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    The Histories (Translated by George Rawlinson with an Introduction by George Swayne and a Preface by H. L. Havell)
    The Histories (Translated by George Rawlinson with an Introduction by George Swayne and a Preface by H. L. Havell)
    The Histories (Translated by George Rawlinson with an Introduction by George Swayne and a Preface by H. L. Havell)
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    The Histories (Translated by George Rawlinson with an Introduction by George Swayne and a Preface by H. L. Havell)

    By Herodotus

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    Widely referred to as the “Father of History”, Greek Historian Herodotus lived during the 5th century BC and “The Histories” is generally accepted as the first work of historical literature in Western Civilization. Departing from the ancient Homeric tradition of treating historical subjects as epically romantic figures, Herodotus instead approached his subjects with a systematic method of investigation. “The Histories” of Herodotus describe the important wars of the fifth century BC. This work conveys the careful research and deliberate documentation of martial battles between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire. The reasons for his efforts, as explained by Herodotus, were to preserve the memory and glory of human achievements and deeds, as well as to record why the Greco-Persian Wars took place. Organized in nine books, which are named after the Muses, he unfolds the various battles while making a comparison of the widely differing governments of the antagonists. In undertaking his “Histories,” Herodotus unfolds a holistic view of the classical world with considerable narrative skill and charisma. This edition follows the translation of George Rawlinson, includes an introduction by George Swayne, and a preface by H. L. Havell.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2017
    ISBN9781420953893
    The Histories (Translated by George Rawlinson with an Introduction by George Swayne and a Preface by H. L. Havell)
    Author

    Herodotus

    Often referred to as the “father of history,” Herodotus was born in what is now modern-day Turkey in 484 BCE. He travelled the world in order to collect eyewitness accounts of the Greco-Persian Wars and conduct first-hand research, and his work is amongst the earliest Greek prose to survive in its entirety. Although Herodotus’s method of collecting information was unique for the time, he, like many Greek scholars of the period, is criticized for manipulating his reporting of events and witnesses accounts in order to improve the narrative tone. The Histories is Herodotus’s only known work, and is still referred to by modern historians as providing an important perspective on life in ancient times. Recently, Herodotus’s written account of the Battle of Thermopylae was adapted into the film 300 by Zack Snyder. Herodotus is said to have died in 625 BCE at the age of 60, although this date cannot be confirmed.

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    Reviews for The Histories (Translated by George Rawlinson with an Introduction by George Swayne and a Preface by H. L. Havell)

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      In the world's first history textbook (so to speak), Herodotus chronicles the wars between Persia and Greece - and so much more. As new historical figure or locales are introduced into the narrative, he frequently pauses to detail that person or place's history even when it has little bearing on the main event. The sum is a fascinating amalgam of fact and fiction: enough facts to provide an outline of the Greco-Persian Wars and the environs in which they took place, together with the people who carried it out; and enough fiction to add an aura of mythology to the undertakings, providing a challenge in prose to Homer's poetry.Inevitably the question arises of what to believe, so you'll want a good edition with footnotes or endnotes to help you parse it all. Herodotus' absurd description of a hippopotamus alone is enough to throw everything else into question, and that's just one of many examples. Whether he travelled as widely as his narrative implies, or saw with his own eyes as much as he claims, are open questions. There's also no telling how reliable his other sources were - something he gamely questions, but never enough to prevent him from sharing a good story. Expect some entertainment with your history.It's much easier reading than I'd assumed going in, and translator Aubrey de Selincourt's 1954 effort probably deserves the credit for making this such a compelling read. Even if you don't believe a word of what Herotodus says (although archeology has been able to back up quite a bit), the 'Father of History' still put together a great epic. For all that his effort is slandered, dating all the way back to ancient times, at least he gave it a shot and - most telling - none of his contemporaries ever tried to top him.
    • 5/5
      A generation had no living memory of the greatest danger that the Greeks had ever lived through, but one man decided to change all that and gift posterity with a new genre. The Histories written by Herodotus details 80 crucial years from the rise of the Persian Empire to the defeat the remnants of Xerxes expedition and the events that led to the latter.Using knowledge gleamed from extensive travel across the ancient world Herodotus begins his historical narrative by giving the ‘legendary’ encounters between the peoples of Europe and Asia before delving into the more ‘historical’ events that lead to Xerxes’ grand expedition. Herodotus details the history of the kingdom of Lydia that was the first to conquer populations of Greeks, those in western Anatolia, and how its great king Croesus lost his war to Cyrus the Great thus placing those same Greeks under the rule of Persia. The history of the Medes and their conquest by the Persians is related then the subsequent history of the Persian Empire until the Ionian revolt which led to the intervention of Athens and setting the stage for Darius expedition to Marathon. Intertwined with the rise of Persia was Herodotus relating the events within various Greek city-states, in particular Athens and Sparta, that contributed to the reasons for first Darius’ expedition and then to Xerxes’. Eventually his narrative would go back and forth between the two contending sides throughout the latter conflict as events unfolded throughout 480-479 BC.The sheer volume of material that Herodotus provides is impressive and daunting for a reader to consider. Not only does he cover the political and military events, but numerous past historical and general culture aspects as well as lot of biographies and antidotal digressions that add color to the overall piece. Given that this was the first history ever written it’s hard to really criticize Herodotus—though Thucydides apparently had no problem later—but some digressions I wish Herodotus had left out or not heard at all.The Histories by Herodotus is one of classic historical works that needs to be read by anyone who enjoys reading history. Whether or not you love the style of writing or even the topic, this book is important because it literally is the first history book.
    • 3/5
      Most interesting I think if read as an originating piece of the theory of historiography, or as a divergent theory of historiography.
    • 5/5
      I suppose we don't need another review of such a well known work, but since I just finished rereading it I thought I might put down some thoughts. For one, here is a book whose tangents tend to be its most redeeming qualities. Everytime Herodotus goes off storyline, my mind gets more engaged rather than less engaged. This I find to be quite a unique feature. A condensed version of Herodotus, say with only main points about the rise of the Persian Empire and the Persian War would be not nearly as interesting and possibly not worth rereading unless you were a professional historian.
    • 4/5
      Herodotus paints a fascinating picture of the ancient world - full of colour and wonder. His wild (and I mean wild) inaccuracies only make him more enjoyable to read.
    • 4/5
      These are the reasons for the Persian invasions of Greece, in 490 and 481 -79 BCE, and the methods used to defeat them. A good deal about the Persians, not many Greeks being mentioned by name.Herodotus probably died about 429 BCE. He was a believer in setting out the evidence for a disputed point in the text, and sometimes left the reader little doubt as to which version of the facts he preferred. His account demonstrates an early stage in the development of historical methodology, and we are certainly much in his debt for his methods. I think he was the "Father of history" for his courage in placing alternatives before his readers.
    • 5/5
      Definitely a must read for anyone interested in ancient history. There is no doubt that much of the book is fiction, yet it's great for what it is.
    • 5/5
      for many years, this has been my bedside book; I could always pick it up and read a story or two at random when I woke in the night. It is full of wonderful stories. I am now using Ammianus in much the same way; his is a little more serious but with robin seager's studies on the side, Ammianus doesn't need to be read strictly in order in the usual way. At any rate, I find it more fun this way.
    • 5/5
      This was a really great read! I don't know if it was the translation and the way Herodotus actually wrote, but it felt like he was there having a conversation with you. A must read for anyone interested in ancient history, especially the persian conquests. Word of advice though, read the notes as you are reading the book. I didn't do that, but I wish I did. Next time I read it I will.
    • 3/5
      I found this interesting and amusing to read, but by the time I reached Book Six, I was finished. Not being a scholar, I feel no compulsion to finish, having read enough to know who Herodotus was, how he wrote and what he wrote about. At this point in my life, I believe I would prefer a straight forward history with lots of photographs and detailed maps.
    • 4/5
      My Barnes & Noble edition read well and I soon sunk into the magic of Herodotus's history of the Persian Wars (and whatever else was on his mind!) A better read than Thucydides.
    • 5/5
      It's been awhile since I read it, but I absolutely loved this book at the time, and in picking it up recently I still find it fascinating. "The Histories" culminates in Xerxes invasion of Greece, but before doing so sets the stage by providing a history of Lydia, Egypt, the Persian empire under Darius, and of course Athens and Sparta. The book is absolutely chock-full of interesting events, culture, and perspectives that are either long gone ("Until their fifth year they are not allowed to come into the sight of their father, but pass their lives with the women. This is done that, if the child die young, the father may not be inflicted by its loss"), or just as true today, 2000+ years later ("No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.") It's hard to do the book justice in a review; as I flip through it there is just way too much to extract. The section on Egypt with accounts of the building of the pyramids and mummification was wonderful, as were the classic stories of the Persian invasions into Greece. By the way, forget the awful movie "300" which tells of Thermopylae, read Herodotus!Many have drawn attention to the fact that in some cases the "History" provided is almost certainly not factual and plays between reality and lore. Herodotus is often criticized for this but I found the book all the more interesting as a result. To those who would harp on this point, I would recall Mark Twain's comment about history and question how much else of what we read as "history" is a truly objective recounting of events. :-) I am also reminded of a coincidence that occurred as I read Herodotus for the first time: I came across an article in Time Magazine that explained the discovery of the giant gold-digging "ants" he described in modern-day Pakistan, which turned out to be marmots, and indeed burrowed in gold-bearing soil. The translation by Rawlinson is superb, as are the footnotes provided with the text. I highly recommend this particular version of the "The Histories". One quote for the road; Xerxes while watching his massive army on the move: "'There came upon me', replied he, ' a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness of man's life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.'"
    • 3/5
      It took me a long time to get around to reading Herodotus (over 15 years) & a long time to read him once I did. Writing in the 5th century BC, Herodotus set the tone for much of Western history writing afterwards. Like that of the epic poets, his chronicle chiefly concerns rulers & wars. That said there are many interesting, even amusing, digressions regarding local customs, religious practices, gender relations, etc. For the lay reader (one with no particular knowledge of Western antiquity)confusion will reign in regards to names, locations & dates. Like its 20th century offspring, 100 Years of Solitude, names repeat over generations. We are talking sons of sons, etc. Sometimes Herodotus recites genealogies in a manner reminiscent of Genesis. There will be a place & a progenitor (sometimes that will be a god or human who consorts with a god). As for location, trying to pin down exactly what Greece might be is quite difficult as it seems to be a moving target depending on which city or island is in or out of the confederacy at any given time or depending on whether you are talking about Greeks as an ethnic group or as a political one. The maps included at the beginning of the Penguin Classics edition are only mildly helpful. I would have loved to be able to superimpose modern maps onto ancient ones & vice versa. Just getting a grip on what is Africa (not called such by Herodotus, but rather Egypt,Libya & Ethiopia/ Kush), what is Europe (the Bosphorus is key, although at times Europe seems to be elsewhere than Greece)& what is Asia (perhaps one of the reasons it is hard to get a grip on where Greece is is that Greeks are established also in Western Asia, in what we now call Sicily & southern Italy, as well as North Africa). In short there was a whole lot of mixing going on. A few things that I found quite remarkable in light of modern history are as follows: Herodotus never mentions race as we know it & only very rarely skin color or hair texture (& when he does it is primarily to note that the Ethiopians were considered to be the most perfect physical specimens of the human race, as well as the longest lived); Herodotus never mentions the Jews at all, whether as inhabitants of Judea or elsewhere, although Jews certainly were part of the Ancient World that he writes about-he does mention Palestine, but the Phoenicians & Assyrians seem to have been the most important players on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean ; although females are generally regarded as property throughout the world Herodotus reports on, some do have power & influence & occasionally, as in the case of the naval commander Artemesia, male positions. When women do assume gender-proscribed roles, Herodotus takes that in stride, as if it's to be expected & lauded, all the while the norm remains otherwise. Most of The Histories is taken up with the rise of the Persian Empire from Cyrus through Xerxes, along with some history of Egypt up until the defeat of Egypt by Cambyses in 525 when Egypt fell under Persian power. The book ends with the defeat of Xerxes by the Greeks (Athenians, Spartans & Allies)in 478.
    • 4/5
      It is often said that Herodotus is more pleasant to read than Thucydides, but I find that Herodotus is *only* pleasant compared to Thucydides. (7/10)
    • 4/5
      This book deserves "5 stars" for its historical importance. Unfortunately, my knowledge of this period is minimal and I often lost the thread of the narrative - this was not helped by Herodotus's fondness for digression. While some parts were a slog . ALL THOSE NAMES . Much was very interesting, although sometimes incredulous.
    • 4/5
      A fun, highly readable translation of a hugely historical work. It really made the world of over 2,000 years ago come alive. That being said, this isn't a book you burn through in a day or two. I'm a slow reader to begin with, but this took awhile to get through, referencing the copious notes and many pages of maps does slow one down.
    • 3/5
      Knap historisch document.Inhoudelijk evenwichtige verdeling tussen actie en beschou?wing, maar met wel lange aanloop. In de compositie zitten soms vele, storende flashbacks en uitweidingen over allerlei details. Causaliteit: de grote mannen en hun hebzucht, eerzucht, moed en opoffering, maar ook dromen (voorspellende waarde), orakels (komen steeds uit), en ingrijpen van "God" (op 2-tal plaatsen als zeer ree?l omschreven, elders gesuggereerd). Het lot is op de achtergrond aanwezig, maar niet uitgesproken.Opmerkelijk is de licht bewonderende ondertoon bij de beschrijving van de verrichtingen van de Perzen, cfr vooral Cyrus; de Ioni?rs worden daarentegen als regelrecht uitschot omschreven, de Atheners zijn maar zo zo; over Sparta blijft Herodotus neutraal.
    • 4/5
      It's a classic it should be read. I'm guessing George Bush didn't read it otherwise he would have gotten in and out of Iraq faster. "Soft countries breed soft men." Cyrus
    • 4/5
      Very interesting and entertaining history book. For class we had to read sections regarding different ethnic groups and Herodotus does a wonderful job telling the reader about them. This was a suprisingly quicck read and kept my attention the whole way.
    • 5/5
      One of the most fascinating history books I've ever read. Herodotus tries his best at being unbiased and doesn't always succeed, which makes this history even more intriguing. That's forgivable, however, because this is really one of the world's earliest attempts at creating a book of history. Herodotus had no rules by which to write. So when he includes heresay and myth it makes the book all the more exciting.
    • 3/5
      READ IN DUTCH/GREEK

      This was our final assignment in my Greek class. So I read passages in Greek, translating them in Dutch. Some of the stories of the Histories are very famous, but I'd never realised they came from Herodotus.
    • 5/5
      This is a very clear and readable modern English translation of Herodotus. The notes at the end are more complete than anything I've ever seen before, and the introduction is a good guide for someone like me who has very little background in ancient Greek history.
    • 4/5
      I have this in two volumes. I give the first a 5-star rating and the second a 3 to 4 star rating. The first was very interesting because it described the way of life in the parts of the world Herodotus had vistied as it was 2500 years ago and earlier. The second described Persian invasions of Greece during his lifetime. Very detailed, a little slow. Now I want to see the movie "300".
    • 5/5
      It's all in here -- facts, battles, espionage, emotion, sex, beauty, culture, religion, and atrocity. The main characters: Xerxes, Cyrus, Darius, Croesus, Solon, Alexander. This is as enjoyable reading as any modern history. In addition to providing the facts, Herodotus conveys the sometimes contemplative nature affecting his choice of what was "worthy to be recorded." The people and events seem very real because he balances major events with everyday details. The latter include the customs of the people involved, from their marriage rites to their favorite insults ("worse than a woman" was apparently quite popular with the Persians). Though not the primary theme of the work, I was greatly affected by a number of events that were remarkably comparable to Biblical stories. Assuming we know the earliest writing date, the Old Testament scenarios could at least be claimed as the source for the parallel in other cultures -- not so with New Testament events. Among the examples: parting waters at Thales (Book I, #75); a child to reign unless a king kills him; prophecy and gifts from the Magi (I, #107); a new baby from Petra being the rock that will one day make right the city of Corinth (V, #92); referring to Neptune as the "savior" (VII, #192); the parting of the sea due to an ebb tide that flows back and kills those crossing (VIII, #129); "he who seeks his life will lose it..." (Book VII, #39). We also see similarities related to cultural beliefs and legends: In II, #50-53, Herodotus explains how the Greek god names came from the Egyptian; Egypt had a Helen story; Egypt had a Jupiter; 12 cities (I, #12); Persia named for Perses (son of Perseus) (VII, #61); the sun darkened by arrows (VII, #226); Croesus to be overthrown by a mule (I, #31-#93). Customs: burying alive (Book VII, #114), two different incidents regarding Greeks who didn't make it to the battle in time and were scorned by their countrymen. Herodotus covers more common details: grain boats, dress, marriage, the sick. And he covers epic moments: the 10,000 "immortals," a secret message on the tablet beneath the wax, and uses of water for defense (and turned against). In Book III, #72, Darius provides a very pragmatic stance on lying, claiming that a man lies or tells the truth both for the same purpose of achieving something. In situations where there is no value in maintaining trust, lying is an effective means to an end. Darius is chosen as king by his horse being the first to neigh at a certain point on the trail. Two versions are given of how he made that happen, both involving the scent of a mare. Book IX, #98: "Nothing mortal travels so fast as these Persian messengers. The entire plan is a Persian invention; and this is the method of it. Along the whole line of the road, there are men (they say) stationed with horses, in number equal to the number of days which the journey takes, allowing a man and a horse to each day; and these men will not be hindered from accomplishing at their best speed the distance which they have to go, either by snow, or rain, or heat, or by the darkness of night. The first delivers his dispatch to the second..." In Book VIII, #118, Xerxes and men are crossing in an overloaded boat. The helmsmen mentions the best strategy is to lighten the load. The king's guards jump out. The king reward the helmsman with a crown and beheads him for costing him his men.
    • 4/5
      Really 2 books in 1, Histories gives an overview of both the Persian/Greek conflict and the cultures surrounding it. To fully appreciate this book, it is important to be able to divide it in your mind - a Fodors Guide for the Ancient Mediterranean and a History 101.Although most would agree that Herodotus had a problem with facts, it is important to look at it contextually. Herodotus was one of the revolutionaries in history - he set out to make an honest book, comparing different versions of history and ethnography and explaining why he believed a version was true.Worth reading but remember - categorize it in your mind as you read!
    • 4/5
      A milestone in European thought. A combination travelogue and history of the ancient world, rife with fascinating commentary. A lot of the bookk is complete fantasy, with gold digging ants and winged serpents, but a good deal more consists of astute observations and almost scholarly research. This is one of the primary historical sources for the Persian Wars, superbly described and analyzed. Herodotus also does well by Egypt and Scythia, the former admired, the latter feared. It is difficult to say which aspect is the more entertaining: the kingdoms, people and events described or the complex mind of the author and the culture that produced him.
    • 5/5
      Much the most readable ancient historian, for me. It may not all be true, but I believe Herodotus put down what his informants told him.
    • 5/5
      Rawlinson's translation is old fashioned, though perfectly serviceable and this edition lacks some of the critical apparatus some other editions have, but it was the way I discovred Herodotus so can't help loving it.
    • 4/5
      Written in the 5th century BC, this is a fascinating snapshot of ancient Greek life and beliefs. Herodotus's narrative of the Persian War and the famous Spartan stand at Thermopylae are worth the price of admission alone, but where he really shines is in his many passages of sheer made up nonsense. For instance: his description of the hippopotamus - highly creative, highly wrong. Also, his ideas about the practices of other cultures are fairly ridiculous in some places, but this is what makes it so fun. He must have been a real hoot to hang out with, the kind of fellow who told fireside tales that kept listeners hanging on every improbable word."And there are these flying snakes, right?"Right, Herodotus, right.
    • 3/5
      Strangely compelling, for ancient history -- especially in this (de Selincourt) translation.

    Book preview

    The Histories (Translated by George Rawlinson with an Introduction by George Swayne and a Preface by H. L. Havell) - Herodotus

    cover.jpg

    THE HISTORIES

    By HERODOTUS

    Translated by GEORGE RAWLINSON

    Introduction by GEORGE SWAYNE

    Preface by H. L. HAVELL

    The Histories

    By Herodotus

    Translated by George Rawlinson

    Introduction by George Swayne

    Preface by H. L. Havell

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5388-6

    eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5389-3

    This edition copyright © 2016. Digireads.com Publishing.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

    Cover Image: A detail of The Battle of Salamis by Walter Crane from The Story of Greece, Told to Boys and Girls by Mary Macgregor, Thomas Nelson and Sons, New York, c. 1914.

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    PREFACE

    BOOK I. CLIO

    BOOK II. EUTERPÉ

    BOOK III. THALIA

    BOOK IV. MELPOMENE

    BOOK V. TERPSICHORE

    BOOK VI. ERATO

    BOOK VII. POLYMNIA

    BOOK VIII. URANIA

    BOOK IX. CALLIOPÉ

    MAPS

    Introduction

    So little is known for certain regarding the life of Herodotus, the father of history, that it may well be a subject of congratulation that he has not shared the fate of Homer, the father of poetry, in having doubt thrown on his individual existence.

    He appears to have been born about the year 484 B.C., between the two great Persian invasions of Greece, at Halicarnassus, a colony of Dorian Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor. His family was one of some distinction. From his writings alone we should know that he received a liberal education, and became familiarly acquainted with the current literature of his day; and the epic form of his great prose work, besides numberless expressions and allusions, bears witness to the fact that the Homeric poems were his constant study and model.

    His early manhood was spent in extensive travels, in which he accumulated the miscellaneous materials of his narrative. He visited, in the course of them, a great part of the then known world; from Babylon and Susa in the east, to the coast of Italy in the west; and from the mouths of the Dnieper and the Danube in the north, to the cataracts of Upper Egypt southwards. Thus his travels covered a distance of thirty-one degrees of longitude from east to west, and twenty-four of latitude from north to south—an area of something like 1700 miles square. It was an immense range in days when there were few facilities for locomotion, and when every country was supposed to be at war with its neighbours, unless bound by express treaties of peace and alliance. He traveled, too, it must be remembered, in an age when robbers by land and sea were members of a recognized profession,—very lucrative and not entirely disreputable: when (as we shall see hereafter) disappointed political or military adventurers took to piracy as a last resort, without any sort of compunction. Pray, friends, are you pirates,—or what? is the question which old Nestor puts to his visitors, in the ‘Odyssey,’ without the least intention either of jesting or of giving offence. A voyage itself was such a perilous matter, that a Greek seaman never, if he could help it, lost sight of land in the daytime, or remained on board his ship during the night; and at a later date the philosopher Aristotle distinctly admits that even his ideal brave man may, without prejudice to his character, fear the being drowned at sea. The range of our author’s travels is, however, less wonderful than their busy minuteness. He is traveler, archaeologist, natural philosopher, and historian combined in one. He appears scarcely ever to have concluded his visit to a country without exhausting every available source of information. Personal inquiry alone seems to have satisfied him, wherever it could be made; though he consulted carefully all written materials within his reach, records public and private, sacred and secular. He rightly calls his work a History, for the Greek word history means really investigation, though it has passed into a different use with us. In Egypt alone he seems to have spent many years, visiting and exploring its most remarkable cities—Memphis, Hieropolis, and the hundred-gated Thebes. In Greece proper, as well as its colonies on the Asiatic seaboard and in South Italy, and in all the islands of the Archipelago, he is everywhere at home, as well as in the remoter regions of Asia Minor.

    Such details of his life as have come down to us rest on somewhat doubtful authority. It is said that he was driven from Halicarnassus to Samos by the tyranny of Lygdamis, grandson of that Queen Artemisia whose conduct he nevertheless, with some generosity, immortalises in his account of the battle of Salamis; that in Samos he learned the Ionic dialect in which his history is written; that in time he returned to head a successful insurrection against Lygdamis, but then, finding himself unpopular, joined in the Athenian colonization of Thurium, in Italy, where he died and was buried, and where his tomb in the market-place was long shown. His residence at Samos may have been a fiction invented to explain the dialect in which he wrote, which was more probably that consecrated by usage to historical composition. At one time he appears to have removed to Athens, where he received great honours, partly in the substantial shape of ten talents (more than £2400), after a public recitation of his history. According to one story, he was commissioned to read it before the Assembly of all the Greek States on the occasion of the great national games held every fourth year at Olympia in Elis.

    Amongst the audience on some such occasion, most probably at Athens, a young Athenian, Thucydides, is said to have been present; and the introduction which then took place may have given the first stimulus to the future historian of the Peloponnesian war, who, despairing of surpassing his predecessor as a charming story-teller, boldly struck out for himself a new path, as the founder of the critical method. It seems also that at Athens Herodotus enjoyed the friendship of the great tragic poet Sophocles. Plutarch has preserved the opening words of a poem in which the tragedian compliments the historian, after he had quitted Athens for Thurium. In two of the tragedies of Sophocles, the ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ and the ‘Antigone,’ are passages plainly adapted, from this history. The society of Athens under Pericles, comprising all that was most select and brilliant in art and intellect, must have had great attractions for Herodotus; and it implies some self-denial on his part to have torn himself away from it. Probably he longed to exercise, as most Greeks did, full political rights, which, as an alien, he could not enjoy at Athens, though he was evidently an enthusiastic admirer of her institutions.

    After his emigration to Thurium, he seems to have devoted his life to the elaboration and amplification of his great work. Several passages in his history prove that he was, at all events, acquainted with the earlier events of the great Peloponnesian war. The balance of evidence seems to point to his death having occurred when he was about sixty. If so, he at least escaped witnessing, as the result of that war, the fall of his beloved Athens from her well-won supremacy over Greece.

    The history of Herodotus is a great prose epic, suggested doubtless to the author in early life by the fame of those events which were still fresh in the minds of all men—the repulse of the Persian invasion, and the liberation of Greece. The Greeks had thrown off colonies, from time to time, into the islands of the Levant and the west coast of Asia.{1} These Asiatic Greeks had actually been enslaved by Persia; and European Greece, though free from the first, could only wake to the full consciousness of that freedom when the overshadowing dread of the monster Asiatic power had been dissipated. Independence could be but a name for either Athenian or Spartan, so long as the very sight of the Persian dress (as Herodotus tells us) inspired terror. Until Miltiades won Marathon, by a rush as apparently desperate as our Balaklava charge, the Persians had been reputed invincible. Their second expedition against Greece was intended to repair the damaged prestige of Persian valour, by setting in motion overwhelming numbers. It seemed as if the dead weight alone of Asiatic fleets and armies must carry all before it. It did indeed carry Athens, but not the Athenians. The sea-fight of Salamis was won by citizens who had lost their city. The two great victories which followed within a year—Platæa and Mycale, gained on the same day—indicated for ever the superiority of Europeans over Asiatics. The latter was fought out on Asiatic ground—the beginning of the great retribution which has continued even to the present time, represented by uncertain tides of Western conquest gradually gaining ground on the East.

    Never before or since has an author employed himself with grander subject-matter than Herodotus. The victories of Freedom in all ages, more than any other conquests, have stirred the human heart to its depths. It is the cause that alone humanizes war, and makes it other than brutal butchery. Many such victories there have been in the course of time, but all of local and limited importance in comparison. And, indeed, perhaps Marathon made Morgarten possible. By Salamis and "Platæa the world may have escaped being orientalized for ever, and bound in the immobility of China. These battles, by saving freedom and securing progress, anticipated the overthrow of the Saracens before Tours, and of the Turks before Vienna. Herodotus, indeed, could not see all this, when the plan of his great history dawned on his mind, but the salvation of his beloved Greece was to him a sufficient inspiration.

    We find the same unity of design in the history of Herodotus as in Homer’s great epic. As in the ‘Iliad,’ not the siege of Troy but the wrath of Achilles is the continual burden, so, in our author’s work, not the history of Greece but the destruction of the great Persian armada is its one great subject. All the other local histories, though introduced with much fullness of detail, are subordinate to this consummation. They flow to it like the tributaries of a river, whose might and grandeur make men love to explore its sources. He gives us in succession the early history of Lydia, of Babylon, and of Assyria, in order to trace the rise and fall of those several Asiatic powers which merged at last in the great empire of the Medes and Persians, who are the actors in his true drama, to which these preliminary histories are a discursive prologue. His work is not a romance founded on fact, like Xenophon’s ‘Education of Cyrus,’ or Shakespeare’s historical plays, or Scott’s ‘Quentin Durward.’ It is serious history, as history was understood in his time. But the historian’s appetite was omnivorous in the collection of materials, and robustly digested fable and fact alike. His mind was like that of Froissart and Philip de Comines, who lived in another age, when miracles were thought matters of course. Yet in Herodotus we perceive the dawning of that criticism which finds its full expression in Thucydides, who was in mind a modern historian, though less fastidious as to the evidence of facts than a man of our century would be. The incredulity of Herodotus, when it shows itself, seems rather evoked by the suspected veracity of his informant, or some contradiction in phenomena, than by the incredible nature of the facts themselves.

    He has been most found fault with for ascribing effects to inadequate causes; but we ought rather to feel grateful to him, considering the mould in which the mind of his time was cast, for endeavoring to trace the connection between cause and effect at all. In Homer the gods are always in requisition, and always at hand to manage matters, even in minutest details. That Herodotus had a religious mind there can be no doubt, for he speaks even of foreign and barbaric rites and beliefs with intense respect. And the great liberation War of Greece was, in its circumstances, calculated to illustrate one great pervading principle of his religion—that heaven will not allow an excess of mortal prosperity. The rock which overhung the bay of Salamis, whence Xerxes looked down on his host, might well bear the statue of Nemesis. Nemesis, in the religious system of the ancient Greeks, is the great divine stewardess, who assigns to man his quota of good or of evil. If man takes to himself more good than his share, she adjusts the balance by giving him evil; for the gods are jealous of those who try to vie with them. Did not Apollo flay Marsyas for daring to contend with him on the lyre? Did not Minerva change Arachne into a spider for boasting to be a better spinster than herself? So the Sovereign of the gods cannot endure the luxury and pride of the earthly despot. It becomes the business of Nemesis to compass his destruction. She invokes against him Atè, or Infatuation. Atè blindfolds his mind, and forces him to enter of his own will on the path whose end is destruction. To ward off this, men resort to sacrifice; but any sacrifice short of what is most precious is useless. Polycrates, the despot of Samos, almost insults the gods in supposing that throwing a jewel into the sea will atone for the crime of prosperous sovereignty; the ring comes back to him in a fish brought to his table. Was not Agamemnon compelled to sacrifice his daughter, the pride of his house, before he could obtain a fair wind to sail to Troy? It seems to have been an article of the Athenians’ creed, which Herodotus shared, that there was a sort of wickedness in one free man attempting to rise above the level of his fellow-citizens; and perhaps they thought that their honourable punishment of ostracism was devised as much for a great man’s good as for theirs.{2} It was a kind of inverted doctrine of the divine right of kings, traces of which we find throughout the Attic literature. Had Herodotus lived in our day, we may imagine that his attention would have been powerfully arrested by the fate of Napoleon the First, or the Czar Nicholas of Russia, as illustrating this sentiment.

    The History of Herodotus was divided by the ancients into nine books, each bearing the name of one of the Muses. His own order of narration is very discursive, for he digresses into local history and anecdote continually. In these pages a rearrangement into chapters will perhaps be more welcome to the general reader.

    GEORGE SWAYNE

    1870.

    Preface

    When we speak of the history of Greece we mean the history, not so much of a country, as of a people. The Greeks were a race of extraordinary energy and intelligence, who, at a period of which we have no record, penetrated into that part of Europe now called the Balkan Peninsula, and from there gradually spread themselves over the adjacent coasts and islands. They went on founding colony after colony, until at last their cities occupied the whole coast of the Mediterranean, and extended eastward to the farthest limit of the Black Sea, and westward to the Strait of Gibraltar. But, however far they went, they always prided themselves on their name of Greeks, and spoke of all other races as Barbarians. They were not a nation of conquerors and lawgivers, like the Romans, nor mere traders, like the Phoenicians. What distinguishes them from all other peoples of the earth is the keenness of their intellect, their insatiable thirst for knowledge, their love of beauty, and their power of embodying it in forms of art and poetry. And this is what still gives an unequaled interest to their history and their literature.

    The Greeks were divided into three great tribes—the Ionians, the Achæans (or Æolians), and the Dorians. Of these, the earliest were the Ionians and Achæans. In the poems of Homer we read of a great king, named Agamemnon, who ruled in the city of Mycene, in northeast Peloponnesus (Morea), and led a great army of Greeks against Troy, a city in Asia Minor, near the shores of the Dardanelles. He was accompanied by his brother Menelaus, King of Sparta, and by a great number of lesser chieftains, who all called themselves kings; and after a siege, lasting ten years, Troy was captured, and burned. Eighty years after the fall of Troy the Dorians, a hardy race of mountaineers, entered Peloponnesus from the north, and established themselves in various positions, the chief of which were Sparta, Corinth, and the island of Ægina. The Achæans of Peloponnesus were now confined to a narrow strip of land, running along the southern coast of the Gulf of Corinth, and now called, after them, Achæa; and the old population of Arcadia, a rugged mountain region forming the core of Peloponnesus, remained undisturbed.

    The Spartan Dorians settled in the southeast portion of Peloponnesus, called Laconia, and pitched their camp in a deep valley at the foot of Mount Taygetus, on the banks of the Eurotas. After a desperate struggle, lasting for thirty years, they made themselves masters of the district called Messenia, west of Sparta, and henceforth remained undisputed masters of Southern Peloponnesus. The conquered population remained as subjects, and was divided into two classes: the first and more favored of these kept possession of their farms, and managed their own affairs, but had to pay tribute to Sparta, and serve in her armies. The second, called Helots, were much worse treated; and the name of Helot has passed into common language, denoting the lowest state of social degradation. The Helots were serfs, who tilled the soil for their masters, and accompanied them in battle. They were stout and brave, and, being much more numerous than the Spartans, were a constant source of terror to their tyrants, who employed the most cruel and treacherous methods to keep down their numbers.

    The Spartans thus formed a military aristocracy, living in the midst of a hostile population, and closely united by common interests and common perils. Their city was a camp; their life a never-ending drill. They stood apart from the other Greeks in their contempt for art, literature, and all the refinements and elegancies of life. Their whole training was directed to one object—the maintenance of their position as the ruling race in Peloponnesus. Northward lay Arcadia, peopled by a turbulent and warlike race of mountain shepherds. On the west coast was Elis, which had been occupied at about the time of the Dorian invasion by the Ætolians, another northern tribe; and in Elis was the famous city of Olympia, where multitudes congregated from all parts of Greece every four years to take part in the Olympian Games. On the northeast was the peninsula of Argolis, with the powerful city of Argos, proud of its connection with the ancient glories of the Grecian race, and bitterly jealous of Sparta. Thus threatened continually by perils from within and perils from without, the Spartans had enough to do to maintain the high position which they held among Greeks. That they succeeded in doing so for so long was due to the severity, simplicity, and self-denial which have made the name of Sparta a proverb for all time.

    Sparta was the acknowledged leader of the Dorian race. Among the Ionians, Athens rose by slow degrees to the highest place. In very early times, before the Dorian invasion, the population of Greece was constantly shifting, and the most fertile districts were most exposed to invasion from neighboring tribes. But the soil of Attica, being poor and thin, offered little temptation to the invader; consequently Attica from a very early period was occupied by the same inhabitants. The Athenians called themselves children of the soil, and old-fashioned Athenian gentlemen fastened their hair in a knot with a golden grasshopper, to show that they, like the grasshoppers, were an earth-born race. Attica was at first broken up into scattered townships, each governed by its own magistrate. These were united into a single state at the time when Athens was ruled by kings. The kingly power was gradually abolished, and in 683 B.C. the government was placed in the hands of nine magistrates, who were appointed from year to year. For a long time the little state was torn by factions, the rich and noble striving to keep all the power in their own hands, and the poor struggling against the hardships and miseries which made their lives unbearable. All the land had passed into the hands of a few powerful families, and the poor men who tilled the soil were crushed by debt. The position became so desperate that in 594 B.C. Solon, the wisest man of his time, was called upon to make new laws, and save the state. Solon took measures to relieve the debtors, and drew up a new form of government, with a senate of four hundred to superintend public business, and a sort of parliament, called the Ecclesia, in which every free-born native of Attica had a vote.

    These were the beginnings of public liberty in Attica; but it was long before they bore fruit. In 560 B.C. Pisistratus, a noble, placed himself at the head of the poorer citizens, and made himself Tyrant of Athens. He was expelled, but in 545 B.C. he succeeded in establishing himself firmly on the throne, and reigned in peace till his death in 527 B.C. He was succeeded by his son Hippias, who ruled until 510 B.C, when he was driven out with the help of the Spartans. After the expulsion of Hippias the work of Solon was carried out by Clisthenes. The famous Athenian Democracy begins from this date (509 B.C.); and henceforth Athens sprang rapidly into power and fame, and became the great rival of Sparta.

    The constant shifting of the population in the Greek peninsula, and its unsettled condition in early times, led to the foundation of numerous colonies, which extended, as we have seen, along the whole coast of the Mediterranean, and to the eastern shores of the Black Sea. Those which chiefly concern us in the period of Greek history dealt with in this book are the Achæan (or Æolic), the Dorian, and Ionian colonies on the coasts of Asia Minor immediately facing Greece. Of these, the most important are the Ionian colonies, with the powerful cities of Ephesus and Miletus, founded by Athens. In 550 B.C. the Ionian cities of Asia Minor were conquered by Croesus, King of Lydia, the westernmost of those great Oriental monarchies with which the Greeks were destined not long after to fight for their very existence. Croesus in his turn fell before a mightier power, which in the meantime had been growing up in the heart of Asia. That power was Persia, and in order to understand the events which follow we must turn our thoughts for a moment to the heart of Asia.

    In 559 B.C. Astyages, the last King of Media, was defeated by Cyrus, the young King of Persia, and with this date begins the greatness of the Persian Empire. In 546 B.C. Cyrus captured Sardis, the capital of Lydia, and Croesus henceforth lived as a guest in the Persian court. The conquest of Lydia brought the Greeks in the coast-towns of Asia Minor into contact with the Persians; and all these cities were conquered by Harpagus, a general of Cyrus. After the death of Cyrus in 529 B.C., Cambyses, his son, conquered Egypt (525 B.C.), and died four years afterward, 521 B.C. After a short interval, during which the Persian throne was occupied by a usurper, named Smerdis, Darius, son of Hystaspes, became king, and reigned for thirty-six years.

    In 499 B.C. the Ionians of Asia Minor revolted from Persia, and, aided by the Athenians, burned Sardis. The revolt spread to all the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and lasted six years before it was finally suppressed. In 492 B.C. Darius, who had not forgotten the part taken by the Athenians in the burning of Sardis, sent a fleet and army under Mardonius against Athens. The fleet was totally destroyed by a storm off Mount Athos, and the army was attacked and routed by the wild Thracian tribes.

    In 490 B.C. a second fleet and army under Datis and Artaphernes sailed across the Ægean, burned Eretria, on the coast of Eubœa, opposite to Attica, and then came to land at Marathon, on the northern coast of Attica. Here the Persians, numbering one hundred thousand, were totally defeated by the Athenians and Platæans, whose whole force only amounted to ten thousand men. Darius at once set about making preparations for a third expedition, which was to be on such a scale that all resistance would be hopeless. In the midst of this task he was overtaken by death (485 B.C.), and was succeeded by his son, Xerxes, who, much against his will, was persuaded to carry out his father’s designs against Greece.

    The issue of this wild and impious attempt on the liberty of a young and gallant people is fully described in the latter part of this book. The Greeks were fighting for all that makes life worth living: for their hearths and homes, their religion, their manhood, their high traditions. The Persians were fighting for a master who was himself a slave—the slave of low passions and childish vanity. Therefore, in spite of overwhelming numbers, in spite of faint hearts and cold counsels, the cause of Greece, the cause of European civilization, won the day.

    This is the subject which appealed to a delightful story-teller of that far-off time. Herodotus was called the father of history; but in his Greek tongue the word historia meant nothing more than story-telling—the weaving of all these heroic wars and great personal deeds into tales full of romance and charm. And from the importance of the theme and method of treatment, it came to be considered as the beginning of world histories.

    Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus, a Doric city on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, about 490 B.C.; and he died probably in Italy, about 425 B.C. His life was thus spent during that momentous period between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars. And his interesting record of the people and events around him—retold in these Tales—has proved the one medium which has kept many of them from being forgotten.

    H. L. HAVELL

    1906.

    Book I. Clio

    These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feuds.

    According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began to quarrel. This people, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Erythraean Sea, having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria. They landed at many places on the coast, and among the rest at Argos, which was then preeminent above all the states included now under the common name of Hellas. Here they exposed their merchandise, and traded with the natives for five or six days; at the end of which time, when almost everything was sold, there came down to the beach a number of women, and among them the daughter of the king, who was, they say, agreeing in this with the Greeks, Io, the child of Inachus. The women were standing by the stern of the ship intent upon their purchases, when the Phoenicians, with a general shout, rushed upon them. The greater part made their escape, but some were seized and carried off. Io herself was among the captives. The Phoenicians put the women on board their vessel, and set sail for Egypt. Thus did Io pass into Egypt, according to the Persian story, which differs widely from the Phoenician: and thus commenced, according to their authors, the series of outrages.

    At a later period, certain Greeks, with whose name they are unacquainted, but who would probably be Cretans, made a landing at Tyre, on the Phoenician coast, and bore off the king’s daughter, Europe. In this they only retaliated; but afterwards the Greeks, they say, were guilty of a second violence. They manned a ship of war, and sailed to Aea, a city of Colchis, on the river Phasis; from whence, after despatching the rest of the business on which they had come, they carried off Medea, the daughter of the king of the land. The monarch sent a herald into Greece to demand reparation of the wrong, and the restitution of his child; but the Greeks made answer that, having received no reparation of the wrong done them in the seizure of Io the Argive, they should give none in this instance.

    In the next generation afterwards, according to the same authorities, Alexander the son of Priam, bearing these events in mind, resolved to procure himself a wife out of Greece by violence, fully persuaded, that as the Greeks had not given satisfaction for their outrages, so neither would he be forced to make any for his. Accordingly he made prize of Helen; upon which the Greeks decided that, before resorting to other measures, they would send envoys to reclaim the princess and require reparation of the wrong. Their demands were met by a reference to the violence which had been offered to Medea, and they were asked with what face they could now require satisfaction, when they had formerly rejected all demands for either reparation or restitution addressed to them.

    Hitherto the injuries on either side had been mere acts of common violence; but in what followed the Persians consider that the Greeks were greatly to blame, since before any attack had been made on Europe, they led an army into Asia. Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women, since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. Henceforth they ever looked upon the Greeks as their open enemies. For Asia, with all the various tribes of barbarians that inhabit it, is regarded by the Persians as their own; but Europe and the Greek race they look on as distinct and separate.

    Such is the account which the Persians give of these matters. They trace to the attack upon Troy their ancient enmity towards the Greeks. The Phoenicians, however, as regards Io, vary from the Persian statements. They deny that they used any violence to remove her into Egypt; she herself, they say, having formed an intimacy with the captain, while his vessel lay at Argos, and perceiving herself to be with child, of her own free will accompanied the Phoenicians on their leaving the shore, to escape the shame of detection and the reproaches of her parents. Whether this latter account be true, or whether the matter happened otherwise, I shall not discuss further. I shall proceed at once to point out the person who first within my own knowledge inflicted injury on the Greeks, after which I shall go forward with my history, describing equally the greater and the lesser cities. For the cities which were formerly great have most of them become insignificant; and such as are at present powerful, were weak in the olden time. I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay.

    Croesus, son of Alyattes, by birth a Lydian, was lord of all the nations to the west of the river Halys. This stream, which separates Syria from Paphlagonia, runs with a course from south to north, and finally falls into the Euxine. So far as our knowledge goes, he was the first of the barbarians who had dealings with the Greeks, forcing some of them to become his tributaries, and entering into alliance with others. He conquered the Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians of Asia, and made a treaty with the Lacedaemonians. Up to that time all Greeks had been free. For the Cimmerian attack upon Ionia, which was earlier than Croesus, was not a conquest of the cities, but only an inroad for plundering.

    The sovereignty of Lydia, which had belonged to the Heraclides, passed into the family of Croesus, who were called the Mermnadae, in the manner which I will now relate. There was a certain king of Sardis, Candaules by name, whom the Greeks called Myrsilus. He was a descendant of Alcaeus, son of Hercules. The first king of this dynasty was Agron, son of Ninus, grandson of Belus, and great-grandson of Alcaeus; Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last. The kings who reigned before Agron sprang from Lydus, son of Atys, from whom the people of the land, called previously Meonians, received the name of Lydians. The Heraclides, descended from Hercules and the slave-girl of Jardanus, having been entrusted by these princes with the management of affairs, obtained the kingdom by an oracle. Their rule endured for two and twenty generations of men, a space of five hundred and five years; during the whole of which period, from Agron to Candaules, the crown descended in the direct line from father to son.

    Now it happened that this Candaules was in love with his own wife; and not only so, but thought her the fairest woman in the whole world. This fancy had strange consequences. There was in his bodyguard a man whom he specially favoured, Gyges, the son of Dascylus. All affairs of greatest moment were entrusted by Candaules to this person, and to him he was wont to extol the surpassing beauty of his wife. So matters went on for a while. At length, one day, Candaules, who was fated to end ill, thus addressed his follower: I see thou dost not credit what I tell thee of my lady’s loveliness; but come now, since men’s ears are less credulous than their eyes, contrive some means whereby thou mayst behold her naked. At this the other loudly exclaimed, saying, What most unwise speech is this, master, which thou hast uttered? Wouldst thou have me behold my mistress when she is naked? Bethink thee that a woman, with her clothes, puts off her bashfulness. Our fathers, in time past, distinguished right and wrong plainly enough, and it is our wisdom to submit to be taught by them. There is an old saying, ‘Let each look on his own.’ I hold thy wife for the fairest of all womankind. Only, I beseech thee, ask me not to do wickedly.

    Gyges thus endeavoured to decline the king’s proposal, trembling lest some dreadful evil should befall him through it. But the king replied to him, Courage, friend; suspect me not of the design to prove thee by this discourse; nor dread thy mistress, lest mischief be. thee at her hands. Be sure I will so manage that she shall not even know that thou hast looked upon her. I will place thee behind the open door of the chamber in which we sleep. When I enter to go to rest she will follow me. There stands a chair close to the entrance, on which she will lay her clothes one by one as she takes them off. Thou wilt be able thus at thy leisure to peruse her person. Then, when she is moving from the chair toward the bed, and her back is turned on thee, be it thy care that she see thee not as thou passest through the doorway.

    Gyges, unable to escape, could but declare his readiness. Then Candaules, when bedtime came, led Gyges into his sleeping-chamber, and a moment after the queen followed. She entered, and laid her garments on the chair, and Gyges gazed on her. After a while she moved toward the bed, and her back being then turned, he glided stealthily from the apartment. As he was passing out, however, she saw him, and instantly divining what had happened, she neither screamed as her shame impelled her, nor even appeared to have noticed aught, purposing to take vengeance upon the husband who had so affronted her. For among the Lydians, and indeed among the barbarians generally, it is reckoned a deep disgrace, even to a man, to be seen naked.

    No sound or sign of intelligence escaped her at the time. But in the morning, as soon as day broke, she hastened to choose from among her retinue such as she knew to be most faithful to her, and preparing them for what was to ensue, summoned Gyges into her presence. Now it had often happened before that the queen had desired to confer with him, and he was accustomed to come to her at her call. He therefore obeyed the summons, not suspecting that she knew aught of what had occurred. Then she addressed these words to him: Take thy choice, Gyges, of two courses which are open to thee. Slay Candaules, and thereby become my lord, and obtain the Lydian throne, or die this moment in his room. So wilt thou not again, obeying all behests of thy master, behold what is not lawful for thee. It must needs be that either he perish by whose counsel this thing was done, or thou, who sawest me naked, and so didst break our usages. At these words Gyges stood awhile in mute astonishment; recovering after a time, he earnestly besought the queen that she would not compel him to so hard a choice. But finding he implored in vain, and that necessity was indeed laid on him to kill or to be killed, he made choice of life for himself, and replied by this inquiry: If it must be so, and thou compellest me against my will to put my lord to death, come, let me hear how thou wilt have me set on him. Let him be attacked, she answered, on the spot where I was by him shown naked to you, and let the assault be made when he is asleep.

    All was then prepared for the attack, and when night fell, Gyges, seeing that he had no retreat or escape, but must absolutely either slay Candaules, or himself be slain, followed his mistress into the sleeping-room. She placed a dagger in his hand and hid him carefully behind the self-same door. Then Gyges, when the king was fallen asleep, entered privily into the chamber and struck him dead. Thus did the wife and kingdom of Candaules pass into the possession of Gyges, of whom Archilochus the Parian, who lived about the same time, made mention in a poem written in iambic trimeter verse.

    Gyges was afterwards confirmed in the possession of the throne by an answer of the Delphic oracle. Enraged at the murder of their king, the people flew to arms, but after a while the partisans of Gyges came to terms with them, and it was agreed that if the Delphic oracle declared him king of the Lydians, he should reign; if otherwise, he should yield the throne to the Heraclides. As the oracle was given in his favour he became king. The Pythoness, however, added that, in the fifth generation from Gyges, vengeance should come for the Heraclides; a prophecy of which neither the Lydians nor their princes took any account till it was fulfilled. Such was the way in which the Mermnadae deposed the Heraclides, and themselves obtained the sovereignty.

    When Gyges was established on the throne, he sent no small presents to Delphi, as his many silver offerings at the Delphic shrine testify. Besides this silver he gave a vast number of vessels of gold, among which the most worthy of mention are the goblets, six in number, and weighing altogether thirty talents, which stand in the Corinthian treasury, dedicated by him. I call it the Corinthian treasury, though in strictness of speech it is the treasury not of the whole Corinthian people, but of Cypselus, son of Eetion. Excepting Midas, son of Gordias, king of Phrygia, Gyges was the first of the barbarians whom we know to have sent offerings to Delphi. Midas dedicated the royal throne whereon he was accustomed to sit and administer justice, an object well worth looking at. It lies in the same place as the goblets presented by Gyges. The Delphians call the whole of the silver and the gold which Gyges dedicated, after the name of the donor, Gygian.

    As soon as Gyges was king he made an in-road on Miletus and Smyrna, and took the city of Colophon. Afterwards, however, though he reigned eight and thirty years, he did not perform a single noble exploit. I shall therefore make no further mention of him, but pass on to his son and successor in the kingdom, Ardys.

    Ardys took Priêné and made war upon Miletus. In his reign the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomads of Scythia, entered Asia and captured Sardis, all but the citadel. He reigned forty-nine years, and was succeeded by his son, Sadyattes, who reigned twelve years. At his death his son Alyattes mounted the throne.

    This prince waged war with the Medes under Cyaxares, the grandson of Deïoces, drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, conquered Smyrna, the Colophonian colony, and invaded Clazomenae. From this last contest he did not come off as he could have wished, but met with a sore defeat; still, however, in the course of his reign, he performed other actions very worthy of note, of which I will now proceed to give an account.

    Inheriting from his father a war with the Milesians, he pressed the siege against the city by attacking it in the following manner. When the harvest was ripe on the ground he marched his army into Milesia to the sound of pipes and harps, and flutes masculine and feminine. The buildings that were scattered over the country he neither pulled down nor burnt, nor did he even tear away the doors, but left them standing as they were. He cut down, however, and utterly destroyed all the trees and all the corn throughout the land, and then returned to his own dominions. It was idle for his army to sit down before the place, as the Milesians were masters of the sea. The reason that he did not demolish their buildings was that the inhabitants might be tempted to use them as homesteads from which to go forth to sow and till their lands; and so each time that he invaded the country he might find something to plunder.

    In this way he carried on the war with the Milesians for eleven years, in the course of which he inflicted on them two terrible blows; one in their own country in the district of Limeneium, the other in the plain of the Maeander. During six of these eleven years, Sadyattes, the son of Ardys who first lighted the flames of this war, was king of Lydia, and made the incursions. Only the five following years belong to the reign of Alyattes, son of Sadyattes, who (as I said before) inheriting the war from his father, applied himself to it unremittingly. The Milesians throughout the contest received no help at all from any of the Ionians, excepting those of Chios, who lent them troops in requital of a like service rendered them in former times, the Milesians having fought on the side of the Chians during the whole of the war between them and the people of Erythrae.

    It was in the twelfth year of the war that the following mischance occurred from the firing of the harvest-fields. Scarcely had the corn been set alight by the soldiers when a violent wind carried the flames against the temple of Minerva Assesia, which caught fire and was burnt to the ground. At the time no one made any account of the circumstance; but afterwards, on the return of the army to Sardis, Alyattes fell sick. His illness continued, whereupon, either advised thereto by some friend, or perchance himself conceiving the idea, he sent messengers to Delphi to inquire of the god concerning his malady. On their arrival the Pythoness declared that no answer should be given them until they had rebuilt the temple of Minerva, burnt by the Lydians at Assêsus in Milesia.

    Thus much I know from information given me by the Delphians; the remainder of the story the Milesians add.

    The answer made by the oracle came to the ears of Periander, son of Cypselus, who was a very close friend to Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus at that period. He instantly despatched a messenger to report the oracle to him, in order that Thrasybulus, forewarned of its tenor, might the better adapt his measures to the posture of affairs.

    Alyattes, the moment that the words of the oracle were reported to him, sent a herald to Miletus in hopes of concluding a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians for such a time as was needed to rebuild the temple. The herald went upon his way; but meantime Thrasybulus had been apprised of everything; and conjecturing what Alyattes would do, he contrived this artifice. He had all the corn that was in the city, whether belonging to himself or to private persons, brought into the market-place, and issued an order that the Milesians should hold themselves in readiness, and, when he gave the signal, should, one and all, fall to drinking and revelry.

    The purpose for which he gave these orders was the following. He hoped that the Sardian herald, seeing so great store of corn upon the ground, and all the city given up to festivity, would inform Alyattes of it, which fell out as he anticipated. The herald observed the whole, and when he had delivered his message, went back to Sardis. This circumstance alone, as I gather, brought about the peace which ensued. Alyattes, who had hoped that there was now a great scarcity of corn in Miletus, and that the people were worn down to the last pitch of suffering, when he heard from the herald on his return from Miletus tidings so contrary to those he had expected, made a treaty with the enemy by which the two nations became close friends and allies. He then built at Assêsus two temples to Minerva instead of one, and shortly after recovered from his malady. Such were the chief circumstances of the war which Alyattes waged with Thrasybulus and the Milesians.

    This Periander, who apprised Thrasybulus of the oracle, was son of Cypselus, and tyrant of Corinth. In his time a very wonderful thing is said to have happened. The Corinthians and the Lesbians agree in their account of the matter. They relate that Arion of Methymna, who as a player on the harp, was second to no man living at that time, and who was, so far as we know, the first to invent the dithyrambic measure, to give it its name, and to recite in it at Corinth, was carried to Taenarum on the back of a dolphin.

    He had lived for many years at the court of Periander, when a longing came upon him to sail across to Italy and Sicily. Having made rich profits in those parts, he wanted to recross the seas to Corinth. He therefore hired a vessel, the crew of which were Corinthians, thinking that there was no people in whom he could more safely confide; and, going on board, he set sail from Tarentum. The sailors, however, when they reached the open sea, formed a plot to throw him overboard and seize upon his riches. Discovering their design, he fell on his knees, beseeching them to spare his life, and making them welcome to his money. But they refused; and required him either to kill himself outright, if he wished for a grave on the dry land, or without loss of time to leap overboard into the sea. In this strait Arion begged them, since such was their pleasure, to allow him to mount upon the quarter-deck, dressed in his full costume, and there to play and sing, and promising that, as soon as his song was ended, he would destroy himself. Delighted at the prospect of hearing the very best harper in the world, they consented, and withdrew from the stern to the middle of the vessel: while Arion dressed himself in the full costume of his calling, took his harp, and standing on the quarter-deck, chanted the Orthian. His strain ended, he flung himself, fully attired as he was, headlong into the sea. The Corinthians then sailed on to Corinth. As for Arion, a dolphin, they say, took him upon his back and carried him to Taenarum, where he went ashore, and thence proceeded to Corinth in his musician’s dress, and told all that had happened to him. Periander, however, disbelieved the story, and put Arion in ward, to prevent his leaving Corinth, while he watched anxiously for the return of the mariners. On their arrival he summoned them before him and asked them if they could give him any tiding of Arion. They returned for answer that he was alive and in good health in Italy, and that they had left him at Tarentum, where he was doing well. Thereupon Arion appeared before them, just as he was when he jumped from the vessel: the men, astonished and detected in falsehood, could no longer deny their guilt. Such is the account which the Corinthians and Lesbians give; and there is to this day at Taenarum, an offering of Arion’s at the shrine, which is a small figure in bronze, representing a man seated upon a dolphin.

    Having brought the war with the Milesians to a close, and reigned over the land of Lydia for fifty-seven years, Alyattes died. He was the second prince of his house who made offerings at Delphi. His gifts, which he sent on recovering from his sickness, were a great bowl of pure silver, with a salver in steel curiously inlaid, a work among all the offerings at Delphi the best worth looking at. Glaucus, the Chian, made it, the man who first invented the art of inlaying steel.

    On the death of Alyattes, Croesus, his son, who was thirty-five years old, succeeded to the throne. Of the Greek cities, Ephesus was the first that he attacked. The Ephesians, when he laid siege to the place, made an offering of their city to Diana, by stretching a rope from the town wall to the temple of the goddess, which was distant from the ancient city, then besieged by Croesus, a space of seven furlongs. They were, as I said, the first Greeks whom he attacked. Afterwards, on some pretext or other, he made war in turn upon every Ionian and Aeolian state, bringing forward, where he could, a substantial ground of complaint; where such failed him, advancing some poor excuse.

    In this way he made himself master of all the Greek cities in Asia, and forced them to become his tributaries; after which he began to think of building ships, and attacking the islanders. Everything had been got ready for this purpose, when Bias of Priêné (or, as some say, Pittacus the Mytilênéan) put a stop to the project. The king had made inquiry of this person, who was lately arrived at Sardis, if there were any news from Greece; to which he answered, Yes, sire, the islanders are gathering ten thousand horse, designing an expedition against thee and against thy capital. Croesus, thinking he spake seriously, broke out, Ah, might the gods put such a thought into their minds as to attack the sons of the Lydians with cavalry! It seems, oh! king, rejoined the other, that thou desirest earnestly to catch the islanders on horseback upon the mainland,—thou knowest well what would come of it. But what thinkest thou the islanders desire better, now that they hear thou art about to build ships and sail against them, than to catch the Lydians at sea, and there revenge on them the wrongs of their brothers upon the mainland, whom thou holdest in slavery? Croesus was charmed with the turn of the speech; and thinking there was reason in what was said, gave up his ship-building and concluded a league of amity with the Ionians of the isles.

    Croesus afterwards, in the course of many years, brought under his sway almost all the nations to the west of the Halys. The Lycians and Cilicians alone continued free; all the other tribes he reduced and held in subjection. They were the following: the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybians, Paphlagonians, Thynian and Bithynian Thracians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Pamphylians.

    When all these conquests had been added to the Lydian empire, and the prosperity of Sardis was now at its height, there came thither, one after another, all the sages of Greece living at the time, and among them Solon, the Athenian. He was on his travels, having left Athens to be absent ten years, under the pretence of wishing to see the world, but really to avoid being forced to repeal any of the laws which, at the request of the Athenians, he had made for them. Without his sanction the Athenians could not repeal them, as they had bound themselves under a heavy curse to be governed for ten years by the laws which should be imposed on them by Solon.

    On this account, as well as to see the world, Solon set out upon his travels, in the course of which he went to Egypt to the court of Amasis, and also came on a visit to Croesus at Sardis. Croesus received him as his guest, and lodged him in the royal palace. On the third or fourth day after, he bade his servants conduct Solon. over his treasuries, and show him all their greatness and magnificence. When he had seen them all, and, so far as time allowed, inspected them, Croesus addressed this question to him. Stranger of Athens, we have heard much of thy wisdom and of thy travels through many lands, from love of knowledge and a wish to see the world. I am curious therefore to inquire of thee, whom, of all the men that thou hast seen, thou deemest the most happy? This he asked because he thought himself the happiest of mortals: but Solon answered him without flattery, according to his true sentiments, Tellus of Athens, sire. Full of astonishment at what he heard, Croesus demanded sharply, And wherefore dost thou deem Tellus happiest? To which the other replied, First, because his country was flourishing in his days, and he himself had sons both beautiful and good, and he lived to see children born to each of them, and these children all grew up; and further because, after a life spent in what our people look upon as comfort, his end was surpassingly glorious. In a battle between the Athenians and their neighbours near Eleusis, he came to the assistance of his countrymen, routed the foe, and died upon the field most gallantly. The Athenians gave him a public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid him the highest honours.

    Thus did Solon admonish Croesus by the example of Tellus, enumerating the manifold particulars of his happiness. When he had ended, Croesus inquired a second time, who after Tellus seemed to him the happiest, expecting that at any rate, he would be given the second place. Cleobis and Bito, Solon answered; they were of Argive race; their fortune was enough for their wants, and they were besides endowed with so much bodily strength that they had both gained prizes at the Games. Also this tale is told of them:—There was a great festival in honour of the goddess Juno at Argos, to which their mother must needs be taken in a car. Now the oxen did not come home from the field in time: so the youths, fearful of being too late, put the yoke on their own necks, and themselves drew the car in which their mother rode. Five and forty furlongs did they draw her, and stopped before the temple. This deed of theirs was witnessed by the whole assembly of worshippers, and then their life closed in the best possible way. Herein, too, God showed forth most evidently, how much better a thing for man death is than life. For the Argive men, who stood around the car, extolled the vast strength of the youths; and the Argive women extolled the mother who was blessed with such a pair of sons; and the mother herself, overjoyed at the deed and at the praises it had won, standing straight before the image, besought the goddess to bestow on Cleobis and Bito, the sons who had so mightily honoured her, the highest blessing to which mortals can attain. Her prayer ended, they offered sacrifice and partook of the holy banquet, after which the two youths fell asleep in the temple. They never woke more, but so passed from the earth. The Argives, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made, which they gave to the shrine at Delphi.

    When Solon had thus assigned these youths the second place, Croesus broke in angrily, What, stranger of Athens, is my happiness, then, so utterly set at nought by thee, that thou dost not even put me on a level with private men?

    Oh! Croesus, replied the other, "thou askedst a question concerning the condition of man, of one who knows that the power above us is full of jealousy, and fond of troubling our lot. A long life gives one to witness much, and experience much oneself, that one would not choose. Seventy years I regard as the limit of the life of man. In these seventy years are contained, without reckoning intercalary months, twenty-five thousand and two hundred days. Add an intercalary month to every other year, that the seasons may come round at the right time, and there will be, besides the seventy years, thirty-five such months, making an addition of one thousand and fifty days. The whole number of the days contained in the seventy years will thus be twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, whereof not one but will produce events unlike the rest. Hence man is wholly accident. For thyself, oh! Croesus, I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of many nations; but with respect to that whereon thou questionest me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that thou hast closed thy life happily. For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily

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