The interval between Archilochus and Solon (660-580 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 without metre or prose. The philosopher Pherekydês 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 Hekatæus of Milêtus,[189] about 510-490 B. C.,—prose being a subordinate and ineffective species of composition, not always even perspicuous, but requiring no small practice before the power was acquired of rendering it interesting.[190] Down to the generation preceding Sokratês, 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. We must recollect 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 Hippônax, who seems to have been possessed with the devil of Archilochus, and in part also with his genius,—Anakreon, Ibykus, Pindar, Bacchylidês, Simonidês, and the dramatists of Athens, continue the line of eminent poets without intermission. After the Persian war, the requirements of public speaking created a class of rhetorical teachers, while the gradual spread of physical philosophy widened the range of instruction: so that prose composition, for speech or for writing, occupied a larger and larger share of the attention of men, and was gradually wrought up to high perfection, such as we see for the first time in Herodotus. But before it became thus improved, and acquired that style which was the condition of wide-spread popularity, we may be sure that it had been silently used as a means of recording information; and that neither the large mass of geographical matter contained in the Periegêsis of Hekatæus, nor the map first prepared by his contemporary, Anaximander, could have been presented to the world, without the previous labors of unpretending prose writers, who set down the mere results of their own experience. The acquisition of prose-writing, commencing as it does about the age of Peisistratus, is not less remarkable as an evidence of past, than as a means of future, progress. [189] Pliny, H. N. vii, 57. Suidas v. Ἑκαταῖος.