BACCHYL’IDES (470 B.C.), the nephew of Simonides of Ceos: hymns, epigrams, etc., in Doric: style highly polished: a specimen epigram is, “The touchstone tries the purity of gold, And by all-conquering truth man’s worth and wit are told.” TIMOC’REON OF RHODES (471 B.C.), lyric poet and satirist. CHAPTER IV. _RISE OF GREEK PROSE._ =Earliest Prose Writings.=—For several centuries, the literature of Greece was confined to poetry. In Hellas, as elsewhere, verse for a time at first so charmingly and completely filled the popular ear that there was no desire, no room, for prose. But, as new necessities arose, poetry could not suffice for Greece; not with epic and lyric voice alone were her men of genius to gain a hearing from the world. National achievements must be recorded; the people must be appealed to in the agora; the curtain of metaphysics must be raised; and so History, Oratory, and Philosophy appeared upon the stage. To these practical new-comers, the plain garb of prose was found more appropriate than the broidery of verse. Moreover, the introduction of facilities for writing favored the development of prose literature; for, unlike poetry, it needed a written form to give it permanence. When the art of writing became familiar, and men with its help could rapidly inscribe their thoughts for others still more rapidly to read, prose, as a distinct branch of composition, was born; and its birth marked an era in the intellectual growth of the Greeks. Ever since the introduction of letters, prose had doubtless been used more or less in despatches, records, laws, and official documents. Pherecy’des of Sy’ros and Cadmus of Miletus (about 550 B.C.) were the first to secure its recognition as a department of polite literature, the one embodying in it his philosophical doctrines, the other the fabulous history of his native land—with homely strength, if not with artistic finish. =Era of the Sages.=—In the period during which prose gained its first foothold flourished the Seven Sages of Greece (665-540 B.C.). Revolutions were then the order of the day, the people were beginning actively to assert their rights, and political questions of vital interest absorbed the attention of thinkers. The flights of fancy became fewer, as these grave problems presented themselves. Philosophers strove to solve them at home; patriots went abroad to study foreign institutions; and all awoke to the discovery that “knowledge is power.” The Seven Sages were gnomic poets, as well as philosophers and statesmen. Their moral and political maxims they usually threw into verse; but those inscribed on plates of metal and deposited in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, were in prose. In their proverbs, whether prose or poetry, we discern the dawn of moral philosophy.