Exploration in Asia Minor has discovered the remains of the city of Troy, and there is now no doubt that early Greek princes did bring their men overseas and destroy it. In the south of Greece we have found the palaces and graves of these princes, their inlaid bronze swords and golden death-masks, and we recognize the vivid realism of Homer. This great victory of the early Greeks would be the chief theme of the bards at every princes’ court, and all sorts of picturesque legends would be added to the truth. Homer weaves all these together in two great epics with masterly skill. You can _see_ the heroes, sharply and vividly sketched, fighting their great duels, the scenes in camp and court, the dawn or the blaze of the sun on the blue Mediterranean. Much of this powerful and beautiful description is lost in translation, though the old translations by poets like Pope, Cowper and Bryant, are very fine, and the current translations, chiefly by Andrew Lang and collaborators, are excellent. Homer is next to Shakespeare, who surpasses him and all others in beautiful imagery and allegory. The epic poem remained for two or three centuries the chief writing of the Greeks. They were then royalists with numbers of small courts of chiefs or princes where these story-poems were recited. As the race advanced in civilization, “lyric” poetry (short poems sung to the accompaniment of the lyre) developed. The most interesting writer of these is the female poet Sappho, who lived in the island of Lesbos in the seventh century. Between Sappho and Homer was the great poet Hesiod (9th century), whose chief poem, _Works and Days_, is full of moral and religious feeling; and in the sixth and fifth centuries Pindar won a high position in Greece and wrote great numbers of songs, hymns, odes, etc. Aesop’s famous _Fables_ also appeared in the sixth century, though many doubt if there was such a person as Aesop. But we must confine ourselves here to the greatest names, or this book would not get beyond Greece. Two other kinds of writers arose as Greek civilization moved on toward its most brilliant days. On the one hand was a series of scientists and philosophers, but we have none of the works of these. On the other hand tragedy was born, and Greece had, in a very short period, the three greatest tragedians the world has ever known: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.