ORPHEUS, the Thracian minstrel, inventor of religious poetry. THAM’YRIS, deprived of his sight and poetical talent for challenging the Muses to a trial of skill on the lyre. EUMOLPUS, a Thracian priest; reputed founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries. O’LEN, earliest prophet of Apollo. CHRYSOTH’EMIS, the Cretan. MUSÆUS (_inspired by the Muses_), a son or disciple of Orpheus. AMPHI’ON, taught of the god Mercury; raised stones into the walls of Thebes by the strains of his lyre. PHILAMMON, son of Apollo, and inventor of choral music. PAMPHOS, author of the first Linus. OLYMPUS, introducer of the flute. PHEMON’OE, first priestess at the Delphic shrine, inventor of hexameters. CHAPTER II. _AGE OF EPIC POETRY._ HOMER AND HIS WORKS. =Homer.=—The oldest literary productions of Greece extant are the poems of Homer, the most ancient monuments of Aryan poetry west of the Persian Gulf. About 1000 B.C., among the legion of ballad-writers, the reciters of battle-songs, myths, and traditions (known as Rhapsodists—_ode-stitchers_), there arose an Ionian poet who soon towered head and shoulders above them all—a giant among the giants of literature—HOMER, of unique genius and world-wide fame. As to Homer’s life, we must ever remain in the dark. For the honor of giving him birth, seven cities of antiquity disputed,[21] Smyrna seeming to have the best claim. If we may believe tradition, he gave early evidence of his divine powers. Chance took him on a sea-voyage, during which he visited many countries, among them Ithaca, the home of Ulysses, one of his heroes. On the island of Chi’os, his favorite resort, he is thought to have written his epics the Il’iad and Od’yssey, the first in early manhood, the second in old age. Legend relates that Homer, twice warned by an oracle to _beware of the young men’s riddle_, went ashore one day on I’os, an island of the Cyc’lades, and there, noticing some boys who had been fishing, asked them, “What luck?” “What we caught we left, what we could not catch we carried with us,” was the reply. Unable to guess the riddle, the old poet died of vexation. According to another account, disease carried him off. He was buried on the sea-shore at Ios, where in after years this epitaph marked his tomb:— “Here Homer the Divine, in earthy bed, Poet of heroes, rests his sacred head.” =Homer’s Style.=—Homer’s Iliad was the first Greek poem in which were combined ingenuity of plot, unity of subject, and a faithful delineation of character throughout. He deals with heroes, but they are men of like passions with ourselves. The Odyssey, if less sublime, in its pathos and fine touches of nature shows the same rich gifts of genius as the older poem of loftier flight. Both works are written in hexameter verse, the true metre of the ancient epic.