foundation of Dodona. 'How can a dove speak with a human voice?'
he asks, and rationalises the bird into a foreign princess.

Similarly he seems more inclined to believe that the great storm at
the beginning of the Persian War ceased from ordinary atmospheric
causes, and not in consequence of the incantations of the MAGIANS.
He calls Melampos, whom the majority of the Greeks looked on as an
inspired prophet, 'a clever man who had acquired for himself the
art of prophecy'; and as regards the miracle told of the AEginetan
statues of the primeval deities of Damia and Auxesia, that they
fell on their knees when the sacrilegious Athenians strove to carry
them off, 'any one may believe it,' he says, 'who likes, but as for
myself, I place no credence in the tale.'

So much then for the rationalistic spirit of historical criticism,
as far as it appears explicitly in the works of this great and
philosophic writer; but for an adequate appreciation of his
position we must also note how conscious he was of the value of
documentary evidence, of the use of inscriptions, of the importance
of the poets as throwing light on manners and customs as well as on
historical incidents. No writer of any age has more vividly
recognised the fact that history is a matter of evidence, and that
it is as necessary for the historian to state his authority as it
is to produce one's witnesses in a court of law.

While, however, we can discern in Herodotus the rise of an historic
sense, we must not blind ourselves to the large amount of instances
where he receives supernatural influences as part of the ordinary
forces of life. Compared to Thucydides, who succeeded him in the
development of history, he appears almost like a mediaeval writer