the relations between the Greek states, which were diffused in Athens by the statesmen of the party of Pericles; and he states his opinion that Athens did not deserve, after her great exploits in the Persian war, to be so envied and blamed by the rest of the Greeks; which was the case just at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war[1].
Herodotus settled quietly in Thurii, and devoted the leisure of his latter years entirely to his work. Hence he is frequently called by the ancients a Thurian, in reference to the composition of his history.
§ 2. In this short review of the life of Herodotus we have taken no notice of his travels, which are intimately connected with his literary labours. Herodotus did not visit different countries from the accidents of commercial business or political missions; his travels were undertaken from the pure spirit of inquiry, and for that age they were very extensive and important. Herodotus visited Egypt as high up as Elephantine, Libya, at least as far as the vicinity of Cyrene, Phœnicia, Babylon, and probably also Persia; the Greek states on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the contiguous country of the Scythians, as well as Colchis; besides which, he had resided in several states of Greece and Lower Italy, and had visited many of the temples, even the remote one of Dodona. The circumstance of his being, in his capacity of Halicarnassian, a subject of the king of Persia, must have assisted him materially in these travels; an Athenian, or a Greek of any of the states which were in open revolt against Persia, would have been treated as an enemy, and sold as a slave. Hence it may be inferred that the travels of Herodotus, at least those to Egypt and Asia, were performed from Halicarnassus in his youth.
Herodotus, of course, made these inquiries with the view of imparting their results to his countrymen. But it is uncertain whether he had at that time formed the plan of connecting his information concerning Asia and Greece with the history of the Persian war, and of uniting the whole into one great work. When we consider that an intricate and extensive plan of this sort had hitherto been unknow in the historical writings of the Greeks, it can scarcely be doubted that the idea occurred to him at an advanced stage of his inquiries, and that in his earlier years he had not raised his mind above the conception of such works as those of Hecatæus, Charon, and others of his predecessors and contemporaries. Even at a later period of his life, when he was composing his great work, he contemplated writing a separate book upon Assyria (Ἀσσύριοι λόγοι); and it seems that this book was in existence at the time of Aristotle[2]. In fact, Herodotus might also have made separate books out of the accounts of
- ↑ Compare Herod. VII. 139. with Thuc. II. 8.
- ↑ Aristotle, Hist. An. VIII. 18. mentions the account of the siege of Nineveh in Herodotus (for, although the manuscripts generally read Hesiod, Herodotus is evidently the more, suitable name); that is, undoubtedly, the siege which Herodotus I. 106. promises to describe in his separate work on Assyria (comp. I. 184).
