ABSTRACT
We have briefly surveyed the thousand years between Homer and Plotinus and in doing so have doubtless overlooked much of the wealth and splendour of ancient Hellenism. In most ancient literatures the earliest poems are concerned solely with the gods and the creation of the world. The Iliad and the Odyssey do not neglect Olympus, but in both of them it is men who hold the centre of the stage; and when they are called Achilles, Hector or Odysseus, they prove to be more exemplary than the gods. With their earliest crude attempts m the eighth century B.c., the Athenian vase painters introduced the human form into their geometrical designs; and later, the whole of classical and Hellenistic art was to exalt the physical beauty of men and women.
