of Herodotus.  To the same vein of thought belongs the story, just recounted, of the relations of Croesus with the Delphian oracle.  An account is provided, satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was ruined—­but nothing less than the overruling and omnipotent Moerae could be invoked to explain so stupendous a result.  It is rarely that these supreme goddesses—­or hyper-goddesses, since the gods themselves must submit to them—­are brought into such distinct light and action.  Usually they are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the unseen stumbling block in cases of extreme incomprehensibility; and it is difficult clearly to determine (as in the case of some complicated political constitutions) where the Greeks conceived sovereign power to reside, in respect to the government of the world.  But here the sovereignity of the Moerae, and the subordinate agency of the gods, are unequivocally set forth.  The gods are still extremely powerful, because the Moerae comply with their requests up to a certain point, not thinking it proper to be wholly inexorable; but their compliance is carried no farther than they themselves choose; nor would they, even in deference to Apollo, alter the original sentence of punishment for the sin of Gyges in the person of his fifth descendant—­sentence, moreover, which Apollo himself had formerly prophesied shortly after the sin was committed, so that, if the Moerae had listened to his intercession on behalf of Croesus, his own prophetic credit would have been endangered.  Their unalterable resolution has predetermined the ruin of Croesus, and the grandeur of the event is manifested by the circumstance that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon them to alter it, or to grant more than a three years’ respite.  The religious element must here be viewed as giving the form, the historical element as giving the matter only, and not the whole matter, of the story.  These two elements will be found conjoined more or less throughout most of the history of Herodotus, though as we descend to later times, we shall find the latter element in constantly increasing proportion.  His conception of history is extremely different from that of Thucydides, who lays down to himself the true scheme and purpose of the historian, common to him with the philosopher—­to recount and interpret the past, as a rational aid toward pre-vision of the future.

In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ctesias, no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon.  His narrative, indeed, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data altogether different.