Excerpt from The Histories of Herodotus
After the death of Panyassis, Herodotus, who may have been implicated in the affair, is supposed to have withdrawn to Samos, and it is recorded that he bore a conspicuous part in the revolution that unseated Lygdamis in 455. In 454 the name of Halicarnassus appears on the roll of the Athenian allies who paid their quota to the fund levied for resistance to Persia. But faction begets faction, and Herodotus, who had ousted Lygdamis, was himself forced to withdraw, and we find him registered among those who joined the Athenian colony of Thurii, in Lower Italy, founded in 444. Hence he is sometimes called a Thurian. His tomb was there, but another tomb was shown in Athens, the city he loved so well. Shortly before going to Thurii he is said to have read a portion of his histories at Athens - which portion is much disputed - and to have received a public reward of ten talents for his praise of the violet-wreathed city. The amount is extravagant; the story reminds one of the old tale about Pindar, but a public recitation is not at all improbable, nor a public recognition of some kind.
Much of his time was spent in travel. What the modem historian finds useful for giving vividness and exactness to I his narrative the ancient historian found indispensable for the collection of material. The day of the bookworm historians, whose journeys were limited to papyrus and to parchment, had not yet come. In point of fact, the geographer and the historian were one in the early time, and the differentiation did not take place until a comparatively late period.
Attempts have been made to trace the travels of Herodotus in his work, not always with signal success. Continental Greece he knew, Athens beyond a doubt, and the traveller of to-day who stands in Sparta and looks out toward Therapne feels that he is on Herodotean ground. Some of the Cyclades he must have visited, but how many is open to question.
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