is known of the several books in Müller's Fragg., i. pp. lxx-lxxii. His many panegyrical and deliberative speeches, as well as his letters, doubtless in the style of his master Isocrates, are rarely cited. Athenæus refers four times to his letters to Alexander for attacks on the Chians, and on Harpalus concerning his immoral life.1 There are also mentioned a Diatribe against Plato, and a tract on Piety.

2

§ 593. We have many and explicit judgments on his merits as a historian and as a stylist, which are sufficiently supported by his fragments to give us a clearer idea of him than of any of his rivals. We have an abstract of his vain and self asserting personal preface to the Philippicu. He here boasted of his independence from writing for pay, of the number of his works, and their celebrity through the world, as well as of his travels, quite after the manner of one of the older sophists. He proceeded to assert the superiority of the literary men of his own day over their predecessors, owing to the advances and improvements made in the study of letters. This offensive selfpraise was no doubt common in the school of Isocrates, and marks a turning point in the history of Greek literature. It is plain from the exceedingly voluminous character of Theopompus' compositions, from the extraordinary variety of the subjects quoted in our fragments, and from other indications, that he aimed at excelling Herodotus rather than Thucydides. But not only were his digressions excessive and tedious, but the stories of marvels and miracles, and of barbarian manners and customs, which sound appropriate in Herodotus, were out of place and even offensive in this more conscious and sceptical age, and were justly ridiculed by his critics. We may also be certain that he treated his subject in an intensely rhetorical spirit, seeking everywhere for effect rather than strict truth. He was, moreover, a strong political partisan, and allowed himself constantly to attack violently Greek democracies and their failings. Indeed, in every case he sought out hidden motives, and stated them with force, but often with libellous rancour. His taste for repeating private scandal, and for drawing pictures of luxury and of immorality among both 1 Frags. 276-8. 2 Frag. 26.

Greeks and barbarians,' shows a very different order of mind from that of Herodotus. He is in fact a self-conscious, rhetorical, Isocratic ape of the great historian. Nor do his invectives against the increasing luxury of the age sound like the outcome of sincere indignation, but rather of a sour and faultfinding temper.

But withal, he must have been a man of considerable force, and far the greatest of Isocrates' pupils. The very persecutions he endured show that his furious invectives, and his angry advices on public affairs, had far more effect than the despised pamphlets of his master. He is quoted particularly often by Athenæus on various manners and customs, which he had minutely described, and these are unfortunately not the most edifying or instructive portions of his works. In spite of his strong self-assertion, and his unwearied diligence, no subsequent critic admitted him to the pinnacle he claimed above his great predecessors in historiography.2

§ 594. I do not think that any of the numerous succeeding historians,3 or the group of antiquarian writers who

1 Cf. in Müller frags. 33, 54, 65, 95, 129, 149, 178, 222, 243, 249, 260.

2 The utilisation of Theopompus by later historians—Nepos, Plutarch, Diodorus, &c.-forms a parallel enquiry to those above cited as regards Ephorus. The episode Teρì dnμaywyŵv seems to have been often thus transcribed. In addition to the tracts above given, which touch on Theopompus as well as Ephorus, we have Bünger, Theopompus (Würzburg, 1874); Natorp, quos auctores-secuti sint Diodorus, &c. (Würzburg, 1876); Rühl, die Quellen Plut. in Leben des Kimon (Marburg, 1867); and Schmidt's Perikleisches Zeitalter. These critics set up and overthrow all manner of hypotheses on the indirect use of sources by late authors. But as they are chiefly based on the unproved assumption that later transcribers adhered with uniformity to the authority they had once selected, none of them is likely to add much to our knowledge of lost authors.

Thus Timæus of Tauromenium, who was born in classical days (about 350 B.C.), did not begin his literary work till late in life, after his exile by Agathocles, and his settlement at Athens. The whole style of his Sicilian history, his perpetual censure of his forerunners, his want of that chastity and reticence which marked good Greek prose, unite in degrading him in our estimation to a writer of the silver age. Our chief knowledge of him is from Polybius, who 'hoists him on his own petard by frequent censuring of his angry criticisms.

composed Atthides on the legendary and historical lore of Athens, can be included in classical Greek literature. In no case have we sufficient knowledge of them to judge of their style, and there is no reason to think that any one of them reached such excellence as to entitle him to any attention beyond that claimed by the matter of his book. The age of originating in literature was passing away. People who studied form had unapproachable models in the older masters. People who desired new knowledge sought it in a great and wide-spreading literature which was scientific in its aim, and sought merely to impart knowledge in the plainest way. These critical and scientific tendencies found a suitable atmosphere for their growth beyond the limits of Greece, and in the new kingdom which first mediated between purely Hellenic and non-Hellenic culture. To enter upon the history of this period, and in this foreign soil, must be reserved for a different work.