On the other hand, we shall find in him qualities of a most original type. His spirits are inexhaustible, he laughs heartily and often without malice at the follies of the mass of men; Cleon and Euripides were anathema to him, but the rest he treats as Fluellen did Pistol: "You beggarly knave, God bless you". His lyrics must be classed with the best in Greek poetry. Like Rabelais this rollicking jolly spirit disguises his wisdom under the mask of folly, turning aside with some whimsical twist just when he is beginning to be too serious. He will repay the most careful reading, for his best things are constantly turning up when least expected. His political satire ceasing with the death of Cleon, he turned to the land of pure fancy among the winged careless things; he then raised the woman's question, started literary criticism and ended with Allegory. To few has such a noble cycle of work been vouchsafed; we owe him at least a debt of remembrance, for he loved us as our brother. TRANSLATIONS: Frere (verse). This spirited version of five plays is justly famous. Various plays have been rendered into verse by Rogers (Bell). The translation is on the whole rather free. The volumes contain excellent introductions and notes. No prose translation of outstanding merit has appeared. The Greek tragedians have not received their due from translators and admirers. There is nothing in English drama inspired by Greece to compare with the French imitations of Seneca, Plautus and Terence. HERODOTUS Greek historical literature follows the same course of development as Greek poetry; it begins in epic form in Ionia and ends in dramatic type at Athens. Herodotus, "the father of History", was born at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor about 484 B.C. He travelled widely over the East, Egypt, North Africa and Greece. He was acquainted with the Sophoclean circle, joined the Athenian colony at Thurii in South Italy and died there before the end of the century. His subject was the defeat of the Persian attack on Greece and falls into three main divisions. In the first three books he tells how Persian power was consolidated: in the next three he shows how it flooded Russia, Thrace and Greece, being stemmed at Marathon in 490; the last three contain the story of its final shattering at Salamis and Plataea in 480 and of the Greek recoil on Asia in 479. It is thus a "triple wave of woes" familiar to Greek thought. His dialect is Ionic, which he adopted because it was the language of narrative poetry and prose.