Grote's
voluminous annals, the old slight and popular summary of Goldsmith
or Gillies will serve. The valuable part is the age of Pericles, and
the next generation. And here we must read the "Clouds" of
Aristophanes, and what more of that master we gain appetite for, to
learn our way in the streets of Athens, and to know the tyranny of
Aristophanes, requiring more genius and sometimes not less cruelty
than belonged to the official commanders. Aristophanes is now very
accessible, with much valuable commentary, through the labors of
Mitchell and Cartwright. An excellent popular book is J. A. St.
John's "Ancient Greece"; the "Life and Letters" of Niebuhr, even
more than his Lectures, furnish leading views; and Winckelmann, a
Greek born out of due time, has become essential to an intimate
knowledge of the Attic genius. The secret of the recent histories in
German and in English is the discovery, owed first to Wolff, and
later to Boeckh, that the sincere Greek history of that period must
be drawn from Demosthenes, specially from the business orations, and
from the comic poets.
If we come down a little by natural steps from the master to the
disciples, we have, six or seven centuries later, the Platonists,--
who also cannot be skipped,--Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Synesius,
Jamblichus. Of Jamblichus the Emperor Julian said, "that he was
posterior to Plato in time, not in genius.
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