Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/50

22 Neither writing, nor sculpture, nor painting, nor the art of modelling in clay began in Greek lands with the Hellenic world. The discoveries in the Troad, at Mycenae and Tiryns, and in Crete, already referred to, show that these arts existed many centuries before the dwellers in Greece were the Hellenes. But literature begins with them. The author, or authors, of the Iliad and Odyssey, indeed, wrote or recited before the Greeks began to speak of themselves generally as Hellenes; but the language of the poems was that which the Hellenes always used, and they do not appear ever to have been written in any other than the Ionic alphabet, which, in part at least, was derived from the Phoenicians. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of this great body of heroic legend, of divine tradition and moral doctrine, upon the national character, emphasising its unity of origin, and holding up a common standard of conduct and religious belief. The Hellenic poems and those of Hesiod, whatever their origin or date, continued to be regarded by the Hellenes as their chief source of theology and early history. They were followed by the poems of what are called the "Cyclic" poets, because they dealt with other parts of the "cycle" of Trojan legends, supplementing and extending the tale of the Iliad and Odyssey; and adding to them another cycle of legends connected with Thebes. None of these are now extant, but they supplied the Greek dramatists with many of their plots and fables.

The first period of Greek literature independent of the Homeric Epic began about the year B.C. 700, and was for some time wholly poetical. A number of