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ANCIENT GREECE.[CHAT-, xrv.are so little able to mark the progressof its particularbranches. But whatever influences these causes may haveexercised, the greatreason which retarded historic sciencebefore Herodotus layin the want of subjects.Before the Persian wars, there was no subject capable ofinspiring the historian. The Trojan war, the Argonauticexpedition, all great undertakings, belonged to tradition,and hence belonged more than half to poetry. The narrations of the origin of the individual cities, accounts of distant nations and countries, might gratify curiosity, mightaiford amusement ;but nothing more. There existed nogreat national subject of universal interest.At length came the Persian wars. The victory at Marathon first awakened a spirit of valour; whether this wasmore inflamed by the defeat at Thermopylae, or the victoryat Salamis, it is difficult to say with the battle of ; Plataeae,freedom was saved. What a subject for the historic Muse !The subject, from its very nature, belonged exclusivelyto history and; poetry had no share in it. It was no subject of hoary antiquity, nor yet of the present moment ;butof a period which had but recently passed away. And yetitcame so variously in contact with tradition, that an historianin a critical age would often have been compelled to takehis walks into the regions of mythology. How much more,then, at a time, when the bounds between history and tradition had not yet been in the slightest degree marked out !Herodotus employed himself on this subject, and managedit in a manner which surpassedallexpectation. 1Many1Dahlmann in 1823 published liis careful criticism on the life of the fatherof History, in the second volume of his Historical Inquiries. Herodot. jausseinem Buche sein Leben. The critic recognises the value of the great historian, to whose just fame I hope by this work to have contributed something;yet he proves, that on many points an uncertainty prevails, sufficient to warrant a difference of opinion. I count among them, the time of the composition and publication of the work of Herodotus. Certainly, in its presentform, it is not the production of his youth and it is jquite as improbable that itcould have been written after his seventy-seventh year. The mention by Dalhmannof several events as late as 408 B. C., warrants an inference only asto the time when Herodotus published his work, not as to the time when hewrote it. The death of Amyrtseus of Syncellus, as Dahlmann remarks, and asthe new Armenian edition of Eusebius confirms, happened eight years earlier,that is, 416 B. 0. ;and if the Darius, mentioned i. 130, is Darius Nothus, itis surprising that he is not more precisely designated. The most natural inference is, that Herodotus, as a young man, collected his materials on histravels, wrote it at Thurium in the maturity of manhood, about 444 B. C.but did not publish it till his old age. That he formed his design early "and