Mosaics of Grecian History | Page 3

literature forms the most illustrious confutation of
the charges brought against such studies as being useless and
impractical."
"The style of Thirlwall," says Dr. Samuel Warren of England, in his
Introduction to Law Studies, "is dry, terse, and exact--not fitted,
perhaps, for the historical tyro, but most acceptable to the advanced
student who is in quest of things."
GEORGE GROTE, Member of Parliament, and a London banker, who

wrote a history of Greece in twelve volumes, published from 1846 to
1855, has been styled, by way of eminence, the historian of Greece,
because his work is universally admitted by critics to be the best for the
advanced student that has yet been written. The London Athenæum
styles his history "a great literary undertaking, equally notable whether
we regard it as an accession of standard value in our language, or as an
honorable monument of what English scholarship can do." The London
Quarterly Review says: "Errors the most inveterate, that have been
handed down without misgiving from generation to generation, have
been for the first time corrected by Mr. Grote; facts the most familiar
have been presented in new aspects and relations; things dimly seen,
and only partially apprehended previously, have now assumed their
true proportions and real significance; while numerous traits of Grecian
character; and new veins of Grecian thought and feeling, have been
revealed to the eyes of scholars by Mr. Grote's searching criticism, like
new forms of animated nature by the microscope."
The general character of the work has been farther well summed up by
Sir Archibald Alison. He says: "A decided liberal, perhaps even a
republican, in politics, Mr. Grote has labored to counteract the
influence of Mitford in Grecian history, and construct a history of
Greece from authentic materials, which should illustrate the animating
influence of democratic freedom upon the exertions of the human mind.
In the prosecution of this attempt he has displayed an extent of learning,
a variety of research, a power of combination, which are worthy of the
very highest praise, and have secured for him a lasting place among the
historians of modern Europe."
We may also mention, in this connection, the valuable and scholarly
work of the German professor, Ernst Curtius (1857-'67), in five
volumes, translated by A. Ward (1871-'74). His sympathies are
monarchical, and his views more nearly accord with those of Mitford
and Thirlwall than with those of Grote.
The work by William Smith, in one volume, 1865, is an excellent
summary of Grecian history, as is also that of George W. Cox, 1876.
The former work, which to a considerable extent is an abridgment of
Grote, has been brought down, in a Boston edition, from the Roman
Conquest to the middle of the present century, by Dr. Felton, late
President of Harvard College. President Felton has also published two

volumes of scholarly lectures on Ancient and Modern Greece (1867).
The works devoted to limited periods of Grecian history and special
departments of research are very numerous. Among the most valuable
of the former is the History of the Peloponnesian War, by the Greek
historian Thucydides, of which there are several English versions. He
was born in Athens, about the year 471 B.C. His is one of the ablest
histories ever written.
Herodotus, the earliest and best of the romantic historians, sometimes
called the "Father of History," was contemporary with Thucydides. He
wrote, in a charming style, an elaborate work on the Persian and
Grecian wars, most of the scenes of which he visited in person; and in
numerous episodes and digressions he interweaves the most valuable
history that we have of the early Asiatic nations and the Egyptians; but
he indulges too much in the marvelous to be altogether reliable."
Of the numerous works of Xenophon, an Athenian who is sometimes
called the "Attic Muse," from the simplicity and beauty of his style, the
best known and the most pleasing are the Anab'asis, the Memorabil'ia
of Socrates, and the Cyropedi'a, a political romance. He was born about
443 B.C. The best English translation of his works is by Watson, in
Harper's "New Classical Library."
The work of the Greek historian, Polybius, originally in forty volumes,
of which only five remain entire covered a period from the downfall of
the Macedonian power to the subversion of Grecian liberty by the
Romans, 146 B.C. It is a work of great accuracy, but of little rhetorical
polish, and embraces much of Roman history from which Livy derived
most of the materials for his account of the wars with Carthage.
In the first century of our era, Plutarch, a Greek biographer, wrote the
"Parallel Lives" of forty-six distinguished Greeks and Romans--a
charming and instructive work, translated by John and William
Langhorne in 1771, and by Arthur Hugh Clough in 1858.
A history of Greece,