The language of epic poetry perhaps once the common tongue of the people, and merely elaborated by the bards. The art of writing, old in Greece; while there is no positive evidence of its being known before 800 B.C., the historian Herodotus (450 B.C.) speaks as if it had been familiar to his countrymen for hundreds of years. Homer’s epics, though by some thought to have been handed down by oral repetition, probably written on metallic or wooden tablets by their author. Hesiod’s works originally committed to leaden tables and deposited in the temple of the Bœotian Muses. Greek papyrus-factories on the Nile, 650 B.C. Writing first extensively used by priests and bards, particularly at the temple of Delphi. * * * * * (The student is further recommended to read _Cox’s “Mythology of the Aryan Nations,” vol. ii._, _Harrison’s “Myths of the Odyssey,”_ _Coleridge’s “Minor Poems of Homer,”_ _Tyler’s “Theology of the Greek Poetry,”_ and _Mahaffy’s “History of Classical Greek Literature” vol. i._, and “_Social Life in Greece_.”) CHAPTER III. _LYRIC POETRY._ =Rise of Lyric Poetry.=—For more than two hundred years after Homer and Hesiod, no one worthy of the name of poet appeared in Greece. Greek genius seemed to have exhausted itself. A few feeble imitators of the great master, and epic poetry was no more. The spirit of the Iliad and the Odyssey died with the monarchies whose chieftains they immortalized. When popular governments arose, the bard no longer celebrated the gods and demigods of the past, or traced the genealogies of kings, but sung the glories of his country, or poured forth without restraint the emotions of his soul. Thus lyric poetry was the child of liberty. =Varieties.=—At the beginning of the seventh century B.C., there was a new birth of poesy; Grecian song burst forth once more, from hearts throbbing with enthusiasm at the triumph of free institutions. Solemn dirges and stately hymns chanted by olive-crowned youth bearing offerings to the gods, were no longer paramount; ballads full of human feeling, lyrics appealing directly to the people—to the patriot, the artisan, the shepherd, the lover, the pleasure-seeker—struck chords that vibrated in many hearts. Feasts afforded frequent occasions for outbursts of national feeling, it being the custom of the guests to pass a branch of myrtle from hand to hand, each as he received it repeating an appropriate verse. A favorite banquet-song of the fifth century B.C. was the following eulogy of Harmo’dius and Aristogi’ton, the Athenian heroes who slew the tyrant Hipparchus:— “In a wreath of myrtle I’ll wear my glaive, Like Harmodius and Aristogi’ton brave, Who striking the tyrant down, Made Athens a freeman’s town. Harmodius, our darling, thou art not dead! Thou liv’st in the isles of the blest, ’tis said, With Achilles first in speed, And Tydi’des Diomede.