CHAPTER V.
The Great Historians.
Herodotus and Thucydides 91
Herodotus superior in subject 92
Narrow scope of Thucydides 92
His deliberate omissions 93 supplied by inferior historians 93
Diodorus 93
Date of the destruction of Mycenæ 94
Silence of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides 94
Value of Plutarch's _Lives_ 95
The newly-found tract on _The Polity of the Athenians_ 96
Effects of Thucydides' literary genius 97
The Peloponnesian war of no world-wide consequence 97
No representation in Greek assemblies 98
No outlying members save Athenian citizens settled in subject towns 99
Similar defect in the Roman Republic 99
Hence an extended Athenian empire not maintainable 99
The glamour of Thucydides 100
His calmness assumed 101
He is backed by the scholastic interest 101 on account of his grammatical difficulties 102
He remains the special property of critical scholars 102
Herodotus underrated in comparison 103
The critics of Thucydides 103
The _Anabasis_ of Xenophon 104
The weakness of Persia long recognized 105
Reception of the Ten Thousand on their return 105
The army dispersed 106
Xenophon's strategy 106
His real strategy was literary 107
A special favourite of Grote 107
Xenophon on Agesilaus and Epaminondas 108
Injustice of the _Hellenica_ 108
Yet Xenophon is deservedly popular 109