Impressive versions of tragedies by Louis MacNeice and Rex Warner can still be found in second hand
bookshops.
- Greek Historians (By Oswyn Murray)
I
Of the main extant works, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Hellenica and Anabasis, Aristotle's
Constitution of Athens and Arrian's History of Alexander are available in good Penguin translations,
with introductions by leading modern scholars; the best translation of Thucydides is however still that of
R. Crawley (1876, often reprinted in Everyman's Library, London and New York). The lesser works of
Xenophon and other authors (Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus) are most easily found in
the Loeb Classical Library, with facing text and translation; special mention should also be made of the
new two-volume Loeb Arrian, with important introduction, notes and appendices by P. A. Brunt
(Harvard 1976, 1983). Aristotle's Constitution of Athens and Related Texts, translated and with
commentary by K. von Fritz and E. Kapp (New York, 1950) is excellent.
The fragments of the lost Greek historians have been collected by Felix Jacoby, who devoted his life to
the task; his monumental Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden, 1923-58) in fourteen
volumes is the most important work on Greek history of this century. Jacoby died before he could finish
it; it is arranged according to types of history, and the main areas which remain to be covered are
geography, and literary and philosophical history and biography. The work consists of the evidence for
the life of each historian, the fragments of his works, and an often extensive commentary in either
German or English. There is no translation.
II
The most illuminating modern work on Greek history-writing is that of A. Momigliano; his more
important essays are collected in two volumes, Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), and Essays in
Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977). For the relations between Greek and other
historical traditions there is much of interest in Herbert Butterfield's unfinished The Origins of History
(London, 1981). See also the survey of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in J. Van Seters, In
Search of History (Yale, 1983), which is primarily focused on the Jewish tradition. The beginnings of
Greek historical writing are surveyed by L. Pearson, Early Ionian Historians (Oxford, 1939, repr.
Connecticut, 1975), and R. Drews, The Greek Accounts of Eastern History (Harvard, 1973, to be treated
with caution). For the problems faced by Herodotus the best introduction is the general work by the
anthropologist Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition (Harmondsworth, 1973); see also A. Momigliano, Studies
chs. 8 and 11. The best recent general book is J. A. S. Evans, Herodotus (Boston, Mass., 1982); other
books offer more partial insights.