The History of Greece. By Adolf Holm. (Macmillan and Co.)—
This volume, the second out of the four to which it is proposed to limit the work, contains the history of the culminating period of Hellenic greatness, the fifth century. We must own that with such works as Thirlwall and Grote on the larger scale, and Mr. Oman's on the smaller, with Ernst Curtius in proportions nearer to that of the work now under review, we do not see that there is a place to be filled. The book is more than a sketch and less than a history. It could hardly be otherwise, when some five hundred odd pages, of which not far from a fifth are given to notes, have to tell the story of the first and second Persian and of the Pelo- ponnesian wars. Two or three pages, for instance, have to suffice for Marathon. The grave problems connected with the narrative of the battle are not discussed in an adequate way. The chief value of the book lies, we conceive, in the notes. which often furnish, in a convenient form, the latest views, or, at least, references to the latest views, of the subject treated in the text.
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