nicles, text-books
for scholastic instruction or manuals for reference, and the whole
literature therewith connected which subsequently became very copious
in the Latin language also, can hardly be reckoned as belonging
to artistic historical composition; and Nepos himself in particular
was a pure compiler distinguished neither by spirit nor even merely
by symmetrical plan.

The historiography of this period is certainly remarkable
and in a high degree characteristic, but it is as far from pleasing
as the age itself. The interpenetration of Greek and Latin literature
is in no field so clearly apparent as in that of history;
here the respective literatures become earliest equalized in matter
and form, and the conception of Helleno-Italic history as an unity,
in which Polybius was so far in advance of his age, was now learned
even by Greek and Roman boys at school. But while the Mediterranean
state had found a historian before it had become conscious
of its own existence, now, when that consciousness had been attained,
there did not arise either among the Greeks or among the Romans
any man who was able to give to it adequate expression.
"There is no such thing," says Cicero, "as Roman historical
composition"; and, so far as we can judge, this is no more than
the simple truth. The man of research turns away from writing history,
the writer of history turns away from research; historical literature
oscillates between the schoolbook and the romance. All the species
of pure art--epos, drama, lyric poetry, history--are worthless
in this worthless world; but in no species is the intellectual decay
of the Ciceronian age reflected with so terrible a clearness
as in its historiography.

Literature Subsidiary to History
Caesar's Report

The minor historical literature of this period displays
on the other hand, amidst many insignificant and forgotten productions,
one treatise of the first rank--the Memoirs of Caesar, or rather
the Military Report of the democratic general to the people
from whom he had received his commission. The finished section,
and that which alone was published by the author himself, describing
the Celtic campaigns down to 702, is evidently designed to justify
as well as possible before the public the formally unconstitutional
enterprise of Caesar in conquering a great country and constantly
increasing his army for that object without instructions
from the competent authority; it was written and give