PREFACE

If a new translation of Herodotus does not justify itself, it will
hardly be justified in a preface; therefore the question whether it
was needed may be left here without discussion. The aim of the
translator has been above all things faithfulness--faithfulness to the
manner of expression and to the structure of sentences, as well as to
the meaning of the Author. At the same time it is conceived that the
freedom and variety of Herodotus is not always best reproduced by such
severe consistency of rendering as is perhaps desirable in the case of
the Epic writers before and the philosophical writers after his time:
nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be
reproduced in the form of archaisms of language; and that not only
because the affectation of an archaic style would necessarily be
offensive to the reader, but also because in language Herodotus is not
archaic. His style is the "best canon of the Ionic speech," marked,
however, not so much by primitive purity as by eclectic variety. At
the same time it is characterised largely by the poetic diction of the
Epic and Tragic writers; and while the translator is free to employ
all the resources of modern English, so far as he has them at his
command, he must carefully retain this poetical colouring and by all
means avoid the courtier phrase by which the style of Herodotus has
too often been made "more noble."[1]

As regards the text from which this translation has been made, it is
based upon that of Stein's critical edition (Berlin, 1869-1871), that
is to say the estimate there made of the comparative value of the
authorities has been on the whole accepted as a just one, rather than
that which depreciates the value of the Medicean MS. and of the class