ABSTRACT
H ERODOTUS, as we know, is both Father of History and Father ofAnthropology. Sir John Myres wrote: "so far as Herodotuspresents us .. . with a science of anthropology . . . he is little, if at all. behind the best thought of our own day." Even as of 1908 this seems extravagant. Herodotus lacks a principle which Tyler, in the generation before Myres. had already put at the head of cultural anthropology, namely, that every culture is a "complex whole"-or, as we would say. a system. Herodotus merely notes particular traits; he is not concerned with the functional, structural, or stylistic coherence of the cultures he describes.
