From my newest favourite book, Travels with Herodotus.by the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinkski.
"...Herodotus was the contemporary of the greatest Greek tragedians -- Aeschylus, Sophocles... and Euripides. His times were the golden age of theatre (as well as much else) and stage art in those days was influenced by mysteries, folk rituals, national festivals, religious services, Dionysian rites. This affected how Greeks wrote, how Herodotus wrote. He explains the fortunes of the world through the fortunes of individuals. The pages of his book, whose goal is the recording of human history, are full of flesh and blood people, specific human beings with specific names who are either powerful or weak, kind or cruel, triumphant or despondent. Under different appellations and in different contexts are Antigones, Medeas, Cassandras and the servants of Clytemnestra, the Ghost of Darius and the lance-bearing knights of Aegisthus. Myths blend with reality, legends with facts. Herodotus tries to separate one from the other, without neglecting either or presuming to establish hierarchy. He knows to what great degree a man's way of thinking and his decision-making are determined by an inner realm of spirits, dreams, anxieties and premonitions. He understands that the phantom which the King sees in his sleep can decide the fate of his nation and millions of his subjects. He knows how weak a human being is, how defenseless he is in the face of the terrors born of his own imagination."
https://burnsmar.blogspot.ca/2017/06/speaking-of-theatre.html