The ancient Greek historians (Harvard lectures) by J. B. Bury.

I THE EPICS AS HISTORY 3
experience. Sparta, for instance, had a complicated constitution; yearly magistrates had been
introduced at Athens. The number of the small
independent states which had to live together,
some of which had special relations to one another,
tended to develop the political sense. Intensity
of political life had been the outcome of the
institution of the polis, and the Hellenic world
was the scene of numerous and various experiments in government. In these conditions,
political literature originated. Archilochus, Tyrtaeus, Solon, and Theognis were the most eminent
of the ancient publicists who dealt with current
politics in metrical pamphlets. But the Greeks
of this period felt no impulse to record their
experiences in historical records; the only history
they cared for was still furnished by the epics.
Long before this, Egypt and Assyria had
abundant contemporary records, narratives of
conquests and achievements, inscribed for the
glorification of some powerful monarch. But the
early Greeks, even despots, were free from the
kind of self-consciousness which prompted an
Assur-bani- pal to draw up a narrative of his
deeds; Periander and Peisistratus did not think
of securing posthumous fame by such appeals to
posterity. Had Peisistratus been an oriental ruler,
he would have invited his literary friends to
celebrate his own career; being a Greek of his
time, he appointed a committee of men of letters
to edit the Homeric poems. There were indeed