The work by William Smith, in one volume, 1865, is an excellent summary of Grecian history, as is also that of George W. Cox, 1876. The former work, which to a considerable extent is an abridgment of Grote, has been brought down, in a Boston edition, from the Roman Conquest to the middle of the present century, by Dr. Felton, late President of Harvard College. President Felton has also published two volumes of scholarly lectures on Ancient and Modern Greece (1867).
The works devoted to limited periods of Grecian history and special departments of research are very numerous. Among the most valuable of the former is the History of the Peloponnesian War, by the Greek historian Thucydides, of which there are several English versions. He was born in Athens, about the year 471 B.C. His is one of the ablest histories ever written.
Herodotus, the earliest and best of the romantic historians, sometimes called the "Father of History," was contemporary with Thucydides. He wrote, in a charming style, an elaborate work on the Persian and Grecian wars, most of the scenes of which he visited in person; and in numerous episodes and digressions he interweaves the most valuable history that we have of the early Asiatic nations and the Egyptians; but he indulges too much in the marvelous to be altogether reliable."
Of the numerous works of Xenophon, an Athenian who is sometimes called the "Attic Muse," from the simplicity and beauty of his style, the best known and the most pleasing are the Anab'asis, the Memorabil'ia of Socrates, and the Cyropedi'a, a political romance. He was born about 443 B.C. The best English translation of his works is by Watson, in Harper's "New Classical Library."
The work of the Greek historian, Polybius, originally in forty volumes, of which only five remain entire covered a period from the downfall of the Macedonian power to the subversion of Grecian liberty by the Romans, 146 B.C. It is a work of great accuracy, but of little rhetorical polish, and embraces much of Roman history from which Livy derived most of the materials for his account of the wars with Carthage.
In the first century of our era, Plutarch, a Greek biographer, wrote the "Parallel Lives" of forty-six distinguished Greeks and Romans—a charming and instructive work, translated by John and William Langhorne in 1771, and by Arthur Hugh Clough in 1858.
A history of Greece, in seven volumes, by George Finlay, a British historian, long resident at Athens, is noted for a thorough knowledge of Greek topography, art, and antiquity. The completed work embraces a period from the conquest of Greece by the Romans to the middle of the present century.
A History of Greek Literature, by J. P. Mahaffy, is the most polished descriptive work in the department which it embraces. It is happily supplemented by J. Addington Symonds' Studies of the Greek Poets. Mr. Mahaffy, in common with many German scholars, is an unbeliever in the unity of the Iliad.
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[The names of authors from whom illustrative prose selections are taken in SMALL CAPITALS; those from whom poetic selections are taken are in italics.]