Book II - Wilbourhall.org

1 INTRODUCTION. [iii.the burning question of the day was the relationof the Greeks with the empire.Meanwhile the quality of prose writing had greatlyimproved. The ancients thought Hellanicus ofMytilene worthy to be mentioned with Herodotusand Thucydides.Beside many other historical workshe wrote a history of Athens, which Thucydidesimplies was meagre and contained as much falsehoodas truth. The influence of epic is stillstrongly marked in Herodotus, who was bornabout 485 and lived beyond 428 B.C. But heis not, like his predecessors, a mere chronicler.His history, which related the triumph under divineguidance of Greece over Persia, quickly won extraordinarypopularity, and became a national bookscarcely less valued than Homer. As a generaldescription of the style of early prose, which closelyresembled that of epic poetry, the ancient criticsused the expression eipoixevrj Ae^ts, by which theymeant the simplest narration, in which there ismere juxtaposition of ideas, with no attempt atwriting aperiod.In the short interval that separated Thucydidesfrom Herodotus, Greek prose underwent an extraordinarychange at Athens, the final outcome ofwhich was that Attic prose established itself asthe standard of prose excellence all over the Greekworld. This change is closely connected with a greatadvance made in political oratory. Pericles hadintroduced the custom of writing out speeches beforethey were delivered in the Assembly. His object, aswe can see from words which Thucydides puts into