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

14 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

been stimulated by the acquaintance he made
in Egypt with the historical traditions of the
Egyptians. There he made the discovery that
in days when gods were supposed to be walking
abroad on the hills and in the vales of Hellas,
Egypt at the distance of a few days' voyage was
managed exclusively by mere human beings. It
was an obvious inference that the age of the gods
in Greece must be relegated to as remote a date as
the age of the gods in Egypt, and that the heroic
age of the not very distant ancestors of the existing
Greeks must be divested of the supernatural
atmosphere with which poetical fable had encompassed it. We may conclude that the prefatory
announcement of Hecataeus was not excessive,
and that hiis atioamlism was more complete than
the few meagre fragments ofle work might lead
us to suppose.
Hecataeus, as I have said, wrote in prose. His
choice of prose was a proof of his competence and
a condition of his achievement. But prose had, in
all probability, been used already at Miletus for the
treatment of a historical subject. The very existence of Cadmus the Milesian has been called in
question by some modern critics, and he is certainly
a misty figure. The evidence seems to me-though
I speak with diffidence-to point to the conclusion
that he existed, and was one of the earliest prose
writers of Ionia. Myy idea of Cadmus is that he

I Chief sources for Cadmus: Dionys. Hal. De Thuc. 23; Strabo i. 2.
6; Pliny,.N]I. v. 31, vii. 56; Josephus, c. Ap. i. 2; Suidas, sub