Most modern biographers of Herod, and probably a majority of biblical scholars, dismiss Matthew's story as an invention.[55] Contemporary non-biblical sources, including Herod's friend and personal historian, Nicolas of Damascus, provide no corroboration for Matthew's account of the massacre,[56] and it is not mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Classical historian Michael Grant states “[t]he tale is not history but myth or folk-lore”,[57] while Peter Richardson notes that the story's absence from the Gospel of Luke and the accounts of Josephus "work[s] against the account's accuracy".[58] Richardson suggests that the event in Matthew's gospel was inspired by Herod's murder of his own sons.[59]