In ancient Greece and up to the nineteenth century thought about literature is identified with thought about poetry. There is a clear concept of poetry, but there is not a concept of literature in the present-day sense of the word. Poetry is in Greece one among other arts, or rather several: in the late Alexandrian age, beside the muses of astronomy, dancing, and history, we find one muse assigned to each of the varieties of poetry: epic poetry, lyric poetry, comedy and pastoral poetry, tragedy, love poetry, and sacred songs. The muses were the attendants of the patron god of poetry, Apollo. There was also a close association between poetry and music. Lyric poetry, of course, was sung; and epic poetry was often chanted to musical accompaniment. Music was also a main feature in drama: Greek tragedies must have been closer to operas than to modern tragedies in this sense.
Some of the early thought about literature can be gathered from the tales about mythical poets-musicians, such as Orpheus and Amphion. Orpheus appears from the 6th century BC on as a musician whose lyre and voice bewitch Nature and fierce animals. Even the Sirens and the gods of the dead were placated by his song. Orpheus had the reputation of a teacher. Tradition wants that it was he who taught pederasty to the Thracians. In classical and Alexandrian times, Orphism developed into a specific mystery cult. The religious connotations of Orphism reach the sphere of poetry: we have then orphic hymns which exalt the harmony linking man to the macrocosm. The poet is regarded as an inspired being, the victim of a divine fury, which allows him an access to the vision of cosmic harmony.
The myth of Amphion is similar to that of Orpheus. He was a hero, the son of Zeus, who recieved from Hermes the gift of being able to play the lyre. Amphion built the walls of Thebes, making the stones move by themselves with the sound of his lyre. At least from Roman times on, the myths of Orpheus and Amphion were interpreted allegorically, as a mythical illustration of the civilising power of the arts.
But we needn't go as far as mythical figures to trace the notion of the poet as a teacher or a civiliser. The role played by Homeric poems in the educative sytem of ancient Greece rests upon this same conception of the poet being able to teach. Many would argue that Homer or Hesiod are themselves mythical figures, but that is of no consequence now. What is a fact is that the Iliad and the Odyssey , as well as Hesiod's works, were a kind of encyclopaedia of Greek culture. They contained the metaphysics, history, religion, geography and science of ancient Greece, and so it is hardly surprising that teaching should be one of the functions assigned to poetry from the first theoretical pronouncements. It was a function it was evidently carrying out at that time. Let us now examine the more explicit pronouncements of the poets themselves.