Sketch of the History of Greek Literature to the Reign of Alexander the Great

THUCYDIDES, the greatest of the Greek historians, was an Athenian, and was born in the year 471 B.C. His family was connected with that of Miltiades and Cimon. He possessed gold- mines in Thrace, and enjoyed great influence in that country. He commanded an Athenian squadron of seven ships at Thasos, in 424 B.C., at the time when Brasidas was besieging Amphipolis; and having failed to relieve that city in time, he went into a voluntary exile, in order probably to avoid the punishment of death. He appears to have spent 20 years in banishment, principally in the Peloponnesus, or in places under the dominion or influence of Sparta. He perhaps returned to Athens in B.C. 403, the date of its liberation by Thrasybulus. According to the unanimous testimony of antiquity he met with a violent end, and it seems probable that he was assassinated at Athens, since it cannot be doubted that his tomb existed there. From the beginning of the Peloponnesian war he had designed to write its history, and he employed himself in collecting materials for that purpose during its continuance; but it is most likely that the work was not actually composed till after the conclusion of the war, and that he was engaged upon it at the time of his death. The first book of his History is introductory, and contains a rapid sketch of Grecian history from the remotest times to the breaking out of the war. The remaining seven books are filled with the details of the war, related according to the division into summers and winters, into which all campaigns naturally fall; and the work breaks off abruptly in the middle of the 21st year of the war (B.C. 411). The materials of Thucydides were collected with the most scrupulous care; the events are related with the strictest impartiality; and the work probably offers a more exact account of a long and eventful period than any other contemporary history, whether ancient or modern, of an equally long and important aera. The style of Thucydides is brief and sententious, and whether in moral or political reasoning, or in description, gains wonderful force from its condensation. But this characteristic is sometimes carried to a faulty extent, so as to render his style harsh, and his meaning obscure.

XENOPHON, the son of Gryllus, was also an Athenian, and was probably born about B.C. 444. He was a pupil of Socrates, who saved his life at the battle of Delium (B.C. 424). His accompanying Cyrus the younger in his expedition against his brother Artaxerxes, king of Persia, formed a striking episode in his life, and has been recorded by himself in his ANABASIS. He seems to have been still in Asia at the time of the death of Socrates in 399 B.C., and was probably banished from Athens soon after that period, in consequence of his close connexion with the Lacedaemonians. He accompanied Agesilaus, the Spartan king, on the return of the latter from Asia to Greece; and he fought along with the Lacedaemonians against his own countrymen at the battle of Coronea in 394 B.C. After this battle he went with Agesilaus to Sparta, and soon afterwards settled at Scillus in Elis, near Olympia. He is said to have lived to more than 90 years of age, and he mentions an event which occurred as late as 357 B.C.

William Smith, A Smaller History of Ancient Greece

Sketch of the History of Greek Literature from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Alexander the Great

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