SOURCE: "The Development of Greek Historiography after Thucydides," in The Ancient Greek Historians, 1908. Reprint by Dover Publications, 1958, pp. 150-90.

In the excerpt that follows, Bury assesses Xenophon as one of the primary historians to follow Thucydides 's career. Of the three that he examines, he finds Xenophon the "least meritorious," but influential nonetheless.

Thucydides had set up a new standard and proposed a new model for historical investigation. He taught the Greeks to write contemporary political history; this was the permanent result of his work. But the secret of his critical methods may be said to have perished with him; it has been reserved for modern students fully to appreciate his critical acumen, and to estimate the immense labours which underlay the construction of his history but are carefully concealed like the foundation stones of a building. Influences came into play in the fourth century which drove history...