The solitary and doubtful claim of the birth--but not the song--of Tyrtaeus (fl.

B.C.

683), is the highest literary honour to which the earlier age of Attica can pretend; and many of the Dorian states--even Sparta itself--appear to have been more prolific in poets than the city of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

But throughout all Greece, from the earliest time, was a general passion for poetry, however fugitive the poets.

The poems of Homer are the most ancient of profane writings--but the poems of Homer themselves attest that they had many, nor ignoble, precursors.