Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/445

I HERODOTUS. lived before the time of Plato. ( Arist. Hist. Anim. vi. 6, ix. 12.) Herodoms was the author of a work on the mythology and worship of Heracles, which comprised at the same time a variety of historical and geographical notices. It must have been a work of considerable extent. Athenaeus (ix. p. 410, f.) quotes from the 17th book of it. It is frequently referred to in the scholia attached to the works of Pindar and Apollonius Rhodius, and by Aristotle, Athenaeus, Apollodorus, Plutarch, and others. The scholiast on Apollonius also refers to a work by Herodorus on the Macrones, a nation of Pontus, to a work on Heraclea, and to one on the Argonauts. (Schol. ad Apoll. i. 1024, i. 71, 773, &c.) Quotations are also found from the OtStTious, rifAoTTcfa, and 'OXvixiria of Herodorus. But it is not clear whether these were all separate works or only sections of the work on Hercules. But the ^ kyyovaxniKa, which is frequently quoted, was doubtless a separate work, as also was pro- bably the work on Heracleia ; unless in the pas- sage where it is referred to {ScJiol. ApolL ii. 815), we should read Tlepl 'HpaKKfovs, instead of Uepl 'HpaKheias. A mistake made by the scholiasts on Apollonius (ii. 1211), who ascribe to Herodorus two hexameter lines from one of the Homeric hymns {Hymn. Horn, xxxiv.) has led to the sup- position that the Argonautics of Herodorus was a poem. The character of the quotations from it points to a different conclusion. Westermann has collected the passages in which the writings of Herodorus are quoted. (Vossius, De Hist. Gr. p. 451, ed. Westermann.) 2. A writer who, according to Olympiodorus (Phot. Cod. 80), composed a history of Orpheus and Musaeus. If he is the same with the Herodorus frequently mentioned in connection with Apion, he lived about the time of the emperors Tiberius and Claudius. (Fabric. 5?6/. Graec. vol. i. pp. 512,515.) 3. A musician, a native of Megara, noted parti- cularly for his size and voracity. (Athen. x. p. 414, f, 415, e.) 4. An intimate friend of Demetrius, son of Philip, king of Macedonia, who fell a victim to the artifices by which Perseus, the other son of Philip, was endeavouring to compass the ruin of his brother. Having been cast into prison and put to the torture, for the purpose of extorting from him something which might be made the subject of a charge against Demetrius, he died under the pro- tracted tortures to which he was subjected, b. c. 181. (Liv. xl. 23.) [C.P.M.] HERO'DOTUS ('HpJSoTos). 1. The eailiest Greek historian (in the proper sense of the term), and the father of history, was according to his own statement, at the beginning of his work, a native of Halicamassus, a Doric colony in Caria, which at the time of his birth was governed by Arte- misia, a vassal queen of the great king of Persia. Our infonnation respecting the life of Herodotus is extremely scanty, for besides the meagre and con- fused article of Suidas, there is onl)^ one or two passages of ancient writers that contain any direct notice of the life and age of Herodotus, and the rest must be gleaned from his own work. Accord- ing to Suidas, Herodotus was the son of Lyxes and Dryo, and belonged to an illustrious family of Halicamassus ; he had a brother of the name of Theodorus, and the epic poet Panyasis was a rela- tion of his, being the brother either of his father or his mother. (Suid. s. v. Uavvaais.) Herodotus HERODOTUS. 431 (viii. 132) mentions with considerable emphasis one Herodotus, a son of Basilides of Cliios, and the manner in which the historian directs attention to him almost leads us to suppose that this Chian Herodotus was connected with him in some way or other, but it is possible that the mere identity of name induced the historian to notice him in that particular manner. The birth year of Herodotus is accurately stated by Pamphila {ap. Gell. xv. 23), a learned woman of the time of the emperor Nero : Herodotus, she says, was 53 years old at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war ; now as this war broke out in B.C. 431, it follows that Herodotus was bom in B. c. 484, or six years after the battle of Marathon, and four years before the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis. He could not, therefore, have had a personal knowledge of the great straggles which he afterwards described, but he saw and spoke with persons who had taken an active part in them, (ix. 16). That he survived the beginning of the Peloponnesian war is attested by Pamphila and Dionysius of Halicamassus {Jud. de Thucyd. 5 ; comp. Diod. ii. 32 ; Euseb. Chron. p. 1G8, who however places Herodotus too early), as well as by Herodotus's own work, as we shall see hereafter. Respecting his youth and education we are alto- gether without information, but we have every reason for believing that he acquired an early and intimate acquaintance with Homer and other poems, as well as with the works of the logo- graphers, and the desire one day to distinguish himself in a similar way may have arisen in hira at an early age. The successor of Artemisia in the kingdom (or tyrannis) of Halicamassus Avas her son Pisindelis, who was succeeded by Lygdamis, in whose reign Panyasis was killed. Suidas states, that Hero- dotus, unable to bear the tyranny of Lygdamis, emigrated to Samos, where he became acquainted with the Ionic dialect, and there wrote his history. The former part of this statement may be true, for Herodotus in many parts of his work shows an intimate acquaintance with the island of Samos and its inhabitants, and he takes a delight in re- cording the part they took in the events he had to relate ; but that his history was written at a much later period will be shown presently. From Samos he is said to have returned to Halicamassus, and to have acted a very prominent part in de- livering his native city from the tyranny of Lyg- damis ; but during the contentions among the citizens, which followed their liberation, Herodotus, seeing that he was exposed to the hostile attacks of the (popular ?) party, withdrew again from his native place, and settled at Thurii, in Italy, where he spent the remainder of his life. The fact of his settling at Thurii is attested by the unanimous statement of the ancients ; but whether he went thither with the first colonists in b. c. 445, or whether he followed afterwards, is a disputed point. There is however a passage in his own work (v. 77) from which we must in all probability infer, that in b. c. 431, the year of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, he was at Athens; for it appears from that passage that he saw the Pro- pylaea, which were not completed till the year in which that war began. It further appears that he was well acquainted with, and adopted the prin- ciples of policy followed by Pericles and his party which leads us to the belief that he witnessed