78 HERODOTUS. [CHAP.

As Herodotus was an adherent of the Pythagorean School of
. Philosophy, we cannot be surprised if we find him

His General ....

views of disagreeing with some of the geographical views of the

Geography. ionj[an School. This point has already been noticed
in speaking of Hecataeus, where we have seen that the historian
derides the notion, which was still maintained by that school, that
the Earth was a circular plane surrounded by the ocean stream l.
Yet the cast of his own mind was essentially unphilosophical, and
while he expresses incredulity about the opinions of his prede-
„. „ . . cessors. he shews strange simplicity in his own

His Pnmi-

tive cosmicai conceptions of the order of nature. Nothing
Beliefs. indeed can well be more childish than his belief

that the sun was driven southward out of its regular course by the
winds at the approach of winter2. For this reason it is the less
strange that he should not have adopted the Pythagorean tenet of
the sphericity of the Earth, notwithstanding the persuasiveness of
that doctrine when it had once been propounded, and the
numerous difficulties which it seems to solve. That he held fast
to the belief that the world is a plane surface seems probable from
. his saying that in India the greatest heat of the day was in the
morning hours, and not as in other countries in the middle of
the day ; for this idea on his part seems to have arisen- from the
belief that the sun was nearer to the Earth at that time3. He was
wedded also to a certain class of a priori views with regard to the
metrical symmetrical arrangement of land and water and
correspon- inhabited districts on the Earth's surface, especially

in comparing its northern and southern portions.
Thus, when speaking of the stories that were current concerning
the Hyperboreans, he remarks, as if it were an indisputable pro-
position, that if there are ' dwellers at the back of the North wind/
there must also be 'dwellers at the back of the South wind4.' A
courses of st^ more H^ked instance of supposed correspond-
the Nile and ence is the parallel which he draws between the

Nile and the Ister. Speaking of the Nile, which in

1 + *6'

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