strange tales. However credulous
he may appear to a modern judgment, he takes care to keep separate what
he knows by his own observation from what he has merely inferred and
from what he has been told. He is candid about acknowledging ignorance,
and when versions differ he gives both. Thus the modern scientific
historian, with other means of corroboration, can sometimes learn from
Herodotus more than Herodotus himself knew.

There is abundant evidence, too, that Herodotus had a philosophy of
history. The unity which marks his work is due not only to the strong
Greek national feeling running through it, the feeling that rises to a
height in such passages as the descriptions of the battles of Marathon,
Thermopylae, and Salamis, but also to his profound belief in Fate and
in Nemesis. To his belief in Fate is due the frequent quoting of oracles
and their fulfilment, the frequent references to things foreordained by
Providence. The working of Nemesis he finds in the disasters that befall
men and nations whose towering prosperity awakens the jealousy of the
gods. The final overthrow of the Persians, which forms his main theme,
is only one specially conspicuous example of the operation of this force
from which human life can never free itself.

But, above all, he is the father of story-tellers. "Herodotus is such
simple and delightful reading," says Jevons; "he is so unaffected and
entertaining, his story flows so naturally and with such ease that
we have a difficulty in bearing in mind that, over and above the hard
writing which goes to make easy reading there is a perpetual marvel in
the work of Herodotus. It is the first artistic work in prose that Greek
literature produced. This prose work, which for pure literary merit no
subsequent work has surpassed, than which later generations, after
using the pen for centuries, have produced no prose more easy or more
readable, this was the first of histories and of literary prose."

AN ACCOUNT OF EGYPT

BY HERODOTUS

BEING THE SECOND BOOK OF HIS HISTORIES CALLED EUTERPE

When Cyrus had brought his life to an end, Cambyses received the royal
power in succession, being the son of Cyrus and of Cassandane the
daughter of Pharnaspes, for whose death, which came about before his
own, Cyrus had made great mourning himself and also had proclaimed to
all those over whom he bore rule that they should make mourning for her:
Cambyses, I say, being the son of this woman and