SOURCE: "Scepticism and Credulity in Herodotus," in The World of Herodotus, Little, Brown and Company, 1962, pp. 53-67.

In the following essay, de Sélincourt provides a sketch of religious thought in the time of Herodotus and discusses the Greek concepts of fate, pride, and guilt. De Sélincourt notes Herodotus's religious credulity, but also detects in the History a sceptical intelligence.

One way in which the artist differs from the rest of us is that he knows better than we do what to leave out. A sculptor, knowing which bits of stone are irrelevant to his purpose, chips them away. Knowledge of what to leave out makes the difference between a good talker or a successful raconteur and a bore; between a good book and a ragbag of information or gossip. A good book may deal with all sorts of peripheral matters, but the reader perceives, or comes...