This legendary time in Grecian history begins nobody knows when, and ends about one thousand years before the birth of Christ. Our only knowledge of it comes from the mythology which we have inherited from the past, and the two poems of Homer, called the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." The "Iliad" recounts the anger of Achilles and all that happened in the Trojan War; the "Odyssey" relates the wonderful adventures of Ulysses. Probably Homer never thought of such a thing as being an historian--he was a poet--much less did he dream of being the only historian of any certain time or age; but since, in the course of his poems, he refers to the manners and customs of the years that had preceded him, and gives accounts of certain past events, he is, in truth, the prime source from which we learn the little that we know of the prehistoric days in Greece. It is believed that Homer wrote about 850 B.C., and after that date we have nothing complete in Greek literature until the time of Herodotus, who is called the "Father of History" and was born in 484 B.C. Thus four centuries between Homer and Herodotus are left with no authoritative writings. The legendary or first period of Greek history was followed by five hundred years more of which we have no continuous history; but facts have been gathered here and there from the works of various authors which make it possible to give a reliable account of the Greece of that time. For our purpose in this book we go on to a still later time, or a third period, which began about 500 B.C., in which the architecture and art which we have in mind, when we use the general term Greek Art, originated. It is true that before this temples had been erected of which we have some knowledge, and the elegant and ornate articles which Dr. Schliemann has found in his excavations at Troy and Mycenæ prove that the art of that remote time reached a high point of excellence. The temples and other buildings of which we know anything, and which belonged to the second period, were clumsy and rude when compared with the perfection of the time which we propose to study. Before we speak of any one edifice it is best to understand something of the various orders of Greek architecture, more especially as the terms which belong to it and had their origin in it are now used in speaking of architecture the world over, and from being first applied to Greek art have grown to be general in their application. [Illustration: FIG. 35.--GRAVESTONE FROM MYCENÆ (SCHLIEMANN).]