[74]
Theopompus1 comes next, and though as a historian he
is inferior to the authors just mentioned, his style
has a greater resemblance to oratory, which is not
surprising, as he was an orator before he was urged
to turn to history. Philistus2 also deserves special
distinction among the crowd of later historians, good
though they may have been: he was an imitator of
Thucydides, and though far his inferior, was somewhat more lucid. Ephorus,3 according to Isocrates,
needed the spur.
1 Theopompus of Chios, born about 378 B.C., wrote a history of Greece (Hellenica) from close of Peloponnesian war to 394 B.C., and a history of Greece in relation to Philip of Macedon (Philippica). His master, Isocrates, urged him to write history.
2 Philistus of Syracuse, born about 430 B.C., wrote a history of Sicily.
3 Ephorus of Cumae, flor. circ. 340 B.C., wrote a universal history. He was a pupil of Isocrates. Cp. II. viii. 11.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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