THE EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 61 



Let us now return from our odyssey into Cimmerian darkness, 

 and from visiting the shadows of departed heroes, to the shores of 

 historic Greece, and inquire whether modern genius and modern 

 industry have not added something to that more precise knowledge 

 which we owe to the literature of the classical epoch. And here, too, 

 we shall find that the gain is momentous, and the promise of future 

 increment fair beyond our hopes. But that is so because our whole 

 method of investigation has been enlarged, and because we have 

 developed the relations of Greek philology and history to many 

 kindred researches. We do not indeed grow weary of analyzing and 

 commenting on our Greek historians, though that process has been 

 likened to the squeezing of the last drops of juice from the exhausted 

 lemon. But since we learned from our early travelers, notably from 

 Colonel Leake, that Greek history must be studied in Greece; since 

 the French government, more than half a century ago, took the lead 

 in founding an archgeological school at Athens, the spade and the 

 measuring-rod have been applied to verify and correct the narratives 

 of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. A crowd of inscriptions 

 have been extracted from the soil, or from medieval walls into which 

 they were built. The modern writer dare not put his pen to paper 

 without searching the great collections of these inscriptions, to which 

 the learned journals are perpetually adding fresh material. For in 

 imitation of the French, the Germans and the Greeks have endowed 

 their archaeological schools, and produce their Transactions in Athens. 

 The English and the Americans have followed suit with private 

 enterprise, and so a large body of experts has been let loose upon the 

 country, and has added to the capital enterprise of Schliemann at 

 Mykense and Argos many careful investigations at Athens, Olympia, 

 Delphi, Delos, Megalopolis, the Argive Herseum, and a dozen other 

 sites. All these have yielded us topographical, historical, and social 

 evidence. Our difficulty now is not only to find, but to compass the 

 evidence which is accruing, and which is scattered through a number 

 of learned journals, such as the French Bulletin de correspondance 

 hellenique, the German Mittheilungen des archeologischen Instituts, 

 the English Journal of Hellenic Studies, to mention but three out 

 of many. The men who have by universal consent done most for the 

 better understanding of Greek history are not the Greek professors 

 at home, but the brilliant directors of the French and the German 

 schools, who have been able to indulge their genius with ample 

 appointments and with the experience of many years of splendid 

 industry. It is of course impossible for me in this general discourse 

 to turn aside to the particular inquiries which have thrown light on 

 particular points of Greek history. The excellence of these studies 

 consists in their minute and accurate detail. I need only quote, as 

 specimens, the masterly analysis of the Greek theatre derived from 



