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

V

CRATIPPUS

155

calling than Xenophon to exercise the historian's
trade. Cratippus was one of the obscurest figures
in literature, and till a few months ago we had not
even a fragment to indicate the character of his
work. But a passage of Plutarch might suggest
that his history possessed more than ordinary
merit. "If there were no men of action," Plutarch
observes,1 "there would be no historians. Abolish
Pericles, Phormio, Nicias, and the rest, and you
eliminate Thucydides. Abolish Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, and Conon, and you abolish Cratippus."
Here Cratippus is singled out as the leading
historian of Athens for the years subsequent to the
termination of Thucydides, and as one whose loss
would be acknowledged to be an impoverishment
of historical literature. The passage also leads us
to infer that Cratippus carried his continuation as
far as the naval victory of Cnidus, 394 B.c., which
enabled Athens to win back an independent and
eminent position in the Greek world. Egypt,
which has yielded so many invaluable relics of
classical literature to the indefatigable explorations
of the eminent Oxford scholars, Grenfell and
Hunt, has recently enriched us with a treasure,
which, I have little doubt, is a portion of the
work of Cratippus. This substantial fragment
covers a part of the year 396 B.C. and most of the
year 395, so that it may represent more than
a twentieth part of the whole history. Some
eminent scholars claim for it the authorship of
1 De Glor. Athen. ad init. (ed. Bernardakis, ii. p. 455).