ghtened and
curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
invaluable.

To Thucydi