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Ancient Greek Historians - Herodotus

The most important fact of History is its birth. If this be accepted, the conclusion lies not far off that the most important historical book is that of the Father of History, ancient Herodotus. For uncounted ages humanity was pre-historical, without a consciousness of History. History had already put forth its earliest buds in Hecataeus and Dionysius. Quite a list of the names of these pre-Herodotean historians have come down to the present, 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.

The three celebrated historians, Hellanicus, Herodotus, and Thucydides, are said to have flourished nearly at the same time. "At the commencement of the Peloponnesian war," Aulus Gellius, book xv. chap. 23, says, "Hellanicus was sixty-five years old, Herodotus fifty-three, and Thucydides forty."

Respecting the life of Hellanicus, almost nothing is known. Hellanicus was a very prolific writer, and if all the titles that have come down to the present were titles of genuine productions and distinct works, their number would amount to nearly thirty; but several works bearing his name are spurious and of later date, and that many others which are referred to as separate works, are only chapters or sections of other works. All the productions of Hellanicus are lost, with the exception of a considerable number of fragments. Although he belongs, strictly speaking, to the logographers, still he holds a much higher place among the early Greek historians than any of those who are designated by the name of logographers. He forms the transition from that class of writers to the real historians ; for he not only treated of the mythical ages, but, in several instances, he carried history down to his own times. Thucydides says that Hellanicus wrote the history of later times briefly, and that he was not accurate in his chronology.

Pherecydes of Scyros (550 BC) 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 (proi'sus, prosa) continuously. Herodotus did 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 took not the measured speech of the poet, but the prosaist's unfettered flow of words, now demanded and coming into vogue. Herodotus is the first great prose-writer of Greece whose book has been preserved as a whole.

Greek Mythology has, as one of its chief themes, the conflict between Orient and Occident, the struggle between the Hellenic and the Oriental spirit. Perseus and the sea-moneter, Theseus and the Minotaur, Oedipus and the Sphinx, Bellerophon and the Chimaeru are instances 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 was 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 historical deeds of Greece against Asia was the defeat of Xerxes, also a phase 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.

Few are the facts about Herodotus which have come down from antiquity. The Peloponnesian war began in 431 BC, and consequently the date of the birth of Herodotus is generally placed in 484 BC, but is sometimes assigned to 489 BC. The authority for the first date is Pamphila, a female 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.

At the eighty-first Olympiad in BC 456, Herodotus did not omit the favorable opportunity of reciting his history to so illustrious an audience. He was listened to with universal delight and applause; and Thucydides was present at this great solemnity, with his father Olorus. On hearing the composition of Herodotus, Thucydides discovered the seeds of those exalted talents which afterwards made his name immortal. After listening to the father of history with the most composed and serious attention, Thucydides burst into tears. He was then no more than fifteen years old; and Herodotus, observing his emotion, exclaimed to Olorus, "Your son burns with an ardor for science."

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 constructive character is found not merely in architecture, it belongs to other spiritual domains, to Literature and Philosophy, and gives the chief 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, aud all her spiritual products have this architectonic element. Herodotus became a builder too, a spiritual builder, and nobody can get to the heart of his work without penetrating aud 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.

Of the works of Herodotus there are remaining nine books, to which the names of the Nine Muses have been respectively annexed. Whether he ever wrote any thing else, has been a matter of much controversy among scholars. The style of Herodotus might well demand a separate dissertation: this, perhaps, is not the properest place to speak at any length upon the subject. It has been universally admired for being, beyond that of all other Greek writers of prose, pure and perspicuous. Cicero calls it fusum atque tractum, at the same time copious and polished. Plutarch, who wrote a treatise expressly to derogate from the fame and authority of Herodotus, in more places than one speaks of his diction with the highest commendation.

In regard to the religious world-view of Herodotus, there was a decided change from that of Homer. The Olympian Pantheon hardly appears, except casually and quite in the background. Pallas was indeed visible in the battle of Marathon, and Pan met the courier Phidippides 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. The Homeric play of divinities 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.

Many eminent writers, both of ancient and modern times, accuse Herodotus of not having had a sufficient regard to the austere and sacred dignity of historic truth. Ctesias, in Photius, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Aulus Gellius, and, above all, Plutarch, have made strong and violent objections to many of his assertions. In many cases Herodotus simply deliver accounts as he received them from the sources, without vouching for the truth of the remarkable events they intended to record. Some writers accuse Herodotus of taking his information from unreliable sources, and that, from his not being acquainted with the language of the country he travelled in, he was often deceived into the belief of things that had existence nowhere but in the inventive faculties of those about him, principally merchants, who were trading between Greece and Egypt, and frequenting the markets of the latter place. Ancient dragomen, it is evident from Herodotus's writings, like later sailors, knew how to spin yarns, some of them as wonderful, if not more wonderful than the sea-serpent, or any other sea stories.

Herodotus was honest, and saw much of what he writes about; though he may have taken the rest from the mouths of others who amused themselves with his credulity. Information of any kind was in that age often false and always difficult to obtain. He visited Egypt about 430 BC and speaks partly of what he saw, and partly of things belonging to an era not improbably more than two thousand years before his time. Many circumstances have since tended to show that, where he writes from his own knowledge, he is truthful, and he says himself, speaking of his observations in Egypt, "Hitherto I have related what I have seen, what I have thought, and what I have learnt by inquiry: but from this point I proceed to give the Egyptian account according to what I heard, and there is added to it something of my own observation. The priests informed me so and so." That he relates many wonderful tales cannot be denied, tales perhaps that the priests were interested in keeping up. They themselves were the only possessors of knowledge at that time, and, as far as we can tell, were in no way desirous of extending that knowledge among the multitude; so that after all you will do well to take much that he records as history simply as his story.