Not justifiable without particular reasons.
Max Duncker.
Not suited to English readers.
§ 14. We may now pass to the more modern treatment of the myths and mythical history of Greece. There are before us the essays of several men since the monumental work of Grote. First there is that of Ernst Curtius; then Duncker's (both translated into English); still more recently the shorter histories of Holm, Busolt, Hertzberg, and other Germans, not to speak of Sir George Cox's history and the first volume of that of Mr. Evelyn Abbott. In fact they are so many and so various that the production of a new work on Greek history requires some special justification. For the time has really come when we may begin to complain of new histories that are not new, but merely reproduce the old facts and the old arguments, without regard to what specialists have been doing to clear up particular questions. Duncker's large work, of which the earlier period of Greek history forms the closing part, is indeed an important book, and cannot be dismissed so easily. But if I may venture to speak out, I do not think it was worth translating into English. Scholars
earnest and patient enough to read through it can hardly fail to have learned German, and therefore require no English version. I cannot believe that the English-speaking public will ever read it, nor do I think this should be expected. For in the first place the book is sadly deficient in style,—not merely in the graces of style, which are seldom attained by professional scholars, but in that higher quality of style produced either by burning passion or delicate æsthetic taste. Duncker is not, like most of the English historians, a politician. To him despot and democracy are mere things to be analyzed. Nor does he strive to advocate novel and picturesque views, like Ernst Curtius. His mind is so conservative that he rather takes a step backward, and reverts, especially in his chronology, to statements which of late seemed likely to be discarded as obsolete. He is always sensible and instructive; he has an excellent habit of making his authorities speak for themselves: but he wants verve as well as originality in treating old, unsettled problems, though he has made some remarkable re-constructions of history from conflicting myths.
Busolt and Holm.
Return to Grote.
Holm's postulate.
The two best recent histories to which I have referred, Busolt's in 1885, Holm's in 1886 (I speak of the first volumes), are by no means so conservative as Duncker; Holm is as advanced in his scepticism as Grote; but, as I shall show in the sequel, their scepticism is still spasmodic, or shall I say varied with touches of credulity, which are probably the necessary relief of all scepticism. Nothing strikes
the reader of these new Greek histories more forcibly than their abandonment of the combinations of the school of E. Curtius, and their return to the attitude of Grote, whose decision concerning the utter untrustworthiness of legends for historical purposes they all quote with approval. The ground taken by Grote was the possibility of 'plausible fiction' which could not possibly be distinguished, as miraculous stories can, from sober history. Holm adds to this some excellent arguments showing the strong temptations to deliberate invention which must have actuated the old chronographers and genealogists[30:1]. Nevertheless, Holm devotes 200 12mo pages, Busolt 100 8vo, of their 'short histories' to the analysis and discussion of the legends and discoveries concerning pre-historic Greece, in the course of which they cannot avoid many inferences from very doubtful evidence. Holm very justly demands that historians should let the reader know in the stating of it, what has been handed down to us, and what is modern hypothesis, and claims to have observed this distinction himself. But there are traditions which are manifestly late and untrustworthy, such as that which fixes the dates of Arktinos and Eumelos, and tells us of written registers in the eighth century B.C., which he accepts without a due caution to his readers.
