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70 ANCIENT GREECE. LCIUP. vi.of the moment ;or only reposedin their memory. In theformer case, they were, in the full sense of the word, improvisator! and, in the latter, they must necessarily have;remained in some measure improvisator!, for theylived inan age, which, even if it possessed the alphabet, seems neverto have thought of committing poems to writing.The epicpoetry of the Greeks did not continue to be mere extemporaneous effusions ;but it seems to us very probable,thatsuch was its origin. Lastly Although the song was some:times accompanied by a dance illustrative of its subject,imitative gesturesare never attributed to the bard himself.There are dancers for that.Epic poetry and the ballet canthus be united ;but the union was not essential, and probably took place only in the histories concerning the gods. 1This union was very natural. Under the southern skies ofEurope, no proper melody is required for the imitativedance ;it is only necessary that the time should be distinctlymarked. When the bard did this with his lyre, the dancers,as well as himself, had all that they required.This heroic poetry, which was so closely interwoven withsocial life, that it could be spared at no cheering banquet,was common, no doubt, throughoutall Hellas. We hear itsstrains in the island of the Phaeacians, no less than in thedwellings of Ulysses and Menelaus. The poet does not bringbefore us strict contests in song; but we may learn, thatthe spirit of emulation was strong, and that some believedthemselves already perfectin their art, from the story of theTbraciau Thamyris, who wished to contend with the muses,and was punished for his daring by the loss of the light of2bis eyes, and the art of song.Epic poetry emigrated with the colonies to the shores ofAsia. When we remember, that those settlements weremade during the heroic age, and thatin partthe sons andposterity of the princes, in whose halls at Argos and Mycenae its echoes had formerly been heard, were the leaders3of those expeditions, this will hardly seem doubtful, and stillless improbable.But that epic poetry should have first displayedits full1As in the story of the amour of Mars and Yenus. Od. viii.2 II. Cat Nav. 102.8As Orestes and his descendants*