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

44 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

which was epic, and not Hesiodic but Homeric,
in spirit and style.
His theme, the struggle of Greece with the
Orient, possessed for him a deeper meaning than
the political result of the Persian war. It was
the contact and collision of two different types of
civilisation, of peoples of two different characters
and different political institutions. In the last
division of his work, where the final struggle of
Persia and Greece is related, this contrast between
the slavery of the barbarian and the liberty of the
Greek, between oriental autocracy and Hellenic
constitutionalism, is ever present and is forcibly
brought out. But the contrast of Hellenic with
oriental culture pervades the whole work; it
informs the unity of the external theme with the
deeper unity of an inner meaning. It is the keynote of the history of Herodotus. The digressions
and stories which delay the action, besides their
intrinsic interest, and besides their epic use as
pleasant pauses, have also the value of sounding
that note, and of contributing distinctly, but
without emphasis or iteration, towards impressing
that contrast on the reader's mind. The interview,
for example, of Croesus withl Solon, the self-confident Eastern potentate with the thoughtful, selfcontrolled Greek, strikes this chord loudly; and most
of the oriental and Hellenic stories are calculated
to suggest the antithesis which finds its supreme
expression, and is more elaborately wrought out,
in the final collision of the Persian wars.