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HECATiEUS: HfiROD^RUS 127 figure both in the history of literature and in the march of the human mind. Hecataeus represents the spirit of his age as a whole, the research, the rationalism, the literary habit. Herodotus is the most typical illustra- tion of the last of these tendencies ; for the others we select two of the unpreserved writers, Herodorus and Hellanicus. Herodorus H^R0d6rus of Heraclea, father of the sophist Bryson, whose dialogues are said to have influenced Plato, is the typical early rationalist. His work was a critical history of the earliest records, dealing primarily with his native town and its founder, Heracles, but touching, for instance, on the Argonauts and the Pelopidae. His method is one that has lost its charms for us ; but it meant hard thinking, and it wrought real service to humanity. Prometheus, bound, torn by the eagle, and delivered by Heracles, was really a Scythian chief near the river called Eagle, which, as is well known, makes ruinous floods. The inhabitants, thinking (as Hesiod thought) that floods were a punishment for the sins of princes, bound, i.e. imprisoned, Prometheus, till Heracles, who is recorded to have received from Atlas "the pillars of earth and heaven " — i.e. the foundations of astronomy, geography, and practical science — engineered the stream into a proper seaward course. Laomedon, again, was said to have defrauded Apollo and Poseidon of their reward after they had built his walls for him. That is the simplest matter : he took money from their temples for the building and did not restore it.^ It was per- 1 Frag. 23, 24, 18.