<P> Herodotus clearly writes as both historian and teller of tales . Herodotus takes a fluid position between the artistic story - weaving of Homer and the rational data - accounting of later historians . John Herrington has developed a helpful metaphor for describing Herodotus's dynamic position in the history of Western art and thought--Herodotus as centaur: </P> <P> The human forepart of the animal...is the urbane and responsible classical historian; the body indissolubly united to it is something out of the faraway mountains, out of an older, freer and wilder realm where our conventions have no force . </P> <P> Herodotus is neither a mere gatherer of data nor a simple teller of tales--he is both . While Herodotus is certainly concerned with giving accurate accounts of events, this does not preclude for him the insertion of powerful mythological elements into his narrative, elements which will aid him in expressing the truth of matters under his study . Thus to understand what Herodotus is doing in the Histories, we must not impose strict demarcations between the man as mythologist and the man as historian, or between the work as myth and the work as history . As James Romm has written, Herodotus worked under a common ancient Greek cultural assumption that the way events are remembered and retold (e.g. in myths or legends) produces a valid kind of understanding, even when this retelling is not entirely factual . For Herodotus, then, it takes both myth and history to produce truthful understanding . </P>

Who recognized the appeal of herodotean story-telling of historical events