Chapter 1 No.1

Our Earlier Historians of Greece.

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Definite and indefinite problems 1

Examples in theology and metaphysics 1

Examples in literature 2

The case of history generally 3

Special claims of Greek history 4

The claims of Rome and of the Jews 4

Greek influences in our religion 4

Increasing materials 5

Plan of this Essay 6

Universal histories 6

Gillies 7

Effects of the French Revolution on the writers of the time 8

Mitford writes a Tory history of Greece 8

He excites splendid refutations 9

Thirlwall: his merits 10

his coldness 11

his fairness and accuracy, but without enthusiasm 11

Clinton's Fasti: his merits 12

Contrast of Grote's life 13

His theory Radicalism 13

The influences of his time 14

To be compared with Gibbon 14

His eloquence; his panegyric on democracy 15

Objections: that democracies are short-lived 16

that the Athenian democrat was a slave-holder and a ruler over subjects 16

The Athenian not the ideal of the Greeks 17

Grote's treatment of the despots 18

Their perpetual recurrence in the Greek world 18

Advantages of despotism 18

Good despots not infrequent 19

Grote a practical politician 20

His treatment of Alexander the Great 20

Contrast of Thirlwall 20

Grote ignores the later federations, and despises their history 21

His treatment of the early legends 22

Even when plausible, they may be fictions 22

Thirlwall's view less extreme 23

Influence of Niebuhr on both historians 23

Neither of them visited Greece, which later historians generally regard as essential 24

Ernst Curtius and Victor Duruy 25

The value of autopsy in verifying old authors 25

Example in the theatre of Athens 25

Its real size 26

No landscape for its background 26

Greek scenery and art now accessible to all 27