Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/287

265 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 265 upon Lydia, written in the Ionic dialect, bears, in the few fragments which remain, the stamp of high excellence. Some valuable remarks upon the nature of the earth's surface in Asia Minor, which pointed partly to volcanic agency, and partly to the extension of the sea ; and precise accounts of the distinctions between the Lydian races, are cited from it by Strabo and Dionysius *. The passages quoted by these writers bear unquestionable marks of genuineness; in later times, however, some spurious works were attributed to Xanthus. In parti- cular, a work upon magic, which passed current under his name, and which treated of the religion and worship of Zoroaster, was indubi- tably a recent forgery. A still greater uncertainty prevails with respect to the writings of Dionysius of Miletus, inasmuch as the ancient writer of this name was confounded by the Greek critics themselves with a much later writer on mythology. It is certain that the Dionysius, whom Diodorus follows in his account of the Greek heroic age, belongs to the times of learning and historical systems ; he turns the whole heroic mythology into an historical romance, in which great princes, captains, sages, and benefactors of mankind take the places of the ancient heroes t. Of the works which appear to belong to the ancient Dionysius, viz. the Per- sian histories and the events after Darius (probably a continuation of the former), nothing precise is known. § 9. To the Greek historians before Herodotus modern scholars have given the common name of logographers, which is applied by Thucydides to his predecessors. This term, however, had not so limited a meaning among the ancients ; as logos signified any discourse in prose. Accord- ingly, the Athenians gave the same name to writers of speeches, i.e. per- sons who composed speeches for others, to be used in courts of justice. It is however convenient to comprehend these ancient Greek chro- niclers under a common name, since they had in many respects a common character. All were alike animated by a desire of recording, for the instruction and entertainment of their contemporaries, the ac- counts which they had heard or collected. But they did this, without attempting, by ingenuity of arrangement or beauty of style, to produce such an impression as had been made by works of poetry. The first Greek to whom it occurred that fiction was not necessary for this pur- pose, and that a narrative of true facts might be made intensely inte- resting, was Herodotus, the Homer of history. t Whether this Dionysius is the Dionysius of Samos cited by Athenscus, who wrote concerning the cyclus, or Dionysius Scytobrachion of Mytilene, has nut been completely determined.
 * The fragments in Creuzer ubi sup. p. 135, sq.