He only lived to complete the story of that war to the year B.C. 411. Herodotus had used the Ionic dialect, either because he had become familiar with it during his residence at Samos, or because of a literary tradition from the earliest historians of Miletus (Hecataeus and Hellanicus); but Thucydides was an Athenian, and the Attic dialect in his time was becoming the language of literature. He has many of the highest qualities of an historian, patient accuracy, large and sagacious insight, and on great occasions a supreme power of vivid representation. But his style is often complex and obscure, and his idea of representing his views dramatically by com- posing speeches to be put into the mouths of the actors in the great events, set a precedent which was unfortunate. Xenophon (c. B.C. 431–354) continued the narrative of Thucydides in his Hellenica down to B.C. 362. He was neither a great artist nor possessed of any deep insight; but he excels in a certain simplicity and directness of statement. He wrote many things besides this history: the narrative of the march of the ten thousand Greeks who accompanied Cyrus in the expedition against his brother; the life of King Agesilaus; essays in various political and agricultural subjects; and two political romances, the Hiero and Cyropaedeia. In his youth he was much influenced by Socrates, whose teaching he recorded in a Symposium and Anecdotes (Memorabilia). Polybius (B.C. 203–121) is the historian of the Graeco-Roman period. To him chiefly we owe our knowledge of the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues, and of the Macedonian wars which brought Greece
