NOTES. Many critics believe that the Odyssey is by a later author than the Iliad. There exist some fragments ascribed to Callinus, but very questionably. See Mahaffy's History of Greek Literature, Vol. I, p. 158. Alcman arranged the Strophe and Antistrophe, and Stesichorus added the Epode, thus completing the choral ode. The brother of Jocasta who had succeeded Edipus upon the throne. • Other authorities say he was born two years later. f A play named Rhesus, believed to be spurious, occurs in nearly all editions of Euripides. Late critics doubt this story and place the birth of Xenophon at about 429 B.C. Some recent critics think he was born about 435, and died at 55 years of age. An act was passed to make him a citizen, but was set aside as illegal. This story is by some considered doubtful. * Or, rather, of being bribed by Harpalus, who was seeking to organize a revolt. 1 Or, possibly, he was born in the island of Cos. m By Roman chronology, about 350 B.C. PART I. THE LITERATURE OF GREECE. CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. THREE thousand years ago the boundaries of the civilized world were strikingly different from what they now are. In fact, despite man's long previous residence upon the earth, he had only fairly commenced to exist as a civilized. being at the opening of this period. The origin of civilization was probably farther back in the past; but it had, at that time, attained a very imperfect development, and was confined to a very limited region. And though literature undoubtedly had its beginning in the preceding period, it is very doubtful if any of this primitive literature still exists. More probably all extant relics of ancient literature are products of the subsequent epoch. Though rooted in a preceding soil of human thought, they did not earlier attain their matured form. India, Persia and China may have possessed earlier literatures. The Chaldeans, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians and the Egyptians undoubtedly did. Yet it is very probable that these products of human thought, at least in their original form, have perished, and that no extant literature can claim a greater age than the above-named period of thirty centuries. At the beginning of this epoch, Greece, the destined birth-place of classic literature, had not yet emerged from |