I had long ignored Herodotus because of that epithet, and I think it was a huge mistake. After reading him I was very surprised about how accurate he was in gen

I had long ignored Herodotus because of that epithet, and I think it was a huge mistake. After reading him I was very surprised about how accurate he was in general. He also says where he got information, and presents different reports where they are available, and frequently expresses skepticism about some of the stories. Additionally, even the crazy-sounding stories are often rooted in some kind of truth: the Wikipedia article about the gold-digging ants claims there is a local tribe that did in fact collect gold dust from marmot burrows. One item that struck me was that in the Egyptian chapters, he reports that cats (then a curiosity to the Greeks) would leap into fires and burn to death; a footnote in my edition made some comment about the absurdity of his claims about cats and this in particular. But the reason it struck me is because my ex-girlfriend had a cat who exhibited exactly that behavior. It made me wonder if Herodotus mistook a singular anecdote for a generality, or if there was some kind of bizarre instinct in at least some breeds of cats in history that did indeed lead them to do that.