ALEXANDER TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST
B.C.) Federal Government.—In the history of Greece proper dur ing this period the interest is mainly constitutional. It may be called the age of federation. Federation, indeed, was no novelty in Greece. Federal unions had existed in Thessaly, in Boeotia and elsewhere, and the Boeotian league can be traced back at least to the 6th century. Two newly-founded federations, the Chalcidian and the Arcadian, play no inconsiderable part in the politics of the 4th century. But it is not till the 3rd century that federation attains to its full development in Greece, and becomes the normal type of polity. The two great leagues of this period are the Aetolian and the Achaean. Both existed in the 4th century, but the latter, which was dissolved shortly before the beginning of the 3rd century, becomes important only after its restoration in 28o B.C., about which date the former, too, first begins to attract notice. The interest of federalism lies in the fact that it marks an advance beyond the conception of the city-state. It is an attempt to solve the problem which the Athenian empire failed to solve, the reconciliation of the claims of local autonomy with those of national union. The federal leagues of the 3rd century possess a further interest for the modern world, in that there can be traced in their constitutions a nearer approach to a representative system than is found else where in Greek experience. A genuine representative system, it is true, was never developed in any Greek polity. What we find in the leagues is a sort of compromise between the principle of a primary assembly and the principle of a representative chamber. In both leagues the nominal sovereign was a primary assembly, in which every individual citizen had the right to vote. In both of them, however, the real power lay with a council (boule) composed of members representative of each of the component states'.
The real interest of this period, how ever, is to be looked for elsewhere than in Greece itself. Alexan der's career is one of the turning-points in history. He is one of the few to whom it has been given to modify the whole future of the human race. He originated two forces which have profoundly affected the development of civilization. He created Hellenism (q.v.), and he created for the western world the monarchical ideal. Greece had produced personal rulers of ability, or even of genius ; but to the greatest of these, to Peisistratus, to Dionysius, even to Jason of Pherae, there clung the fatal taint of illegitimacy. As yet no ruler had succeeded in making the person of the monarch respectable. Alexander made it sacred. From him is derived, for the West, that "divinity that doth hedge a king." And in creat ing Hellenism he created, for the first time, a common type of civilization, with a common language, literature and art, as well as a common form of political organization. In Asia Minor he was content to reinforce the existing Hellenic elements (cf. the case of Side, Arrian, Anabasis, i. 26.4). In the rest of the East his instrument of hellenization was the polls. He is said to have founded no less than seventy cities, destined to become centres of Greek influence, the great majority in lands in which city-life was almost unknown. In this respect his example was emulated by his successors. The eastern provinces were soon lost, though Greek influences lingered on even in Bactria and across the Indus.
'It is known that the councillors were appointed by the states in the Aetolian League ; it is only surmised in the case of the Achaean.
It was only the regions lying to the west of the Euphrates that were effectively hellenized, and the permanence of this result was largely due to the policy of Rome. But, after all deductions have been made, the great fact remains that for many centuries after Alexander's death Greek was the language of literature and reli gion, of commerce and of administration throughout the Nearer East. Alexander created a universal empire as well as a universal culture. His empire perished at his death, but its central idea survived—that of the municipal freedom of the Greek polls within the framework of an imperial system. Hellenistic civiliza tion may appear degenerate when compared with Hellenic ; when compared with the civilizations which it superseded in non Hellenic lands, it marks an unquestionable advance. Greece left her mark upon the civilization of the West as well as upon that of the East, but the process by which her influence was diffused was essentially different. In the East Hellenism came in the train of the conqueror, and Rome was content to build upon the foun dations laid by Alexander. In the West Greek influences were diffused by the Roman conquest of Greece. It was through the ascendancy which Greek literature, philosophy and art acquired over the Roman mind that Greek culture penetrated to the nations of western Europe. The civilization of the East remained Greek. The civilization of the West became and remained Latin, but it was a Latin civilization that was saturated with Greek influences. The ultimate division, both of the empire and the church, into two halves, finds its explanation in this original difference of culture. (See HELLENISM and MACEDONIAN EMPIRE.) I. Earliest Period.—For the earliest periods of Greek history, the so-called Minoan and Mycenaean, the evidence is purely archaeological. It is sufficient here to refer to the article AEGEAN CIVILIZATION. For the next period, the Heroic or Homeric Age, the evidence is derived from the poems of Homer. In any estimate of the value of these poems as historical evidence, much will depend upon the view taken of the authorship, age and unity of the poems. For a full discussion of these questions see HOMER.
For the period that ex tends from the end of the Heroic Age to the end of the Pelopon nesian War' the two principal authorities are Herodotus and Thucydides. Not only have the other historical works which treated of this period perished (those at least whose date is earlier than the Christian era), but their authority was secondary and their material chiefly derived from these two writers. In one respect then this period of Greek history stands alone. Indeed, it might be said, with hardly an exaggeration, that there is nothing like it elsewhere in history. Almost our sole authorities are two writers of unique genius, and they are writers whose works have come down to us intact. For the period which ends with the repulse of the Persian invasion our authority is Herodotus. For the period which extends from 478 to 4ir we are dependent upon Thucydides. In each case, however, a distinction must be drawn. The Persian Wars form the proper subject of Herodotus; the Peloponnesian War is the subject of Thucydides. The interval between the two wars is merely sketched by Thucydides ; while of the period anterior to the conflicts of the Greek with the Persian, Herodotus does not attempt either a complete or a con tinuous narrative. His references to it are episodical and acci dental. Hence our knowledge of the Persian Wars and of the Peloponnesian War is widely different in character from our knowledge of the rest of this period. In the history of these wars the lacunae are few; in the rest of the history they are alike frequent and serious. In the history, therefore, of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars little is to be learnt from the secondary sources. Elsewhere, especially in the interval between the two wars, they become relatively important.
In estimating the authority of Herodotus (q.v.) we must distinguish between the invasion of Xerxes and all that is earlier. Herodotus' work was published soon after 43o B.C., i.e., about half a century after the invasion. Much of his inf or 'Strictly speaking, to 411 B.C. For the last seven years of the war our principal authority is Xenophon, Hellenica, mation was gathered in the course of the preceding twenty years. Although his evidence is not that of an eye-witness, he had had opportunities of meeting those who had themselves played a part in the war, on one side or the other (e.g., Thersander of Orcho menos, ix. 16). In any case, we are dealing with a tradition which is little more than a generation old, and the events to which the tradition relates, the incidents of the struggle against Xerxes, were of a nature to impress themselves indelibly upon the minds of contemporaries. Where, on the other hand, he is treating of the period anterior to the invasion of Xerxes, he is dependent upon a tradition which is never less than two generations old, and is sometimes centuries old. His informants were, at best, the sons or grandsons of the actors in the wars (e.g., Archias the Spartan, iii. 55). Moreover, the invasion of Xerxes, entailing, as it did, the destruction of cities and sanctuaries, especially of Athens and its temples, marks a dividing line in Greek history. It was not merely that evidence perished and records were destroyed. What, in reference to tradition, is even more im portant, a new consciousness of power was awakened, new in terests were aroused, and new questions and problems came to the front. The former things had passed away ; all things were become new. A generation that is occupied with making history on a great scale is not likely to busy itself with the history of the past. Consequently, the earlier traditions became faint and obscured, and the history difficult to reconstruct. As we trace back the conflict between Greece and Persia to its beginnings and antecedents, we are conscious that the tradition becomes less trustworthy as we pass back from one stage to another. The tra dition of the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes is less credible in its details than that of the expedition of Xerxes, but it is at once fuller and more credible than the tradition of the Ionian revolt. When we get back to the Scythian expedition, we can discover but few grains of historical truth.
The criticism of Herodotus as an historian begins with Thucyd ides. Perhaps the two clearest examples of this criticism are to be found in Thucydides' correction of Herodotus' account of the Cylonian conspiracy (Thus. i. 126, cf. Herod. v. 71) and in his appreciation of the character of Themistocles—a veiled protest against the slanderous tales accepted by Herodotus (i. 138). In Plutarch's tract "On the Ill-nature of Herodotus" there is much that is suggestive, although his general standpoint, viz., that Herod otus was in duty bound to suppress all that was aiscreditable to the valour or patriotism of the Greeks, is not that of the modern critic. It must be conceded to Plutarch that he makes good his charge of bias in Herodotus' attitude towards certain of the Greek states. The question, however, may fairly be asked, how far this bias is personal to the author, or how far it is due to the character of the sources from which his information was derived. He cannot, indeed, altogether be acquitted of personal bias. His work is, to some extent, intended as an apologia for the Athenian empire. In answer to the charge that Athens was guilty of robbing other Greek states of their freedom, Herodotus seeks to show, firstly, that it was to Athens that the Greek world, as a whole, owed its freedom from Persia, and secondly, that the subjects of Athens, the Ionian Greeks, were unworthy to be free. This leads him to be unjust both to the services of Sparta and to the qualities of the Ionian race. As a rule, however, the bias apparent in his narrative is due to the sources from which it is derived. Writing at Athens, in the first years of the Peloponnesian War, he can hardly help seeing the past through an Athenian medium. It was inevitable that much of what he heard should come to him from Athenian informants, and should be coloured by Athenian prejudices. We may thus explain the leniency which he shows towards Argos and Thessaly, the old allies cf Athens, in marked contrast to his treatment of Thebes, Corinth and Aegina, her deadliest foes. In his intimacy with members of the great Alcmaeonid house we probably have the explanation of his depreciation of the services of Themistocles, as well as of his defence of the family from the charges brought against it in connection with Cylon and with the incident of the shield shown on Pentelicus at the time of Marathon (v. 71, vi. 121-124). His failure to do justice to the Cypselid tyrants of Corinth (v. 92), and to the Spartan king, Cleomenes, is to be accounted for by the nature of his sources—in the former case, the tradition of the Corinthian oligarchy; in the latter, accounts, partly derived from the family of the exiled king Demaratus and partly representative of the view of the ephorate. Much of the earlier history is cast in a religious mould, e.g., the story of the Mermnad kings of Lydia in book i., or of the fortunes of the colony of Cyrene (iv. 145-167). In such cases we cannot fail to recognize the influence of the Delphic priesthood. The moralizing tendency observable in Herodotus is partly to be explained by the fact that much of his information was gathered from priests and at temples, and was given in explanation of votive offerings, or of the fulfilment of oracles. Hence the determination of the sources of his narra tive has become one of the principal tasks of Herodotean criti cism. In addition to the current tradition of Athens, the family tradition of the Alcmaeonidae, and the stories to be heard at Delphi and other sanctuaries, there may be indicated the Spartan tradition, in the form in which it existed in the middle of the 5th century; that of his native Halicarnassus, to which is due the prominence of its queen Artemisia; the traditions of the Ionian cities, especially of Samos and Miletus (important both for the history of the Mermnadae and for the Ionian Revolt) ; and those current in Sicily and Magna Graecia, which were learned during his residence at Thurii (Sybaris and Croton, v. 44, 45 ; Syracuse and Gela, vii. 153-16 7) . Among his more special sources we can point to the descendants of Demaratus, who still held, at the beginning of the 4th century, the principality in the Troad which had been granted to their ancestor by Darius (Xen. Hell. iii. 1.6), and to the family of the Persian general Artabazus, in which the satrapy of Dascylium (Phrygia) was hereditary in the 5th century. Possibly some of his information about Persian affairs may have been derived, at first or second hand, from Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus, whose flight to Athens is mentioned in iii. i6o.
His use of written material is more difficult to determine. It is generally agreed that the list of Persian satrapies, with their re spective assessments of tribute (iii. 89-97), the description of the royal road from Sardis to Susa (v. 5 2-54) , and of the march of Xerxes, together with the list of the contingents that took part in the expedition (vii. 26-131), are all derived from documentary and authoritative sources. From previous writers (e.g., Dionysius of Miletus, Hecataeus, Charon of Lampsacus and Xanthus the Lydian) it is probable that he has borrowed little, though the fragments are too scanty tc permit of adequate comparison. His references to monuments, dedicatory offerings, inscriptions and oracles are frequent.
The chief defects of Herodotus are his failure to grasp the prin ciples of historical criticism, to understand the nature of military operations, and to appreciate the importance of chronology. In place of historical criticism we find a crude rationalism (e.g., ii. 45, vii. 129, viii. 8). Having no conception of the distinction be tween occasion and cause, he is content to find the explanation of great historical movements in trivial incidents or personal motives. Thus, in his account of the Ionian revolt, he fails to discover the real causes either of the movement or of its result. Indeed, it is clear that he regarded criticism as no part of his task as an historian. Again and again he gives two or more versions of a story. We are thus frequently enabled to arrive at the truth by a comparison of the discrepant traditions. It would have been fortunate if all ancient writers who lacked the critical genius of Thucydides had been content to adopt the practice of Herodotus. His accounts of battles are always unsatisfactory. The great battles, Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, present a series of problems. This result is partly due to the character of the traditions which he follows—traditions which were to some extent inconsistent or contradictory, and were derived from dif ferent sources; it is, however, in great measure due to his inability to think out a strategical combination or a tactical movement. The battle of Plataea, as described by Herodotus, is wholly unin telligible. Most serious of all his deficiencies is his careless chro nology. Even for the 5th century, the data which he affords are inadequate or ambiguous. The interval between the Scythian expedition and the Ionian revolt is described by a vague expres sion. In the history of the revolt itself, though he gives us the interval between its outbreak and the fall of Miletus, he does not give us the interval between this and the battle of Lade, nor does he indicate with sufficient precision the years to which the succes sive phases of the movement belong. Throughout the work pro fessed synchronisms too often prove to be mere literary devices for facilitating a transition from one subject to another. In the 6th century a whole generation, or more, disappears in his his torical perspective. The attempts to reconstruct the chronology of this century upon the basis of the data afforded by Herodotus have completely failed.
In spite of all such defects Herodotus is an author, not only of unrivalled literary charm, but of the utmost value to the historian. If much remains uncertain or obscure, even in the history of the Persian Wars, it is chiefly to motives or policy, to topography or strategy, to dates or numbers, that uncertainty attaches. It is to these that a sober criticism will confine itself.
Thucydides.—Thucydides (q.v.) is at once the father of con temporary history and the father of historical criticism. From a comparison of i. i, i. 22 and v. 26, we may gather both the prin ciples to which he adhered in the composition of his work and the conditions under which it was composed. It is seldom that the circumstances of an historical writer have been so favourable for the accomplishment of his task. Thucydides was a contemporary, in the fullest sense of the term, of the Twenty-Seven Years' War. He had reached manhood at its outbreak, and he survived its close by at least half -a-dozen years. And he was more than a mere contemporary. As a man of high birth, a member of the Periclean circle, and the holder of the chief political office in the Athenian state, the strategic, he was not only familiar with the business of administration and the conduct of military operations, but he possessed in addition a personal knowledge of those who played the principal part in the political life of the age. His exile in the year 424 afforded him opportunities of visiting the scenes of distant operations (e.g., Sicily), and of coming in contact with the actors on the other side. He spared no pains to obtain the best information available in each case. He began collecting materials for his work from the very beginning of the war. Indeed, it is probable that much of books i.--v. 24 was written soon after the Peace of Nicias (421), just as it is possible that the history of the Sicilian expedition (books vi. and vii.) was originally in tended to form a separate work. The work, as a whole, appears to have been composed in the first years of the 4th century, after his return from exile in 404, when the material already in existence must have been revised and largely recast. There are exceedingly few passages which seem to have been overlooked in the process of revision. The impression left upon the reader's mind is that the point of view of the author, in all the books alike, is that of one writing after the fall of Athens.
The task of historical criticism in the case of the Peloponnesian War is widely different from its task in the case of the Persian Wars. It has to deal, not with facts as they appear in the tradi tions of an imaginative race, but with facts as they appeared to a scientific observer. Facts, indeed, are seldom in dispute. The question is rather whether facts of importance are omitted, whether the explanation of causes is correct, or whether the judg ment of men and measures is just. Such inaccuracies as have been brought home to Thucydides on the strength, e.g., of epigraphic evidence, are, as a rule, trivial. His most serious errors relate to topographical details in regard to which he was dependent on the information of others. Sphacteria (see PYYLos) is a case in point. Nor have the difficulties connected with the siege of Plataea been cleared up. Where, on the contrary, he is writing at first hand his descriptions of sites are surprisingly correct. The most serious charge as yet brought against his authority as to matters of fact relates to his account of the Revolution of the Four Hundred, which seems, at first sight, to be inconsistent with the docu mentary evidence supplied by Aristotle's Constitution of Athens (q.v.) . It may be questioned, however, whether the documents have been correctly interpreted by Aristotle. On the whole, it is probable that the general course of events was such as Thucydides describes, though he failed to appreciate the position of Thera menes and the Moderate party, and was clearly misinformed on some important points of detail. Much is omitted that would not be omitted by a modern writer. Such omissions are generally due to the author's conception of his task. Thus the internal history of Athens is passed over as forming no part of the history of the war. It is only where the course of the war is directly affected by the course of political events (e.g., by the Revolution of the Four Hundred) that the internal history is referred to. However much it may be regretted that the relations of political parties are not more fully described, especially in book v., it cannot be denied that from his standpoint there is logical justification even for the omission of the ostracism of Hyperbolus. There are omissions, however, which are not so easily explained, as that of the raising of the tribute in 425 B.C. (see DELIAN LEAGUE).
Nowhere is the contrast between the historical methods of Herodotus and Thucydides more apparent than in the treatment of the causes of events. The distinction between the occasion and the cause is constantly present to the mind of Thucydides, and it is his tendency to make too little rather than too much of the personal factor. Sometimes, however, it may be doubted whether his explanation of the causes of an event is adequate or correct. In tracing the causes of the Peloponnesian War itself, modern writers are disposed to allow more weight to the commercial rivalry of Corinth; while in the case of the Sicilian expedition, they would actually reverse his judgment. To us it seems that the very idea of the expedition implied a gigantic miscalculation of the resources of Athens and of the difficulty of the task. His judgments of men and of measures have been criticized by writers of different schools and from different points of view. Grote criticized his verdict upon Cleon, while he accepted his estimate of the policy of Pericles. More recent writers, on the other hand, have accepted his view of Cleon, while they have selected for attack his appreciation alike of the policy and the strategy of Pericles. He has been charged, too, with failure to do justice to the statesmanship of Alcibiades'.
There are cases, undoubtedly, in which the balance of recent opinon will be adverse to the view of Thucydides. There are many more in which the result of criticism has been to establish his view. That he should occasionally have been mistaken in his judgment and his views is certainly no detraction from his claim to greatness.
On the whole, while the criticism of Herodotus has tended seriously to modify our view of the Persian Wars, as well as of the earlier history, the criticism of Thucydides has affected but slightly our view of the course of the Peloponnesian War. The labours of recent workers in this field have borne most fruit where they have been directed to subjects neglected by Thucyd ides, such as the history of political parties, or the organization of the empire.
Of the secondary authorities for this period the two principal ones are Diodorus (xi. 38 to xii. 37) and Plutarch. Diodorus is of value chiefly in relation to Sicilian affairs, to which he devotes about a third of this section of his work and for which he is almost our sole authority. His source for Sicilian history is Timaeus (q.v.), himself a Sicilian, who wrote in the 3rd century B.C. For the history of Greece proper during the Pentekontaeteris (the period between the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars), Diodorus contributes comparatively little of importance. Isolated notices of particular events (e.g., the synoecism of Elis, 471 B.c., or the foundation of Amphipolis, 437 B.c.), which appear to be derived from a chronological writer, may generally be trusted. The greater part of his narrative is, however, derived from Ephorus, who seems to have had before him little authentic information for this period of Greek history other than that afforded by Thucydides' work. Four of Plutarch's Lives are concerned with this period, viz., Ttiemistocles, Aristeides, Cimon, and Pericles. From the Aristeides little can be gained. The Cimon, on the other hand, contains much that is valuable ; such as the account of the battle of the Eurymedon (chs. 12 and 13). To the Pericles we owe several quotations from the Old Comedy.
, see E. Meyer, Forscltungen, ii.
Two other of the Lives, Lycurgus and Solon, are amongst our most important sources for the early history of Sparta and Athens respectively. Of the two (besides Pericles) which relate to the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades adds little to what can be gained from Thucydides and Xenophon ; the Nicias, on the other hand, supplements Thucydides' narrative of the Sicilian expedition with many valuable details, which, it may safely be assumed, are derived from the contemporary historian, Philistus of Syracuse. Amongst the most valuable material afforded by Plutarch are the quotations, which occur in almost all the Lives, from the collection of Athenian decrees formed by the Macedonian writer Craterus, in the 3rd century B.C.
Tv, o other works may be mentioned in connection with the history of Athens. For the history of the Athenian Constitution down to the end of the 5th century B.C., Aristotle's Constitution of Athens (q.v.) is our chief authority. The other Constitution of Athens, erroneously attributed to Xeno phon, a tract of singular interest both on literary and historical grounds, throws a good deal of light on the internal condition of Athens, and on the system of government, both of the state and of the empire, in the age of the Peloponnesian War, during the earlier years of which it was composed.
To the literary sources for the history of Greece, especially of Athens, in the 5th century B.C. must be added the epigraphic. Few historical inscriptions have been dis covered which date back beyond the Persian Wars. For the latter half of the 5th century they are both numerous and important. Of especial value are the series of Quota-lists, from which can be calculated the amount of tribute paid by the subject-allies of Athens from the year 454 B.C. onwards. The great majority of the inscriptions of this period are of Athenian origin. They relate, as a rule, to questions of organization, finance and administration, as to which little information is to be gained from the literary sources.
Of the historians who flourished in the 4th century the sole writer whose works have come down to us is Xenophon. It is a singular acci dent of fortune that neither of the two authors, who at once were most representative of their age and did most to determine the views of Greek history current in subsequent generations, Ephorus (q.v.) and Theopompus (q.v.), should be extant. It was from them, rather than from Herodotus, Thucydides or Xenophon, that the Roman world obtained its knowledge of the history of Greece in the past, and its conception of its significance. Both were pupils of Isocrates, and both, therefore, bred up in an atmosphere of rhetoric. Hence their popularity and their influence. The scientific spirit of Thucydides was alien to the temper of the 4th century, and hardly more congenial to the age of Cicero or Tacitus. To the rhetorical spirit, which is common to both, each added defects peculiar to himself. Theopompus is a strong partisan, a sworn foe to Athens and to democracy. Ephorus, though a military his torian, is ignorant of the art of war. He is also almost incredibly careless and uncritical. Only a few fragments remain of either writer, but Theopompus was largely used by Plutarch in several of the Lives, while Ephorus continues to be the main source of Diodorus' history, as far as the outbreak of the Sacred War (Fragments of Ephorus in Miiller's Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, vol. i. ; of Theopompus in Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, cum Theopompi et Cratippi fragmentis, ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, i9o9).
It may be at least claimed for Xenophon (q.v.) that he is free from all taint of the rhetorical spirit. As a witness, he is both honest and well-informed. But, if there is no justifica tion for the charge of deliberate falsification, he had strong political prejudices, and his narrative has suffered from them. His historical writings are the Anabasis, an account of the expe dition of the Ten Thousand, the Hellenica and the Agesilaus, a eulogy of the Spartan king. Of these the Hellenica is far the most important for the student of history. It consists of two distinct parts (though there is no ground for the theory that the two parts were separately written and published), books i. and ii., and books to vii. The first two books are intended as a continuation of Thucydides' work. They begin, quite abruptly, in the middle of the Attic year 411/1o, and they carry the history down to the fall of the Thirty, in 403. Books iii. to vii., the Hellenica proper, cover the period from 4oi to 362, and give the histories of the Spartan and Theban hegemonies down to the death of Epamei nondas. There is thus a gap of two years between the point at which the first part ends and that at which the second part begins. The two parts differ widely, both in their aim and in the arrange ment of the material. In the first part Xenophon attempts, though not with complete success, to follow the chronological method of Thucydides, and to make each successive spring, when military and naval operations were resumed after the winter's interruption, the starting-point of a fresh section. The resemblance between the two writers ends, however, with the outward form of the narrative. All that is characteristic of Thucydides is absent in Xenophon. The latter writer shows neither skill in portraiture, nor insight into motives. He is deficient in the sense of propor tion, and he knows nothing of the distinction between occasion and cause. Perhaps his worst fault is a lack of imagination. It was not given to Xenophon, as it was to Thucydides, to discrimi nate between the circumstances that are essential and those that are not essential to the comprehension of the story. In spite, therefore, of its wealth of detail, his narrative is frequently obscure. In the first two books, though there are omissions (e.g., the loss of Nisaea, 409 B.c.), they are not so serious as in the last five, nor is the bias so evident. If the account of the rule of the Thirty given in Aristotle's Constitution of Athens be accepted, Xenophon must have deliberately misrepresented the course of events to the prejudice of Theramenes. But it is at least doubtful whether Aristotle's version can be sustained against Xenophon's, though there are mistakes as to details in the latter writer's narra tive, and less than justice is done to the policy and motives of the "Buskin." The Hellenica was written, it should be remembered, at Corinth, after 362 B.C. More than forty years had thus elapsed since the events recorded in the first two books, and after so long an interval, accuracy of detail, even where the detail is of impor tance, is not always to be expected. In the second part the chrono logical method is abandoned. A subject once begun is followed out to its natural ending, so that sections of the narrative which are consecutive in order are frequently parallel in point of date. A good example of this will be found in book iv. In chapters 2 to 7, the history of the Corinthian war is carried down to the end of 390, so far as the operations on land are concerned, while chap ter 8 contains an account of the naval operations from 394 to 388 B.C. In this second part of the Hellenica the author's disqualifica tions for his task are more apparent than in the first two books. The more he is acquitted of bias in his selection of events and in his omissions, the more clearly does he stand convicted of lacking all sense of the proportion of things. Down to Leuctra (i B.c. ) Sparta is the centre of interest, and it is of the Spartan state alone that a complete or continuous history is given. After Leuctra, if the point of view is no longer exclusively Spartan, the narrative of events is hardly less incomplete. Throughout the second part of the Hellenica omissions abound which it is difficult either to explain or justify. The formation of the Second Athenian Con federacy of 377 B.C., the foundation of Megalopolis and the resto ration of the Messenian state are unrecorded. Yet the writer who passes them over without mention thinks it worth while to devote more than one-sixth of an entire book to a chronicle of the un important feats of the citizens of the petty state of Phlius. No attempt is made to appraise the policy of the great Theban leaders, Pelopidas and Epameinondas. The former, indeed, is mentioned only in a single passage, relating to the embassy to Susa in 368 B.C.; the latter does not appear'on the scene till a year later, and receives mention but twice before the battle of Mantineia. An author who omits from his narrative some of the most important events of his period, and elaborates the portraiture of an Agesilaus, while not attempting the bare outline of an Epameinondas, may be honest; he may even write without a consciousness of bias; he certainly cannot rank among the great writers of history.
For the history of the 4th century Diodorus as sumes a higher degree of importance than belongs to him in the earlier periods. This is partly to be explained by the deficiencies of Xenophon's Hellenica, partly by the fact that for the interval between the death of Epameinondas and the accession of Alexan der we have in Diodorus alone a continuous narrative of events. Books xiv. and xv. of his history include the period covered by the Hellenica. More than half of book xiv. is devoted to the history of Sicily and the reign of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. For this period of Sicilian history he is, practically, our sole authority. In the rest of the book, as well as in book xv., there is much of value, especially in the notices of Macedonian history. Thanks to Diodorus we are enabled to supply many of the omis sions of the Hellenica. Diodorus is, e.g., our sole literary authority for the Athenian naval confederation of 377. Book xvi. must rank, with the Hellenica and Arrian's Anabasis, as one of the three principal authorities for this century, so far, at least, as works of an historical character are concerned. It is our authority for the Social and the Sacred Wars, as well as for the reign of Philip. It is a curious irony of fate that, for what is perhaps the most momentous epoch in the history of Greece, we should have to turn to a writer of such inferior capacity. For this period his material is better and his importance greater : his intelligence is as limited as ever. Who but Diodorus would be capable of narrating the siege and capture of Methone twice over, once under the year 354, and again, under the year 352, of giving three differ ent numbers of years (eleven, ten and nine) in three different passages (chs. 14, 23 and 59) for the length of the Sacred War, or of inserting a conclusion of peace between Athens and Philip in 34o B.C., after the failure of his attack on Perinthus and Byzan tium? Among the subjects which are omitted is the peace of Philocrates. For the earlier chapters, which bring the narrative down to the outbreak of the Sacred War, Ephorus, as in the previous book, is Diodorus' main source. His source for the rest of the book, i.e., for the greater part of Philip's reign, cannot be determined. It is generally agreed that it is not the Philippica of Theopompus.
For the reign of Alexan der our earliest extant authority is Diodorus, who belongs to the age of Augustus. Of the others, Q. Curtius Rufus, who wrote in Latin, lived in the reign of the emperor Claudius, Arrian and Plutarch in the and century A.D. Yet Alexander's reign is one of the best known periods of ancient history. The Peloponnesian War and the twenty years of Roman history which begin with 63 B.C. are the only two periods which we can be said to know more fully or for which we have more trustworthy evidence. For there is no period of ancient history which was recorded by a larger number of contemporary writers, or for which better or more abundant materials were available. Of the writers actually contemporary with Alexander there were five of importance— Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Callisthenes, Onesicritus and Nearchus; and all of them occupied positions which afforded exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the facts. Four of them were officers in Alexander's service. Ptolemy, the future king of Egypt, was one of the somatophulakes (we may, perhaps, regard them as corresponding to Napoleon's marshals) ; Aristobulus was also an officer of high rank (see Arrian, Anab. vi. 29. Io) ; Nearchus was admiral of the fleet which surveyed the Indus and the Persian Gulf, and Onesicritus was one of his subordinates. The fifth, Callisthenes, a pupil of Aristotle, accompanied Alexander on his march, and was admitted to the circle of his intimate friends. A sixth historian, Cleitarchus, was possibly also a contemporary; at any rate he is not more than a generation later. These writers had at their command a mass of official documents, edited and published after Alexander's death by his secretary, Eumenes of Cardia ; the records of the marches of the armies, which were carefully measured at the time ; and the official reports on the conquered provinces. That these documents were made use of by the historians is proved by the references to them which are to be found in Arrian, Plutarch and Strabo. We have, in addition, in Plutarch numerous quotations from Alexander's correspondence with his mother, Olympias, and with his officers. The contem porary historians may be roughly divided into two groups. On the one hand there are Ptolemy and Aristobulus, who, except in a single instance, are free from all suspicion of deliberate invention. On the other hand, there are Callisthenes, Onesicritus and Clei tarchus, whose tendency is rhetorical. Nearchus appears to have allowed full scope to his imagination in dealing with the wonders of India, but to have been otherwise veracious. Of the extant writers Arrian (q.v.) is incomparably the most valuable. His merits are twofold. As the commander of Roman legions and the author of a work on tactics, he combined a practical with a theo retical knowledge of the military art, while the writers whom he follows in the Anabasis are the two most worthy of credit, Ptolemy and Aristobulus. We may well hesitate to call in question the authority of writers who exhibit an agreement which it would be difficult to parallel elsewhere in the case of two independent historians. It may be inferred from Arrian's references to them that there were only eleven instances in all in which he found discrepancies between them. The most serious drawback which can be alleged against them is an inevitable bias in Alexander's favour. It would be only natural that they should pass over in silence the worst blots on their great commander's fame. Next in value to the Anabasis comes Plutarch's Life of Alexander, the merits of which, however, are not to be gauged by the influence which it has exercised upon literature. The Life is a valuable supplement to the Anabasis, partly because Plutarch, as he is writing biography rather than history (for his conception of the difference between the two see the famous preface, Life of Alexander, ch. i.), is concerned to record all that will throw light upon Alexander's character (e.g., his epigrammatic sayings and quotations from his letters) ; partly because he tells us much about his early life, before he became king, while Arrian tells us nothing. Plutarch writes in an uncritical spirit ; he formed no clear concep tion and drew no consistent picture of Alexander's character. Book xvii. of Diodorus and the Historiae Alexandri of Curtius Rufus are thoroughly rhetorical in spirit. It is probable that in both cases the ultimate source is the work of Cleitarchus.
Towards the end of the 5th century a fresh source of information becomes available in the speeches of the orators, the earliest of whom is Antiphon (d. 411 B.c.) . Lysias is of great importance for the history of the Thirty (see the speeches against Eratosthenes and Agoratus), and a good deal may be gathered from Andocides with regard to the last years of the 5th and the opening years of the next century. At the other end of this period Lycurgus, Hypereides and Deinarchus throw light upon the time of Philip and Alexander. The three, however, who are of most importance to the historian are Iso crates, Aeschines and Demosthenes.
Isocrates (q.v.), whose long life
B•c.) more than spans the interval between the outbreak of the Pelopon nesian War and the triumph of Macedon at Chaeroneia, is one of the most characteristic figures in the Greek world of his day. To comprehend that world the study of Isocrates is indispensable ; for in an age dominated by rhetoric he is the prince of rhetoricians. It is difficult for a modern reader to do him justice, so alien is his spirit and the spirit of his age to ours. He is frequently monotonous and prolix; at the same time, as the most famous representative of rhetoric, he was read from one end of the Greek world to the other. He was the friend of Evagoras and Archidamus, of Dionysius and Philip; he was the master of Aeschines and Lycurgus amongst orators and of Ephorus and Theopompus amongst historians. No other contemporary writer has left so indelible a stamp upon the style and the sentiment of his generation. It is a commonplace that Isocrates is the apostle of Panhellenism. It is not so generally recognized that he is the prophet of Hellenism. Doubtless he had no conception of the extent to which the East was to be hellenized. He was, however, the first to recognize that it would be hellenized by the diffusion of Greek culture rather than of Greek blood. His Pan hellenism was the outcome of his recognition of the new forces and tendencies which were at work in the midst of a new genera tion. When Greek culture was becoming more and more inter national, the exaggeration of the principle of autonomy in the Greek political system was becoming more and more absurd. He had sufficient insight to be aware that the price paid for this autonomy was the domination of Persia; a domination which meant the servitude of the Greek states across the Aegean and the demoralization of Greek political life at home. His Panhellen ism led him to a more liberal view of the distinction between what was Greek and what was not than was possible to the intenser patriotism of a Demosthenes. In his later orations he has the courage not only to pronounce that the day of Athens as a first rate power is past, but to see in Philip the needful leader in the crusade against Persia. The earliest and greatest of his political orations is the Panegyricus, published in 38o B.C., midway be tween the peace of Antalcidas and Leuctra. It is his apologia for Panhellenism. To the period of the Social War belong the De pace (3 5 5 B.c.) and the Areopagiticus (3 54 B.c.), both of great value as evidence for the internal conditions of Athens at the beginning of the struggle with Macedon. The Plataicus (373 B.c.) and the Archidamus (366 B.c.) throw light upon the politics of Boeotia and the Peloponnese respectively. The Panathenaicus (339 B.c), the child of his old age, contains little that may not be found in the earlier orations. The Philippus (346 B.c.) is of peculiar interest, as giving the views of the Macedonian party.
Demosthenes.—With the estimate of character and statesman ship of the orator Demosthenes (q.v.) we are not here concerned. With regard to his value as an authority for the history of the period, it is to his speeches, and to those of his contemporaries, Aeschines, Hypereides, Deina rchus and Lycurgus, that we owe our intimate knowledge, both of the working of the constitutional and legal systems, and of the life of the people, at this period of Athenian history. From this point of view his value can hardly be overestimated. As a witness, however, to matters of fact, his authority can no longer be rated as highly as it once was. The orator's attitude towards events, both in the past and in the present, is inevitably different from that of the historian. The object of a Thucydides is to ascertain a fact, or to exhibit it in its true relations. The object of a Demosthenes is to make a point, or to win his case. In their dealings with the past the orators exhibit a levity which is almost inconceivable to a modern reader. Andocides, in a passage of his speech On the Mysteries (§ 107), speaks of Marathon as the crowning victory of the cam paign against Xerxes ; in his speech On the Peace (§ 3) he confuses Miltiades with Cimon, and the Five Years' Truce with the Thirty Years' Peace. Though the latter passage is a mass of absurdities and confusion, it was so generally admired that it w..s incorporated by Aeschines in his speech On the Embassy (§§ 17 2-6) . If such was their attitude towards the past; if, in order to make a point, they do not hesitate to pervert history, is it likely that they would conform to a higher standard of veracity in their state ments as to the present—as to their contemporaries, their rivals or their own actions? It has come to be recognized that no statement as to a matter of fact is to be accepted, unless it receives independent corroboration, or unless it is admitted by both sides.
The speeches of Demosthenes may be conveniently divided into four classes according to their dates. To the pre-Philippic period belong the speeches On the Symmories (354 B.C.), On Megalopolis
B.c.), Against Aristocrates (351 B.c.), and, perhaps, the speech On Rhodes (? 351 B.c.) . These speeches betray no con sciousness of the danger threatened by Philip's ambition. The policy recommended is one based upon the principle of the balance of power. To the succeeding period, which ends with the peace of Philocrates (346 B.c.), belong the First Philippic and the three Olynthiacs. To the period between the peace of Philocrates and Chaeronea belong the speech On the Peace (346 B.c.), the Second Philippic (344 B.c.), the speeches On the Embassy (344 B.c.) and On the Chersonese (341 B.c.), and the Third Philippic. The masterpiece of his genius, the speech On the Crown, was delivered in 33o B.C., in the reign of Alexander. Of the three extant speeches of Aeschines (q.v.) that On the Embassy is of great value, as enabling us to correct the misstatements of Demosthenes.
For the period from the death of Alexander to the fall of Corinth (323-146 B.c.) our literary authorities are singularly defective. For the Diadochi (q.v.) Diodorus (books xviii.–xx.) is our chief source. These books form the most valuable part of Diodorus' work. They are mainly based upon the work of Hieronymus of Cardia, a writer who combined exceptional opportunities for ascertaining the truth (he was in the service first of Eumenes, and then of Antigonus) with an ex ceptional sense of its importance. Hieronymus ended his history at the death of Pyrrhus (2 7 2 B.c.), but, unfortunately, book xx. of Diodorus' work carries us no farther than 303 B.c., and of the later books we have but scanty fragments. The narrative of Diodorus may be supplemented by the fragments of Arrian's History of the events after Alexander's death (which reach, how ever, only to 321 B.c.), and by Plutarch's Lives of Eumenes and of Demetrius. For the rest of the 3rd century and the first half of the end we have his Lives of Pyrrhus, of Aratus, of Philopoe men, and of Agis and Cleomenes. For the period from 2 20 B.C. onwards Polybius (q.v.) is our chief authority (see ROME: Ancient History). In a period in which the literary sources are so scanty great weight attaches to the epigraphic and numismatic evidence.
The literature which deals with the history of Bibliography.—The literature which deals with the history of Greece in its various periods, departments and aspects, is of so vast a bulk that all that can be attempted here is to indicate the most important and the most accessible of the works of a general character. It may be pointed out that a full bibliography will be found at the end of each of the volumes of the Cambridge Ancient History. General Histories of Greece.—There are only three general histories of Greece written by English scholars that call for mention here. George Grote's History of Greece was published originally in 12 volumes, 1846-56 (new ed. 1888) . Grote had his faults and his limita tions. His prejudices are strong and his scholarship is weak ; he had never visited Greece, and he knew little or nothing of Greek art ; and, at the time it which he wrote, the importance of coins and inscriptions was imperfectly apprehended. In spite of every defect, however, his work is the greatest history of Greece that has yet been written. It is not too much to say that nobody knows Greek history till he has mastered Grote. The History of Greece, by the late J. B. Bury, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge (2nd ed., 1922), in one volume, is a work on a far less elaborate scale than Grote's. Of a different character from the Histories of Grote and Bury, is The Cambridge Ancient History, edited by J. B. Bury, S. A. Cook and F. E. Adcock, and published by the Cambridge University Press. This work, which is in course of publica tion, is intended, when complete, to deal with the history of the ancient world down to the fall of the Roman empire, vols. iv.–vii. being mainly concerned with the history of Greece. The plan of the Ancient History is similar to that of the Cambridge Modern History and the Cambridge Mediaeval History, different chapters being as signed to different scholars, chiefly English and American.
Of general histories by foreign scholars, the following may be men tioned: K. J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, ed. 2. (Strasbourg, 1912 27) ; E. Cavaignac, Histoire de l'Antiquite, vols. 1-3 (1913-14) ; G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, ed. 2. (Gotha, 1893-1904) (differs in character from other histories of Greece, the writer's object being to refer in the notes, which constitute five-sixths of the book, to the views of every writer, in any language, upon every controverted question ; it is indispensable as a work of reference for any serious study of Greek history) ; Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums (Stuttgart, 1893-1902) (the ablest work on Greek history since Grote's; of the five volumes which have appeared, vols. ii.–v. are principally concerned with the history of Greece, and carry the nar rative down to a few years later than the death of Epameinondas) ; M. Rostovtzeff, A History of the Ancient World, trans. J. D. Duff (Oxford, 1926) .
Works bearing on the History of Greece: Iwan Muller, Handbuch der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Munich, various dates) ; K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitiiten, new ed. (Tubingen, various dates) ; A. Gercke and E. Norden, Einleitung in die Alter tumswissenschaft, ed. 2. (Leipzig and Berlin, 1914) ; Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopadie der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1893) (in progress) ; H. F. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1841) , (a work of which English scholarship may well be proud; it is still invaluable for the study of Greek chronology) .
Among works on Epigraphy may be mentioned: Inscriptiones Graecae (1924) ; E. L. Hicks and G. F. Hill, Manual of Greek His torical Inscriptions, new ed., 1 vol. (Oxford, 19o1) ; W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1915-17).
Among works on Numismatics, the English reader may refer to: B. V. Head, Historia numorum, end ed. (Oxford, 1911) ; G. F. Hill, Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins (1899) ; P. Gardner, History of Ancient Coinage, 700-300 B.C. (Oxford, 1918). (E. M. WA.)
