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Excerpt from The History of Greece From Its Commencement to the Close of the Independence of the Greek Nation, Vol. 2 of 4 In the second volume of my History of Greece I have endeavoured, as in the first, to bring into clear relief, firstly, old and trustworthy records, secondly, additions made thereto by biassed contemporaries or in later antiquity, and thirdly, the conclusions of modern research. My attempt to draw as sharp a distinction as possible between theories and facts has, as I gratefully acknowledge, met with the approval of my critics, especially of those in England. In the history of the fifth century B.C. the important point was to form a definite idea of the value of Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon on the one hand, and of contemporary partizans and later historians on the other. The reader will find that I have allowed the results of these considerations to exercise a decided influence on the narrative. What I have had to do in this volume was to exhibit the historical progress of the Greek people in the fifth century by means of a narrative founded on the facts. In the performance of this task I have arrived at many conclusions which differ from the views which have hitherto been generally accepted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.