The first author, at once of considerable age and of purely literary value, to be very fully handled is the above-mentioned Ctesias, and we have only fragments whereby to control Photius’s criticism of him. But the paragraph which comes at the end of the abstract of the _Persica_, and applies both to that and to the _Indica_, is itself worth abstracting. “This historian is very clear and simple in language, so that his style is mixed with much pleasure. He uses the Ionic dialect, not throughout, like Herodotus, but partially. Nor does he, like that writer, divert his story to unseasonable digressions. But from the mythical matters with which Herodotus is reproached neither does Ctesias abstain, especially in the book called _Indica_. Still, the pleasure of his history consists chiefly in the arrangement of his narrative, which is strong in the pathetic and unexpected, and in the variation of it by dint of the mythical. His style is slipshod more than is fitting, often falling into mere vulgarity. But the style of Herodotus, both in this and other respects of the power and art of the Word, is the canon of the Ionic dialect.” Footnote 245: πυκνότης, which some would render “shrewdness.” Footnote 246: βρύων γλυκύτητος. Footnote 247: τῷ ἀρχαϊσμῷ καὶ ταῖς καινοπρεπεστέραις τῶν συντάξεων εμφιλοτιμουμενος. Footnote 248: εἰς ἰδιάζουσαν ἰδέαν ἐκβεβιασμένος. Appian’s _Roman History_ and Arrian’s _Parthica_ come in for successive notice, but there is nothing about the latter’s literary character till the much later and fuller notice of his Alexander-book at 91, where Photius, as is specially his wont with historians, gives a full appreciation. The pupil of Epictetus, he thinks, "is second to none among those who have best drawn up histories, for he is both first-rate at succinct narration, and he never hurts the continuousness of his history by unseasonable divagations and parentheses.[249] He is original [“new-fangled,” the usual translation of καινοπρεπὴς, has a too unfavourable twist in it], rather by the arrangement of his words than by his vocabulary; and he manages this in such a fashion that hardly otherwise could the tale be told more clearly and luminously. He uses a vivid, euphonious, well-turned style, and has smoothness well mixed with grandeur.[250] His neologisms are not directed to mere innovation _à perte de vue_,[251] but close and emphatic, so as to be real figures of speech and not merely change for ordinary words.[252] Wherefore clearness is his companion, not merely in this respect, but most of all in the arrangement and order and constitution of his style, which is the very craft-secret of clearness. For the use of merely straightforward periods is within the power of mere uncultivated persons,[253] and, if it be maintained without admixture, brings the style down to flatness and meanness, whereto Arrian, clear as he is, has not approached. And he makes use of elliptic figures not in respect of his period but of his