Inspired by the National exaltation of soul which carried the Greeks through their Birth-struggle, the first pan-hellenic Act since the Trojan War, Herodotus writes in the calm after the storm, with adjustment and expansion still active around him; and looking back, as Milton could look back over the Elizabethan Age, or Victor Hugo over the Napoleonic, he sees that Heroic Age far enough off to be contemplated whole, yet near enough still for the Divine Justice and Mercy to be very real and terrible.