Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/182

 142 Oiitlines of European History looked up at the cloud-veiled summit of Mount Olympus (Fig. 69), the home of the gods, there grew up a group of songs telling many a story of the feats of gods and heroes. Into these songs were woven also vague memories of remote wars which had actually occurred. By 1000 b.c. these songs had crossed to the coasts and islands of Ionia on the Asiatic side of the ^gean Sea. Here arose a class of professional bards who graced the feasts of king and noble with songs of battle and adventure re- cited to the music of the harp. Framed in exalted and ancient forms of speech, and rolling on in stately measures,^ these heroic songs resounded through many a royal hall — the oldest literature born in Europe. After the separate songs had greatly increased in number, they were finally woven together by the bards into a connected whole — a great epic cycle especially clustering about the traditions of the Greek expedition against Troy. They were not the work of one man, but a growth of several centuries by generations of singers, some of whom were still living even after 700 B.C. It was then that they were first written down. Among these ancient singers there seems to have been one of great fame whose name was Homer (Fig. 73). His reputa- tion was such that the composition of the whole cycle of songs, then much larger than it now is, was attributed to him. Then as the Greeks themselves later discerned the impossibilit}- of Homer's authorship of them all, they credited him only with the Iliad ,^ the story of the Greek expedition against Troy ; and the Odyssey, or the tale of the wanderings of the hero Odysseus on his return from Troy. These are the only two series of songs that have entirely survived, and even the ancient world had its doubts about the Homeric authorship of the bdyssey. These ancient bards not only gave the world its greatest epic 1 These were in hexameter : that is, six feet to a line. This Greek verse is the oldest literary form in Europe. 2 So named after Ilium, the Greek name of Troy.