none offer to go but Olympiodorus and 
 a band of Athenians with the bowmen. Here 
 occurs the death of Masistius, followed by the 
 capture of his body. He was the Persian cavalry 
 leader. First blow, and the Athenian in the 
 front. 
 
 Great encouragement results ; the Greeks find 
 they can fight cavalry with success, something 
 not yet done even by the Athenians at Marathon. 
 Now the fact is proved by them; in exalted 
 hope, the whole army makes a new move. 
 
 3. The second 'position of the Greeks (^25-50). 
 This lies further down the mountain, more in the 
 plain, with a better supply of water from the 
 fount Gargaphia. More audacious, perhaps a 
 little too much so, the Greeks become. The dis- 
 pute as to the place on the left wing between 
 Tegeans and Athenians is significant. Mythical 
 
442 THE FA THEE OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 claims both sides make, but Athens has the his- 
 torical fact, Marathon. Still she will not quarrel 
 at such a time, she is willing to fight anywhere, 
 let the Lacedemonians decide. And they all 
 shouted : the Athenians are the worthier. Such 
 is the most heart-stirring incident in this whole 
 history; such self-suppression in view of the 
 cause is the Athenian glory. The Athenian spirit 
 is again strongly applauded by the Lacedemo- 
 nians, it will be a powerful influence in the future 
 battle, and it now overwhelms the Tegeans, for 
 the Lacedemonians would not decide till this man- 
 ifestation. The Tegeans get a good place next 
 to the Lacedemonians ; they did not sulk, but 
 won great honor in the fight. 
 
 The roll is now called by the historian on each 
 side. Among; the Greeks foro^et not the 40,000 
 Helots fighting for Greek liberty, four times 
 more than all the Lacedemonians, and over one- 
 third of the whole army. 
 
 The diviner has very important part in this 
 battle; note Tisamenus and his story (33). Mar- 
 donius has likewise his Greek soothsayer at first, 
 Hegesistratus, who also has a history. The sac- 
 rifices on both sides are not favorable for battle. 
 The stopping of Greek supplies (38) is a serious 
 but not a fatal mishap. Victims do not permit 
 the fight ; perchance neither side wishes to start 
 the attack. Other incidents of note : the refusal 
 of Mardonius to employ bribery ; his respect 
 
BOOK NINTH. 443 
 
 for the Delphic Oracle ; Alexander comes to the 
 Greek camp with a secret message (45). 
 
 This message frightens Pausanias, who per- 
 haps now overestimates the Athenians, offering 
 to change wings with them. It is indeed a most 
 surprising incident. Never could there have been 
 so complete an acknowledgment of the Athenians' 
 place in the conflict. But the wings change back 
 again when the move does no good; it encour- 
 ages, however, the Persians, who make a fresh 
 attack and choke up the fountain Gargaphia, 
 which compels the Greeks to take a new posi- 
 tion. 
 
 4. Third position of the Greeks (51-69). 
 They now shift to the Island, ten stades distant, 
 near Platea, where they have water and a higher 
 ground, more out of the way of the cavalry. 
 The center retreats in bad order, and does not 
 take the position assigned; the Lacedemonians 
 are stopped by one of their captains refusing to 
 stir — an unexpected obstacle. The Athenians 
 stay and keep a sharp outlook over the Lace- 
 demonians, evidently distrusting them some- 
 what, for the gap in the middle seems suspicious 
 to the Athenians. So they send and get answer 
 that they should adjust themselves to the Lace- 
 demonians, and come to them (fill the gap forthe 
 present). Very significant again is the place of 
 the Athenians in this affair. They are really the 
 people relied on by Pausanias to help out, and 
 
444 THE FATHEB OF HISTORY. 
 
 they do so always. Finally the Lacedemonians 
 start and keep close to the hills, fearing the cav- 
 alry. The Athenians move down into the plain, 
 to attract the cavalry probably from the dis- 
 united Greeks. What a contrast in the inner 
 discipline between Athenians and Spartans ! 
 Still the Spartans remained visible to the enemy, 
 and were pursued by the Persians, while the 
 Athenians were not seen, as they passed through 
 the plain. Again an urgent request comes to the 
 Athenians from Pausanias, when he is attacked 
 by the cavalry ; almost terror-stricken does he 
 seem in this appeal. 
 
 The battle is brought on by the retrograde 
 movement, the Persians advancing in a disorderly 
 way. Victims are still not favorable, but the 
 Tegeans start anj^how. Some time after them 
 the Spartans follow. The Persians show them- 
 selves not trained, though brave; Artabazus, 
 however, runs off with a large detachment of the 
 Persian army. 
 
 So the battle is fought chiefly by the Lace- 
 demonians and the Athenians — the former 
 overthrowing the Persians, the latter the The- 
 bans, who flee to this city; the Athenians then 
 turn aside to the Persian camp or wall. 
 
 5. Events at the Persian wall ( 70-85). Again 
 the Athenians have to do the new work; they 
 surmount the wall, make the breach when the 
 Tegeans and Lacedemonians pour in. This is 
 
BOOK NINTH. 445 
 
 like the wall at Troj^ which no personal bravery 
 can take, no Achilles, but Ulysses (intelligence). 
 It is affectinoj to see how the historian rescues the 
 bravest Spartan, Aristodemus, from the injustice 
 of his countrymen, the one survivor of Ther- 
 mopylae. Pausanias is heroized in several anec- 
 dotes : he protects a fleeing concubine ; he spurns 
 an inhuman proposal of an Eginetan ; he refuses 
 to slay the innocent sons of the Theban leader 
 who has escaped. 
 
 6. Siege of Thebes and the flight of the Per- 
 sians (86-89). As in legend, so now in history. 
 There is something un-Greek in Thebes, some- 
 thing Asiatic, which Greece has to put down. 
 Thebes falls, offering to surrender its medizing 
 leaders. So we have the historical sieo:e of 
 Thebes, which has its mythical counterpart in 
 the heroic age of Greece. 
 
 The Persians under Artabazus continue their 
 flight and reach Byzantium, where they cross 
 over by boats into Asia. Pausanias would allow 
 no pursuit, but he let them flee, which was the 
 best policy under the circumstances. 
 
 Note the place which the Athenians hold in 
 this battle, being the very soul of the army and 
 its intelligence; they, though without supreme 
 authority, still control mainly, as Themistocles 
 did at the battle of Salamis. They give the first 
 encouragement by slaying Masistius, and they 
 first meet the Persian cavalry so terrible to the 
 
446 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 Lacedemonians. The latter could not keep them 
 down in a subordinate rank. 
 
 Very interesting must have been the visit of 
 Herodotus to Platea, which took place probably 
 while he was staying at Athens, with possible 
 letters of introduction from Pericles. These 
 would give him many friends from the start; 
 forth we see him going, from the Plateau walls 
 to view the monuments with distinguished 
 Plateaus as guides. 
 
 II. 
 
 We now pass to the fleet and to the battle of 
 Mycale in Asia Minor (90-113), which occurred 
 on the same day on which the battle of Platea 
 took place. The Samians go to the Greek fleet 
 for help against the Persian, and the Lacede- 
 monian admiral starts from Delos, Deiphonus 
 (God's voice) acting as diviner. 
 
 This Deiphonus receives special attention here 
 in a story. It is noticeable that in these later 
 Books the historian gives greater prominence to 
 the diviners (or augurs) than in the other por- 
 tions of his History. They are mentioned by 
 name along with the generals, and the battle can- 
 not proceed without them, though it would seem 
 that the Tegeans "defied augury" and began 
 the battle at Platea. Moreover these diviners 
 are deemed worthy of a biographic account ( see 
 the narrative about Tisamenus, the diviner for 
 
BOOK NINTH. 447 
 
 the Spartans IX. 33, and of Hegesistratus, the 
 diviner for Mardonius, IX. 37; especially is 
 Megistias honored with an epigram by Simonides, 
 being the diviner at Thermopylae and perishing 
 there with the Spartans, though he foreknew his 
 fate, VII. 228). 
 
 The Persians send home the Phoenician ships, 
 completely giving up the control of the sea, and 
 they hasten with their other ships to the land at 
 Mycale. They make a kind of w^all and prepare 
 to defend themselves. Pheme, Kumor, that 
 divine voice, is also heard here, and passing 
 through the camp of the Greeks, announces the 
 victory at Platea (an anticipation of the modern 
 telegraph). 
 
 The enemy were commanded by Tigranes, 
 *'wdio excelled the Persians in beauty and in 
 stature." It is characteristic of Greek artistic 
 spirit that the most beautiful men are specially 
 designated in the text of the historian. Calli- 
 crates, a Spartan, " came to the army the hand- 
 somest man of the Greeks of that time," hence 
 he is to receive particular mention. In like man- 
 ner the beauty of three Persian leaders is duly 
 celebrated — Masistius, Mardonius, and Tigranes. 
 Thus the beautiful, as manifesting: itself in the 
 human form, gets its due in this history of the 
 great conflict, soon after which plastic Art is to 
 reach its highest terrestrial bloom at Athens in 
 the workshop of Phidias. 
 
448 THE FATHEB OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 In the battle at Mycale the Athenians are easily 
 the first; they outstrip the Lacedemonians and 
 defeat the enemy in advance. What shall we say 
 about Athens and her people throughout this 
 war? The greatest marvel of all is just their 
 spirit ; they appear to have a demonic impulse to 
 the great action ; wherever they go, victory is in 
 the air. They do not seem to have had a diviner, 
 and it was probably they who did not like 
 Deiphonus (the diviner 'who had been brought by 
 the Corinthians), saying that he served for hire 
 ( 95 ) . The era of intelligence has clearly dawned 
 at Athens, as has been already indicated more 
 than once. 
 
 In the concluding part of this section (107- 
 113), the historian gives us some peeps into the 
 internal quarrels among the Persians. It is plain 
 that the grand failure of the expedition has 
 caused many reproaches and recriminations. The 
 story of Xenagoras, a Halicarnassian (and hence 
 the fellow-countryman of our historian), who 
 saved the life of the brother of Xerxes, was 
 probably heard by Herodotus in his native town. 
 
 A deeper cast has the love-affair of Xerxes 
 with the wife of his brother Masistes (108). It 
 shows the intrigues of the absolute monarch for 
 the gratification of his passion ; he does not spare 
 his nearest kin ; Persian degeneracy has evidently 
 set in, the manly virtues of Cyrus and of Darius 
 are overshadowed by luxury. The end is a 
 
BOOK NINTH. 440 
 
 tragedy of the darkest hue ; the honorable man 
 and woman at the Persian court are first undone 
 and then destroyed. This is our last glimpse of 
 Xerxes, hinting the miserable outcome of his 
 mighty expedition against Greece; the tale in- 
 serted just here has its strong suggestion, which 
 the historian with his artistic instinct must have 
 felt at the present conjuncture. 
 
 III. 
 
 The third portion of the present Book (114- 
 122) is brief and is the conclusion of the whole 
 History. The author has brought to an end the 
 theme with which he began ; beyond the Persian 
 War of Xerxes he does not intend to carry us, 
 though at the end he casts a significant glance 
 into the epoch that is coming. 
 
 After the battle of Mycale, the combined fleet 
 of the Greeks set out for the Hellespont to de- 
 stroy the bridge between Asia and Europe, which 
 they find broken asunder already. At this point 
 occurs the grand separation between Athenians 
 and Lacedemonians, never again to be entirely 
 healed, and the starting-point of a new stage of 
 Greek history. **Leotychides with the Pelopon- 
 nesians concluded to sail home, while Xanthippus 
 with the Athenians resolved to stay and to 
 try to subdue the Chersonesus." Such is the 
 difference which will continue to widen till it 
 becomes the Peloponnesian War between Athens 
 
 29 
 
450 THE FATHER OF HIS TOBY. 
 
 and Sparta. The Athenians bfesiege and take 
 Sestos which may be deemed the beginning of 
 the Athenian Empire ; they now act for them- 
 selves, and the leaders seem to have a presenti- 
 ment of the new order (117). 
 
 Here we have the mythical element of the past 
 connected with the historical element of the pres- 
 ent in a storv which tells of the Persian wrono^ 
 done to the hero Protesilaus, who was the first 
 Greek to land and to fall at Troy, and of the 
 ample revenge of his wrong by the Greeks. The 
 Persian commander of the district had robbed and 
 desecrated the sanctuary of the Greek hero, 
 alleging to Xerxes that this Greek *' had carried 
 arms into your territories." By this allusion we 
 see that both Persian and Greek regarded the 
 Trojan War as a conflict between Asia and Hellas, 
 and in a line of connection with the present war. 
 The duty of the Greeks to avenge the insult is 
 held to be greater than any sum of money, since 
 they will not accept the Persian commander's 
 tempting offer of two hundred talents for him- 
 self and his children. 
 
 Thus the history of Herodotus returns to its 
 starting-point, which is the Mythus, and specially 
 the My thus of Troy. (Seel. 3, 4.) Protesilaus 
 was the first man to leap on the Asiatic shore 
 in the attack upon Troy ; thus we have verily 
 remounted to the beginning. 
 
 Typical is the fact that the cables and other 
 
BOOK NINTH. 451 
 
 materials of the bridge were captured and taken 
 to Athens, where they were dedicated in the 
 temples to the Greek Gods. Such is the end of 
 that which was to be the passage of Asia into 
 Europe ; Athens has it and will keep it, for a 
 time at least. 
 
 The last chapter of the History is an anecdote, 
 of the ** That reminds me" style, hinting the 
 two classes of Oriental peoples, the hardy stock 
 of the mountains, who are the conquerors, and 
 the effeminate inhabitants of the fertile plains, 
 who are the conquered. It suggests also the 
 difference between the Greek and Oriental to a 
 certain degree. But the anecdote has been sus- 
 pected to be a later addition, and it can be left 
 away without much detriment. The History is 
 finished when the Athenians sail home with the 
 materials of the bridge, having captured Sestos 
 and avenged the hero Protesilaus. 
 
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