HISTORY

(Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.) This word is first used in the commencement of work of Hero dot us, whicli he there calls by the title Hist or i a. It is probable that this ancient writer thus fixed sense in which the word has ever since been used; as plicable, strictly and properly, to the civil history of man, although it has been analogically used to expre other branches of investigation, as in the term Natural History, still in use; an application also sanctioned by cla ical usage, in the instances of Theophrastus' s History of Plants, Aristotle's History of Animals, . Civil history, properly so called, has also been subdivided into several branches; first, according to the cla of events or actions which is made the subject of narration; r.s clesiastical, political, and literary: secondly, according the extent of the subject; as universal history, in contradistinction to the history of particular nations or districts, or individual men, more properly termed biography. Our most ancient civil history is to be found in the Testament. But its objects are confined, after the brief introductory narration of the first ages of the world, to annals of a separate and peculiar people, the Jews, and such incidental notices of the affairs of other nations (A yrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, .) as the inspired writers found nece ary for the illustration of their main topic. But great empires and kingdoms which surrounded the little commonwealth of the Hebrews were also connected, various circumstances of religion and descent, with the of the two nations (Greek and Roman) whose annals stitute what is termed cla ical history, with which again our own history, or that of modern Europe, is in intimate a ociation. Hence, in a general view of civil history, whole subject may, perhaps, not be unappropriated cla ed under five heads, indicating, as it were, five different bodies of history, which, in the main, are distinct from each other in the subject, and partly in the sources from whence knowledge is derived, although mutually throwing much light on each other. I. The Jewish history, as contained in the Old Testament. H. The history of the empires and states of antiquity that portion of the world known to the cla ical and Jewish historians, and illustrated by cla ical and Jewish history, viz., As syria, Persia, Egypt, Phoenicia, and its colony thage. III. Cla ical history, properly so called: the history the national affairs and conquests of the Greeks and mans. IV. The history of those nations and states (chiefly ental) which po e annals of their own, independent cla ical, Jewish, and modern European literature; China, India, modern Persia, Arabia, and the Mohammedan quests. V. Modern European history, including that of the colonies and conquests of Europe ans. 1. The Jewish history, as we have said, is to be found the Old Testament, some Apocryphal books, and in the tings of uninspired Jewish authors (Joseph us and Philo-Judseus) who have investigated the antiquities of their country. 2. Of As syria, Egypt, Phoenicia, ancient Persia, Carthage, ., we po e no historical notice except such as is ved, 1.From Jewish or cla ical authors; 2. From monuments, especially in Egypt. Phoenician historical authors of repute (San chon i a tho, Berosus, .) are alluded to cla ical writers, and, perhaps, in part abridged by them we have no actual remains of their compositions on the thenticityofwhich reliance can be placed. With respect to Persia, much industry has been expended in endeavouring to extract from the histories of modern native writers coincidences with the narrations of Greek and Roman thors,but hitherto with little succe . 3. The poems of Homer are generally regarded as tain ing the oldest fragments of Grecian history. Hero dot us is the oldest Greek prose writer. His invaluable history comprises a description of several countries bordering Greece and the Mediterranean; concise narratives of Egyptian, Persian, and A yrian history; and a connected count, more or '.e detailed, according to circumstances, the history of Greece, both civil and domestic, for about years previous to the invasion of Xerxes, with wliich 562 [s. 576]