ABSTRACT
A reading of the “fragments” of Hecataeus, collected by Klausen, was at first disappointing. They consist for the most part of geographical names, preserved in a geographical lexicon. At all events, modern criticism, based on a comprehensive survey of the evidence, has completely refuted the objections to the acceptance of the entire Tour of the World as the genuine work of Hecataeus. Eduard Meyer made it evident that Herodotus based his chronology of the heroic age, reckoned in generations, upon a well-known handbook, which could have been no other than the Genealogies of Hecataeus. One wonders therefore that he should say that Hecataeus narrated only the heroic history. Hecataeus was by that time outmoded: an account of that wonderland in such an approximation as Herodotus could achieve to the newer style then taking form under the influence of rhetoric and the Sophists would be welcomed.
