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HEADS OF AN ANALYSIS

OF THE

HISTORY OF GREECE:

FOR THE USE OF

STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE
UPPER CLASSES IN SCHOOLS.

BY

DAWSON W. TURNER, M. A.

HEAD MASTER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION SCHOOL,
LIVERPOOL;

LATE DEMY AND EXHIBITIONER OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD.

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR,

HEADS OF AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH

AND OF FRENCH HISTORY.

Second Edition. 2s.

HEADS OF AN ANALYSIS OF

ROMAN HISTORY.

28.

NOTICE.

In this little work I have followed the method adopted in my Heads of an Analysis of Roman History. Besides mentioning my obligations to the numerous authorities cited in this work, I have nothing to add except the acknowledgment due to the very kind assistance rendered me throughout by my friends the Rev. James Lonsdale, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, and the Rev. John G. Sheppard, M.A., late Fellow of Wadham College, and Head Master of Kidderminster Grammar School.

Royal Institution School, Liverpool,

July, 1853.

AUTHORITIES QUOTED FROM.

E. R. Edinburgh Review (various articles).
Gr. Gr. Grote's History of Greece.

T. Thirlwall's History of Greece.

H. H. R. Heeren's Historical Researches.
C. H. G. Carr's History of Greece.

H. Heeren's Manual of Ancient History.

W. L. of A. Williams' Life of Alexander the Great. (Family Library.) U. K. S. History of Greece: Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know

ledge.

N. L. Niebuhr's Lectures on Roman History.

A. Arnold's History of Rome.

T. S. D. B. Chronological Tables to Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.

H. P. A. Hermann's Political Antiquities of Greece.

P. Pütz's Handbook of Ancient History; edited by T. K. Arnold.

S. D. B. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.

M. Malkin's History of Greece. (U. K. S.)

Ess. fr. T. N. Essays (republished) from the Times Newspaper.

Q. R. Quarterly Review (various articles).

E. Hist, of Gr. Early History of Greece, by Talfourd, Ottley, and others, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana.

Hist. of Gr. Lit. History of Greek Literature, by Talfourd, Blomfield, and others, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana.

B. Bulwer's Rise and Fall of Athens.

W. I. William Ihne, Ph. D., author of the article Homerus, in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.

Ency. Metr. Continuation of the History of Greece, by various authors, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana.

́Oxf. Tab. Oxford Chronological Tables of Ancient History, published by Talboys.

S. D. A. Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities.

Nat. Cyc. National Cyclopædia, published by Knight.

Ecl. R. Eclectic Review (article in).

ANALYSIS

OF

THE HISTORY OF GREECE.

⚫ THE interest of Grecian history is unexhausted and inexhaustible. As a mere story, hardly any other portion of authentic history can compete with it. Its characters, its situations, the very march of its incidents, are epic. It is an heroic poem, of which the personages are peoples. It is also, of all histories of which we know so much, the most abounding in consequences to us who now live. The true ancestors of the European nations (it has been well said) are not those from whose blood they are sprung, but those from whom they derive the richest portion of their inheritance. The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods.

'The Greeks are also the most remarkable people who have yet existed. Not, indeed, if by this be meant those who have approached nearest (if such an expression may be used where all are at so immeasurable a distance) to the perfection of social arrangements or of human character. Their institutions, their way of life, even that which is their greatest distinction-the cast of their sentiments and development of their faculties were radically inferior to the best (we wish it could be said to the collective) products of modern civilization. It is not the results achieved, but the power and efforts required to make the achievement, that measure their greatness as a people. They were the beginners of nearly everything (Christianity excepted) of which the modern world makes its boast. If in several things they were but few removes apart from it, they alone among nations, so far as is known to us, emerged from barbarism by their own efforts, not following in the track of any more advanced people. If with them, as in all antiquity, slavery existed as an institution, they were not the less the originators of political freedom, and the grand exemplars and sources of it to modern Europe. If their discords, jealousies, and wars between city and city, caused the ruin of their national independence, yet the arts of war and government evolved in those intestine contests made them the first who united great empires under civilized rule-the first who broke down those barriers of petty nationality, which had been so fatal to themselves-and, by making Greek ideas and language common to large regions of the earth, commenced that general fusion of races and nations, which, followed up by the Romans, prepared the way for the cosmopolitism of modern times.

B

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