speeches in his design was due to special influences of the age as well as to the peculiar bent of his mind; we have to consider what had been done before him, and the plan on which he went to work.
At the beginning of the Peloponnesian war a Greek prose literature scarcely yet existed. The Ionian prose-writers before Herodotus, or contemporary with him, are known to us only from scanty fragments. But the Augustan age possessed all, or nearly all, their writings; and Dionysius of Halicarnassus has described their general characteristics, comparing them collectively with Herodotus and Thucydides[1]. These Ionian writers, he says, treat the annals of cities and people separately[2],—not combining them into a large picture, as Herodotus does. Their common object was to diffuse a knowledge of the legends which lived in oral tradition (ὅσαι διεσώζοντο μνῆμαι), and of the written records (γραφαί) preserved in temples or state-
- ↑ Dionys. de Thuc. c. 5. Dionysius concedes the more dignified name of (συγγραφεῖς to the Ionian logographers. He names, (1) as anterior to the age of Thucydides,—Eugaeon of Samos, Deiochos of Proconnesos, Eudemos of Paros, Democles of Phigaleia, Hecataeus of Miletus, Acusilaus of Argos, Charon of Lampsacus, Amelesagoras of Chalcedon; (2) as elder contemporaries of Thucydides,—Hellanicus of Lesbos, Damastes of Sigeion, Xenomedes of Chios, Xanthos of Lydia. His words imply that these, "and many more" (ἄλλοι συχνοί), were then extant.
- ↑ Ib. οὐ συνάπτοντες ἀλλήλαις (τὰς ἱστορίας), ἀλλὰ κατ' ἔθνη καὶ κατὰ πόλεις διαιροῦντες: wheras Herodotus is said πολλὰς καὶ διαφόρους πράξεις ἐς μίαν περιγραφὴν πραγματείας ἀγαγεῖν.
