While the grounds for distrusting the narrative are thus materially weakened, the positive evidence will be found very forcible. The expedition of Xerxes took place when Herodotus was about four years old, so that he afterwards enjoyed ample opportunity of conversing with persons who had witnessed and taken part in it: and the whole of his narrative shows that he availed himself largely of such access to information. Besides, the building of the bridge across the Hellespont, and all the incidents connected with it, were acts essentially public in their nature,—known to many witnesses, and therefore the more easily verified,—the decapitation of the unfortunate engineers was an act fearfully impressive, and even the scourging of the Hellespont, while essentially public, appears to Herodotus[31] (as well as to Arrian, afterwards), not childish but impious. The more attentively we balance, in the case before us, the positive testimony against the intrinsic negative probabilities, the more shall we be disposed to admit without diffidence the statement of our original historian. [28] See Stanley and Blomfield ad Æschyl. Pers. 731, and K. O. Müller (in his Review of Benjamin Constant’s work Sur la Religion), Kleine Schriften, vol. ii, p. 59. [29] See Auguste Comte, Traité de Philosophie Positive, vol. v, leçon 52, pp. 40, 46. [30] See vol. ii, part 2, c. i, p. 297 of the present work; and compare Wachsmuth, Hellenisch. Alterthümer, 2, i, p. 320, and K. F. Hermann, Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 104. For the manner in which Cyrus dealt with the river Gyndês, see Herodot. i, 202. The Persian satrap Pharnuchês was thrown from his horse at Sardis, and received an injury of which he afterwards died: he directed his attendants to lead the horse to the place where the accident had happened, to cut off all his legs, and leave him to perish there (Herodot. vii, 88). The kings of Macedonia offered sacrifice even during the time of Herodotus, to the river which had been the means of preserving the life of their ancestor Perdikkas; after he had crossed it, the stream swelled and arrested his pursuers (Herodot. viii, 138): see an analogous story about the inhabitants of Apollonia and the river Aöus, Valerius Maxim. i, 5, 2.