Legendary Lost Persian Army Found in Sahara

[JasonC]

Um, no one who claims that Herodotus is real history can possibly have read any of him. Io and Europa and Medea and Helen in a rape roundabout, 505 years of 22 generations descended from Heracles, until Gyges takes power because he sees the queen naked and she insists, sickness striking a king because a temple burns down, dolphin rides in minstrel robes, prophetic dreams of sons killed hunting - these are the ordinary stuff of the first pages.

300 Spartans and 300 neighbors fight all day until 3 are left alive; the phoenix is a real bird in Egypt which is reborn from ashes, yada yada yada.

It is all one ripping yarn after another. He is making it up. He wants to explain every plate and gimcrack at Dephi with a long mythic story...

Fine, as literature one can say, he wasn't trying to be an historian, he was just telling tales with pithy morals to them, preferably as marvelous as possible. But this is a new age tour guide telling the mob at the museum all about the magic crytals that cured his arthritis, and not --- history.