SELECTIONS FROM ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS IN ENGLISH,

by Royal Case Nemiah (Professor ofGreek). Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939.pp. xv + 428. $2.00.

In this book Professor Nemiah has given passages in translation from three Greek historians, which present a connected nar- rative of the war between the Greeks and the Persians and the Peloponnesian War. The translations of Herodotus, Thucy- dides, and the Hellenica of Xenophon are from Rawlinson, Crawley, and H. G. Dakyns respectively. There is a very brief introduction on Historical Evidence and the three historians, and, at the end of the book, are a very few informational notes and a chronological table of Greek history.

It is not the purpose o£ this review to discuss the Greek historians or their translators. In planning a book of selections of this kind no two editors would agree as to what should be included or omitted. The passages printed in this book are well chosen, though sometimes the transition from one to another is unmarked and so abrupt as possibly to cause confusion. A table of contents, indicating the passages contained in the book, might have been useful. I should myself have given less of the historians, especially Herodotus, and thus had space for a much fuller introduction and far more copious notes. The whole text fairly bristles with geography and the reader would have found an occasional map or more geographical information in the notes exceedingly helpful.

The book should be very useful to students who have not easy access to translations of the Greek historians. I would only suggest that, in my opinion, it might well have contained more of Professor Nemiah, even at the expense of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.