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.
n a level place;
and having come up to them, they were beginning to pluck the fruit which
was upon the trees: but as they began to pluck it, there came upon them
small men, of less stature than men of the common size, and these seized
them and carried them away; and neither could the Nasamonians understand
anything of their speech nor could those who were carrying them off
understand anything of the speech of the Nasamonians; and they led them
(so it was said) through very great swamps, and after passing through
these they came to a city in which all the men were in size like those
who carried them off and in colour of skin black; and by the city ran
a great river, which ran from the West towards the sunrising, and in it
were seen crocodiles. Of the account given by Etearchos the Ammonian let
so much suffice as is here said, except that, as the men of Kyrene told
me, he alleged that the Nasamonians returned safe home, and that the
people to whom they had come were all wizards. Now this river which ran
by the city, Etearchos conjectured to be the Nile, and moreover reason
compels us to think so; for the Nile flows from Libya and cuts Libya
through in the midst, and as I conjecture, judging of what is not known
by that which is evident to the view, it starts at a distance from its
mouth equal to that of the Ister: for the river Ister begins from the
Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the
midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border
upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those
who have their dwelling in Europe): and the Ister ends, having its
course through the whole of Europe, by flowing into the Euxine Sea at
the place where the Milesians have their settlement of Istria. Now the
Ister, since it flows through land which is inhabited, is known by
the reports of many; but of the sources of the Nile no one can give an
account, for the part of Libya through which
