ry. The operator unrolls
before us the long panorama of wars and plots and bribes and murders:
his pictures speak, but he himself seldom interjects a word. Sometimes
the lack of comment seems almost brutal, but what need to darken the
torture-chamber in the House of Hades?

There are two ways of writing history. One is to observe a strictly
chronological order, describing together only such events as took
place in a single year or reign; and the other, to give all in one
place and in one narration the story of a single great movement,
though it should cover several years and a fraction,--or, again, to
sketch the condition of affairs in one province, or valley, or
peninsula for so long a time as the story of such a region seems to
possess unity of development. The first kind of writing takes the year
or the reign as its standard, whereas the second uses the matter under
discussion or some part of the earth in the same way: and they may
accordingly be called, one, the chronological method, and the other,
the pragmato-geographical. The difference between the two is well
illustrated by the varying ways in which modern works on Greek history
treat the affairs of Sicily.

The first plan is that which Dio follows, and his work would have been
called by the Romans _annales_ rather than _historiae_. The method has
its advantages, one of which is, or should be, that the reader knows
just how far he has progressed; he can compare the relative
significance of events happening at the same time in widely separated
lands: he is, as it were, _living_ in the past, and receives from week
to week or month to month reports of the world's doings in all
quarters. On the other hand, this plan lacks dramatic force; there are
sub-climaces and one grand climax: and the interest is apt to flag
through being obliged to divide itself among many districts. The same
results, both good and bad, are observable in Thukydides, whom Dio
follows in constructive theory as well as style. It has already been
said that our historian sacrifices sharpness of dates to the Onkos,
depending, doubtless, on his chronological arrangements to make good
the loss. Usually it does so, but occasionally confusion arises.
Whether because he noticed this or not, he begins at the opening of
the fifty-first book to be accurate in his dates, generally stating
the exact day. Rarely, Dio lets his interest run away with him and
mixes the two economies.

If we read the pages clo