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210 ANCIENT GREECE. [CHAP. xiv.but chiefly related to the colonies ;for their establishment,intimately interwoven with the history of heroes, offered therichest materials.History continued to be treated in a poetical manner, tillnear the time of the Persian wars. How deeply, therefore,must the poetic character have been imprinted upon Grecianhistory? Experience has taught that it was indelibly so.When the first writers appeared who made use of prose, thischaracter was changed only with respect to the form, but byno means to the matter. They related in prose what thepoets had told in verse. This is expressly stated by Strabo. 1" The earliest writers," says he, " Cadmus of Miletus, Pherecydes,Hecatseus, preserved the poetic character, thoughnot the measure of verse. Those who came after them,were the first to descend from that height to the presentstyle of writing."The opinion of Cicero seems therefore tohave been ill founded, when he compares the oldest historians, and particularly Pherecydes, with the earliest annalistsFabius Pictor andof the Romans,Cato/ whose style wascertainly not poetical.The largernumber and the earliest of the narrators oftraditions, 3as Herodotus stylesthem in distinction from theepic poets, were lonians. Epic poetry was followed bynarrations in prose,in the very countries where it had beencultivated most successfully. History has left us in uncertainty respecting the more immediate causes of this change;"but has not the East always been the land of fables ?Here,where the crowd of colonial cities was springing up, whichwere founded toward the end of the heroic age, that class ofnarrations which relate to these subjects found the most appropriate themes. In explaining therefore the origin of historic science among the Greeks, it may perhaps be properto remember, that they participated in the character of theoriental nations ; although they merit the glory of havingsubsequently given to that science its true and peculiarcharacter.But in the period in which the prose style of narrationwas thus forming, the improvement of historic science apcitethat of Herodotus on the origin of Gyrene ;of which the poetic sourceseems unquestionable. How many similar relations in Pausanias betray thelsame origin!Strabo, i. p. 34.2 Cicero de 3 Oratore, ii. 12. The Xoyoy/xtyoc, as Hecatseus and others.