NOTE
HERODOTUS was born at Halicarnassus, on the southwest coast of
Asia Minor, in the early part of the fifth century, B. C. Of his life we know
almost nothing, except that he spent much of it traveling, to collect the
material for his writings, and that he finally settled down at Thurii, in
southern Italy, where his great work was composed. He died in 424 B. C.
The subject of the history of Herodotus is the struggle between the
Greeks and the barbarians, which he brings down to the battle of Mycale
in 479 B. C. The work, as we have it, is divided into nine books, named
after the nine Muses, but this division is probably due to the Alexandrine
grammarians. His information he gathered mainly from oral sources, as he
traveled through Asia Minor, down into Egypt, round the Black Sea, and
into various parts of Greece and the neighboring countries. The
chronological narrative halts from time to time to give opportunity for
descriptions of the country, the people, and their customs and previous
history; and the political account is constantly varied by rare tales and
wonders.
Among these descriptions of countries the most fascinating to the
modern, as it was to the ancient, reader is his account of the marvels of the
land of Egypt. From the priests at Memphis, Heliopolis, and the Egyptian
Thebes he learned what he reports of the size of the country, the wonders
of the Nile, the ceremonies of their religion, the sacredness of their
animals. He tells also of the strange ways of the crocodile and of that
marvelous bird, the Phoenix; of dress and funerals and embalming; of the
eating of lotos and papyrus; of the pyramids and the great labyrinth; of
their kings and queens and courtesans.