1. It has been shown in the preceding chapter that the national and original poetry of the Doric race was not the epic, but the lyric; which is occupied rather in expressing inward feelings, than in describing outward objects. If this predilection may be considered as natural to the whole race, it will enable us to explain why history neither originated among, nor was cultivated by the Dorians. For both its progress and invention we are indebted to the Ionians, who were also the first to introduce prose-composition in general.(1753) The Dorians, however, did not always retain this incapacity; for we are told that the Spartans gladly listened to the sophist Hippias of Elis, speaking of the families of heroes and men, the settlements by which the cities had in ancient times been founded, and of ancient events in general.(1754) This naturally suggests the remark, that the Dorians paid more attention to the events of the past than of the present time; in which they are greatly opposed to the Ionians, who from their governments and geographical position were more thrown into society, and interested themselves more in the passing affairs of the day. Hence some of the early writers on mythical history were Dorians, as Acusilaus for example; but the contemporary historians were almost exclusively Ionians and Athenians;(1755) for Herodotus, who in his early years had lived for some time at Samos, and after his various travels wrote his History at Thurii, can hardly be considered as a genuine Dorian.(1756) Nor would it be difficult to account for the entire ignorance of the arts of rhetoric and logic in the Doric states (for the schools of rhetoricians and sophists in Sicily are evidently to be traced to the peculiar character of those islanders),(1757) or to see why the perfection of these, both in theory and practice, as well as that of the regular drama, was left to the Athenians.