BOOKS.
HERODOTUS.*
IN the days of Herodotus the Muse of History was happily in her teens. Now she is an austere dame, wears a learned air, and walks sedately in the company of Professors. But in Greece, when the great struggle with Persia had just ended, Clio still gazed upon the world with young-eyed wonder and an uncritical curiosity. The thought, indeed, of history as a serious and scientific study was as yet unborn. Annals, of course, there were, and men copied inscriptions, took note of monuments and votive offerings, or drew up tedious lists of Kings and priestesses; but those who sought to make the dead past live were at first less historians than story-tellers (Xoyolro:00. If they desired to instruct, they were also com- pelled to please. Dry facts were reckoned dull hearing unless they were set off with legends, anecdotes, aphorisms, and wit. A generation which had learned such history as it knew chiefly from Homer or in the theatre needed to have its ears tickled when it was addressed in unfamiliar prose. It required to be
,• lterednius. Books VII., VIII., IX. By R. W. Macau. D.Litt., Master of Unisys:say College, Oxford. 3 voLs. Loudon : Macmillan and Co. [SOs. net.]
entertained, and, whatever his failings, Herodotus is the most entertaining of historians. No modern can ever hope to rival the freshness of his charm, for we have left our youth far behind us, and can no longer be ingenuous without effort or artless without affectation. But even in his own age Herodotus seems to stand almost alone. He was a man of high ability and much learning; be had travelled in pursuit of knowledge more widely than any of his contemporaries ; he knew Sophocles, and had lived at Athens in those Periclean years to which after-time presents no parallel; and yet he retains the heart and the simplicity of a child. The whole story of Croesus, for instance, is so full at once of vivacity and reflection that it may equally please a schoolboy or a philosopher. Or turn to his marvellous chapters on the animals of Egypt. They afford curious study for the learned, and yet the nursery would fall in love with that bird, called Trochilus, which "when the crocodile, his mouth much plagued with leeches, comes from the water to the land, and thereupon yawns—for it is his custom to do this towards the western breeze—entering into his jaws swallows the leeches, but he being profited is pleased, and does the Trochilus no harm." Doubtless pedants will deride this, and Josephus reckons Herodotus "among the greatest of liars"; but the peculiarity is that the man who tells such a tale elsewhere makes notes on the fructification of the date- palm by insects, and on the use of the sounding-lead to show how far the Nile mud is carried out to sea, which would have delighted Darwin. In fact no great writer has been at once so shrewd and so innocent, so eager for knowledge and yet so ignorant, while he has the added charm of being wholly unconscious of his own defects. With comic solemnity he calculates that the army of Xerxes contained "five hundred and twenty-eight myriads, three thousands, two hundreds, and two deem& of men," and then, after carefully recording the rivers which it "drunk dry," allows the greater part of this vast host to vanish without explana- tion into space. Or after telling a story which would dazzle Defoe, he will, in making his next statement, caution the reader that be only speaks " hesitatingly " and "from hearsay." That the priestess of a temple near his own home "grows a great beard when anything un- toward is to befall" he relates as a simple fact; that the Persians were miraculously repulsed from Delphi he accepts at once, for the rocks which Apollo rolled upon them from Parnassus "were still standing in the precinct of Athena even to our day " ; but when it comes to a deserter from Xerxes " diving " from Aphetae to Artemisium, a distance of some six miles, he assumes a judicial air and remarks : "Now about this man other things like to falsehoods are related
but in this matter let my opinion be set forth that he reached Artemisium in a boat." In the case of any other historian, the reader might think that be was being played with, but the good faith of Herodotus is transparent. It is only that be has an inborn love for the marvellous, and an interesting story so takes hold of his fancy that he tells it gravely and with conviction, while he only hints doubt half-heartedly and from a sense of duty. Unlike his great successor, be treads with uneasy feet the stony paths of criticism, and roams with young delight amid the enchanted fields of myth and fable. And yet he too, no less than Thucydides, has left behind him a work which is not only "something to please the hour," but also "a possession for all time."
For Herodotus does more than interest or amuse. His style affords an almost perfect model of simple narrative. His language is plain and homely, but it is never vulgar, and avoids the commonplace through a certain quaintness and racy originality, while the story moves with natural ease, so that the reader seems to float, as it were, upon some gentle stream that, with many devious windings, carries him gently and happily to his goal. The composition, indeed, of the whole work cannot be too highly praised. Its formal theme only embraces that account of the Persian War which, though probably written first, now occupies the last three books; but the genius of its author refused to be confined. Just as Homer wove the legend of "The Wrath of Achilles" into the fabric of a marvellous and many-coloured poem, so Herodotus, fashioning for the first time an epic in prose, set his immediate subject on a splendid background of universal history. Deal- ing with what appeared to him, and was in fact, a world-issue, he took the just measure of his task. Desultory, discursive, and even trivial as he often seems, there is nothing paltry about his large design. The living memories of Marathon and Salamis had been in his boyish ears, and when later he "had seen the cities and known the mind of many men," all other history seemed to fall into its place as a preface to that struggle between East and West, between despotism and liberty, which left to Hellas the crown of undying fame. He caught inspiration from his age, and, though minute critics may carp at him, yet Longinus was right when he applied to him the epithet `01.inptic–hraros; for there is about his work much of the breadth and power of the Iliad. But if he took Homer for his supreme master, he also learned much from the tragedians, for ho does not only set before us a picture of events, but he places living, breathing figures upon the scene, and he does not seek to make us understand them by the methods of reflection and analysis. Rather, as a great editor has said, "he never condescends to describe a character." His men and women present themselves to us by their own words and deeds with such dramatic force that Croesus, Themistocles, Artemisia, and a dozen others are for all time such as he has shown them. And then think of Xerxes! Does he not stand before us to-day on the historic stage exactly as Herodotus drew him twenty-four centuries ago ? Is there any figure in tragedy which is more familiar to us, or more clearly outlined to our thoughts ? What, indeed, the real man was no inquiry can now discover, but the Xerxes who lives in the pages of Herodotus has stamped himself on the imagination of mankind. He remains to-day what he was to the Greeks of his own time,—the supreme type of that tyranny which hurls itself idly against the resistance of free men, and of that insolence which the divine powers bring low even to the dust.
We have, however, while only touching the edge of our subject, too much neglected the present volumes ; but it has not been without reason. For while some of the qualities which make up an historical masterpiece may be indicated in a brief notice, yet Herodotus, in the wide sweep of his narrative, deals with such countless topics of high interest, he has brought together, as it were, such a large collection of curios about the genuineness and value of which experts are so at variance, that any attempt to follow a commentator who deals frilly with every point at issue would only produce perplexity. It must suffice to say that whatever modern research can contribute to criticism of the subject has been laboriously collected, admirably arranged, and liberally enriched from his own stores of learning by the Master of University. Oxford, certainly, need not fear that "the reproach of sterility will be levelled against her resident Sons" while they repay their debt to her with such noble tribute, and Dr. Macon may be assured that by his "thirty years" of labour he has done a lasting and noteworthy service to the cause both of classical and of historical study.
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