that of the bards, a heroic event. His story is a vast prose epos, in
which science is to this extent subordinated to art. "This is the
showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, to the end
that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the
works, great and marvellous, which have been produced, some by Hellenes,
some by Barbarians, may lose their renown, and especially that the
causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another"
(i.e. the Persian war).
In Thucydides a higher art than that of Herodotus was combined with a
higher science. He scorned the story-teller "who seeks to please the ear
rather than to speak the truth," and yet his rhetoric is the culmination
of Greek historical prose. He withdrew from vulgar applause, conscious
that his narrative would be considered "disappointing to the ear," yet
he recast the materials out of which he constructed it in order to lift
that narrative into the realm of pure literature. Speeches, letters and
documents are reworded to be in tone with the rest of the story. It was
his art, in fact, which really created the Peloponnesian war out of its
separate parts. And yet this art was merely the language of a scientist.
The "laborious task" of which he speaks is that of consulting all
possible evidence, and weighing conflicting accounts. It is this which
makes his rhetoric worth while, "an everlasting possession, not a prize
competition which is heard and forgotten."
From the sublimity of Thucydides, and Xenophon's straight-forward story,
history passed with Theopompus and Ephorus into the field of rhetoric. A
revival of the scientific instinct of investigation is discernable in
Timaeus the Sicilian, at the end of the 4th century, but his attack upon
his predecessors was the text of a more crushing attack upon himself by
Polybius, who declares him lacking in critical insight and biased by
passion. Polybius' comments upon Timaeus reach the dignity of a treatise
upon history. He protests against its use for controversial pamphlets
which distort the truth. "Directly a man assumes the moral attitude of
an historian he ought to forget all considerations, such as love of
one's friends, hatred of one's enemies.... He must sometimes praise
enemies and blame friends. For as a living creature is rendered useless
if deprived of its eyes, so if you take truth from History, what is left
but an improfitable tale" (bk. xii. 14). These are the words of a Ranke.
Unfortunately Polybius, like most modern scientific historians, was no
artist. His style is the very opposite of that of Isocrates and the
rhetoricians. It is often only clear in the light of inscriptions, so
closely does it keep to the sources. The style found no imitator;
history passed from Greece to Rome in the guise of rhetoric. In
Dionysius of Halicarnassus the rhetoric was combined with an extensive
study of the sources; but the influence of the Greek rhetoricians upon
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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