These works are of a kindred nature with the universal histories which the Greeks had for a considerable time been composing; and these very Greek world-chronicles, such as that of Kastor son-in-law of the Galatian king Deiotarus, concluded in 698, now began to include in their range the Roman history which previously they had neglected.  These works certainly attempted, just like Polybius, to substitute the history of the Mediterranean world for the more local one; but that which in Polybius was the result of a grand and clear conception and deep historical feeling was in these chronicles rather the product of the practical exigencies of school and self-instruction.  These general chronicles, text-books for scholastic instruction or manuals for reference, and the whole literature therewith connected which subsequently became very copious in the Latin language also, can hardly be reckoned as belonging to artistic historical composition; and Nepos himself in particular was a pure compiler distinguished neither by spirit nor even merely by symmetrical plan.

The historiography of this period is certainly remarkable and in a high degree characteristic, but it is as far from pleasing as the age itself.  The interpenetration of Greek and Latin literature is in no field so clearly apparent as in that of history; here the respective literatures become earliest equalized in matter and form, and the conception of Helleno-Italic history as an unity, in which Polybius was so far in advance of his age, was now learned even by Greek and Roman boys at school.  But while the Mediterranean state had found a historian before it had become conscious of its own existence, now, when that consciousness had been attained, there did not arise either among the Greeks or among the Romans any man who was able to give to it adequate expression.  “There is no such thing,” says Cicero, “as Roman historical composition”; and, so far as we can judge, this is no more than the simple truth.  The man of research turns away from writing history, the writer of history turns away from research; historical literature oscillates between the schoolbook and the romance.  All the species of pure art—­epos, drama, lyric poetry, history—­are worthless in this worthless world; but in no species is the intellectual decay of the Ciceronian age reflected with so terrible a clearness as in its historiography.

Literature Subsidiary to History
Caesar’s Report

The minor historical literature of this period displays on the other hand, amidst many insignificant and forgotten productions, one treatise of the first rank—­the Memoirs of Caesar, or rather the Military Report of the democratic general to the people from whom he had received his commission.  The finished section, and that which alone was published by the author himself, describing the Celtic campaigns down to 702, is evidently designed to justify as well as possible before the public the formally unconstitutional enterprise of