Herodotus: Histories (Books I-II) [1, Revised] 0674991303, 9780674991309

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DO

II

i

1 1 1

'I 3

HERODOTUS i

BOOKS

I

-II

1 a

i i I i I ]

1 i 1 1 i i I

1 1

Translated by

A. D.

GODLEY

1 1 1 1 1 1 I i

of Loeb titles can be found at the end of each volume Complete

list

HERODOTUS

the great

was born about 484

Greek

historian

at

Halicar-

B.C.,

nassus in Caria, Asia Minor, when it was subject to the Persians. He travelled

widely in most of Asia Minor, Egypt far as Assuan),

North

(as

Africa, Syria, the

country north of the Black Sea, and many parts of the Aegean Sea and the mainland of Greece. He lived, it seems, for some time in Athens, and in 443 went with other colonists to the new city Thurii (in

South

Italy)

where he died about 430

B.C.

He was

'the prose correlative of the bard, a narrator of the deeds of real men, and a

describer of foreign places' (Murray). His famous history of warfare between the

Greeks and

the Persians has an epic dignity which enhances his delightful style. It includes the rise of the Persian power

and an account of the Persian empire the description of Egypt fills one book; ;

because

Darius

attacked

Scythia,

the

geography and customs of that land are also given even in the later books on the ;

attacks of the Persians

are digressions. All

Greece there most entertaining

against

is

and produces a grand unity. After personal inquiry and study of hearsay and other evidence, Herodotus gives us a not uncritical estimate of the best that he could find.

NY PUBL C

L

BRARY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES

3 3333

lc

08668 4186

3v

THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB,

LL.D.

EDITED BY G. P.

GOOLD,

PH.D.

FORMER EDITORS fE. CAPPS, PH.D., LL.D. -f-L. A. POST, L.H.D.

PAGE, C.H., LITT.D. JW. H. D. ROUSE, LITT.D. j-T.

E.

E. H.

WARMINGTON,

M.A., F.R.HIST.SOC.

HERODOTUS

HEEODOTUS WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY A.

1).

GODLKY

HON. FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLKUE, OXFORD

IN

FOUR VOLUMES 1

BOOKS

I

AKP

II

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD

American British

ISBN ISBN

0-674-99130-3 434 99117 1

First printed 1920 Revised and Reprinted 1926, 1931, 1946, 1960, 1966, 1975

Printed in Great Britain

CONTENTS TAOK

........... ... INTRODUCTION TO BOOKS AND ......... BOOK ...................... BOOK ..................... INDEX OF PROPER NAMES ............. GENERAL INTRODUCTION

I

II

I

II

MAP

WESTERN ASIA MINOR

VJi

...

1

273 499

At end

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

IT is impossible to give certain and undisputed But if we are dates for the lifetime of Herodotus. to believe Aulus Gellius, he was born in 484 B.C. and the internal evidence of his History proves that he was alive during some part of the Peloponnesian war, as he alludes to incidents which occurred in its ;

He may therefore be safely said to contemporary of the two great wars which respectively founded and ended the brief and brilliant pre-eminence of Athens in Hellas. He earlier years. have been a

belongs in the fullest sense to the "great" period of Greek history.

Herodotus was

(it is

agreed on

all

hands) a native

and if his birth fell in 484, he was born a subject of the Great King. His early life was spent, apparently, in his native town, or possibly in the island of Samos, of which he shows an intimate knowledge. Tradition asserts that after a visit to Samos he " returned to Halicarnassus and of Halicarnassus in Caria

;

"

" but when later expelled the tyrant (Lygdamis) he saw himself disliked by his countrymen, he went ;

as a volunteer to

Thurium, when

it

was being colonised vii

GENERAL INTRODUCTION by the Athenians. There he died and lies buried This is supported by good the market-place." 1 evidence, and there seems to be no reason for doubtin

It is also stated that he visited Athens and ing it. there recited some part of his history this may have It is happened, as alleged, about the year 445. ;

evident from his constant allusions to Athens that he

knew

it

well,

and must have lived there.

So much

Beyond

it

may be reasonably taken as certain. we know very little there is a large field

for conjecture, expatiate in it.

;

and scholars have not hesitated to If Herodotus was banished from

Halicarnassus for political reasons, it is probable that man of some standing in his birth-place.

he was a

The unquestioned

fact that he travelled far makes it was well-to-do. But his history, full brim of evidences of travel, is never " (except in an occasional phrase, I have myself seen," and the like) autobiographical and we know nothing, from any actual statement of the historian's own, of the date of his various visits to the countries which he describes. Probably they were spread over a All that can be said is considerable part of his life. that he must have visited Egypt after 460 B.C., and may have been before that date in Scythia. Nothing else can be asserted we only know that at some time or other Herodotus travelled not only in Greece and the Aegean, of which he obviously has personal knowledge, but also in a large part of what we call

likely that he as it is to the

;

;

1

viii

Suidas.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION He saw with his own eyes much of Asia Minor; Egypt, as far south as Assuan ; Cyrene and the country round it ; Syria, and eastern lands and the northern perhaps as far as Mesopotamia the Near East.

;

coast of the Black Sea. dvOpwTTfav i8ev acrrca

of his travels are

/cat

Within these limits, TroXXtov But as the dates voov eyvw. so

unknown,

is

their intention.

Did he travel to collect materials for his history, its scheme being already formed? or was that history the outcome of the traveller's experiences ? We only know that Herodotus' wanderings and the nine books of his narrative are mutually interwoven.

His professed object

is,

as

he

states it in the first

sentence of his first book, to write the history of the But in order to do this he Graeco- Persian war. must first describe the rise of the Persian empire, to

which the chapters on Lydia and the story of -Croesus When he comes in due time to are introductory. relate the Persian invasion of

Egypt, this

is

the cue

and history of the Nile valley, whole of the second book and the the occupying for

a description

;

story of Darius' subsequent expedition against Scythia leads naturally to a long digression on the geography and customs of that country. The narrative in the later books, dealing with the actual Persian invasion

but till then naturally less broken interrupted by constant episodes and digressions, here a chapter, there a whole book ; it is the historian's practice, as he himself says, to inof Greece,

at least

troduce

it

is

;

is

7rpo

;

p.rjv Tra.vTd.Tra.cnv

OVK oa>

may

;

TOICTI p.ev

TO.

vvv

ye VTT'

roiavra TrtOavd

vTro/ceerat

ort

ra

123); "I know the tale as 'twas

(ii.

be, I tell

me." In view of these plain statements, to attack Herodotus for foolish credulity is nothing less told to

than disingenuous. Some harm, moreover, has been done to Herodotus' reputation by the tendency of modern languages to alter the meaning of derived words. Herodotus

Now a repeats ^vOoL. of implication falsity ; not.

that

/>u)0os is

it

may

simply a

tale,

with no

just as well be true as

But when we say that Herodotus repeats myths, an altogether different matter; myth and

is

and mythical carry the implication of falsehood Herodotus is branded as a dupe or a liar, who cannot be taken seriously as an authority for anything. ;

Herodotus' reputation for untrustworthiness arises, from his professed method of giving a hearing

in fact,

to every opinion.

those

who

early

This has been of great service to late have accused him of deli-

and

berate and perhaps interested falsification of historical These attacks began with Plutarch ; they have

fact.

been more than once renewed in modern times by of a name for originality and indeNone of them can be regarded as of any pendence. critics desirous

serious importance.

They

leave Herodotus' credit xiii

GENERAL INTRODUCTION untouched, for the simple reason that they are hardly Plutarch's treatise on ever based on solid evidence. Herodotus' "malignity" only establishes his own. Modern critics, who maintain that Herodotus' praise is unjustly distributed, have seldom any witness to appeal to save the historian himself; and failing necessary support ab extra, they can only

and blame

assert the a priori improbability that an historian who is inaccurate in one narrative should be accurate in another.

It is quite possible that

the heroes of

the history were not so heroic and the villains not so villainous as the historian paints them but we ;

have no evidence as to the private life of Cyrus or Cambyses beyond what the historian himself has

Nor is there any justification for deservices of Athens to Greece because the preciating the eulogist of Athens happened to believe that the

given

us.

the Pyrenees, and that the sun's

Danube

rises in

course

affected by the wind.

It

cism.

is

cannot be denied that Herodotus invites critiPlainly enough, a great deal of the evidence

on which he

relies

must be more substantial than

He

has undoubtedly learnt much from documents engraved or written. To take one instance, the long and detailed catalogue of the nations included in the Persian empire and the amounts of tribute paid by each must rest on some documentary authority. But he will not support his at least, he does so credit by producing his proofs seldom for the most part, his Jbntes are included

simple hearsay.

;

xiv

GENERAL INTRODUCTION "

he may have seen under " what he lias heard this, he may have read that, but it is all set down as hearsay and no more. There could be no better way of opening the door to suspicious critics. Further, some of the qualities which constitute the ;

his narrative make him suspect to those only from history that it should be a plain statement of what did actually happen. Herodotus

charm of

who ask is

pre-eminently biographical personal passion and is the guiding motive of events they are ;

desire

;

individual

attributed to force

action

more than

to

the

Debatable situations are terms of an actual debate between

of circumstance.

described

in

named champions

of this or that policy, as in in matteras even the comparatively Euripides, nay, Nor is it only the of-fact narrative of Thucydides.

human individual human above all.

will

which decides;

The

it is the superfortunes of individuals and

communities are presented to us as they appear to a

Greek who

sees in

human

life

"a sphere for the

1 To Oflov is always Judgments." " " Nemesis to balance good working whether as and evil fortune, and correct overweening pride and

realisation of Divine ;

excessive prosperity by corresponding calamity, or as Such eternal justice to punish actual wrongdoing. beliefs,

common

to

all

ages, find especial prominence

in the history of Herodotus, as they do in Greek The stories of Croesus, Polycrates, Camtragedy.

byses, the

fall

of Troy 1

all

Macau,

are

op. cU.

illustrations

of a

GENERAL INTRODUCTION divine ordering of human affairs indeed the central subject of the story the debdcle of the vast Persian ;

expedition against Hellas exemplifies the maxim that v(3pLv

epja /j,ejd\a rd Be (Bapftd-

d

vvv ol Xoytoi

yeveorffai rr}? Biatyopfj?.

erri rrjvSe rr)V fldXacrcrav,

rovrovs