It may be doubted, however, whether to any known person in the domains of olden time can be truly attributed the high honor of such an invention. Indeed, the views that may justly be entertained as to what constitutes an invention may be various and diverse. Perhaps, in a qualified sense, any signal addition or improvement deserves to be so distinguished. What was precisely the subject matter of Atossa's invention is not told, nor is anything recorded to lead to the conclusion that she invented any new material; but, if she discovered any way of committing the communications between persons, separated or at a distance from each other, to paper--whether composed of the interior bark of trees, or of the Egyptian papyrus, or other flexible substance--and making it into a roll or volume, to be sent by some carrier, that Persian queen may be accredited as the inventress of epistolary composition. It has been conjectured that letter writing was an art existing in the days of Homer; because one of that great poet's characters, named Pretus, gives a folded tablet to another personage, Bellerophontes, to deliver to a third individual, Jobates. But the learned commentators, both German and English, agree in the fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey were never written, but recited to various audiences by 'The grand old bard of Scio's rocky isle.' Writing, however, was in use throughout Greece before the time of Homer, if not in ordinary intercourse, certainly for memorials and inscriptions. The age of Homer may be regarded as preceding the Christian era by about one thousand years. It synchronizes with the time of Solomon. Thus the greatest of poets and the wisest of kings coexisted--truly a noticeable fact, a theme for the imagination. But the Holy Scriptures afford instances of letter writing, in some form or other, at a period considerably anterior to the age of Solomon. David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah: 'And he wrote in the letter, saying.' (2 Samuel xi, 14, 15.) And, about one hundred and forty years afterward, Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab's name (1 Kings xxi, 8, 9), and 'sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in the city, dwelling with Naboth, and she wrote in the letters, saying, (2 Kings v, 5, 6, 7; 2 Kings x, 1, 2, 6, 7.) The king of Syria wrote a letter to the king of Israel, and therewith sent Naaman, his servant, to be cured of his leprosy: 'And it came to pass when the king of Israel read the letter, that he rent his clothes.' Now this occurred about nine hundred years before the Christian era; and, about twenty years later, we are told that Jehu wrote letters and sent them to Samaria. A second time he transmitted other letters of a similar import, which were cruelly obeyed.