Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/115

 COMMENCEMENT OF PEOSE-WRITING. 97 Auman progress, secured through the Greeks and through them only to mankind generally, our attention will be called at a later period of the history ; at present, it is only mentioned in contrast with the naked, dogmatical laconism of the Seven Wise Men, and with the simple enforcement of the early poets: a state in which morality has a certain place in the feelings, but no root, even among the superior minds, in the conscious exercise of reason. The interval between Archilochus and Solon (GGO-580 B.C.) seems, as has been remarked in my former volume, to be the period in which writing first came to be applied to Greek poems, to the Homeric poems among the number ; and shortly after the end of that period, commences the era of compositions with- out metre or prose. The philosopher Pherekydes of Syros, about 550 B.C., is called by some the earliest prose-writer ; but no prose-writer for a considerable time afterwards acquired any celebrity, seemingly none earlier than Hekatasus of Miletus, 1 about 510-4'JO B.C, prose being a subordinate and ineffective species of composition, not always even perspicuous, but requir- ing no small practice before the power was acquired of rendering it interesting. 9 Down to the generation preceding Sokrates, the poets continued to be the grand leaders of the Greek mind : until then, nothing was taught to youth except to read, to remember, to recite, musically and rhythmically, and to comprehend poetical composition. The comments of preceptors, addressed to their pupils, may probably have become fuller and more instructive, but the text still continued to be epic or lyric poetry. ~VVe must re- collect also that these poets, so enunciated, were the best masters for acquiring a full command of the complicated accent and rhythm of the Greek language, essential to an educated man in ancient times, and sure to be detected if not properly acquired. Not to mention the Choliambist Hipponax, who seems to have been possessed with the devil of Archilochus, and in part also with Ida 1 Pliny, H. N. vii, 57. Suidas v, 'Eara?of. remarks on the difficulty and obscurity of the early Greek prose-'writevs, in reference to the darkness of expression and meaning universally charged npon the philosopher Herakleitus. VOL. iv. 5 7oc.
 * H. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophic, ch. vi, p. 243) has some good