a 
OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 27 
whom he described. The result was a picture of the 
old Greek world so faithful and so brilliant that it can- 
not soon be superseded. A German history of Greece 
was afterward written by Ernst Curtius, —a charming 
book, rich in learning and thought. But the experi- 
ence of the Englishman as the native of a free country 
gave him an advantage in understanding the Athe- 
nians, the lack of which we feel seriously when we 
read the German work.: A similar deficiency, due to 
similar shortcomings in political training, we find in 
one of the greatest works of the nineteenth century, 
Mommsen’s “ History of Rome.” 
But while Grote achieved such success in depicting 
the free world of Hellas, he was less successful when 
he came to the Macedonian Conquest, and with the 
close of the generation contemporary with Alexander 
the Great he seemed to lose his interest in the subject. 
His history stops at that point with words of farewell 
that echo the mournful spirit of baffled Demosthenes. 
The spectacle of free Greece was so beautiful and in- 
spiring that one cannot bear to see it come to an end. 
Yet the diffusion of Greek culture through the Roman 
world, from the Euphrates to the shores of Britain, is 
a theme of no less interest and importance. In many 
ways the learned and thoughtful books of Mr. Mahaffy 
illustrate this point. It may suffice here to observe 
that, without a careful study of the three centuries 
following Alexander, one cannot hope to understand 
the circumstances of the greatest event in all his- 
tory, the spreading of Christianity over the Roman 
Empire. 
We are thus led to notice another important dif- 
ference between the old and the new ways. The old- 
