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 wielded the decisive force; but while the main purpose of Thucydides is political, that of Xenophon is rather ethical. Xenophon introduces direct speech or dialogue chiefly to enforce the moral lessons of individual character. The colloquial tone prevails even in political debate, and there is rarely any attempt at condensed reasoning of the Thucydidean type. In the course of the fourth century B.C. the school of Isocrates developed a normal literary prose, and such writers as Ephorus and Theopompus applied a rhetoric more florid than their master's to the misplaced embellishment of history. At the same time the political life of Greece was decaying, and with it the instinct which in earlier days would have been offended by the obtrusion of false ornament on a narrative of civic action. Then came the age of the Alexandrian erudition, and history was made a province of learned research. Polybius is a learned historian with a theory, but he is also a practical statesman and soldier. He is utterly opposed to the rhetorical treatment of historical subjects. He expressly condemns the sensational writers who confound the scope of history with that of tragedy. Tragedy, he says, may stir the emotions by any fiction which is not too improbable: the part of