Note 8 — GLIMPSES OF ANCIENT GREEK LIFE.

“Learn by heart.” During the most flourishing period of Athenian literature manuscripts were indifferently written, without marks of punctuation. They were scarce and costly, and could only be read by those who had literary training. Under these circumstances the Greeks could never become a reading people, and they became acquainted with the productions of their poets, only by hearing them recited in public by bards or rhapsodists, the latter being a body of professional reciters. It is said when Pisistratus wished to make a collection of the poems of Homer, he offered sums of money to as many of this class as would come to him and repeat, before a copyist, all of the parts that they had learned by heart.