Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/141

 V THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE Inscriptions If our earliest specimens of Greek prose are inscribed on stone and bronze, that only means that these are durable materials, and have outlived the contemporary wood and wax and parchment. At the time of the treaty betvi^een Elis and Heraea in the sixth century, there must have been plenty of commercial and diplomatic correspond- ence ; there must have been much writing as well as talking to settle the exact agreement between Oianthe and Chaleion about piracy, and to fix the mild penalty of four drachmas for exercising that privilege in the wrong place. But it looks as if the earliest prose was in essence similar to these inscriptions — a record of plain, accurate statements of public importance, which could not be trusted to the play of a poet's imagination or the exigencies of his metre. The temples especially were full of such writings. There were notices about impiety. At lalysus, for instance, the goddess Alectrona announced a fine of 10,000 drachmae for the entrance into her precinct of horses, mules, asses, and men in pig-skin shoes. There were full public statements of accounts. There w^ere records of the prayers which the god had answered, engraved at the cost of the votary ; of the 117