that shattered Xerxes' armada (vii.189, 191), though the Athenians had actually prayed to Boreas to send it, Herodotus refuses to assign it positively to that cause, pointing out that the Magi were praying in the opposite sense for three days, at the end of which time the storm stopped. Herodotus's Godhead is "jealous and fraught with trouble," and "falls like lightning" upon human pride-upon the sin, that is, of man making himself equal to God. Aristotle is one of the few theologians who have explained that 'jealousy' is inconsistent with the idea of God, and that in the true sense man should make himself as near God as can be. In that point Herodotus's deity seems to stoop; but it is the Moral Triubunal of the world, and all tribunals are apt to punish wrong more than to reward right. It would be invidious, though instructive, to quote parallels from modern historians on the special workings of Providence upon the weather and such matters, in favour of their own parties; and as for oracles, Herodotus's faith is approved by his standard translator and commentator in the present day, who shows reason to suppose that the Pythia was inspired by the devil! (Rawlinson, i.176 n)
A certain rabies against the good faith of Herodotus has attacked various eminent men in different ages. But neither Ktesias nor Manetho nor Plutarch nor Panovsky nor Sayce has succeeded in convincing many persons of his bad faith. He professes to give the tradition, and the tradition he gives; he states variant accounts with perfect openness, and criticises his material abundantly. He is singularly free from any tendency to glorify past achievements into the miraculous, still more singularly free from national or local
