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Excerpt from A History of Classical Greek Literature, Vol. 2 of 2: The Prose Writers, (With an Index to Both Volumes)
Introduction - Early use of Writing - The Influences of Religion and Philosophy and the Dawn of History in the Sixth Century B.C.
295. Introductory. - The history of Greek prose literature, as we possess it, begins almost at the close of the poetical development of the nation, at least at the close of it's original development, for though many poets flourished later than our earliest prose writers, no new species of poetry, except possibly the bucolic, dates its origin from this time, and the later poets were in few cases men of remarkable or enduring originality. Hence it is that, in a logical survey of Greek literature, we may allow ourselves to treat all the poetry before we approach the consideration of prose writing. This, indeed, is now the accepted order among the German writers on the subject.
I have in the former volume stated my belief that the composition of any long or elaborate poem postulates the use of writing, and I therefore proposed this condition as giving us the earliest limit for the date of the Iliad as we have it; but many eminent critics have thought differently, and have argued that poetry can be composed and preserved without any such aid.
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