The real limits of this period cannot be exactly defined; but still, so far as its traditions admit of anything like a chronological connection, its duration may be estimated at six generations, or about two hundred years.[6] The history of the heroic age is the history of the most celebrated persons belonging to this class, who, in the language of poetry, are called heroes. The term “hero” is of doubtful origin, though it was clearly a title of honour; but in the poems of Homer, it is applied not only to the chiefs, but also to their followers. In later times its use was narrowed, and in some degree altered; it was restricted to persons, whether of the Heroic or of after ages, who were believed to be endowed with a superhuman, though not a divine, nature, and who were honoured with sacred rites, and were imagined to have the power of dispensing good or evil to their worshippers; and it was gradually combined with the notion of prodigious strength and gigantic stature. Here however we have only to do with the heroes as men. The history of their age is filled with their wars, expeditions, and adventures; and this is the great mine from which the materials of the Greek poetry were almost entirely drawn. But the richer a period is in poetical materials, the more difficult it usually is to extract from it any that are fit for the use of the historian; and this is especially true in the present instance. We must content ourselves with touching on some which appear most worthy of notice, either from their celebrity, or for the light they throw on the general character of the period, or their connection, real or supposed, with subsequent historical events. THE EXPLOITS OF PERSEUS