It is towards the end of the 5th century that a fresh source of information becomes available in the speeches of the orators, the earliest of whom is Antiphon (d. 411 B.C.). Lysias is of great importance for the history of the Thirty The orators. (see the speeches against Eratosthenes and Agoratus), and a good deal may be gathered from Andocides with regard to the last years of the 5th and the opening years of the next century. At the other end of this period Lycurgus, Hyperides and Dinarchus throw light upon the time of Philip and Alexander. The three, however, who are of most importance to the historian are Isocrates, Aeschines and Demosthenes. Isocrates (q.v.), whose long life (436-338) more than spans the interval Isocrates. between the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and the triumph of Macedon at Chaeronea, is one of the most characteristic figures in the Greek world of his day. To comprehend that world the study of Isocrates is indispensable; for in an age dominated by rhetoric he is the prince of rhetoricians. It is difficult for a modern reader to do him justice, so alien is his spirit and the spirit of his age from ours. It must be allowed that he is frequently monotonous and prolix; at the same time it must not be forgotten that, as the most famous representative of rhetoric, he was read from one end of the Greek world to the other. He was the friend of Evagoras and Archidamus, of Dionysius and Philip; he was the master of Aeschines and Lycurgus amongst orators and of Ephorus and Theopompus amongst historians. No other contemporary writer has left so indelible a stamp upon the style and the sentiment of his generation. It is a commonplace that Isocrates is the apostle of Panhellenism. It is not so generally recognized that he is the prophet of Hellenism. A passage in the Panegyricus (§ 50 ὥστε τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὄνομα μήκετι τοῦ γένους ἀλλὰ τῆς διανοίας δοκεῖν εἶναι καὶ μᾶλλον Ἕλληνας καλεῖσθαι τοὺς τῆς παιδεύσεως τῆς ἡμετέρας ἤ τοὺς τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως μετέχοντας) is the key to the history of the next three centuries. Doubtless he had no conception of the extent to which the East was to be hellenized. He was, however, the first to recognize that it would be hellenized by the diffusion of Greek culture rather than of Greek blood. His Panhellenism was the outcome of his recognition of the new forces and tendencies which were at work in the midst of a new generation. When Greek culture was becoming more and more international, the exaggeration of the principle of autonomy in the Greek political system was becoming more and more absurd. He had sufficient insight to be aware that the price paid for this autonomy was the domination of Persia; a domination which meant the servitude of the Greek states across the Aegean and the demoralization of Greek political life at home. His Panhellenism led him to a more liberal view of the distinction between what was Greek and what was not than was possible to the intenser patriotism of a Demosthenes. In his later orations he has the courage not only to pronounce that the day of Athens as a first-rate power is past, but to see in Philip the needful leader in the crusade against Persia. The earliest and greatest of his political orations is the Panegyricus, published in 380 B.C., midway between the peace of Antalcidas and Leuctra. It is his apologia for Panhellenism. To the period of the Social War belong the De pace (355 B.C.) and the Areopagiticus (354 B.C.), both of great value as evidence for the internal conditions of Athens at the beginning of the struggle with Macedon. The Plataicus (373 B.C.) and the Archidamus (366 B.C.) throw light upon the politics of Boeotia and the Peloponnese respectively. The Panathenaicus (339 B.C.), the child of his old age, contains little that may not be found in the earlier orations. The Philippus (346 B.C.) is of peculiar interest, as giving the views of the Macedonian party.
Not the least remarkable feature in recent historical criticism is the reaction against the view which was at one time almost universally accepted of the character, statesmanship and authority of the orator Demosthenes (q.v.). Demosthenes. During the last quarter of a century his character and statesmanship have been attacked, and his authority impugned, by a series of writers of whom Holm and Beloch are the best known. With the estimate of his character and statesmanship we are not here concerned. With regard to his value as an authority for the history of the period, it is to his speeches, and to those of his contemporaries, Aeschines, Hypereides, Dinarchus and Lycurgus, that we owe our intimate knowledge, both of the working of the constitutional and legal systems, and of the life of the people, at this period of Athenian history. From this point of view his value can hardly be overestimated. As a witness, however, to matters of fact, his authority can no longer be rated as highly as it once was, e.g. by Schaefer and by Grote. The orator’s attitude towards events, both in the past and in the present, is inevitably a different one from the historian’s. The object of a Thucydides is to ascertain a fact, or to exhibit it in its true relations. The object of a Demosthenes is to make a point, or to win his case. In their dealings with the past the orators exhibit a levity which is almost inconceivable to a modern reader. Andocides, in a passage of his speech On the Mysteries (§ 107), speaks of Marathon as the crowning victory of Xerxes’ campaign; in his speech On the Peace (§ 3) he confuses Miltiades with Cimon, and the Five Years’ Peace with the Thirty Years’ Truce. Though the latter passage is a mass of absurdities and confusions, it was so generally admired that it was incorporated by Aeschines in his speech On the Embassy (§§ 172-176). If such was their attitude towards the past; if, in order to make a point, they do not hesitate to pervert history, is it likely that they would conform to a higher standard of veracity in their statements as to the present—as to their contemporaries, their rivals or their own actions? When we compare different speeches of Demosthenes, separated by an interval of years, we cannot fail to observe a marked difference in his statements. The farther he is from the events, the bolder are his mis-statements. It is only necessary to compare the speech On the Crown with that On the Embassy, and this latter speech with the Philippics and Olynthiacs, to find illustrations. It has come to be recognized that no statement as to a matter of fact is to be accepted, unless it receives independent corroboration, or unless it is admitted by both sides. The speeches of Demosthenes may be conveniently divided into four classes according to their dates. To the pre-Philippic period belong the speeches On the Symmories (354 B.C.), On Megalopolis (352 B.C.), Against Aristocrates (351 B.C.), and, perhaps, the speech On Rhodes (? 351 B.C.). These speeches betray no consciousness of the danger threatened by Philip’s ambition. The policy recommended is one based upon the principle of the balance of power. To the succeeding period, which ends with the peace of Philocrates (346 B.C.), belong the First Philippic and the three Olynthiacs. To the period between the peace of Philocrates and Chaeronea belong the speech On the Peace (346 B.C.), the Second Philippic (344 B.C.), the speeches On the Embassy (344 B.C.) and On the Chersonese (341 B.C.), and the Third Philippic. The masterpiece of his genius, the speech On the Crown, was delivered in 330 B.C., in the reign of Alexander. Of the three extant speeches of Aeschines (q.v.) that On the Embassy is of great value, as enabling us to correct the mis-statements of Demosthenes. For the period from the death of Alexander to the fall of Corinth (323-146 B.C.) our literary authorities are singularly defective. For the Diadochi Diodorus (books xviii.-xx.) is our chief source. These books form the most valuable part of Diodorus’ work. They are mainly based upon the work of Hieronymus of Cardia, a writer who combined exceptional opportunities for ascertaining the truth (he was in the service first of Eumenes, and then of Antigonus) with an exceptional sense of its importance. Hieronymus ended his history at the death of Pyrrhus (272 B.C.), but, unfortunately, book xx. of Diodorus’ work carries us no farther than 303 B.C., and of the later books we have but scanty fragments. The narrative of Diodorus may be supplemented by the fragments of Arrian’s History of the events after Alexander’s death (which reach, however, only to 321 B.C.), and by Plutarch’s Lives of Eumenes and of Demetrius. For the rest of the 3rd century and the first half of the 2nd we have his Lives of Pyrrhus, of Aratus, of Philopoemen, and of Agis and Cleomenes. For the period from 220 B.C. onwards Polybius (q.v.) is our chief authority (see [Rome]: Ancient History, section “Authorities”). In a period in which the literary sources are so scanty great weight attaches to the epigraphic and numismatic evidence.
Bibliography.—The literature which deals with the history of Greece, in its various periods, departments and aspects, is of so vast a bulk that all that can be attempted here is to indicate the most important and most accessible works.
General Histories of Greece.—Down to the middle of the 19th century the only histories of Greece deserving of mention were the products of English scholarship. The two earliest of these were published about the same date, towards the end of the 18th century, nearly three-quarters of a century before any history of Greece, other than a mere compendium, appeared on the Continent. John Gillies’ History of Greece was published in 1786, Mitford’s in 1784. Both works were composed with a political bias and a political object. Gillies was a Whig. In the dedication (to George III.) he expresses the view that “the History of Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence of Democracy, and arraigns the despotism of Tyrants, while it evinces the inestimable benefits, resulting to Liberty itself, from the steady operation of well-regulated monarchy.” Mitford was a Tory, who thought to demonstrate the evils of democracy from the example of the Athenian state. His History, in spite of its bias, was a work of real value. More than fifty years elapsed between Mitford’s work and Thirlwall’s. Connop Thirlwall, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, afterwards bishop of St David’s, brought a sound judgment to the aid of ripe scholarship. His History of Greece, published in 1835-1838 (8 vols.), is entirely free from the controversial tone of Mitford’s volumes. Ten years later (1846) George Grote published the first volumes of his history, which was not completed (in 12 vols.) till 1856. Grote, like Mitford, was a politician—an ardent Radical, with republican sympathies. It was in order to refute the slanders of the Tory partisan that he was impelled to write a history of Greece, which should do justice to the greatest democracy of the ancient world, the Athenian state. Thus, in the case of three of these four writers, the interest in their subject was mainly political. Incomparably the greatest of these works is Grote’s. Grote had his faults and his limitations. His prejudices are strong, and his scholarship is weak; he had never visited Greece, and he knew little or nothing of Greek art; and, at the time he wrote, the importance of coins and inscriptions was imperfectly apprehended. In spite of every defect, however, his work is the greatest history of Greece that has yet been written. It is not too much to say that nobody knows Greek history till he has mastered Grote. No history of Greece has since appeared in England on a scale at all comparable to that of Grote’s work. The most important of the more recent ones is that by J. B. Bury (1 vol., 1900), formerly fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, afterwards Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Mitford and Bury end with the death of Alexander; Gillies and Grote carry on the narrative a generation farther; while Thirlwall’s work extends to the absorption of Greece in the Roman Empire (146 B.C.).
While in France the Histoire des Grecs (ending at 146 B.C.) of Victor Duruy (new edition, 2 vols., 1883), Minister of Public Instruction under Napoleon III., is the only one that need be mentioned, in Germany there has been a succession of histories of Greece since the middle of the 19th century. Kortüm’s Geschichte Griechenlands (3 vols., 1854), a work of little merit, was followed by Max Duncker’s Geschichte der Griechen (vols. 1 and 2 published in 1856; vols. 1 and 2, Neue Folge, which bring the narrative down to the death of Pericles, in 1884; the two former volumes form vols. 5, 6 and 7 of his Geschichte des Altertums), and by the Griechische Geschichte of Ernst Curtius (3 vols., 1857-1867). An English translation of Duncker, by S. F. Alleyne, appeared in 1883 (2 vols., Bentley), and of Curtius, by A. W. Ward (5 vols., Bentley, 1868-1873). Among more recent works may be mentioned the Griechische Geschichte of Adolf Holm (4 vols., Berlin, 1886-1894; English translation by F. Clarke, 4 vols., Macmillan, 1894-1898), and histories with the same title by Julius Beloch (3 vols., Strassburg, 1893-1904) and Georg Busolt (2nd ed., 3 vols., Gotha, 1893-1904). Holm carries on the narrative to 30 B.C., Beloch to 217 B.C., Busolt to Chaeronea (338 B.C.).[32] Busolt’s work is entirely different in character from any other history of Greece. The writer’s object is to refer in the notes (which constitute five-sixths of the book) to the views of every writer in any language upon every controverted question. It is absolutely indispensable, as a work of reference, for any serious study of Greek history. The ablest work since Grote’s is Eduard Meyer’s Geschichte des Altertums, of which 5 vols. (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1884-1902) have appeared, carrying the narrative down to the death of Epaminondas (362 B.C.). Vols. 2-5 are principally concerned with Greek history. It must be remembered that, partly owing to the literary finds and the archaeological discoveries of the last thirty years, and partly owing to the advance made in the study of epigraphy and numismatics, all the histories published before those of Busolt, Beloch, Meyer and Bury are out of date.
Works bearing on the History of Greece.—Earlier works and editions are omitted, except in the case of a work which has not been superseded.
Introductions.—C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte (1 vol., Leipzig, 1895); E. Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte (2 parts, Halle, 1892-1899; quite indispensable); J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians (London, 1909).
Constitutional History and Institutions.—G. F. Schömann, Griechische Altertümer (2 vols., Berlin, 1855-1859; vol. i., tr. by E. G. Hardy and J. S. Mann, Rivingtons, 1880); G. Gilbert, Griechische Staatsaltertümer (2nd ed., 2 vols., Leipzig, 1893; vol. i. tr. by E. J. Brooks and T. Nicklin, Swan Sonnenschein, 1895); K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten (6th ed., 4 vols., Freiburg, 1882-1895); Iwan Müller, Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (9 vols., Nördlingen, 1886, in progress; several of the volumes are concerned with Greek history); J. H. Lipsius, Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren (Leipzig, 1905, in progress); A. H. J. Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History (1 vol., Macmillan, 1896); Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1894 foll.).
Geography.—E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography amongst the Greeks and Romans (2nd ed., 2 vols., Murray, 1883), W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea (3 vols., 1830), and Travels in Northern Greece (4 vols., 1834); H. F. Tozer, Lectures on the Geography of Greece (1 vol., Murray, 1873), and History of Ancient Geography (1 vol., Cambridge, 1897); J. P. Mahaffy, Rambles and Studies in Greece (3rd ed., 1 vol., Macmillan, 1887, an admirable book); C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland (2 vols., Leipzig, 1872); H. Berger, Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen (4 parts, Leipzig, 1887-1893); Ernst Curtius, Peloponnesos (2 vols., Gotha, 1850-1851).
Epigraphy and Numismatics.—Corpus inscriptionum Atticarum (Berlin, 1875, in progress), Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum (Berlin, 1892, in progress). The following selections of Greek inscriptions may be mentioned: E. F. Hicks and G. F. Hill, Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions (new ed., 1 vol., Oxford, 1901): W. Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum (2nd ed., 2 vols., Berlin, 1898); C. Michel, Recueil d’inscriptions grecques (Paris, 1900). Among works on numismatics the English reader may refer to B. V. Head, Historia numorum (1 vol., Oxford, 1887); G. F. Hill, Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins (1 vol., Macmillan, 1899), as well as to the British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins. In French the most important general work is the Monnaies grecques of F. Imhoof-Blumer (Paris, 1883).