Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/148

124 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE setting forth of the research of Herodotus of Halicarnassus." In a more specialised ' Historic ' — ^* Antiochus, Xenophanes' son^ put these things together about Italy " ; or without the author's name — " This I say about the whole world" (Democritus) ; " Touching the disease called Holy, thus it is" (Hippocrates). And what was the man who so WTote ? He was obviously Xoyoypd(f>o<i, or Xoyoiroio'?, since he had made a * Logos.' He was probably y€Q)'ypd(f)o<i and OeoXoyo'i ; presumably (f)Lao(f)o'^, and in the eyes of his admirers a a6(f)o^ dvrjp. If you wished to quote his name- less and chapterless work you had to use some descrip- tive phrase. As you referred to the middle part of r as " Homer in the Foot-washing," so you spoke of " Heca- taeus in Asia," or " in the parts about Asia " ; " Charon in the Persian parts" ; "Anaximander about Fixed Stars," or "in the Description of the World." Late tradition often took these references for the titles of separate works, and made various early authors write books by the dozen. The early epos was taken as a fact in itself ; it was either authorless, or the work of an imaginary and semi- divine author ; so was the story ; so was the chronicle ; so, of course, were the beginnings of speculation and cosmology. In the next stage a book is the work of a cor- poration ; a guild of poets ; a school of philosophers ; a sect of votaries ; a board of officials. First ' Homer,' ' ^sop,' * Hesiod, '* Orpheus,' * Cadmus' ; next Homeridae, Pythagoristas, Orphics, and "^flpot MiXijaltov. The close bond of the old Greek civic life had to be shattered before an individual could rise in person and express his views and feelings in the sacred majesty of a book. In poetry Archilochus and others had already done it. In prose the epoch was made by a book of which the open-