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

48 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

to comprehend the reason for this scepticism which
he derived from Hecataeus. I touched on this
point in the first lecture. It was not due to the
canons of Ionian science or to the influence of
Ionian philosophy. It was due to the study of
comparative mythology which had opened for
Hecataeus a new perspective of the world's history.
The Egyptian studies which Herodotus pursued in
the footsteps of the Milesian traveller taught him
that human history in that country went back for
thousands of years before the age of the gods was
reached. The Egyptians, for instance, had a god
corresponding to Heracles, and they reckoned that
17,000 years had elapsed since he had appeared in
Egypt. Hence the conclusion which Herodotus
accepts that there was an ancient god Heracles,
but that he must be sharply distinguished from
the human son of Amphitryon, ancestor of the
Heracleidae.1 The Greek tradition that the age in
which gods walked the earth was still current some
eight or nine hundred years ago could not be true.
For even apart from the suggestions of comparative mythology, it was inadmissible to suppose that
while Egypt was in a prosaic age of mere men,
Greece was trodden by deities and the scene of
miracles; and the Egyptian tradition was vouched
for by records. The argument demolished the
received mythology of the heroic age so far as it
was superhuman.

1 Similarly Pan son of Penelope, Dionysus son of Semele, are to be
distinguished from the synonymous gods.