As is known from the autobiographical fragment, Swift had 'turned himself to reading History and Poetry' ever since the early days at Trinity College.(4) The fact that Herodotus was among this reading is borne out by numerous quotations from, and references to, the Historia Graeca in early satires like A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704).(5) When, in 1720, the Dean came to re-read Herodotus, he testified to his admiration of 'the father of history', as Herodotus had been called by Cicero and others,(6) in a 'Judicium de Herodoto post
longum tempus relecto', jotted down in an edition of the History from his own library.(7) So the case does seem clear-cut and straightforward.