Chapter LXVII: Sicilian Affairs (1)

[b] L. MÉNARD, _op. cit._--DIODORUS SICULUS, _op. cit._--STRABO, _op. cit._--PLUTARCH, _op. cit._--EDWARD A. FREEMAN, article on “Sicily,” in the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.--ADOLF HOLM, _Geschichte Siciliens im Alterthum_.

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GRECIAN HISTORY

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE SOURCES

In a previous part of this work reference has been made to the large number of historians of Greece and to the fragmentary condition in which their works have come down to us. Attention has also been called to the comparatively small aid which the historian of Greece receives from epigraphical inscriptions. There are, to be sure, various inscriptions that give an incidental aid; as, for example, the famous inscription on the leg of the statue of Ramses II at Abu-Simbel; an Athenian inscription referring to the work on the Erechtheum; inscriptions from the walls of the temples at Ephesus, at Priene, and the like. All of these, however, give but incidental glimpses; taken together they would make but a most meagre and fragmentary historical record. There is, however, one inscription extant of far greater importance. This is the so-called Parian marble or Parian chronicle, which was found originally at Paros, was brought to England in 1627 at the instance of the earl of Arundel, and was subsequently presented to the University of Oxford, where it forms part of the collection of Arundel marbles.

This inscription originally comprised an epitome of the chief events in Grecian history (with various notable omissions) from the alleged reign of Cecrops, 1318 B.C., to the archonship of Diognetus, 264 B.C. At present, however, the last part of the record is lost, so that the extant portion comes only to the time of Diotimus, 354 B.C. Various parts of the inscription are more or less illegible, and there are, as just noted, numerous very noteworthy omissions, particularly as regards political events. Moreover, the entire record, as pointed out by Clinton,[52] is everywhere one year out of the way. Nevertheless, as a guide to the sequence of events in Grecian history and as a check on the other sources, the Parian chronicle is of the very greatest importance. It is not known just when or by whom this inscription was made, but it is apparently based on earlier sources that are in the main fairly reliable.

As the entire inscription of the Parian chronicle is contained on a slab of marble only about three and a half feet in length, it is obvious that its record must be of the most epitomised character; in short, a mere sequence of names. For a fuller record of the events of Grecian history we must turn to the usual sources, the manuscripts of the historians proper. Non-historical writings are not to be altogether ignored, to be sure. In many cases they furnish us important aids in filling in gaps or in supplying details. In particular the dramatists and the orators furnish important historical data; among the former, Æschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes; among the orators, Isæus, Isocrates, Æschines, and Demosthenes. The works of Plato and Aristotle and, to a less extent, of other philosophers are also to be looked to here and there. But all of these, let it be repeated, are of meagre importance compared with the records of the historians proper.

Something has been said in another place of the large number of Greek historians. Mr. Clinton lists forty-seven by name who flourished prior to 306 B.C.; and this without including the historians of Alexander. Among these are such more or less familiar names as Cadmus of Miletus, Hecatæus, Hellanicus, Ctesias, Ephorus, Theopompus, Dinon, and Anaximenes. But of the entire list of earlier writers only three are represented by extant works in anything but the most fragmentary condition. These three bear the famous names Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. All of these lived within the same century; and each of them left a detailed account of a relatively brief but highly significant period of Grecian history. The story of Herodotus closes with the year 478 B.C.; Thucydides deals with twenty-one years of the Peloponnesian War, though taking an incidental glance at earlier history; Xenophon, taking up the account of the Peloponnesian War where Thucydides leaves off, continues the record to the death of Epaminondas in the year 362 B.C.

Curiously enough, there is no Greek historian after Xenophon, for about two centuries, whose works have been preserved; and the records of Grecian history for all other periods than those covered by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon are mostly preserved in the writings of authors who lived long after Greece had ceased to have importance as an autonomous nation. But of course these writings drew upon contemporary records; and being made at a time when it was possible to check their accounts with numerous histories that are now lost, they have almost the same significance as if they were themselves contemporary sources. These later writings are comparatively few in number. By far the most important of them is the general history of Diodorus, to which reference has so frequently been made. Justin’s abridgment of Trogus Pompeius is also of value; as are the biographies of Plutarch and of Cornelius Nepos. The chronicle of Eusebius supplies many gaps in the record, particularly as regards the earlier periods of Grecian history; and the same is true of the work of Pausanias, which, though dealing primarily with geography, makes important historical allusions here and there; as, for example, in regard to the Messenian wars. The lives of Alexander the Great by Arrian and by Quintius Curtius, based on the now lost works of Alexandrian contemporaries, furnish us full records of the age of the Macedonian hero. For the post-Alexandrian epoch the fragments of Polybius are the chief source for the periods which they cover. But these are so meagre that our main reliance must be placed upon the general historians Diodorus and Justin, here as for so many other periods.

Oddly enough, no single work except the general histories has come down to us that deals with the history of Greece as a whole; that history can be reconstructed only by piecing together the various fragmentary records, and he who would know Grecian history at first hand has chiefly to attend to the authorities just mentioned. When one has read Diodorus and Justin, Plutarch and Nepos, and Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Arrian, and Curtius, one has appealed to the chief among first-hand sources of Grecian history. We have already had occasion to refer to some of these at considerable length, and fuller notes concerning them will be found in the present bibliography; but there is one of them whose work is so important and whose position as a factor in the history of literature is so unique that we are justified in giving more extended attention to him here. This is, of course, the oldest and in some respects the most remarkable of all, Herodotus; an author whom we encounter almost everywhere in the old Orient and who serves as almost our sole witness for the great events through which Greece attained a dominant place among the nations,--the events, namely, of the so-called Persian or Median Wars.

Herodotus, the celebrated father of history, or, as K. O. Müller styles him, the father of prose, was born at Halicarnassus, in Asia Minor, about 484 B.C., and died at Thurii, Italy, about 424 B.C. Halicarnassus was a colony of Doric Greece, and therefore Herodotus was related in his ancestry rather to the Spartans than to the Athenians. His work, however, was not written in the Doric dialect but in the Ionic, which at that time was the accepted vehicle of literary productions in Greece, being the dialect generally employed by Homer, Hesiod, and the long line of logographers. The style of Herodotus has been recognised by critics of all succeeding ages as almost perfect of its kind.

As to the life of the man himself, comparatively little is known. A wealth of fable is associated with his name, as with that of most celebrities of antiquity, but the part of this which may be accepted as historically accurate is almost infinitesimal. Certain ideas, however, have gradually clustered about the name of Herodotus that by common consent are accepted as representing his biography, in default of more accurate information, which latter, presumably, will never be forthcoming. Thus it is accepted that he was born at Halicarnassus of parents named Lyxes and Dryo, and that he was the nephew of Panyasis, a famous epic poet, from which latter circumstance it may be inferred that he came of a literary lineage. It is further alleged that he left Halicarnassus owing to the tyranny of Lygdamis, the ruler of the colony, who had put to death his uncle Panyasis. It is believed that Herodotus went to the island of Samos and lived there for several years; whether he made his extensive journeys in search of knowledge thence, or at a later period, is not ascertained. In either event it is held that he subsequently returned from Samos to Halicarnassus, and personally assisted in the overthrow of the tyrant Lygdamis. Even after this event, however, it would appear that Herodotus did not find Halicarnassus a satisfactory place of residence, as he subsequently migrated to the Greek colony of Thurii, in Italy, where his last days were spent, and where it is presumed he repolished and completed his history. The colony in Thurii was first established in the year 443, but whether or not Herodotus was a member of the first company that went out to it is in dispute; that he finally went there, however, seems to be accepted without reserve.

These meagre facts, some of them by no means too well authenticated, constitute practically all that is known from outside authority regarding the actual life of Herodotus. There are, to be sure, numerous other traditions current, some of which were doubtless founded upon fact, and a few of which are almost inseparably associated with the name of Herodotus. Such, for example, is the story that Herodotus read the books of his great history before the people of Athens, and created such popular enthusiasm thereby that the sum of ten talents (£2,000, $10,000) was voted him from the public treasury. If this be taken as true to fact, it would appear that the business of literature was not ill paid even in that early day. Another tale, or possibly an elaboration of the same one, alleges that Herodotus desired to make his history known to the Greek world, and decided that this could best be accomplished by reading it before the assembled multitudes at Olympia. Just when this reading was held is not clear, but, notwithstanding this lack of date, it is alleged that the reading created the greatest enthusiasm, and that Herodotus divided the honours of the occasion with the winners of the Olympic games.

Another elaboration of the tale, which one would fain believe true, asserts that the youthful Thucydides, listening to the recital of Herodotus, was moved to tears, and fired with the ambition to follow in the footsteps of the great writer. The cold hand of modern scepticism has been laid rudely on this tradition, it being asserted that the date of the birth of Thucydides is too near that of Herodotus to lend authenticity to the story. But, be that as it may, this tale is probably as near the truth as most of the others which we have associated with the name of the father of history.

The work of Herodotus is remarkable, among other things, as being the oldest complete prose composition that has come down to us from classical antiquity. It must not be inferred from this that Herodotus was the first Greek who wrote prose. The fact is far otherwise. The so-called father of prose was, as is well known, preceded by a long line of Greek writers, who composed not merely prose compositions, but compositions on history. The names of many of these men are known, but their works have come down to us only in meagre fragments. As such, however, they serve to prove the wide gap which separated the best of them from their successor Herodotus. Indeed it is doubtless because of the surpassing excellence of the history of Herodotus that his work lived on through the labours of successive copyists, while the works of his predecessors were permitted to disappear through slow decay like the works of so many other and later writers of antiquity.

If it be true that the style is the man, then we may feel that after all, despite the meagre contemporary records as to his life, the man Herodotus is well known to us; for his great work, possibly the only one that he ever composed, has come down to us intact. Not indeed that the actual manuscript of his own production has been preserved. No author of classical Greece has come down to us directly in this sense. But in that day the individual copyist did in a small way what the printing-press to-day accomplishes on a larger scale. And of the numerous copies that were made of Herodotus in succeeding ages down to the period of the Renaissance, something less than a score are still preserved. Most of these date only from the fifteenth, fourteenth, or, at the earliest, the tenth century. There are, however, two or three that are undoubtedly still more ancient, though probably none that was written within a thousand years after the death of the author himself. The fact of numerous copies made in different ages by different hands being available for comparison, however, makes it reasonably sure that we have in the carefully edited editions of modern scholarship a fairly accurate representation of what Herodotus actually wrote.

This work, then, is commonly spoken of as the _History of the Persian War_. It is really much more than that. Starting with the idea of the Persian War as a foundation, Herodotus has built a structure which might, perhaps with more propriety, be termed a history of the world as known in his day. The work itself makes it clear that, in acquiring material for its composition, the author travelled extensively in Asia and in Egypt. He visited Babylon, and gives us the description of an eye-witness of the glories of that famous capital; and he sojourned long in Egypt, saw with his own eyes the Pyramids and other monuments of that wonderful civilisation, and heard from the priests fabulous tales of the past history of their country.

When one reflects what must have been the range of observation of the average stay-at-home Greek of that day, one readily understands how much of what Herodotus saw in these foreign lands had the charm to him of absolute novelty. He had but to recount what he had seen and heard--a fair degree of literary skill being of course presupposed--to produce a narrative which would have all the charm for his compatriots of a fascinating romance. The marvels of his actual observation in Babylon and in Egypt must have seemed to him more wonderful than anything he could conceivably invent. Therefore, even had his sole object been--as quite probably it was--merely to make an entertaining narrative, he had no inducement to depart from the recital of the truth as he saw and heard it. That, in point of fact, he did thus cling to the truth is admitted to-day on all hands. There were periods, however, within a few hundred years of his own epoch, when Herodotus was considered by even the best authorities of the time as a bald romancer. The Greeks and Romans of about the beginning of our era, with Plutarch--or a “false Plutarch”; the question of authenticity is an open one--at their head, did not hesitate to stigmatise Herodotus as a writer of fables. “Plutarch” even went further and asserted that he was a malignant perverter of the truth as well.

Such detractions, however, did not at all alter the fact that the story of Herodotus had an abiding interest for each succeeding generation of readers, and it is one of the curious results of modern exploration and investigation to prove that very often where Herodotus was supposed to have invented fables he was, in point of fact, merely narrating, in the clearest manner possible, what he had actually seen.

Mixed with these recitals of fact, to be sure, there is much that is really fabulous, but this is chiefly true of those things which Herodotus reports by hearsay, and explicitly labels as being at second hand. Whether fact or fable, however, the entire story of Herodotus has at once the fullest interest and the utmost importance for the historian of to-day. For where it tells us facts about the nations of antiquity, these are very often facts that would otherwise be shut out absolutely from our view; and where he relates fables, he at least preserves to us, in a vivid way, a picture of the mental status and the intellectual life of a cultivated Greek in the period of the greatest might of that classical nation.

Our present concern is with the part of Herodotus that deals explicitly with the affairs of Greece. This has particular reference to the Persian Wars, although giving many incidental references to other periods of history. For this period of the Persian invasions Herodotus is practically our sole source, and we have drawn on him largely at first hand. His narrative here may be paraphrased and in some slight details modified, but can never be supplanted. The account of Herodotus closes with the year 478--the definitive year in which the Persians were finally expelled from Greece. As Herodotus was six years old in 478, he must have had personal recollections of the effect produced upon his elders by the accounts of the battles of Thermopylæ, Salamis, and Platæa; must indeed all his life have been associated with men who participated in these conflicts; his account, therefore, has all the practical force of the report of a contemporary witness.

As we have said, the period following the Persian wars--the age of Pericles--found no contemporary historian, though the writings of the poets and the orators to some extent make amends for the deficit; and the art treasures that have been preserved are more eloquent than words in their testimony to the culture of the time. The general historians and biographers supply us with the chief details of the political events of the time and bridge for us the gap between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars.

When we reach the Peloponnesian War itself we come upon the work of the master historian Thucydides. A critical estimate of his writings has already been given and need not be repeated here. Neither need we take up at length the work of Xenophon, who, as already noted, explicitly continued the history of Thucydides. We have previously had occasion to point out that Xenophon did not equal his great predecessor in true historical sense, or in breadth and impartiality of view. His partiality for Sparta and his friendship for Agesilaus led him to do scant justice to the great Theban Epaminondas, and we have previously noted how the record of Diodorus, rather than the contemporary account of Xenophon, is our best source for the history of the Theban hero. Nevertheless Xenophon remains an important source for the period of which his _Hellenica_ treats. His more popular work, the _Anabasis_, describes a picturesque incident in Grecian history, which was important rather as an adumbration of possible future events than because of its intrinsic interest.

Coming to the Macedonian epoch we find, as might be expected, that the picturesque life of Alexander called forth a multitude of chroniclers; all of which, as has been said, were superseded by the later works of Arrian and Curtius.

Recapitulating in a few words what has just been said of the original sources of Grecian history, it would appear that the reader who has before him the works of Diodorus, Justin, Plutarch, Nepos, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Arrian will have access to the chief fountain-heads upon which modern historians have drawn. But it will be clear to anyone who considers these authors in their entirety that the idea of Grecian history to be gained by reading these classical writers alone would be a somewhat disjointed and unsatisfactory one. Many points of chronology would remain obscure; there would be many gaps in the story. Yet, the view thus to be gained was the only one accessible until about a century ago. The revival of interest in the classical authors that came about along with the general intellectual advance in the time of Elizabeth, had led to the translation of many classical authors by such men as Thomas North, Philemon Holland, and Arthur Golding. It had led also, as we have noted, to the production of Sir Walter Raleigh’s general history, which was complete for the period during which Greece was an important nation. But there was no other attempt to unify the story of Grecian history and give it a modern garb until more than a century later.

Then the stimulus given to historical investigation by the success of Gibbon’s splendid work, led to an attempt to treat the history of Greece in a manner equally comprehensive. The man who first undertook the task in England was William Mitford. The work that he produced was an epochal one, replete with scholarship, yet it had certain limitations which led directly to the production by another hand of a yet more monumental work on the same subject. For, as is well known, the history of Grote was written with the explicit intention of combating the conception of Grecian civilisation that Mitford’s book had made current.

There are two quite different points of view from which the history of a foreign nation may be regarded. One of these may be called the “sympathetic,” the other the “antipathetic” view. It was the latter of these which Mitford chose, or rather to which he was impelled by temperament, in dealing with those phases of Athenian life which are the central facts in the political history of Greece. It may be laid down almost as an axiom that it is impossible to write a truly great history of a great people from the antipathetic standpoint. At best, one can obtain only a surface knowledge of a foreign people--it is hard enough to gain a correct knowledge of one’s own race. Every people, like every individual, is a strangely inconsistent organism. The deeds of its diverse moods never seem to harmonise; they are as different as the two sides of a shield or medal, and in proportion as we seize on one phase or another of the inconsistencies, we change utterly the type of the picture. Of course the great historian must see all sides and properly adjust them; but the difficulty is this: it is much easier to detect the inconsistencies than the underlying consistencies, which, after all, are necessary to national life. Hence the antipathetic historian makes out a strong case against the nation with relative ease, while quite overlooking the better side; whereas the sympathetic historian, while searching for the better side, cannot by any possibility overlook the obvious inconsistencies.

To illustrate from the case in hand: Mitford was an ardent tory, and he insisted on weighing Greek conduct in his own balance. He never failed to sneer at the democratic tendency of Athens, and to point out the inconsistencies in Athenian life. And he found ample material. Nothing is more startling to the student who undertakes a careful survey of the history of Greece than the glaring defects of this people. Take two or three illustrations: The Athenians contended all along for equality of rights, yet (1) the majority of their co-residents were slaves; (2) they frequently denied to their best citizens the privilege of living in Athens, banishing them, without even the charge of crime, by ostracism; and (3) they strove all along to establish imperial power for Athens over other cities--strove so fiercely for it that the final result was the utter overthrow of Greece itself.

Again, the Athenian is said to have worshipped the æsthetic and the beautiful. His poetry and art attest the truth of the claim. Yet at table he ate with his fingers; in the streets he committed indescribable vulgarities without concealment; and in his relations with his fellows he indulged in practices of the most revolting kind so commonly that to “love after the manner of the Greeks” became an opprobrious by-word among nations. Herodotus himself records that the Greeks taught these practices to the Persians, who to this day are reproached with them.

To go no further, here is plenty of material for the antipathetic historian. Yet even a very brief analysis might serve to modify the first judgment which would tend to denounce the Greeks as the most inconsistent and disreputable of mortals.

Thus, as to the slaves, a sympathetic historian would not forget that slavery had existed almost everywhere in antiquity, among Hamitic, Semitic, and Aryan races alike; and that modern nations did not throw it off for more than two thousand years after the downfall of Greece. Nor will he forget that the last great nation to discard it was the United States, the most advanced of democracies; and that, when the great struggle came through which it was at last rooted out there, practically all Europe sympathised in spirit with the slave-holder, and not with the party that strove to free their fellow-men. These are grotesque inconsistencies; but with the later history in mind we can scarcely hold up the matter of slavery as an essentially Greek inconsistency.

Then consider the question of ostracism. At first sight it surely seems difficult to bring within the pale of reason this fact of the banishment from Athens of one great citizen after another--of Themistocles, the hero of Salamis, of Aristides the Just, of the brilliant Alcibiades, of Xenophon, and of Thucydides. But consider the matter a little further. Here was a little people, numerically insignificant, who had got hold of a unique principle. They had experienced the pleasures of personal liberty, of free “government of, for, and by the people,” and all the world about them looked jealously on their experiment. Always the gold of Persia was at hand to help on an aristocratic party at home in the effort to overthrow the democratic party by whatever means, fair or foul.

What then must necessarily be the attitude of the best citizens of Athens toward any one of their number who gained very great popularity and influence, and who seemed ambitious to use his power autocratically? Why, such a person, however respected, however loved even--indeed just in proportion to the respect and affection that he inspired--must be regarded with apprehension. And the ballot for ostracism solved the problem, after a fashion. It required no charge against the citizen. It accused him of no crime. It merely gave official expression to a popular belief that it were better for the state that this citizen should retire for a time from its precincts. It was a confession of governmental weakness, to be sure. A powerful unified democracy like the United States in modern times has no need of such a law; but a weak government like that of France still thinks itself obliged sometimes to resort to it in case of political offenders, who are feared for exactly the same reason that led to ostracism in Athens--as witness the case of Déroulède and his allies. In this view then the practice of ostracism, which very probably preserved the democratic government of Athens long after it would otherwise have been overthrown, is not the grotesque inconsistency it at first seems.

As to the factions of the cities, which led to what Ruskin calls the “suicide of Greece,” they come to seem as natural as human nature itself when one stops to reflect that Hellas was never a united country under unified government. The Greek had, to be sure, a prejudice in favour of his race against outside barbarians. But his keenest prejudice was for his own city. The idea of liberty was too new for the conception of a federation of cities to be grasped all at once. Even now, after more than twenty-five hundred years of experiment and effort, that idea has only in a few instances been successfully realised and practised on a large scale for considerable periods of time--by the Greek cities themselves at a later period; by the north Italian cities late in the Middle Ages; and by the Anglo-Saxon race in our own day. It is not strange then that the Athenian regarded the Spartan as a political foreigner; and the struggles between the two were not different from the struggles that have gone on ever since between different neighbouring states all over the world. The appalling fact of universal carnage inconsistently disturbing the dreams of the brotherhood of man is one of the saddest evidences of the restricted civilisation of our race. But with all recent history in our minds, we can hardly hold it too much against the Greek that he was not more advanced in this regard in the year 400 B.C. than is all the rest of the world in the year 1900 A.D.

Without going further it must be clear how very different the points of view are from which the “sympathetic” and the “antipathetic” historian will respectively regard a people, in particular a people of high genius like the Greeks. And, to return to Mitford, it is hardly an unjust criticism which has said of him that his ponderous work, despite its learning, “is scarcely more than a huge party pamphlet.” And this is true precisely because he viewed the Greek always from the standpoint of his own narrow prejudice. Yet this must not be taken to imply that Mitford’s history is valueless. The fact is far otherwise. With due allowance for its bias, it may be read with full profit by everyone, and there are many passages of it that are unprejudiced and authoritative, while the merits of its style commend it so highly that we have had occasion to return to it again and again.

But the greatest distinction of Mitford was to call forth the work of Grote; for it was through indignation aroused by Mitford’s attitude toward Grecian affairs that the London banker, whose recreation was the study of the classics, was led to present a different view of Grecian history. The intentions to combat Mitford developed finally the conception of a comprehensive history, and when this history was completed, a definitive presentation of Grecian affairs had been put forward. Next to Gibbon’s _Rome_, perhaps the greatest historical work ever produced in England is Grote’s _History of Greece_. Unfortunately, Grote did not continue his history beyond the time of Alexander, so we must seek other guides for the period of the decline and fall of Grecian power. The earliest epochs of Grecian history also have been opened up by the work of Schliemann and his successors since the day of Grote. Nor need it be denied that in various details Grote’s theories have been modified by later investigations. But, in the main, his work was based upon such secure foundations, and was conceived and carried out in such a broad and philosophical spirit, that it must stand indefinitely, like the work of Gibbon, as a finished historical structure.

If one were to single out for particular reference the part of Grote’s work which was most revolutionary and at the same time most satisfactory, one would cite perhaps the earliest portion, that which deals with the myths and traditions of Greece. It is almost a matter of course that the chief authoritative investigators of such a subject as this are usually scholars by profession; closet students of that type of mind which can give years of enthusiastic devotion to the investigation of a few pages of an obscure manuscript, and which can devote pages of polemics to the establishment of the correct reading of a disputed text the subject-matter of which is perhaps altogether trivial. This type of mind is in many ways admirable, and the work which it accomplishes is entitled to full respect, but it is not the kind of intellect one would willingly follow as a rule in the decision of questions of more practical import. And it is because this is the sort of intelligence which has chiefly attacked this problem, that the discussion of it has usually evinced so little of practicality. Moreover, another set of persons of even more visionary cast, the poets, namely, have added their modicum of argument along equally visionary lines, prejudiced in their view by love of the great literature in which the mythical tales are embalmed. But Grote combined in his own mind the qualities of secure and profound scholarship with a full appreciation of the beauties of literature and a rare practical knowledge of the world of everyday affairs, which gave him perhaps a keener critical view and a clearer historical perspective than had been vouchsafed anyone who had before attempted to deal with the subject.

Grote was a practical banker and successful financier, turned historian through sheer love of his subject. He applied to the subject of Greek mythology the rules of what may be best described as sound common-sense. He recognised that a myth is not the growth of a day, but the accretion of perhaps many generations, or even centuries of legendary history. He fully recognised two very essential basal principles of practical psychology, namely, first, that quite the rarest feat of the human mind is anything approaching pure invention; but that, secondly, scarcely less rare is a recital, however securely founded in history, which does not contain some elements of invention. He recognised, in other words, the full truth of the homely saying that “where there is much smoke there must be some fire”; but he recognised also the truth that no two persons could ever be found who, after viewing the smoke, would agree as to the exact proportion which it bore to the fire.

Making the application to the case in hand, Grote was convinced that every important myth and legend must have had the prototype of at least its outline in the actual history of some human beings in some period. He combined with this conviction the no less certain one that in our day it is utterly impossible to say what people or what time furnished this historical basis of the tradition, or just what proportion of fact is mingled with the enshrouding cloud of fable. When, therefore, Grote came to write his history of Greece, he adopted a compromise regarding the mythical period, which is one of the most striking illustrations of his practical sagacity. He recited the fables as fables, labelling the legendary period as such, and making no attempt whatever to determine what relation any specific incident among these legends might bear to the actual experiences of the people of prehistoric Greece. Grote’s decision in this matter was at once received with acclaim by a large number of readers; and though of course it by no means silenced the champions of other views, it may fairly be said that after more than half a century there is no other manner of treating this period which can justly supplant that which the great historian established.

Our estimate of Grote in other fields is well illustrated by the liberal use we have made of his work. Notes on other historians of Greece--many of them by no means unimportant in themselves, but no one of them quite to be compared with this master historian--will appear in the following bibliography. It will be sufficient here to recall the names of Thirlwall and Curtius among the general historians of Greece of the earlier generation, and the names of Holm, Beloch, Busolt, and Bury among the more recent writers; while for special periods the names of Droysen, Müller, Schliemann, and Finlay have particular prominence.

FOOTNOTES

[52] _Fasti Hellenici._

LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED, CITED, OR CONSULTED; WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

=Abbot=, E., History of Greece, London, 1892-1893.--=Ælianus= Claudius, ποικίλη ἱστορία, edited by Perizonius, Leyden, 1701, the Variable History of Ælianus (trans. by A. Fleming), London, 1576.--=Alfieri=, V., Tragedy on Agis IV. King of Sparta.--=Allcroft=, A. H., Decline of Hellas, 371-323 B.C., London, 1894; (in collaboration with W. F. =Masom=), Synopsis of Grecian History to 495 B.C., London, 1891.--=Annual= of the British School at Athens.--=Anonymous=, Der Griechisch-turkische Krieg des Jahres 1897, Berlin, 1898; Seven Essays on the Social Condition of the Ancient Greeks, Oxford, 1832.--=Aristobulus=, as quoted by Plutarch, Arrian, etc. (in Müller’s Fragmenta).--=Aristotle=, Ἠθικὰ, edited by Zell, Heidelberg, 1820, 2 vols.; Πολιτικὰ, edited by Barthélemy St. Hilaire, with Fr. trans., Paris, 1837; Ethics, Politics (trans. by Gillies), London, 1804.--=Arrianus=, Flavius, Ἀνάβασις Ἀλεξάνδρου, edited by F. Schmeider, Leipsic, 1798; The Anabasis of Alexander, London.

_L. Flavius Arrianus_, born at Nicomedia about 100 A.D., died at
an advanced age during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

In considering a career so romantic as that of Alexander, it
is quite impossible that the historian should remain a calm,
unmoved spectator of the incidents which he describes. We find,
therefore, that the numerous biographers of Alexander have for
the most part placed themselves explicitly on one or another of
opposite sides. Either, on the one hand, they have considered
Alexander as the greatest of heroes and most wonderful of
men, or, on the other hand, have regarded him as merely the
greatest of adventurers. It is tolerably easy, accordingly as
one emphasises one side or another of the facts of Alexander’s
history, to make out a seemingly good case from either of
these points of view. But what we have elsewhere said about
the sympathetical historian applies with full force here, and
it is not to be expected that anyone can have written a really
satisfactory biography of Alexander who has not been appreciative
of those points of his genius which lie quite without the range
of the ordinary adventurer. Thus it is not surprising to find
that the really great biographies of Alexander, both those of
antiquity and those of modern times, have been written from the
sympathetic point of view.

The biography of Arrian, which, by common consent, far exceeds
in importance all other writings on Alexander that have come
down to us, is certainly most judicious in spirit, and probably
as impartial as such a production could possibly be. Arrian does
not spare the faults of Alexander nor hesitate to give them full
expression, but he fully appreciates the greatness of his hero,
and he undertook to write his life, as he himself explicitly
states, because he felt that no one before him had done full
justice to his subject. Arrian frankly states his opinion that
his own production will be found not unworthy, and that, in
virtue of it, he, himself, must be entitled to be regarded as one
of the great writers of Greece. All things considered, it is,
perhaps, strange that posterity should have declined to accede to
this claim. The work of Arrian is indeed admitted on all hands
to be a production of sterling merit--certainly one of the most
impartial and judicial historical productions of antiquity. Yet,
notwithstanding the extreme importance of his subject, the name
of Arrian is comparatively little known to the general public,
whereas the name of Xenophon, whom Arrian to some extent took for
his master, is familiar to everyone, though the subject of his
chief work was of such relative insignificance.

This anomaly is, perhaps, partly explained in the fact that
Arrian did explicitly follow Xenophon as a master, since one
never expects to rank the follower on a par with the originator.
But the truer explanation is probably that Arrian lived at a
late period, after the glory of Greece, as the literary centre
of the world, had quite departed; and it has been customary to
regard all works of this later period, with their necessary
alterations of style, representing the time of degeneracy of
the Greek language, as things to be looked at askance by lovers
of that language in its purity. Then, too, perhaps, the very
importance of Arrian’s subject may have been detrimental to the
permanent popularity of his work. There was no possible reason
why any other writer should take up in great detail the story
of the _Anabasis_ of the Ten Thousand after Xenophon, since
that story, much as if it had been a mere romance, owed its
importance almost entirely to the qualities of style of the
original narrator. But the case of Alexander was quite different.
Numberless writers, as was most natural, had told his story in
the times immediately after his death. It was inevitable that
so amazing a history should continue to excite the interest of
mankind throughout all time and should be retold again and again
by countless generations of historians. Even had the biography
of Arrian proved in all respects comprehensive and satisfactory,
later generations must have demanded that the story should be
retold after the manner of their own times, but in point of fact,
the biography of Arrian, important as it is, is by no means
altogether comprehensive. It contains, to be sure, all incidents
which its author was satisfied were authentic, but it explicitly
omitted various other incidents, which, whether true or false,
must have an abiding interest from the very fact of having been
associated with the name of Alexander.

Each succeeding generation of historians must then judge for
itself, as is the prerogative of the critic, among the various
contradictory stories that have come down to us, and must weigh
anew the evidence of this side or that, and make for itself a new
story of Alexander.

=Assmann=, W., Handbuch der Allgemeinen Geschichte, Brunswick, 1853.

* * * * *

=Bachelet=, J. A. F., Histoire ancienne grecque, Paris, 1883.--=Baraibar= (in collaboration with =Menendez Pelayo=) Poetas liricos Griegos, Madrid, 1884.--=Becker=, Wilhelm A., Charicles, or Illustrations of the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks (translated by Frederick Metcalfe), London, 1854.--=Beloch=, J., Griechische Geschichte, Strasburg, 1893-1899, 2 vols.--=Bent=, J. T., The Cyclades: Life among the Insular Greeks, London, 1885.--=Berens=, E. M., Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece, London, 1879.--=Berg=, van den, Petite Histoire des Grecs, Paris, 1880.--=Bergk=, T., Griechische Literaturgeschichte, Berlin, 1872-1894.--=Bernhardy=, G., Grundriss der Griechischen Litteratur, Halle, 1836, rev. ed. 1876-92.--=Berthelot=, A., Les grandes scènes de l’histoire grecque, Paris, 1889.--=Blackie=, J. S., Horæ Hellenicæ, London and Edinburgh, 1874.--=Blanchard=, Th., Les Mavroyeni, Paris, 1893.--=Bluemner=, Hugo, Home Life of Ancient Greeks (trans. by A. Zimmern), London, 1895; Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste bei Griechen u. Römern, Leipsic, 1887.--=Boeckh=, A., Public Economy of the Athenians (trans. by A. Lamb), Boston, 1857.

_August Boeckh_, born at Carlsruhe, November 24, 1785; died in
Berlin, August 3, 1867. He published an edition of Pindar with
a continuous commentary, a Latin translation, and a treatise on
Greek Versification, (1811); also _Metrological Investigations
concerning the Weights, Coins, and Measures of Antiquity_ (1838);
_A Dissertation on the Silver Mines of Laurium in Attica_, and
other treatises. He began the _Corpus Inscriptionum Grecarum_,
continued by his pupil Franz and still unfinished. His most
important work on the _Public Economy of the Athenians_, while
necessarily somewhat antiquated, retains its original importance
in many features, and as a repository of knowledge drawn from the
classical writers has not been superseded.

=Bonnet=, M., Le Philologie classique, Paris, 1892.--=Bougeault=, Alfred, Hist. des lett. étrangères, Paris, 1876.--=Bougot=, A., Rivalité d’Eschine et Demosthènes, Paris, 1891. =Brequigny=, L. G. O. F. de, Vie des anciens orateurs grecs, Paris, 1752.--=Bronwer=, P. v. L., Histoire de la Civilisation Morale et Religieuse des Grecs.--=Brown=, J. B., Stoics and Saints. Lectures on Later Heathen Moralists, Glasgow, 1893.--=Budge=, E. A. W., The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great, London, 1896.--=Bulwer=, H. L. E., An Autumn in Greece, London, 1826.--=Bulwer Lytton=, E. G. E. L. See Lytton.--=Burgess=, G., and others, Greek Anthology, London, 1854.--=Burnouf=, E., Mémoires sur l’antiquité, Paris, 1879; La légende athénienne, Paris, 1872; The Science of Religions (trans. by Julie Liebe), London, 1888; Histoire de la littérature grecque, Paris, 1869.--=Bury=, J. B., History of Greece, London, 1900; The Double City of Megalopolis (in Journal of Hellenic Studies), London, 1898.

_John B. Bury_, born 1861; was educated at Trinity College,
Dublin, became professor of modern history in Dublin University
in 1893; regius professor of Greek in 1898; and regius professor
of modern history in the University of Cambridge, 1903.
Professor Bury is well known for his _History of the Later Roman
Empire_ and for his edition of Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall_. In
preparing the history of Greece he wavered, as his preface tells
us, between an elaborate work and the more difficult task of
presenting a well-balanced epitome of Greek history in a single
volume. He was probably wise in choosing the latter; and in so
doing he has produced a work which, while brief, may properly
be styled comprehensive and authoritative and which is also
entertaining. It does not attempt to supplant the more elaborate
works of the older writers, nor does it enter quite the same
field with the recent German productions; but it is almost the
only work which, in a single volume, gives the reader any clear
idea of the latest developments of Mycenæan history, while
carrying the story of Grecian history in general through the age
of Alexander.

=Busolt=, G., Die Griechische Gesch. bis zur Schlacht bei Chæroneia, Gotha, 1893; (in Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Munich, 1892).

* * * * *

=Caillemer=, E., Études sur les antiquités juridiques d’Athènes, Paris, 1880.--=Carraroli=, D., Di leggenda di Alessandro Magno, Mondovi, 1892.--=Church=, A. J., Heroes and Kings, London, 1883; London, 1900; The Fall of Athens, London, 1894; Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, London, 1899; Pictures from Greek Life and Story, 1893.--=Cicero=, Tusculanarum Disputationum Libri V. and De Oratore, Rome, 1469.--=Clarke=, E. D., Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, London, 1810.--=Clinton=, Fynes H., Fasti Hellenici, London, 1851.--=Collins=, W. L., Ancient Classics for English Readers, London, 1870.--=Conitolas=, B., La Grèce apres la faillite, Paris, 1895.--=Constantine VII.=, Flavius Porphyrogenitus, Ἐκλογαὶ περὶ Πρεσβειῶν (Excerpta de Legationibus), περὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ κακίας (Excerpta de Virtutibus et Vitiis), edited by Valesius, 1634; περὶ γνωμῶν (Excerpta de Sententiis), Rome, 1827.--=Corner=, J., History of Greece, London, 1885, 8 vols.--=Costard=, G., Dissertation on Uses of Astronomy in History, etc., London, 1764.--=Coulange=, F. de, Nouvelles recherches sur quelques problèmes d’histoire, Paris, 1891.--=Cox=, G. W., A History of Greece, London, 1874, 2 vols.; General History of Greece, London, 1876; The Athenian Empire, London, 1876; The Tale of the Great Persian War, London, 1861; The Greeks and the Persians, London, 1877; Lives of Greek Statesmen, London, 1885.

_George W. Cox_, born at Benares, January 10, 1827; vicar
of Bekesbourne, 1881, rector of Scrayingham, 1881-1897. His
various historical works have had great popularity, to which
the excellence of their style eminently entitles them. They
are scholarly as regards their treatment of facts, but are
essentially artistic in their presentation of these facts. No
one has treated the mythological period in a more satisfactory
way. Obviously, considering the date of their publication,
they are not to be looked to for the latest phases of Mycenæan
investigation.

=Cramer=, J. A., A Geographical and Historical Description of Ancient Greece, Oxford, 1828.--=Creasy=, Edward S., Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, London, 1852.--=Curteis=, A. M., Rise of the Macedonian Empire, London, 1877.--=Curtius=, E. von, Griechische Geschichte, Berlin, 1887, 3 vols.

_Ernst Curtius_ was born at Lübeck, Germany, September 2, 1814;
died July 12, 1896. When K. O. Müller undertook that tour of
Greece which began so auspiciously and ended so disastrously, he
had as an assistant a young German of kindred genius to his own,
afterwards to be known perhaps even more widely than himself as
an historian of Greece, in the person of Ernst Curtius. The work
which Müller was not permitted to complete was carried on by
Curtius, who devoted his entire life to the study of classical
antiquities as his master had done before him. It was Curtius
who, many years later, conceived the idea of making excavations
at the famed site of Olympia. Curtius himself, acting as envoy
for the German government, secured to that country the monopoly
of excavating there. The results of these excavations which
Curtius for a time personally conducted are full of importance
and interest, and were given to the world in a series of
ponderous volumes.

Much of the work of Curtius had this technical character, but
the one book through which he became best known, and by which
he will probably be longest remembered, was an essentially
popular history of Greece--by far the most popular exposition
of the subject that has ever been written in Germany. It is a
work essentially un-German, so to say, in its plan of execution.
It is a condensed running narrative of the events of Grecian
history, and, what is strange indeed in a German work, it is
quite unmarred by footnotes: notes there are, to be sure, but
these are relatively few in number and are placed by themselves
at the end of each volume, where they may be easily found by the
few who care to seek them out, without marring the interest and
distracting the attention of the mass of readers of the text.
It is interesting to note that this most delightful and popular
history was written at the instance of a publisher as a companion
work to Professor Mommsen’s equally famous history of Rome. The
similarity of treatment and general identity of plan of these
two famous works suggest that the publisher perhaps had no small
share in predetermining their character and scope; if so, the
world owes him two of the most important histories that have come
out of the land of historians.

Professor Curtius’ personal point of view may be described at
once as sympathetic and critical; he had the ripest scholarship,
and he early imbibed much of Müller’s enthusiasm, but he perhaps
brought to his subject a shade more of practicality than his
great master. The combination of traits made him almost a perfect
historian. As a teacher he was long regarded as one of the most
successful in the land of great teachers. Professor Boyesen, in a
popular article on the Berlin University, written for an American
magazine some years ago, described at some length a seminar of
Professor Curtius, and expressed his surprise and admiration
at the ease and fluency with which Professor Curtius carried
on what might be styled a familiar conversation in classical
Latin. Such an incident is far less novel in Germany than it
would be in France, or England, or America; for in Germany the
student is still taught to speak Latin--after a fashion--in the
Gymnasium, and the scholars are not few who learn to handle it
with relative ease as a spoken language. In the case of Professor
Curtius, then, this mastery of classical languages is perhaps
less remarkable than his practical mastery of his mother-tongue;
for there are many German professors who can speak Latin fluently
where there is one who can write German that anyone who is not a
German can read with pleasure.

=Curtius=, Quintus, De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, Venice, 1471; The Wars of Alexander (trans. by William Young), London, 1747.

* * * * *

=Dahlmann=, F. C., Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Gesch., Altona, 1822-1824.--=Daremberg=, C. V., and =Saglio=, E., Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, Paris, 1873; La Médecine dans Homère, Paris, 1865.--=Dares=, the Phrygian, Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Trojæ Historia, L’hist. véritable de la guerre des Grecs et des Troyens, faite française par Ch. de Bourgueville, 1893.--=Dauban=, C. A., Extraits des auteurs anciens sur l’hist. grecque, Paris, 1888.--=Deltour=, N. F., Histoire de la littérature grecque, Paris, 1885.--=Diodorus=, Siculus, Βιβλιοθήκη ἱστορική, edited by L. Dindorf, Leipsic, 1828, 6 vols. The Historical Library, London, 1700.--=Diogenes=, Laertius, φιλόσοφοι βίοι, edited by H. G. Hübner, Leipsic, 1828, 6 vols.--Lives and Opinions of the Most Eminent Philosophers (trans. by C. D. Yonge), London, 1848.--=Dodge=, T. A., Great Captains; History of Origin and Growth of Art of War, Boston, 1890.--=Donaldson=, J., Modern Greek Grammar, Edinburgh, 1853.--=Dragoumes=, N., Souvenirs historiques, Paris, 1890.--=Droysen=, J. G., Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen, Gotha, 1892; Gesch. des Hellenismus, Gotha, 1877-1878.

_Johann Gustav Droysen_ was born at Treptow, Pomerania, Prussia,
July 6, 1808; died at Berlin, June 19, 1884. His history of
Alexander was written before any of the really great modern
histories of Greece were undertaken, and it far surpassed any
preceding effort in the fullness with which it drew upon all
sources of antiquity and in the critical acumen with which it
analysed the material thus gathered. It had, moreover, the merit
of a style of more than average lucidity, and this, added to
its other qualities, gave it at once a wide popularity and an
authoritative position which it has continued to hold to this
day. Indeed, it is only very recently that anyone has attempted
to write a history of Alexander which could be regarded as
competing in the same field with that of Droysen, except such
extended sketches as form part of such comprehensive Grecian
histories as those of Grote, Thirlwall, and Curtius.