The prose of the Attic period we may divide roughly into history, oratory and philosophy. On the historians read Logographi, Greece, Ancient History, “Authorities” (Vol. 12, p. 454), with criticism of the historical accuracy of Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus, Plutarch, Xenophon, etc., Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus (Vol. 13, p. 381; equivalent to 10 pages of this Guide), by the historian George Rawlinson and E. M. Walker, librarian of Queen’s College, Oxford; Thucydides (Vol. 26, p. 893; equivalent to 10 pages of the Guide), by Sir R. C. Jebb, and Malcolm Mitchell, editor of Grote’s Greece; Xenophon (Vol. 28, p. 885; equivalent to 7 pages in this Guide), by E. M. Walker and J. H. Freese; Ctesias, Philistus, Theopompus, and Timaeus.

Oratory

On Attic orators read Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, Antiphon, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hypereides,—most of these articles being by Sir R. C. Jebb, who was particularly versed in this branch of Greek literature. The special student of the orators should read also the articles Greek Law (Vol. 12, p. 501; equivalent to 15 pages in this Guide), by Prof. J. E. Sandys of Cambridge, author of A History of Classical Scholarship, etc.; Sophists (Vol. 25, p. 418, equivalent to 20 pages of this Guide), by Prof. Henry Jackson of Cambridge, a well-known writer on Greek philosophy, and Rhetoric (Vol. 23, p. 233), by Sir R. C. Jebb.

On Greek philosophical writing see the articles Pherecydes of Syros, Anaximenes of Miletus, Anaximander, and the names great not only in Greek thought and literature but in the world’s—Plato (Vol. 21, p. 808; equivalent to about 50 pages of this Guide), by Lewis Campbell, editor and critic of many of the Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle (Vol. 2, p. 501; equivalent to 70 pages of this Guide), by Prof. Thomas Case, Oxford, author of Physical Realism, etc. For a fuller guide to Greek philosophy see the chapter in this Guide on Philosophy.

Decadence

The third period of classical Greek literature was one of Greek thought in unGreek surroundings—see the article Hellenism, by E. R. Bevan, author of The House of Seleucus, etc.,—and this came to its first and finest flower in Alexandria, in Egypt, under the Ptolemies—see the article Alexandrian School, especially that part of it dealing with Literature (Vol. 1, p. 573). On the writers of the Alexandrian period see: for poetry, Philetas, Hermesianax, Asclepiades of Samos, and the comic poets Sotades and Rhinthon, already mentioned; Herodas, by W. G. Headlam, editor of Herodas; the idyllist Theocritus (Vol. 26, p. 760), by A. C. Clark, fellow of Queen’s, Oxford; Theocritus’s followers Bion and Moschus; the mythologist Callimachus, who influenced Catullus as much as Theocritus did the young Virgil; the didactic poet Aratus, whom Cicero translated into Latin and whom Virgil imitated in his Georgics; the epic Apollonius of Rhodes, and the late tragedian Lycophron; and for prose the critic Aristarchus.

In the Greco-Roman period, following the Alexandrian the principal articles for the student are: the historians Polybius and Diodorus Siculus, the satirist Lucian, the later historians Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Dio Cassius, Arrian, Appian, Herodian, Eusebius, Zosimus, the biographers Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, Philostratus, the rhetoricians Longinus and Dio Chrysostom, and the emperor philosopher Marcus Aurelius and his forerunner the “slave philosopher” Epictetus.

Possibly the most typical output of the later Greek age is the matchless collection of short poems known to us as “the Greek Anthology”; on this see the articles Epigram and Anthology.

CHAPTER XLI
BIBLE STUDY

It is impossible for the student to consider the subject of Bible Study without being impressed by the immense labour and the profound scholarship which have been devoted to the interpretation and discussion of Scripture. Continued investigation has solved many difficulties, but has also vastly increased the mass of evidences and conjectures which must be weighed in connection with any doubtful passages. The Britannica tells us, for example, (Vol. 3, pp. 903, 904) that the translators of the King James’s version spent only two years and nine months over their task, while the work on the Revised Version took eleven years for the New Testament and fourteen for the Old Testament.