BOOKS.
MR. SAYCE'S " HERODOTITS."*
To show what light has been thrown by recent discoveries in the East on the earlier books of Herodotus, and to see exactly the point to which Oriental scholars and excavators have been brought by their researches, is the object of Mr. Sayce's present work. If he has successfully executed the latter half of this task in his appendices, it is well. On that point, we pronounce no judgment. He has certainly developed his own theories with sufficient confidence, but the notorious diversity of opinion which exists among Egyptologists and' Assyriologists prevents us from sharing his confidence. In any case, he appears to us to trust too much to what be calls "monumental authority ;" and without going back to prehistoric times for an illus- tration, we will take an event which occurred only five- and-thirty years before the battle of Marathon. In 525 B.C., Cambyses publicly flogged the priests of Apis at Memphis, and gave the sacred animal a death-wound in its thigh with his dagger. It was a deed that must have filled all Egypt with horror, and one not easily forgotten by her people. Herodotus WM at Memphis some sixty years or so after this deed was done, and he tells the story of its details, and says that the Egyptians believed that Cambyses was driven mad, as a punishment for his impiety. In or out of Egypt, it was no one's interest or business to invent such a story, and it seems impossible to doubt its truth. Mr. Sayce thinks otherwise, and says that "the stele which commemorates the death of the Apia bull, said by Herodotus to have been slain by Cambyses, shows that, on the contrary, it had died a natural death, had been buried under his auspices, and had monumental authority for accounting him one of its worshippers." Lord Burleigh's nod was nothing to that stele, but we prefer the testimony of the historian. The priests, moreover, as is probable enough, may have preferred not to put on record such a dismal fact as the murder of their Apis. It is one thing to decipher inscrip- tions and hieroglyphs, but quite another thing to determine their exact value when deciphered ; and the engraver's tool has perhaps, in proportion, cut more "rousing whids," as Burns calls them, than have ever been engrossed by the pen. But Mr. Sayce is willing to trust "monumental authority" in. more ways than one. He has allowed the testimony of in- scriptions to have its full weight in his text, and writes Tiara, • The Ancient Empires of the Bast.—Herodotrie,IAII. With Notes, Introductions, and Appendices. By A. H. Sayce. Lon ion : Macmillan sad Co. 1883. for instance, instead of Teti;Tet. Textual critics, he says, may think such a procedure heretical ; but it is possible that if textual critics condescend. to notice Mr. Sayce's labours at all in this field, they may be less polite than he imagines. The question, however, of spelling reform, as applied to Herodotus, is one that we must leave untouched, though we may have a word or two to say, if space permits, on Mr. Sayce's contrib4- tions to the reform of English spelling. The indictment which he has drawn against the author whom he has selected to edit, is what we shall mainly deal with in the present notice.
The literary genius of Herodotus has never been called in question. His history, next to the Odyssey, is the most delightful work that has come down to us from antiquity ; and this fact alone should make his editor cease to wonder at its having "escaped the wreck from which but a few excerpts of his critic Ctesias have been preserved." But the truthfulness and honesty of "the Father of History" have often been ar- raigned, and quite as often warmly defended. With his defenders and with his other assailants we shall not now concern ourselves, further than by remarking that Mr. Sayce might as well have omitted Thucydides from the ranks of the latter. The greatest of all historians did but correct a single error in Herodotus, and that, too, one of the smallest possible importance. We cannot help saying, also, that when Josephus, "that learned Jew," said that " all " Greek authors acknowledged Heroclotus to have "lied in most of his asser- tions," he lied himself "most consumedly." But now for Mr. Sayce's indictment, or rather for a portion of it, for we really cannot trouble ourselves to answer his wooden criticisms on the speeches, narratives, and stories which lend so unique a charm to the old Greek's history. The three main charges, then, which his editor brings against Herodotus are these :—He affected knowledge which he did not possess ; he laid claim to travels which he never made ; and he pilfered freely and without acknowledgment from Hecatmus and others, whom he sought to disparage and supersede. In short, he was a liar and a humbug. He affected a knowledge which he did not possess,—for while making himself out to be a "marvel- ous linguist," he was ignorant even of the language of Egypt. He may have been ; and in Mr. Sayce's notes there is always "a half-caste dragoman at his elbow." But the only statement (for we may dismiss the Colchians) which Mr. Sayce makes in favour of his own view might be characterised by any one who loved Mr. Sayce's style of epithet, to use one of his own phrases, as " flagrantly dishonest." He says that Herodotus asserted that the Egyptian language resembled the chirping of birds. Now, we grant that if Herodotus did make that assertion, he was, on his own showing, ignorant of Egyptian. But Herodotus made no such assertion at all, as the reader will see, if he turns to ii., 57, and decides for himself whether it is Mr. Sayce's Greek scholarship that is weak, or his sense of fairness that is blunt. Again, because Herodotus, from religious or superstitions scruples of his own, declines to mention the name of Osiris in connection with embalming, burials, or mysteries, Mr. Sayce and Wiedemann—in this instance, Ar- cades ambo—declare that he had not caught the name when taking notes, and deliberately deceives his readers with his faithless silence. So that, in the face of the fact that Herodotus elsewhere explains that Osiris—he knew the name well enough —was Dionysus, Mr. Sayce asks us to believe that the reason why the scrupulous Greek would not "divulge the name of a deity known to every child in Egypt, and appearing on myriads of sepulchral monuments," was because he had not got it on his tablets; and Herr Wiedemann, with native amenity, says that Herodotus, who really was a gentle- man, "had not understood the name, and tried to conceal his ignorance under an affectation of secret knowledge." So much for the first charge. As to the plagiarisms from Hecatmus, we may treat them very briefly. Mr. Sayce again shows that he has one measure for himself and another for his author, for he erroneously declares that Herodotus "makes himself responsible for the truth" of the famous tale of the Phcenix; the fact being that Herodotus explicitly says that he did not believe a word of it. "Still more damaging to his veracity," Mr. Sayce goes on to say, "are the conclusions to be drawn from his descriptions of the crocodile and hippopotamus." But here we can spring a mine on Mr. Sayce. The illustrious Cobet—the first Greek scholar in Europe—has recently expressed an opinion that the fragments of Hecatasus which correspond so closely with Herodotus are forgeries manufactured out of Herodotus; and
till that opinion is controverted, the mystic bird and the mighty amphibians need not trouble us.
The last charge we have to answer is that Herodotus lays claims to travels which he never made. Babylonia and Upper Egypt are the countries which Mr. Sayce sets prominently forth in his introduction, as among those which Herodotus fraudulently wished his readers to believe that he had visited. Mr. Sayce is a poor logician, and wastes words in proving that the historian was never in Babylonia, but the arguments which he advances to prove the question really at issue are few and feeble, and it is ludicrous to find him proposing to give Herodotus the benefit of a correct translation of I.); b■EVOZ, Of XxXaalot, and complaining that "the majority of the commentators" have been deceived by ex- pressions which they misinterpreted. A broad answer to. his baseless theory would be this :—In his account of Egypt, the personality of Herodotus, so to speak, is ever present. He is always asking this, or learning by inquiry that, and seeing things with his own eyes. We venture to say, therefore, since his personality, again so to speak, is always absent in Babylonia, that he *cannot by any possibility have wished his readers to believe that he had been in that country. Upper Egypt raises an entirely different question, but here, too, we think that Mr. Sayce is in the wrong. It is quite certain that Herodotns never visited Elephantine, yet he says that he" came on as an eye-witness as far as the city of Elephantine." This, Mr. Sayce says, is "a deliberate falsehood," and "a flagrant example of dishonesty." Let us see. The damning words, for damning they are, if genuine, are omitted in one MS., but we should hold it very poor criticism to suppose that their omission in that MS. clears Herodotus. Moreover, we think they are wrongfully omitted, though we rather sympathise with the acute but dishonest copyist who saw that they could not possibly be correct. For immediately before them comes the story which Herodotus heard from the sacred priest of Sais,- the marvellous story of the Nile rising from a bottomless pool at Elephantine, and flowing thence in two directions, north and south. "He seemed to me to be jesting," says the historian, with his usual grave politeness, much in contrast with the ill-bred pertness of Mr. Sayce's note. But is it conceivable, is it common- sense, to suppose that, immediately after recounting this marvel- lous tale, he should say that he went on as an eye-witness to Elephantine, and then make no further sign P Mr. Sayce, who, we repeat, is a poor logician, says that if he had gone on to Elephantine, he would not have cared to mention the story of the sacred priest of Sais. In the name of patience, why not? No; if Mr. Sayce's hypothesis were true, if Herodotus had de- termined to say that he had been to Elephantine without going to Elephantine, then and then most indubitably he would not have mentioned the story of the sacred priest of Sais. The text, therefore, must be corrupt; and as the words 'EX:TM/Thing VAECJ; are found there twice, with only ten words between them, we venture to suggest that the corruption lies in the first 'Exocon-how.
We trust that we have shown that Mr. Sayce's contempt for the knowledge, veracity, and honesty of Herodotus rests on rather slender foundations. But we hold it not respectful to the memory of the Father of History to express any indignation with the present Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology at OxfOrd. One word, however, about his spelling, before we part from him_ He talks of " a correct transliteration of Greek proper names." He does not know what correct transliteration means. Maxvitog, correctly transliterated, is " Aiskhulos." Mr. Sayce gives us "Aeskhylos " ! And what shall we say of his "Akhaeans and his " Josephos " ? Fancy " Flavius Josephos " ! Inconsistency with themselves and with each other is the badge of all the tribe who better the instruction of Grote's foolish "fad," and we have often wondered why they make such geese of themselves. Mr. Sayce gives the reason why he does, and it has at least the merit of being preposterous. He misspells Greek proper names, because he hopes that by so doing he "may possibly help to con- tribute to that most desirable of objects, the reform of English spelling."
obEiv j pdavels, 4)v o4 vas wad.
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