HERNANI, OU L'HONNEUR CASTILLAN, âr'nå'ne, oo lo'ner' kå'ste'yüN' (Fr., Hernani, or Castilian honor). A romantic five-act tragedy in verse, by Victor Hugo. At its first performance in 1830 at the Théâtre Français, the presence of Hugo's partisans in bizarre costumes gave rise to the 'Battle of Hernani,' a series of personal encounters between the adherents of the Classical and the Romantic schools of French playwrights. The play rests on the love of three suitors, Don Carlos, Ruy Gomez, and the bandit Hernani, for Doña Sol. Hernani, on whose head a reward is set, is surprised with Doña Sol by Ruy Gomez, who shelters him from the pursuit of the King on condition that at the blast of a horn Hernani shall give himself up. In the dénouement Hernani is about to wed Doña Sol, when the horn sounds and the lovers kill themselves. The plot is highly improbable and without historical truth, but is redeemed by great richness of imagery and poetic feeling.

HERNDON, hern'don, WILLIAM HENRY (181891). An American lawyer, born in Greensburg, Ky. When he was two years old his parents removed to Illinois. In 1836 he entered Illinois College, but was removed by his father in consequence of the abolition sentiments of the faculty. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1844, when he formed a partnership with Abraham Lincoln, which was dissolved only by the latter's death. In 1855 he was Mayor of Springfield, Ill. In connection with Jesse W. Weik, who assisted in putting into literary form the material he (Herndon) had collected, he published Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (new ed. 1891), which is of especial value for the account it gives of Lincoln's early life and personal habits.

HERNE. A town of Westphalia, Prussia, Germany, 11 miles northeast of Essen by rail. It is the centre of great industrial activity, with coal-mines and manufactures of machinery and gunpowder. It was incorporated in 1897. Population, in 1900, 27,863.

HERNE, JAMES A. (1840-1901). An American actor and playwright. He was born in Troy; N. Y., where after a brief experience 'on the road' he made his appearance, in 1859, with a stock company in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Afterwards he played in Baltimore and Washington, and then went to California. He had become a popular actor, both East and West, before he produced his first play, Hearts of Oak, in 1878. This was very successful, but his subsequent productions, such as Drifting Apart and Margaret Fleming, were less fortunate, till in the season of 1892-93 his Shore Acres at the Boston Museum made its author famous. It is a rural comedy in which he, as 'Uncle Nat' Berry, presented a character full of honest humor and touching pathos, and the play kept the boards almost without a break for In 1899 he produced The Rev. Griffith Davenport, and the following year Sag Harbor. Consult Strang, Famous Actors of the Day in America (Boston, 1900).

six years.

HERNE THE HUNTER. A character in popular tradition, who, it was believed, walked at midnight by an ancient oak in Windsor Forest. In Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor (iv., 4), he is described as a spirit, with huge horns on his head, who disturbs the revels of the fairies. He also plays a part in Harrison Ains

worth's romance entitled Windsor Castle. Herne's oak, said to have been 650 years old, was blown down in 1863. A young oak was planted on the spot by Queen Victoria.

HERNIA (Lat., rupture). A protrusion, through an abnormal or accidental opening, of any organ from its natural cavity. Although hernia may occur in many parts of the body, the word is usually restricted to signify protrusion of the abdominal viscera. The abdominal viscera are subject to violent pressure from the diaphragm and the muscles of the abdomen. This pressure forces them outward and downward against the walls of the belly; and if at any point these walls are not sufficiently strong to resist this pressure, some portion of the viscera is driven through them, and a hernial tumor is formed. Certain parts of the abdominal walls, especially the inguinal and crural rings, and the umbilicus, being weaker than others, hernia most frequently occurs at these points. In some instances hernia is congenital, as from abnormal deficiency of the walls; in other cases it may arise at any period of life as a result of violent bodily exertion, such as straining in lifting, jumping, etc. Sex, age, and occupation seem to have a marked influence on predisposition to hernia. Men are far more liable (in about the proportion of four to one) to this disease than women, though they are less so to those forms of the affection known as femoral and umbilical hernia.

A hernia is almost always composed of a sac and its contents. The sac is a portion of the peritoneum (q.v.) corresponding to the aperture at which the hernia protrudes. It is pushed forward by the protruding viscus, and forms a pouch. The contents vary greatly, but generally consist of a portion of the small intestine (particularly of the ileum), forming the variety of hernia known as enterocele. Omentum is often found in hernial sacs, together with intestine. Besides the viscera, the sac always contains a certain quantity of fluid secreted by its interior. able into the abdomen, irreducible, and stranguHernia is divisible (1) into reducible, or returnlated; and (2) according to its situation, into The inguinal, crural, femoral, umbilical, etc. treatment of reducible hernia may be palliative or radical. The palliative treatment consists in the application of a truss (q.v.) to retain the protrusion within the cavity of the abdomen. cial form of truss; and before applying it, the Each particular kind of hernia requires its spehernia must be reduced by placing the patient on his back, relaxing the muscles by bending the thigh upon the abdomen, and pressing the tumor back in the proper direction. The truss should then be put on, and should be worn during the day. The means that have been contrived to effect a radical cure are too purely surgical for description in these pages. Below the age of puberty, and if the hernia is recent, a radical cure is sometimes effected by wearing the truss for two or three years. In irreducible hernia the protruded viscera cannot be returned into the abdomen, but there is no impediment to the passage of their contents or to their circulation. In these cases the patient is often liable to dragging pains in the abdomen and to attacks of vomiting. The treatment consists in avoidance of violent exercise and of constipation, and in wearing a support for the protection of the tumor. Hernia

is said to be strangulated when a portion of intestine or omentum that is protruded is so tightly constricted that it not only cannot be returned into the abdomen, but has its circulation arrested. This form is highly dangerous, because, if relief is not speedily afforded, the strangulated part becomes gangrenous. The causes of strangulation are various, but the condition most commonly arises from a sudden violent effort, by which a fresh portion of intestine is driven into a preexisting hernia, which it distends to such a degree as to produce this complication. The most prominent early symptoms are flatulence, colicky pains, etc. They are succeeded by vomiting first of the contents of the stomach, then of mucus and bile, and lastly of fæcal matters, owing to inverted peristaltic action. If relief is not obtained, the inflammation that commences in the sac extends to the peritoneum, and the ordinary signs of peri

tonitis appear. After a variable time comes gangrene or mortification of the part, and the patient speedily sinks. When reduction is im possible, prompt surgical intervention is neces

sary.

The hernia is cut down upon and freed

from constricting bands with the knife. Where gangrene has set in in the intestine the diseased

portion must be cut away and the ends of the

intestine reunited.

nus.

HERNICI, ěr-nê chề. An old Italian people of Latium. Of Sabine connection, they dwelt in the Apennines between the Trerus and Lake FuciThey held out long against the Romans, with whom they at length formed an equal alliance in B.C. 486, but to whom they had to yield in B.C. 306. They received in B.C. 241 the rights of Roman citizens. To the north were the Marsi

and the Æqui, while the Volsci were on the south. Their capital was Anagnia.

HERNÖSAND, her'ne-sånd. The capital of the Län of Wester Norrland, Sweden, situated on the island of Hernö, in the Gulf of Bothnia, about two miles south of the mouth of the Angerman River (Map: Sweden, H 5). It is connected by bridges with the mainland. It has a school of navigation and other educational institutions. Its harbor is good, and it has regular steamship communication with the other coast towns. It was founded in 1584 by John III., became a bishop's see in 1772, and capital of the län in 1778. Population, in 1901, 7890.

HERO (Lat., from Gk. 'Hp). A priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos. At a festival of Aphrodite she was seen and loved by Leander, a youth of

Abydos. She returned his love, and received him in her tower on the Hellespont, which he swam nightly, being guided by her lamp. Venturing the passage on a stormy night, he was drowned and the body washed ashore at the tower, whence Hero at once cast herself that she might be united with her lover in death. The story developed in the romantic poetry of the Alexandrian period, and has come down to us in a work of Museus and in Ovid. It is represented on some late works of art and on Roman coins of Abydos and Sestos. It is also the subject of, poems by Marlowe and Schiller, and a drama, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, by Grillparzer. HERO. A Greek mathematician and physicist. See HERO OF ALEXANDRIA.

HERO. The quiet daughter of Leonato and cousin of the gay Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much

VOL. X.-2.

Ado About Nothing. Don John causes her waiting woman to impersonate her in a moonlight interview with him, and thus causes her lover to reject her at the altar, but on the discovery of the deception the marriage is carried out. The story of the slander to which she is subjected is generally omitted in modern productions.

HERO, or HERON, OF AL'EXAN'DRIA. The leading Greek mathematician and physicist of his time. Not only are the dates of his birth and death unknown, but there is great uncertainty as to the century in which he lived. The most recent investigation of the evidence, by Schmidt (1899, work cited below, Bd. 1, p. ix.), leads to the conclusion that he may have lived in the first century A.D., but other writers, who, it must be said, have not considered the question so fully, have usually placed him in the first or even the second century B.C. There is much confusion concerning the works of Hero of Alexandria, there having been no less than eighteen Greek writers of this name. It is, however, fairly certain that he wrote at least thirteen books on mathematics and

physics. He seems to have been an Egyptian, and it is certain that his style is not that of a Greek. He contributed little to pure mathe

matics, his chief work on this subject being the

He

extension of the ancient mathematics so as to allow the consideration of the fourth power of lines. Thus, in his geodesy, yewdaioia, contained in his MeTpuka, upon which subject he was the only Greek writer, he gives the well-known formula for finding the area of a triangle with sides, a, b, c, and semiperimeter s, √ s (s-a) (s-b) (s-c), a formula known by his name. (The proof is given, possibly an interpolation, in his IIɛpì dióπтpac.) He seems also to have had some idea of trigonometry, and in his geometry is to be found the first definite use of a trigonometric formula. asserts in substance, using modern symbols, that if A represents the area of a regular n-gon of side s, and if c be the numerical coefficient by which s must be multiplied to produce A, i.e. so n 180° that A cs then must c cot He pro4 ceeds to compute c for the values n=3, 4, . . . 12, with considerable accuracy, but his method is unknown. He could also solve the complete quadratic equation ax2+ bxc, where a, b, c, are positive, but not the general form. Hero is credited with a number of mechanical inventions, including a contrivance for utilizing the force

n

of steam and a fountain which bears his name. Consult: Martin, "Recherches sur la vie et les Mémoires présentées par divers savants à l'Acaouvrages d'Héron d'Alexandrie," in vol. iv. of Hultsch, Heronis Alexandrini Geometricorum démie d'Inscriptions (Série I., Paris, 1854); Schmidt, Heronis Alexandrini Opera quæ Superet Stereometricorum Reliquiæ (Berlin, 1864); sunt Omnia (Leipzig, 1899-).

HEROD, hĕr'od (Gk. 'Hpwdns, Hērōdēs). The family name of a group of rulers in Palestine, derived from that of its most famous member, Herod the Great. The family had its origin in Antipater, an Idumean of honorable stock, whom of Idumea. Alexander Jannæus (B.C. 104-78) made governor

The fact that the Idumeans had been subjugated to John Hyrcanus in B.C. 128, and compelled to embrace Judaism, is the only basis for the claim that the members of the

Herodian line were Jews. In his power and influence, and apparently in his official position in Idumea, Antipater was succeeded by his son of the same name. The latter, with the sagacity which had become characteristic of the family, made the declining fortunes of the Asmonean rule and the rising fortunes of Rome serve his political interests until the real control of the country of the Jews rested in his hand-a control which he strengthened by appointing his two sons Phasael and Herod governors, respectively in Jerusalem and in Galilee. (1) HEROD THE GREAT. Son of Antipater and Cypros, an Arabian woman; reigned from B.C. 37 to 4. Upon the assassination of Antipater (B.C. 43) there followed a period of intrigue and warfare on the part of the Asmonean Antigonus and the Parthians against the Herodian rule, which resulted in the death of Phasael and the escape of Herod to Rome. There in B.C. 39 he was made King of Judea by Antony, Octavius, and the Senate. It was not, however, until B.C. 37 that he succeeded in putting down the forces opposing him. The first years of his reign (B.C. 37-25) were troublous, owing to the hostility of the Sadducean and Pharisaic parties, and the enmity of the surviving members of the Asmonean house, who secured an ally in Cleopatra of Egypt. Herod ultimately prevailed, partly through murder and confiscation of property, partly through political cleverness and trickery, but mainly through the fall of Antony and Cleopatra before the forces of Octavius. The following years (B.C. 25-13) were prosperous. Herod was free to rule and to indulge his passion for building, the results of which showed themselves in the rehabilitation of such places as Strato's Fortress, and such cities as Samaria, Capharsaba, and Anthedon, renamed by him respectively Cæsarea Palestinæ (q.v.), Sebaste, Antipatris, and Agrippæum. At Jerusalem, Jericho, and Cæsarea he erected theatres, amphitheatres, and hippodromes for the Grecian games established in honor of Augustus. He rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem with the most lavish expenditure of wealth and careful regard for the religious scruples of the people. This munificence was extended even beyond his domains to cities in Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece. Herod also gratified his Hellenizing tastes by inviting and attaching to his Court Greek writers and teachers. With all this he was loyal to the people over whom he ruled, not only bestowing upon them substantial benefits at home, but securing for them large favors in some parts of the Diaspora and significant privileges from Rome. The last years of his reign (B.C. 13-4) were full of misery, occasioned by the ceaseless and complicated political intrigues within his household, which rendered him morbidly suspicious and inflamed his murderous passions to the worst. It was shortly before his death that Jesus was born. On his last visit to Rome Herod obtained consent of Augustus to dispose of his kingdom as he saw fit. A few hours before his death he made a will, in which he gave Judea, including Samaria and Idumea, to Archelaus, with the title of king; Galilee and Perea to Antipas, with the title of tetrarch; and Gaulanitis, Auranitis, Trachonitis, Batanea, and Panias to Philip, with the title of tetrarch. This will was practically confirmed by Augustus, and in spite of disturbances and disorders on the part of the people, who desired to be rid of the Herodian yoke, was ultimately put into

effect.-(2) ARCHELAUS, ethnarch of Judea, Idumea, and Samaria. Son of Herod the Great and Malthace, a Samarian woman; ruled from B.C. 4 to A.D. 6. Though given title of king by his father's will, Augustus withheld this from him, substituting that of ethnarch. He was the worst of Herod's surviving sons. Of his reign we have no details; but Josephus describes it as violent and tyrannical. After nine years the Jews made such complaints against Archelaus that Augustus banished him to Vienne in Gaul. This accords with the statement of Matthew ii. 22, that Joseph on his return from Egypt with Mary and the Child Jesus, "When he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of his father Herod, was afraid to go thither, and withdrew into the parts of Galilee.”—(3) ANTIPAS (Herod Antipas), tetrarch of Galilee. Son of Herod the Great and the Samaritan Malthace, younger brother of Archelaus; ruled from B.C. 4 to A.D. 37. Though not much is known of his rule, he seems to have been able to govern his country and to have possessed the family passion for building. In Galilee he remade Sepphoris, afterwards called Dio-Cæsarea, and in Perea, Betharamptha, which he named Livias after the wife of Augustus, and in addition reared the magnificent capital which he named Tiberias, for the reigning Emperor. He seems to have had his father's craftiness, though he apparently lacked his diplomacy, as he certainly did his ability in war. The discarding of his first wife, daughter of the Arabian King Aretas, for Herodias, wife of his half-brother Herod Philip (Mark vi. 17; Matt. xiv. 3), not the tetrarch Philip, brought on a war with Aretas in which Antipas was routed. Later, through the persuasion of Herodias, he went to Rome and demanded of Caligula that he be favored, as Agrippa I. had just been, with the title of king. He was confronted, however, by charges from Agrippa himself, was deposed, and banished by the Emperor to Lugdunum (Lyons) in Gaul. This Antipas is the 'Herod' most frequently mentioned in the New Testament (Matt. xiv. 1; Luke iii. 1; xiii. 31; Acts xiii. 1 et al.). It was he who imprisoned and beheaded John the Baptist (Mark vi. 14-29), and to whom Jesus was sent by Pilate (Luke xxiii. 7-15).-(4) PHILIP. Son of Herod the Great and Cleopatra, a woman of Jerusalem; ruled from B.C. 4 to A.D. 34. The country over which he ruled was north and east of the Sea of Galilee, consequently outside of strictly Jewish territory and inhabited by a predominantly non-Jewish population. It was owing to this fact that Philip was able to carry out a Hellenizing and Roman policy among his people. He had the family passion for building, and founded on the site of Paneas a city which he named Cæsarea, known as Cæsarea Philippi (q.v.), to distinguish it from the larger city on the coast. He also rebuilt Bethsaida, which he called Julias, in honor of the daughter of Augustus. Of his rule nothing is known beyond what may be inferred from Josephus's characterization of the man, as "a person of moderation and quietness" in the conduct of his life and government. He seems to have possessed none of the Herodian ambition, cruelty, or lust. He was married to Salome, the daughter of Herodias, and died without issue.-(5) AGRIPPA (Herod Agrippa). Son of Aristobulus. Herod the Great's son by Mariamne, granddaughter of Hyrcanus, and Bernice, daughter of Salome,

Herod's sister, and Castobar; ruled from A.D. 37 to 44. His earlier years were spent in Rome, where he fell into spendthrift habits that finally compelled his retirement to Palestine. In the last years of Tiberius's reign he returned to Rome, and succeeded in securing the appointment by the Emperor to the care of his grandson. He had been friendly with Caligula in his early life, and shortly after the latter's accession received from him the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias (viz. Abilene) with the title of king, while the Senate added the honorary rank of prætor. In A.D. 40 he obtained the fortified tetrarchy of Antipas; and in the next year, when Claudius came to the throne, he was given by the Emperor, along with the honor of the consular rank, the additional territory of Judea and Samaria, thus finally securing the whole region over which his grandfather had ruled. The next three years constitute the real period of his rule. For the sake of peace he followed a pro-Jewish policy, which showed itself in a personal piety of almost Pharisaic legalism and an official furtherance of the interests of the Jews, which brought them to regard him as a brother and alienated from him the regard of the Roman element in his population and of the Roman troops in his domains. This Jewish favoritism, no doubt, was the cause of his persecution of the Christians (Acts xii. 1-19). The account of his death given by Josephus (Antiq. xviii. 6, 7) is in substantial agreement with that in Acts xii. 20-23.-(6) AGRIPPA II. (Herod Agrippa). Son of Agrippa I. and Cypros; ruled from A.D. 50 to about 100. Because of his extreme youth at the time of his father's death, Claudius was persuaded not to give him the succession. The whole of Palestine thus passed under direct Roman rule. In A.D. 50, however, two years after the death of his uncle Herod of Chalcis, he received the kingdom which had thus been vacated. This he surrendered in

A.D. 53, receiving in return the former tetrarchy of Philip, together with that of Lysanias and the domains of Varus. In A.D. 56 Nero added to this the cities of Tiberias and Julias in Galilee and Tarichea in Perea, with surrounding lands and villages. Like all his family, he gave himself to building, improving his capital, Cæsarea Philippi, which he renamed Neronias, and architecturally adorning Berytus (Beirut) in Phoenicia. Unlike his father, he gave no special care to the interests of the Jews-manifesting, in fact, a general indifference to the religious questions of his time, though it was in his rule that the Temple at Jerusalem was finished. He tried to combine Hellenism and Judaism, and placed the effigies of the emperors on his coins. He strove to dissuade the Jews from their war with Rome, and manifested his loyalty to the Emperor even after his Galilean cities had deserted him. In return for this, after the war his territory was extended northward, while in A.D. 75 he had conferred upon him the prætorian rank. He left no children; in fact, it is doubtful whether he ever married. As far as record can be obtained, he died in the third year of Trajan's reign, A.D. 100. His rule was a feeble one. It was before this Agrippa and his sister Bernice that Paul was brought by Festus in Cæsarea, on the eve of his deportation to Rome, as narrated in Acts xxv. 13-xxvi. 32.

HEROD AGRIPPA. See HEROD.
HERO'DAS. See HERONDAS.

HERO'DIAN (Gk. 'Hpwdiavós, Hērōdianos). A Greek historian of the third century A.D. He was a Syrian by birth, but held office under the Roman Government, so that he writes with a practical knowledge of the events which he describes. His history covers the years A.D. 180238, i.e. from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the accession of Gordianus III. The work was highly valued by later historians, especially the Scriptores Historia Augustæ and Johannes Antiochenus, who take long passages from it, and try to imitate its style. The history was first made known to the Western world in the translation of Politianus (1493). The first critical edition was published by Bekker (1826); the best is that of Mendelssohn (Leipzig, 1883). There is an English translation by Hart (London, 1749). Consult Peter, Die geschichtliche Litteratur über die römische Kaiserzeit, ii. (Leipzig, 1897). HERO'DIANS (Gk. 'Hpwdiavol, Hérōdianoi, adherents of Herod, from 'Hpwons, Hērōdēs, Herod). A party among the Jews, twice mentioned in the New Testament, and both times in connection with the Pharisees: (1) Mark iii. 6, on the occasion of Jesus' healing of the man with the withered hand in the Capernaum synagogue; (2) Mark xii. 13 (cf. Matt. xxii. 16), on the occasion of placing before Jesus the question about tribute to Cæsar. They were evidently not a religious sect, as the Pharisees and the Sadducees; nor the mere Court and family followers of the Herods, but rather a political party, whose object was the reëstablishment of the Herodian kingdom in the spirit of its traditional policythe union of Judaism with Hellenism. (See HEROD.) Their connection with the Pharisees, consequently, was not due to any sympathy of ideas with them, but to the instinctive conviction that in the spiritual mission of Jesus lay a danger common to them both. They were not necessarily pro-Roman in their feelings; though, in the nature of things, they would be more kindly disposed to the spirit of the pagan government than to that of the old theocracy, as represented by the Pharisees, or of the new Messianism involved in the religion of Jesus. It is probable that they had more in common with the religiously indifferent Sadducees than with any other Jewish party. Upon such a supposition there may be some bearing in the significant interchange of 'Sadducees' and 'Herod' in Jesus' warnings to His disciples as given in the parallels, Mark viii. 15 and Matt. xvi. 6. HER'ODIA'NUS, ÆLIUS. A Greek grammarian of the second half of the second century A.D., son of Apollonius Dyscolus. He was born at Alexandria, but afterwards removed to Rome, and there gained the favor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, to whom he dedicated his chief work, Καθολική Προσωδία, called also Μεγάλη IIpoodia, a treatise on prosody, syntax, and etymology, in about twenty books. Though he is highly praised by later grammarians, including Priscian, who calls him maximus auctor artis grammaticæ, only his treatise on monosyllabie words, Περὶ Μονήρους Λέξεως, has been preserved complete. Fragments, however, have been preserved in the citations of other grammarians, and have been edited by Lentz in his Herodiani Technici Reliquiæ (3 vols., Leipzig. 1876). Consult: Lehrs, Herodiani Scripta Tria (Königs

berg, 1848); Hilgard, Excerpta ex Libris Herodiani (Leipzig, 1887); and Stephen, De Herodiani Technici Dialectologia (Strassburg, 1889). HERO'DIAS. Daughter of Aristobulus (second son of Herod the Great and Mariamne, granddaughter of Hyrcanus) and Bernice, daughter of Salome, Herod's sister. She was twice married, first to her half-uncle, Herod, called in the Gospels Philip (Mark vi. 17; Matt. xiv. 3), the issue of which marriage was a daughter, Salome, who afterwards became the wife of Philip, another half-uncle of her mother. Doubtless, through the real attachment of love, Herodias left her husband for his half-brother, Antipas a marriage which, because of its illegality according to the Mosaic law, brought upon the latter the outspoken denunciation of John the Baptist, and so led to that prophet's imprisonment and final execution (Mark vi. 17-29; Matt. xiv. 3-12). It was quite possibly the daughter of this second marriage, bearing her mother's name, who danced before Antipas on the occasion of the festival and allured him to the reckless oath that gave Herodias opportunity to accomplish the death of John. The better reading of Mark vi. 22, "his daughter Herodias," is too plain to be otherwise interpreted; while the term by which she is described, "a little maid," would scarcely apply to a girl as old as Salome must have been at that time. It was Herodias's ambition that led her to urge Antipas to his fatal journey to Rome for the securing of the royal title, though her loyal affection for him made her share his exile. See HEROD.

HEROD'OTUS (Lat., from Gk. Ηρόδοτος) (c.484-c.424 B.C.). A Greek historian. He was the son of Lyxes and Rheo or Dryo, and was born about 484 B.C. at Halicarnassus, an originally Doric colony in Southwestern Asia Minor, at that time ruled by a Queen Artemisia under the sway of the Persians. His uncle, Panyasis, was an epic poet; and it was perhaps through him that Herodotus acquired the comprehensive acquaintance with early Greek literature, especially poetry, which is so conspicuous in his writings. His family was a prominent one, and the uncle was put to death about the year 457 for conspiring against the tyrant Lygdamis. Herodotus went into exile, and is said to have made his temporary home in the island of Samos, an ally of Athens and member of the Confederacy of Delos or the Athenian Empire. Between the years 467 and 464 he is believed to have traveled extensively on the shores of the Black Sea, in Thrace, Scythia, Asia Minor, and the Persian Empire, including Egypt. The precise extent, direction, and starting-points of his travels are matters of inference from his writings and of controversy among scholars. He saw in Egypt the skulls lying on the field of a battle fought in 460. He visited Scythia before the year 454. His travels in Greece, and possibly in Southern Italy, fall much later. Halicarnassus having risen against Lygdamis and joined the Athenian Empire, Herodotus, according to one tradition a leader in the uprising, returned and resumed his citizenship. He was, however, soon attracted to Athens, then, about 447, at the height of the age of Pericles, the centre and focus of Hellenic culture. There, or, as a fanciful later tradition has it, at Olympia, he gave 'author's readings' from his unfinished histories, and won the admiration of the greatest minds of Greece, the personal friendship of the poet

Sophocles, and, so the story goes, the more substantial reward of ten talents voted by the people. A well-invented story relates that the boy Thucydides, present at one of these readings, burst into tears from stress of emulous emotion, and that the historian complimented the boy's father on this indication of a generous nature. In the year 444 Herodotus, with many other brilliant men, joined the colony which Pericles was founding at Thurii in Southern Italy. His subsequent life is a blank. It was probably devoted to the completion and the final publication of his history. An allusion to the Propylæa, or entrance to the Acropolis, is supposed to prove that he visited Athens so late as 430. Nothing in his histories implies that he survived the year 424. Tradition placed his tomb at Thurii.

Herodotus was called the father of history by Cicero. This means, if anything, that he was the first to compose an artistic and dramatically unified history, although there were historians before him, the so-called logographers, or story-tellers, who continued in prose the work of the garrulous later epic. (See LOGOGRAPHER.) The only one explicitly named by Herodotus is Hecatæus of Miletus, who traveled in Egypt, is mentioned as a prominent adviser of the Ionians during the Ionic revolt, and is thought by some critics to have been the source of much matter that Herodotus gives out as his own. But Herodotus was the first to grasp firmly a great central international theme, and to work up, in due and artistic subordination to it, a vast mass of legendary, local, antiquarian, geographical, and ethnological lore, derived partly from predecessors, but widely supplemented by his own travels and inquiry (the original meaning of history). This theme was the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, of which his boyhood had perhaps caught the last echoes in the tales told by his townsfolk of the wondrous He appreexploits of Artemisia at Salamis. hended it as the culmination of the eternal con

flict between the East and the West which he

It

conceived as beginning with the Trojan War, and of which we have not yet seen the end. shaped itself to his imagination in a large, dramatic, and religiously edifying way. Its prologue is the evolution of the free States of Greece, and, in antithesis to them, the history and panorama of the barbarian world of ancient monarchies and outlying peoples. Its dramatic culmination is the overthrow of the myriads of Xerxes by the few thousand Greeks at Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale. Its moral is the lesson of the nemesis that waits upon Hybris-upon the insolence of those who, drunk with power, forget the limits of mortality. "For God abases the mighty ones of earth, and suffers none to think proud thoughts save Himself." There are many theories (none of them verifiable) of the order of composition of the different parts of the history, of the digressions, in which it abounds, and of the retouches by which its allusions were brought down to date. But in the final result the general design is so clear both to Herodotus and to the reader, that, despite the bewildering prodigality of anecdote, digression, retrospect, and description, we never lose our sense of a majestic architectural unity, or fail to feel that we are progressing steadily toward a predetermined goal. The nine books named after the muses, into which later grammarians aptly divided the work, fall into natural groups of symmetry or antithesis