Act III — Absorption#

[HERODOTUS INTERSTITIAL — NOT YET WRITTEN]#

[Herodotus marks the transition to completed deprecation. By now he knows the pattern. His voice should be late-stage: restrained, archival, almost judicial. The wit that characterized his early chapters is expensive now. A paragraph reflecting on what “absorption” looks like — not destruction, not rebellion, but the quiet completion of a process that was never announced.]