To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud pre-eminence.  He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on account of a military failure.  He treated only of a short period, during the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries.  He devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care.  His style has not the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise.  In a single volume Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes of a modern history.  As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled.  In his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he is simple.  He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen perception of human character.  His pictures are striking and tragic.  He is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some of his sentences are not always easily understood.  One of the greatest tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic, George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into a volume.

Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings are classic and inimitable.  He was born probably about 444 B.C.  He is characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation.  His “Anabasis,” in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book.  But his “Cyropaedia,” in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories of his hero without sufficient investigation.  Xenophon wrote a variety of treatises and dialogues, but his “Memorabilia” of Socrates is the most valuable.  All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.

If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,—­to those who were as famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,—­the great names of Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this great department of prose composition.  The first great masters of the Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished until Cicero appeared.  But we do not here write a history of the language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various departments of learning.