2. One of the most important elements of their progress lay in their _great men_. It is indispensable that a man, to become great, or famous, by exercising a wide influence, should represent in a large, well defined and successful way, the general tendency and aspiration of his times. He must unite a clear perception of these tendencies in his mind, with the power to give them adequate expression in his words or deeds. He must be so far ahead of his times as to be able to clearly work out what is lying unexpressed in the general mind, but not so far ahead that it cannot come into sympathy and co-operation with him; else he will not be recognized as great. Great men are a summary of their times, or of the people they dwell among; they gather its tendencies to a point and express the undefined desire of that period. Their value for later times is that they represent the spirit of their race at that time in a form to make a striking impression, and those who have the good fortune to represent the qualities of the best races, or of nations at the most important stage of their history, become the general exemplars of mankind; teaching in a forcible and striking way the lessons which have been wrought out in the experience of a whole people for ages. 3. The poets are the first of these great men of whom history gives us any account, except, perhaps, the heroes whose deeds they sung, which are more or less uncertain, because they clothed the common tradition of their times in an imaginative and fictitious dress. The poets Homer and Hesiod had great influence on early Greece. They summed up its theology and the history of its admired heroes, and gave expression to the early thought and literary turn of that people. Their legislators came next. They gave expression to the genius of their people in institutions and laws. Lycurgus arranged the Spartan state into a military school. His laws remained in force more than five hundred years. Solon was the legislator of Athens and his laws were much admired for their wisdom and justice. The Greeks could think more wisely than they could act. Lycurgus organized the warlike spirit in Greece as well as Sparta. The small Grecian states, determined to keep Sparta and each one of the other states from destroying their individual liberties, were trained by the necessity of combating the vigorous military organization of Sparta to great ability in war. Under Pericles, a republican statesman of Athens, nearly a century later than Solon, the full glory of the Grecian genius shone forth. He encouraged his countrymen to give the support to art and literature that produced the famous master pieces which have made Greece illustrious and influential to this day.