An intimation somewhat curious respecting this collection of prophecies; it was of an extremely varied character, and contained promises or threats to meet any emergency which might arise.
[5] Æschylus, Pers. 761.
[6] Herodot. vii, 5. ὡς ἡ Εὐρώπη περικαλλὴς χώρη, καὶ δένδρεα παντοῖα φέρει τὰ ἥμερα, βασιλέϊ τε μούνῳ θνητῶν ἀξίη ἐκτῆσθαι—χώρην παμφορωτέρην (vii, 8).
[7] Herodot. v, 49.
[8] Homer, Iliad, i, 3. Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή. Herodotus is characterized as Ὁμήρου ζηλωτὴς—Ὁμηρικώτατος (Dionys. Halic. ad Cn. Pompeium, p. 772, Reiske; Longinus De Sublim. p. 86, ed. Pearce).
[9] While Plutarch—if indeed the treatise De Herodoti Malignitate be the work of Plutarch—treats Herodotus as uncandid, malicious, corrupt, the calumniator of great men and glorious deeds,—Dionysius of Halikarnassus, on the contrary, with more reason, treats him as a pattern of excellent dispositions in an historian, contrasting him in this respect with Thucydides, to whom he imputes an unfriendly spirit in criticizing Athens, arising from his long banishment: Ἡ μὲν Ἡροδότου διάθεσις ἐν ἅπασιν ἐπιεικὴς, καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἀγαθοῖς συνηδομένη, τοῖς δὲ κακοῖς συναλγοῦσα· ἡ δὲ Θουκυδίδου διάθεσις αὐθέκαστός τις καὶ πικρὰ, καὶ τῇ πατρίδι τῆς φυγῆς μνησικακοῦσα· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἁμαρτήματα ἐπεξέρχεται καὶ μάλα ἀκριβῶς, τῶν δὲ κατὰ νοῦν κεχωρηκότων καθάπαξ οὐ μέμνηται ἢ ὥσπερ ἠναγκασμένος. (Dionys. Hal. ad. Cn. Pompeium de Præcip. Historicis Judic. p. 774, Reisk.)
Precisely the same fault which Dionysius here imputes to Thucydides (though in other places he acquits him, ἀπὸ παντὸς φθόνου καὶ πάσης κολακείας, p. 824), Plutarch and Dio cast far more harshly upon Herodotus. In neither case is the reproach deserved.
Both the moralists and the rhetoricians of ancient times were very apt to treat history, not as a series of true matters of fact, exemplifying the laws of human nature and society, and enlarging our knowledge of them for purposes of future inference,—but as if it were a branch of fiction, so to be handled as to please our taste or improve our morality. Dionysius, blaming Thucydides for the choice of his subject, goes so far as to say that the Peloponnesian war, a period of ruinous discord in Greece, ought to have been left in oblivion and never to have passed into history (σιωπῇ καὶ λήθῃ παραδοθεὶς, ὑπο τῶν ἐπιγιγνομένων ἠγνοῆσθαι, ibid. p. 768),—and that especially Thucydides ought never to have thrown the blame of it upon his own city, since there were many other causes to which it might have been imputed (ἑτέραις ἔχοντα πολλαῖς ἀφορμαῖς περιάψαι τὰς αἰτίας, p. 770).
[10] Herodot. viii, 99. Μαρδόνιον ἐν αἰτίῃ τιθέντες: compare c. 100.
[11] Herodot. vii, 9.