The ancient Greek historians (Harvard lectures) by J. B. Bury.

I

HECATAEUS

11

rationalists that what was possible once is possible
still, and what is incredible now is incredible
always. And he was also concerned, in the cause
of ethics, to denounce the attribution to the gods
of conduct condemned by the contemporary moral
standards of Greece.1
Besides the efforts of Ionian men of science to
explain nature by reason,- besides the dawn of
philosophy,-there was another fact which contributed, in the second part of the sixth century, to
widen the horizon of intelligent minds in Ionia.
The power of Persia had been extended to the
Aegean, and the Asiatic Greeks had been incorporated in the Persian empire. A natural consequence was the stimulation of interest and curiosity
among those Greeks about the other lands of the
great realm to which they were now attached; and
their new position provided facilities for gratifying
this curiosity. Oriental geography and history
presented to the Greeks a new field of study, and
this exercised, as we shall see, an important influence in bringing history to the birth.
Its birth is associated with the name of Hecataeus
of Miletus. He was, first and foremost, a geographer. I do not dispute the title of Anaximander to be called the "father of geography,"
but Hecataeus may be considered one of the
1 It is remarkable that Xenophanes wrote two epic poems on quasihistorical subjects-the Origin of his native home Colophon, and the
colonisation of his adoptive home Elea; but no traces of these works
have survived. It would be interesting to know how he handled definite
traditions.