writer.

AESOP.--To this period (albeit somewhat at hazard) it is possible to
ascribe Aesop, about whom nothing is known except that he wrote the
fables which have been imitated from generation to generation. The
collection that we possess under his name is one of these imitations,
perpetrated long after his death, but as to which it is impossible to
assign a date.

PINDAR.--Pindar, the Theban, broadened and extended the lyrical type.
Under him it preserved its power, its high spirits, its verse and, so to
say, its fine fury; but he introduced into the epic the narration of
ancient legends, the acts and gestures of the ancient heroes, and
effected this so admirably that the most lyrical of Grecian lyricists is
an historian. Capable of sustained elevation, of sublime thoughts and
expressions, of a fine disorder which has been overpraised, and which on
close expression is found to be very careful, he has been regarded as the
very type of dignified and poetic style, and more or less to be imitated
by all ambitious poets commencing with Ronsard. The wise, like Horace,
have contented themselves with praising him. From fragments left to us he
is infinitely impassioned to read.

GREEK TRAGEDY.--Greek tragedy, which is one of the miracles of the human
brain, began in the sixth century B.C. It was born of the dithyramb. The
dithyramb is a chant in chorus in honour of a god or a hero. From this
chorus emerged a single actor who sang the praises of the god, and to
which the choir replied. When, instead of one actor, there were two who
addressed one another in dialogue and were answered by the choir, the
dramatic poem was founded. When there were three--and there were hardly
ever any more--tragedy, as the Greeks understood it, existed.