The first may be termed the Heroic, or Prehistoric, or Legendary period. It ends with the first Olympiad, B.C. 776, and its chief monuments are the epics of Homer and Hesiod. The second is a period of transition from the heroic or epical to that of artistic maturity in all the branches of literature. In this stage history, properly so called, begins. The Greeks try their strength in several branches of composition. Lyrical, satirical, moral, and philosophical poetry supplant the epic. Prose is cultivated. The first foundations of the drama are laid. The earliest attempts at science emerge from the criticism of old mythologies. The whole mind of the race is in a ferment, and, for the moment, effort and endeavor are more apparent than mastery and achievement. This period extends from B.C. 776 to B.C. 477, the date of the Athenian league. The third period is that of the Athenian supremacy. Whatever is great in Hellas is now concentrated upon Athens. Athens, after her brilliant activity during the Persian war, wins the confidence and assumes the leadership of Greece. Athens is the richest, grandest, most liberal, most cultivated, most enlightened state of Hellas. To Athens flock all the poets and historians and philosophers. The drama attains maturity in her theatre. Philosophy takes its true direction from Anaxagoras and Socrates. The ideal of history is realized by Thucydides. Oratory flourishes under the great statesmen and the demagogues of the republic. During the brief but splendid ascendency of Athens, all the masterpieces of Greek literature are simultaneously produced with marvellous rapidity. Fixing 413 B.C. as the date of the commencement of Athenian decline, our fourth period, which terminates in B.C. 323 with the death of Alexander, is again one of transition. The second period was transitional from adolescence to maturity. The fourth is transitional from maturity to old age. The creative genius of the Greeks is now less active. We have, indeed, the great names of Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes to give splendor to this stage of national existence; but the sceptre has passed away from the Greek nation proper. Their protagonist, Athens, is in slavery. The civilization which they had slowly matured, and which at Athens had been reflected in the masterpieces of art and literature, is now spread abroad and scattered over the earth. Asia and Egypt are Hellenized. The Greek spirit is less productive than it has been; but it is not less vigorous. It still asserts itself as the greatest in the world; but it does so relying more upon its past acquirements than on any seeds of power that remain to be developed in the future. The fifth period, the longest of all, is one of decline and decay. It extends from B.C. 323 to the final extinction of classical civilization. Two chief centres occupy our attention--Athens, where the traditions of art and philosophy yet linger, where the Stoics and Epicureans and the sages of the New