Named Entity Results, Herodotus

ire in place of a republican confederation, and if the fleets of Athens had been joined to those of Syracuse, of Corinth and of Sparta, instead of fighting incessantly against them, the Greeks would perhaps have acquired the empire of the world in advance of the Romans. If the exaggerated traditions of the ancient Greek historians are to be believed, the famous army of Xerxes had not less than four thousand vessels, and this number is less astonishing when we read the nomenclature which Herodotus gives of them. But, what is more difficult to believe, is that at the same instant, and by a concerted effort, five thousand other vessels should have debarked three hundred thousand Carthagenians in Sicily, where they should have been destroyed by Gelon the same day on which Themistocles destroyed the fleet of Xerxes at Salamis. Three other expeditions, under Hannibal, Himilco, and Hamilcar, were to carry there at one time one hundred thousand men, and at another one hundred and fifty t

nius, and, if not a comparison with the great generals of other countries and other times, at least some statement of his merits, some enumeration of his claims. But there is an obvious embarrassment in thus dealing with one who is still living, and may chance to read the pages in which his military character is delineated. What is just praise when spoken of the dead may sound like flattery when spoken of the living. In the interview between Solon and Croesus, so beautifully narrated by Herodotus, the king was told by his wise guest that no man could be called happy until a fortunate life had been closed by a peaceful death; for that so long as a man was alive he was the sport and prey of fortune, and no one could tell what the future had in store for him. In like manner, no accurate estimate can be made of the worth and services of a soldier or statesman until the seal of death is set upon his rounded life and there is no more for him any earthly future. Far distant, we trust, is

Cortes found it in use by the half-civilized Mexicans; and it has been rudely fabricated in Africa from time immemorial. India, however, is the earliest known seat of the cotton manufacture, and here it long ago attained the highest perfection possible prior to the application of steam, with complicated machinery, to its various processes; and hence it appears to have gradually extended westward through Persia and Arabia, until it attracted the attention of the Greeks, and was noticed by Herodotus about 450 B. C., as the product of an Indian tree, and the staple of an extensive manufacture. Later Greek accounts confirm the impression that the tree or shrub variety was cultivated in India previously to the plant or annual now by far the more commonly grown. The Romans began to use cotton fabrics before the time of Julius Caesar, and the cotton-plant was grown in Sicily and along the northern coast of the Mediterranean so early as the tenth century. The culture, however, does not a

Skedaddle.--This word, much used by correspondents in describing the hasty and disorderly flight of the rebels, may be easily traced to a Greek origin. The word skedannumi, of which the root is skeda, is used both by Thucydides and Herodotus to describe the dispersion of a routed army. (See Thucydides, IV., 56, 112, and Herodotus, V., 102.) The last-named historian, in the passage referred to, after giving an account of an engagement at Ephesus between the Persians and the Ionians, in Herodotus, V., 102.) The last-named historian, in the passage referred to, after giving an account of an engagement at Ephesus between the Persians and the Ionians, in which the latter were defeated with great slaughter, says: Those who escaped from this battle were scattered (Greek, eskedasthesan) [skedaddled] throughout the different cities. From the root skeda, of the word eskedasthesan, first aorist indicative passive of skedannumi, the word skedaddle is formed by simply adding the euphonious termination dle, and doubling the d, as required by the analogy of our language in such words. In many words of undoubted Greek extraction, much greater changes

--This word has been supposed to have originated in the fertile brain of some Yankee, who was at loss for an appropriate term to express his idea of the mania of the rebels for retreating before the advance of our armies. The Louisville Journal, however, shows that the word is of Grecian birth, as will be seen by the following extract from an article in that paper: The primitive of skedaddle is a pure Greek word of great antiquity. It occurs in Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, and it was used to express in Greek the very idea that we undertake, in using it, to express in English. Homer, in the Iliad, uses only the aorist eskedasa or skedasa. Thus in Iliad 19: 171, we have skedason laon, for scattering, dispersing. In Prometheus, Aeschylus thus uses it (skeda) in making the sun disperse the hoar frost of the morn. And again Prometheus uses this word in predicting woes upon Jupiter, when he says that a flame more potent than the

e is off to Aden, which he reaches November 21, 1868. Not a word can he learn of Livingstone. He writes enquiries to Consul Webb at Zanzibar, and, in the wretched and sun-scorched little town, sets himself to wait; but not in idleness. He works the Magdala campaign into book-form, designing in some indefinite future to publish it. (It came out five years later.) Then he falls upon a pile of good books which my interesting visit to Greece and Asia Minor induced me to purchase — Josephus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Derby's Iliad, Dryden's Virgil, some few select classics of Bohn's Library, Wilkinson's and Lane's books on Egypt, hand-books to Greece, the Levant, and India, Kilpert's maps of Asia Minor, etc. Worse heat, worse dust, and still no word of Livingstone! New Year's Day, 1869. Many people have greeted me, and expressed their wish that it should be a happy one, and that I should see many more such days. They were no doubt sincere, but what avail their wishes, and what is happin