In the manifold prose work of this period, four principal departments may be distinguished. (1) _History_, with _Biography_, and _Geography_. History is represented by Dionysius of Halicarnassus--also memorable for his criticisms on the orators and his effort to revive a true standard of Attic prose--by Cassius Dio, Josephus, Arrian, Appian, Herodian, Eusebius and Zosimus. In biography, the foremost names are Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius and Philostratus; in geography, Hipparchus of Nicaea, Strabo, Ptolemy and Pausanias. (2) _Erudition_ and _Science_. The learned labours of the Alexandrian schools were continued in all their various fields. Under this head may be mentioned such works as the lexicons of Julius Pollux, Harpocration and Hesychius, Hephaestion's treatise on metre, and Herodian's system of accentuation; the commentaries of Galen on Plato and on Hippocrates; the learned miscellanies of Athenaeus, Aelian and Stobaeus; and the _Stratagems_ of Polyaenus. (3) _Rhetoric_ and _Belles-Lettres_. The most popular writers on the theory of rhetoric were Hermagoras, Hermogenes, Aphthonius and Cassius Longinus--the last the reputed author of the essay _On Sublimity_. Among the most renowned teachers of rhetoric--now distinctively called "Sophists," or rhetoricians--were Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, Themistius, Himerius, Libanius and Herodes Atticus. Akin to the rhetorical exercises were various forms of ornamental or imaginative prose--dialogues, letters, essays or novels. Lucian, in his dialogues, exhibits more of the classical style and of the classical spirit than any writer of the later age; he has also a remarkable affinity with the tone of modern satire, as in Swift or Voltaire. His Attic prose, though necessarily artificial, was at least the best that had been written for four centuries. The emperor Julian was the author both of orations and of satirical pieces. The chief of the Greek novelists (the forerunner of whom was Aristides of Miletus, c. 100 B.C., in his _Milesian Tales_) are Xenophon of Ephesus and Longus, representing a purely Greek type of romance, and Heliodorus--with his imitators Achilles Tatius and Chariton--representing a school influenced by Oriental fiction. There were also many Christian romances in Greek, usually of a religious tendency. Alciphron's fictitious _Letters_--founded largely on the New Comedy of Athens--represent the same kind of industry which produced the letters of Phalaris, Aristaenetus and similar collections. (4) _Philosophy_ is represented chiefly by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in both of whom the Stoic element is the prevailing one; by the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus; and by Proclus, of that eclectic school which arose at Athens in the 5th century A.D. Verse. The Anthology.