Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/103

The Coming of the Greeks 59 85. The Hero Songs of the Greeks. The Greeks were destined to produce many wonderful poems and plays which have been the delight of mankind ever since their day. Long before they learned to write there were bards who sang of the mighty deeds of the Greek warriors. These singers began to flourish perhaps a thousand years before the Christian Era, espe- cially in the Greek settle- ments on the eastern shores of the ^Egean Sea. Here arose a class of professional bards who graced the feasts of king and noble with poetic tales of battle and adventure recited to the music of the harp. Rolling on in stately measures these heroic songs resounded through many a royal hall the oldest literature born in Europe. This magnificent work (over thirty inches high) was found in an Etruscan tomb in Italy (see map, p. 122), whither it had been exported by the Athenian makers in the days of Solon AN ATHENIAN PAINTED VASE OF THE EARLY SIXTH CENTURY B.C. After the separate songs had greatly increased in number they were finally woven together by the bards into a connected whole called an epic a great series clustering especially about the traditions of the Greek expedition against Troy. These epics were a growth of several centuries, the work of generations of singers, some of whom were still living even after 700 B.C., when they were first written down. 86. Homer. Among these ancient singers there seems to have been one of great fame whose name was Homer (see Ancient Times, Fig. 161). His reputation was such that he was supposed to have been the author of two great collections of poems: the Iliad, the story of the Greek expedition against Troy ; and the