Xenophon's, that we have already seen in the note on Antiq. B.
VIII. ch. 10. sect. 3, how very little Herodotus knew about the
Jewish affairs and country, and that he greatly affected what we
call the marvelous, as Monsieur Rollin has lately and justly
determined; whence we are not always to depend on the authority
of Herodotus, where it is unsupported by other evidence, but
ought to compare the other evidence with his, and if it
preponderate, to prefer it before his. I do not mean by this that
Herodotus willfully related what he believed to be false, (as
Cteeias seems to have done,) but that he often wanted evidence,
and sometimes preferred what was marvelous to what was best
attested as really true.

(5)About the days of Cyrus and Daniel.

(6) It is here well worth our observation, what the reasons are
that such ancient authors as Herodotus, Josephus, and others have
been read to so little purpose by many learned critics; viz. that
their main aim has not been chronology or history, but philology,
to know words, and not things, they not much entering oftentimes
into the real contents of their authors, and judging which were
the most accurate discoverers of truth, and most to be depended
on in the several histories, but rather inquiring who wrote the
finest style, and had the greatest elegance in their expressions;
which are things of small consequence in comparison of the other.
Thus you will sometimes find great debates among the learned,
whether Herodotus or Thucydides were the finest historian in the
Ionic and Attic ways of writing; which signify little as to the
real value of each of their histories; while it would be of much
more moment to let the reader know, that as the consequence of