Institutio Oratoria

If we turn to history, we shall find a number of distinguished writers; but there are two who must undoubtedly be set far above all their rivals: their excellences are different in kind, but have won almost equal praise. Thucydides is compact in texture, terse and ever eager to press forward: Herodotus is pleasant, lucid and diffuse: the former excels in vigour, speeches and the expression of the stronger passions; the latter in charm, conversations and the delineation of the gentler emotions.

Theopompus [*]( Theopompus of Chios, born about 378 B.C., wrote a history of Greece ( Hellenica ) from close of Peloponnesian war to 394 B.C., and a history of Greece in relation to Philip of Macedon ( Philippica ). His master, Isocrates, urged him to write history. ) comes next, and though as a historian he is inferior to the authors just mentioned, his style has a greater resemblance to oratory, which is not surprising, as he was an orator before he was urged to turn to history. Philistus [*]( Philistus of Syracuse, born about 430 B.C., wrote a history of Sicily. ) also deserves special distinction among the crowd of later historians, good though they may have been: he was an imitator of Thucydides, and though far his inferior, was somewhat more lucid. Ephorus, [*]( Ephorus of Cumae, flor. circ. 340 B.C., wrote a universal history. He was a pupil of Isocrates. Cp. II. viii. 11. ) according to Isocrates, needed the spur.

Clitarchus [*]( Clitarchus of Megara wrote a history of Persia and of Alexander, whose contemporary he was. ) has won approval by his talent, but his accuracy has been impugned. Timagenes [*]( Timagenes, a Syrian of the Augustan age, wrote a history of Alexander and his successors. ) was born long after these authors, but deserves our praise for the very fact that he revived the credit of history, the writing of which had fallen into neglect. I have not forgotten Xenophon, but he will find his place among the philosophers.

There follows a vast army of orators, Athens alone having produced ten remarkable orators [*]( Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias (flor. 403–380), Isocrates (435–338), Isacus, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Lycargus, Hyperides and Dinarchus. ) in the same generation. Of these Dermosthenes is far the greatest: indeed he came to be regarded almost as the sole pattern of oratory. Such is the force and compactness of his language, so muscular his style, so free from tameness and so self-controlled, that you will find nothing in him that is either too much or too little.