varied and extensive
knowledge acquired in his travels, and by big own personal researches.
But the real subject of the work is the conflict between the Greek
race, in the widest sense of the term, and including the Greeks of Asia
Minor, with the Asiatics. Thus the historian had a vast epic subject
presented to him, which was brought to a natural and glorious
termination by the defeat of the Persians in their attempts upon
Greece. The work concludes with the reduction of Sestos by the
Athenians, B.C. 478. Herodotus wrote in the Ionic dialect, and his
style is marked by an ease and simplicity which lend it an
indescribable charm.

THUCYDIDES, the greatest of the Greek historians, was an Athenian, and
was born in the year 471 B.C. His family was connected with that of
Miltiades and Cimon. He possessed gold-mines in Thrace, and enjoyed
great influence in that country. He commanded an Athenian squadron of
seven ships at Thasos, in 424 B.C., at the time when Brasidas was
besieging Amphipolis; and having failed to relieve that city in time,
he went into a voluntary exile, in order probably to avoid the
punishment of death. He appears to have spent 20 years in banishment,
principally in the Peloponnesus, or in places under the dominion or
influence of Sparta. He perhaps returned to Athens in B.C. 403, the
date of its liberation by Thrasybulus. According to the unanimous
testimony of antiquity he met with a violent end, and it seems probable
that he was assassinated at Athens, since it cannot be doubted that his
tomb existed there. From the beginning of the Peloponnesian war he had
designed to write its history, and he employed himself in collecting
materials for that purpose during its continuance; but it is most
likely that the work was not actually composed till after the
conclusion of the war, and that he was engaged upon it at the time of
his death. The first book of his History is introductory, and contains
a rapid sketch of Grecian history from the remotest times to the
breaking out of the war. The remaining seven books are filled with the
details of the war, related according to the division into summers and
winters, into which all campaigns naturally fall; and the work breaks
off abruptly in the middle of the 21st year of the war (B.C. 411). The
materials of Thucydides were collected with the most scrupulous care;
the events are related with the strictest impartiality; and the work
probably offers a more ex