ABSTRACT
CLASSICAL PROSE T HE Greeks, like every other nation, developed poetry long before prose, as a literary medium, was thought of. Thus we have seen Hesiod using the hexameter for
essentially prosaic matter, political pamphlets written in elegiacs, and, it may be added, thuse parts of Comedy which seem most to call for proS(: still following the convention of verse, wh ich only the Alexandrian music-halls were to throw off (see p. 346).1 This curious fact is probably to be explained by the considcration that early literature seeks, in its beginnings, a medium strikingly different from ordinary speech and easy to remember, while thc many subtle differences between literary prose and everyday language require a highly evolved literary consciousness for even their possibility to be recognized.
