whose advice the sovereign conducted himself in important matters of government, or in the nomination of his successor : but we do not find that they had a voice in the framing of laws, or in the imposition of taxes; and the prince himself had the sole nomination to all offices of government, magistracies, and dignities. SECTION LX. METHOD OF STUDYING ANCIENT HISTORY. 1. A general and concise view of ancient history may be acquired by the perusal of a very few books; as that part of the Cours d'Etude of the Abbé Condillac which regards the history of the nations of antiquity; the Elements of General History by the Abbé Millot, Part I.; the Epitome of Turselline, with the Notes of L'Agneau, Part I.; or the excellent Compendium Historia Universalis, by Professor Offerhaus of Groningen. The two first of these works have the merit of uniting a spirit of reflection with a judicious selection of events. The notes of L'Agneau to the Epitome of Turselline contain a great store of geographical and biographical information; and the work of Offerhaus is peculiarly valuable, as uniting sacred with profane history, and containing most ample references to the ancient authors. The Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle by the Bishop of Meaux, though a work of high merit, is rather useful to those who have already studied history in detail, for uniting in the mind the great current of events, and recalling to the memory their order and connection, than fitted to convey information to the uninstructed. But the student who wishes to derive the most complete advantage from history, must not confine himself to such general or compendious views; he must resort to the original historians of ancient times, and the modern writers who have treated with amplitude of particular periods. It may be useful to such students to point out the order in which these historians may be most profitably perused. 2. Next to the historical books of the Old Testament, the most ancient history worthy of perusal is that of Herodotus, which comprehends the annals of Lydia, Ionia, Lycia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Macedonia, during above 230 years preceding 479 A. C. Book 1. contains the History of Lydia from Gyges to Crœsus, Ancient Ionia; Manners of the Persians, Babylonians, &c.; History of Cyrus the Elder. B. 2. History of Egypt, and Manners of the Egyptians. B. 3. History of Cambyses.-Persian Monarchy under Darius Hystapses. B. 4. History of Scythia. B. 5. Persian Embassy to Macedon; Athens, Lacedæmon, Corinth, at the same period. B. 6. Kings of Lacedæmon.-War of Persia against Greece, to the battle of Marathon. B. 7. The same war, to the battle of Thermopyla. B. 9. The defeat and expulsion of the Persians from Greece. (The merits of Herodotus are shortly characterized supra, Sect. XXXII. § 1.) 3. A more particular account of the periods treated by Herodotus may be found in Justin, lib. 1, 2, 3, and 7; the Cyropædia of Xenophon; the lives of Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Pausanias, written by Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos; and those of Anaximander, Zeno, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus, by Diogenes Laertius. 4. The Grecian History is taken up by Thucydides, from the period where Herodotus ends, and is continued for seventy years, to the twenty-first of the Peloponnesian war. (This work characterized, Sect. XXXII. § 2.) The period he treats of is more amply illustrated by perusing the eleventh and twelfth books of Diodorus Siculus; the lives of Alcibiades, Chabrias, Thrasybulus, and Lysias, by Plutarch and Nepos; the second, third, fourth, and fifth books of Justin, and fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of the first book of Orosius. 5. Next to Thucydides, the student ought to peruse the first and second books of Xenophon's History of Greece, which comprehend the narrative of the Peloponnesian war, with the contemporary history of the Medes and Persians; then the expedition of Cyrus (Anabasis), and the continuation of the history to its conclusion with the battle of Mantinea. (Xenophon characterized, Sect. XXXII. § 3.) For illustrating this period, we have the lives of Lysander, Agesilaus, Artaxerxes, Conon, and Datames, by Plutarch and Nepos; the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of Justin; and the thirteenth and fourteenth of Diodorus Siculus. 6. After Xenophon, let the student read the fifteenth and sixteenth books of Diodorus, which contain the history of Greece and Persia, from the battle of Mantinea to the reign of Alexander the Great. (Diodorus characterized, Sect. XXXII. $5.) To complete this period, let him read the lives of Dion, Iphicrates, Timotheus, Phocion, and Timoleon, by Nepos. 7. For the history of Alexander the Great, we have the admirable works of Arrian and Quintus Curtius, (the former characterized, Sect. XXXII. § 8.) Curtius possesses great judgment in the selection of facts, with much elegance and perspicuity of diction. He is a good moralist and a good patriot: but his passion for embellishment derogates from the purity of history, and renders his authority suspicious. 8. For the continuation of the history of Greece from the death of Alexander, we have the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth books of Diodorus; and the history of Justin from the thirteenth book downwards; together with the lives of the principal personages, written by Plutarch. The history of Justin is a most judicious abridgment of a much larger work by Trojus Pompeius, which is lost. Justin excels in the delineation of characters and in purity of style. 9. I have mentioned the lives of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos as the best supplement to the account of particular periods of ancient history. It is the highest praise of Plutarch, that his writings breathe the most admirable morality, and furnish the most instructive lessons of active virtue. He makes us familiarly acquainted with the great men of antiquity, and chiefly delights in painting their private character and manners. The short lives written by Nepos show great judgment, and a most happy selection of such facts as display the genius and character of his heroes. They are written likewise with great purity and elegance. 10. For the Roman history in its early periods, we have, first, the Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which bring down the history of Rome to the 412th year of Rome, 342 B. C. They are chiefly valuable as illustrating the manners and customs, the rites, civil and religious, and the laws of the Roman state. But the writer is too apt to frame hypotheses, and to give views instead of narratives. We look for these in the modern writers who treat of ancient times, but we cannot tolerate them in the sources of history. 11. The work of Livy is infinitely more valuable; a perfect model of history, both as to matter and composition, (characterized, Sect. XLVII. § 10.) Of 132 books, we have only remaining thirty-five, and these interrupted by a considerable chasm. The first decade (or ten books) treats of a period of 460 years; and the second decade, containing seventy-five years, is lost; the third contains the second Punic war, including eighteen years; the fourth contains the war against Philip of Macedon, and the Asiatic war against Antiochus, a space of twenty-three years; of the fifth decade there are only five books; and the remainder, which reaches to the death of Drusus (746th Y. R., 8 B. C.), has, together with the second decade, been supplied by Freinshemius. To supply the chasm of the second decade, the student ought to read, together with the epitome of those lost books, the first and second books of Polybius; the seventeenth, eighteenth, twenty-second, and twenty-third books of Justin; the lives of Marcellus and Fabius Maximus by Plutarch; and the Punic and Illyrian wars by Appian. 12. But the history of Polybius demands a separate and attentive perusal, as an admirable compendium of political and military instruction. Of forty books of general history we have only five entire, and excerpts of the following twelve. The matter of which he treats is the history of the Romans, and the nations with whom they were at war, from the beginning of the second Punic war to the beginning of the war with Macedonia, comprising in all a period of about fifty years. Of the high estimation in which Polybius stood with the authors of antiquity, we have sufficient proof in the encomiums bestowed on him by Cicero, Strabo, Josephus, and Plutarch; and in the use which Livy has made of his history, in adopting his narratives in many parts of his work, by an almost literal translation. 13. The work of Appian, which originally consisted of twenty books, from the earliest period of the Roman history down to the age of Adrian, is greatly mutilated; there remaining only his account of the Syrian, Parthian, Mithridatic, Spanish, Punic, and Illyrian wars. His narrative of each of these wars is remarkably distinct and judicious, and his composition, on the whole, is chaste and perspicuous. After the history of Appian, the student should resume Livy, from the beginning of the third decade, or twenty-first book, to the end. Then he may peruse with advantage the lives of Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Flaminius, Paulus Æmilius, the elder Cato, the Gracchi, Marius, Sylla, the younger Cato, Sertorius, Lucullus, Julius Cæsar, Cicero, Pompey, and Brutus, by Plutarch. 14. The histories of the Jugurthine war, and the conspiracy of Catiline by Sallust, come next in order. (Sallust characterized, Sect. XLVII. § 8.) Then follow the Commentaries of Cæsar (Sect. XLVII. § 9.), remarkable for perspicuity of narration, and a happy union of brevity with elegant simplicity of style. The epitomes of Florus and of Velleius Patercullus (the latter a model for abridgment of history) may be perused with advantage at this period of the course. 15. For the history of Rome under the first emperors, we have Suetonius and Tacitus; and for the subsequent reigns, the series of the minor historians, termed Historia Augustæ Scriptores and the Byzantine writers. Suetonius rather gives us a series of detached characters, illustrated by an artful selection of facts and anecdotes, than a regular history. His work is chiefly valuable as descriptive of Roman manners, though his genius has too much of the caustic humour of a satirist. Tacitus, with greater powers and deeper penetration (see Sect. XLVII. § 11), has drawn his picture of the times in stern and gloomy colours. From neither of these historians will the ingenuous mind of youth receive moral improvement or pleasing or benevolent impressions; yet we cannot deny their high utility to the student of politics. 16. If we except Herodian, who wrote with taste and judgment, it is doubtful whether any of the subsequent writers of the Roman history deserve a minute perusal. It were preferable that the student should derive his knowledge of the history of the decline and fall of the empire from modern authors, resorting to the original writers only for occasional information on detached points of importance. For this purpose, the General History by Dr. Howel is a work of very high utility, as being written entirely on the basis of the original historians, whose narrative he in general translates, referring constantly to his authorities in the margin. The student will find in this work a most valuable mass of historical information. 17. The reader, having thus founded his knowledge of general history on the original writers, will now peruse with great advantage the modern histories of ancient Greece and Rome, by the able pens of Mitford, Gillies, Gast, Hooke, Gibbon, and Ferguson, and will find himself qualified to form a just estimate of their merits, on which (though too frequently the practice) it is presumptuous to decide without such preparatory knowledge. 18. The greatest magazine of historical information which has ever been collected into one body, is the English Universal History; a most useful work, from the amplitude of its matter, its general accuracy, and constant reference to the original authors. We may occasionally consult it with great advantage on points where deep research is necessary; but we cannot read it with pleasure as a continued work, from its tedious details and harshness of style, as well as from its abrupt transitions, and the injudicious arrangement of many of its parts. 19. Geography and chronology have been justly termed the lights of history. We cannot peruse with advantage the historical annals of any country without a competent notion of its geographical site, and even of its particular topography. In reading the description of all events, the mind necessarily pictures out the scenes of action; and these it is surely better to draw with truth from nature and reality, than falsely from imagination. Many actions and events are likewise intimately connected with the geography and local circumstances of a country, and are unintelligible without a knowledge of them. 20. The use of chronological tables is very great, both for the purpose of uniting in one view the contemporary events in different nations, which often have an influence on each other, and for recalling to the memory the order and series of events, and renewing the impressions of the objects of former study. It is extremely useful, after perusing the history of a nation in detail, or that of a certain age or period, to run over briefly the principal occurrences in a table of chronology. The most perfect works of this kind are the chronological tables of Dr. Playfair, which unite history and biography; the tables of Dr. Blair; or the older tables by Tallent.* *To these may be added, "Chronological Tables of Ancient History, Synchronistically and Ethnographically arranged," Oxford, 1835, which have been frequently consulted in revising the present edition. END OF PART FIRST. |