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

V

PHILISTUS

159

The influence of Thucydides was probably more
marked in another contemporary historian, who
moved in another part of the world and had a
different horizon, Philistus of Syracuse. Like
Thucydides, he had experience of public affairs,
and suffered exile, and lived to be recalled. He
did not confine himself to contemporary history,
as Thucydides did, for he related the story of
Sicily from the very beginning down to the time
of his own youth-he had been an eye-witness
of the Athenian expedition. But his more important work was the history of the two tyrants
Dionysius, father and son, a record of events in
which he had himself played an active part both
as politician and military commander. He enjoyed
the posthumous distinction of being the only
historian whose works followed Alexander, along
with the great poets, to Further Asia, and, as
Freeman says, "the reason of the choice is plain
enough. Nowhere could Alexander find reading
more to his taste than in the history of Dionysius,
the first man who carried on war on a scale and
after a fashion at all approaching to his own."'
Philistus made Thucydides his model,2 not by a
slavish imitation of his style, but rather in temper
and method, and we may suspect that of all
Greek historians he was most Thucydidean. He
1 History of Sicily, iii. 63.
2 Dionysius, 7repi UtLfia-ews, 426 (Usener and Radermacher, p. 208);
Cicero, De Orat. ii. 13. The differences in style between Thucydides
and Philistus are explained by Dionysius, Letter to Pompey, 5. The
style of Philistus was tediously uniform.