Of Herodotus's Malice. (11-15)

First therefore, — beginning, as the proverb is, with Vesta, — whereas all the Grecians affirm Io, daughter to

Nay, he is so favorable to the barbarians, that, acquitting Busiris of those human sacrifices and that slaughter of his guests for which he is accused, and attributing by his testimony to the Egyptians much religion and

The same Herodotus, that he may still be like himself, says that the Persians learned the defiling of the male sex from the Greeks.[*] And yet how could the Greeks have taught this impurity to the Persians, amongst whom, as is confessed by almost all, boys had been castrated before ever they arrived in the Grecian seas? He writes also, that the Greeks were instructed by the Egyptians in their pomps, solemn festivals, and worship of the twelve Gods; that Melampus also learned of the Egyptians the name of Dionysus (or Bacchus) and taught it the other Greeks; that the mysteries likewise and rites of Ceres were brought out of Egypt by the daughters of Danaus; and that the Egyptians were wont to beat themselves and make great lamentation, but yet he himself would not tell the names of their Deities, but concealed them in silence. As to Hercules and Bacchus, whom the Egyptians named Gods, and the Greeks very aged men, he nowhere feels such scruples and hesitation; although he places also the Egyptian Hercules amongst the Gods of the second rank, and Bacchus amongst those of the third, as having had some beginning of their being and not being eternal, and yet he pronounces those to be Gods; but to the Greek

Nor is this impious enough; but moreover, deriving the pedigree of Hercules from Perseus, he says that Perseus was an Assyrian, as the Persians affirm. But the leaders, says he, of the Dorians may appear to be descended in a right line from the Egyptians, reckoning their ancestors from before Danae and Acrisius. [*] Here he has wholly passed by Epaphus, Io, Iasus, and Argus, being ambitious not only to make the other Herculeses Egyptians and Phoenicians, but to carry this also, whom himself affirms to have been the third, out of Greece to the barbarians. But of the ancient learned writers, neither Homer, nor Hesiod, or Archilochus, nor Pisander, nor Stesichorus, nor Alcman, nor Pindar, makes any mention of the Egyptian or the Phoenician Hercules, but all acknowledge this our own Boeotian and Argive Hercules.

Now of the seven sages, whom he calls Sophisters, he affirms Thales to have been a barbarian, descended of the Phoenicians.[*] Speaking ill also of the Gods under the person of Solon, he has these words: Thou, O Croesus, askest me concerning human affairs, who know that every one of the Deities is envious and tumultuous. [*] Thus attributing to Solon what himself thinks of the Gods, he joins malice to blasphemy. Having made use also of Pittacus in some trivial matters, not worth the mentioning, he has passed over the greatest and gallantest action that was ever done by him. For when the Athenians and