“Few writers,” says Larcher, “have united in so eminent a degree as Herodotus the various excellences proper to an historian. Let us in the first place speak of his love of truth. Whoever reads his history with attention, easily perceives that he has proposed to himself no other object but truth; and that when he entertains a doubt he adduces both opinions, leaving it to his readers to choose which they please of the two. If any particular seems to himself unauthentic or incredible, he never fails to add that he only reports what has been told him. Among a thousand examples I shall cite but two.—When Neco ceased to dig the canal which was to have led the waters of the Nile into the Arabian Gulf, he despatched from this gulf certain Phœnicians, with orders to make the circuit of Africa, and to return to Egypt by the Pillars of Hercules, now known as the Straits of Gibraltar. These Phœnicians returned to Egypt the third year after their departure, and related, among other things, that in sailing round Africa, they had had the sun (rising) on their right hand. Herodotus did not doubt that the Phœnicians actually made the circuit of Africa; but as astronomy was then in its infancy, he could not believe that in this voyage they had really seen the sun on the right hand:—‘this fact,’ says he, ‘appeared to me by no means credible; yet perhaps there are those to whom it may seem so.’
“Another point which has not been duly attended to is, that very often he commences his narrative thus—The Persians—The Phœnicians—The Egyptian Priests, have told me this or that. These narrations, which sometimes extend to a considerable length, are, in the original, throughout, made to depend upon this word φασί—they say, either expressed or understood. The genius of our modern languages obliging us to retrench these phrases, it often happens that Herodotus is made to say in his own person what in fact he reports in the third person. Thus things have been attributed to him, for the authenticity of which he is very far from vouching.
“He travelled in all the countries of which he has occasion to speak, he examined with scrupulous attention the rivers and streams by which they are watered—the animals which belong to them—the productions of the earth—the manners of the inhabitants—their usages, as well religious as civil;—he consulted their archives, their inscriptions, their monuments; and when these means of information failed him, or appeared to him insufficient, he had recourse to those among the people who were reputed to be the most skilled in history. He even carried his scrupulosity so far, that though he had no just reason for distrusting the priests of Memphis, he repaired to Heliopolis (Euterpe, 3), and then to Thebes, in order to discover if the priests of the latter city agreed with those of Memphis.
“One cannot refuse confidence to an historian who takes such pains to assure himself of the truth. If, however, notwithstanding all these precautions, it has sometimes happened to him to be deceived, I think he deserves in such instances rather indulgence than blame. Herodotus is not less exact in all matters of Natural History than in historical facts. Some ancient writers have dismissed, as fabulous, some particulars which have since been verified by modern naturalists—much more learned than the ancients. The celebrated Boerhaave did not hesitate to say, in speaking of Herodotus—‘modern observations establish almost all that great man’s assertions.’”
Some English writers also, wishing, as it seems, like Voltaire, to bring all history under suspicion, by endeavouring to prove that the best authenticated facts may, with some show of reason be questioned, have impugned the testimony, not of Herodotus alone, but of all the Greek historians.
In recent times all this ground has been so well and thoroughly explored by writers eminently qualified for the task, that it would be quite a superfluous labour to refute those whose criticisms have passed into oblivion.[9]
Writers who, on general grounds, have laboured to show that Herodotus vastly exaggerates the power, valour, energy, of the Greeks, as compared with the Asiatic nations, have forgotten that, in estimating his testimony in this case, we are abundantly furnished with independent evidences—touching, as well the Asiatic, as the European civilisation, at the times in question. These existing monuments on the one side, leave no room to doubt that the soil of Greece, during a long course of time, supported a numerous people, eminently endowed at once with the physical qualities of strength, beauty, alacrity, and courage, and with a mental conformation, combining the ratiocinative and imaginative faculties in the happiest proportions. There is proof before us that these advantages, inherent in the race, were improved; that a very high degree of civilisation in almost all its branches, and of refinement, was attained; that the resources of an extensive commerce were possessed, and a large amount of political power acquired, by the Greeks; or to express all at once—that the Greeks were then, what the nations of western Europe are now, as compared with the nations of Asia.
Even if it could be made to appear probable that, in the first ages of the world, Asia—and in Asia, Persia, was the centre of civilisation, yet it must be granted, that, so far as authentic history reaches, the picture of the Asiatic nations is uniform in its character and colouring. Asia has indeed produced some races distinguished by a fierce energy, by romantic courage, by loftiness and richness of imagination. But in no people of Asiatic origin that has displayed at once, and in combination, the effective energy, the high intelligence, the taste, the well-directed and sustained industry, which belong to the more advanced of the European nations:—never have its hordes risen to that level on the scale of intelligence at which men become at once desirous of political liberty, and capable of enjoying so great a good.
The relation which modern European armies—those of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English, have always borne to the native forces of India, is very much the same as that which history affirms to have existed in all ages between the people of the East and of the West. Though the latter have not driven the former before them like sheep, they have at length prevailed over them, as courage conquers rage, as mind subdues mere force, and as skill is more than numbers. It is, in substance, the same story that we read, whether the page of history presents us with the exploits of Clive in India, or of Pompey in Parthia and Syria, or of Miltiades at Marathon, or of Alexander in Persia.
The narrative of Herodotus is therefore substantially the first chapter of the history of the enduring conflict between Asia and Europe; and this commencement of the story is in harmony with all its subsequent events. On the one side is seen a reckless despotism, seated on the shoulders of a boundless population, and which, at the instigation of a puerile or a ferocious ambition, lets forth a deluge of war, the course of which was as little directed by skill, as it was checked by humanity. On the other side are seen much smaller means, employed with incomparably greater intelligence; and excepting only the partial events of war, the general issue has ever been the same.