ebrated oration against the Greeks. In that
oration he contends that none of the institutions of which the Greeks
were so boastful had their origin with them, but were all invented by
the barbarians.

It may be doubted, however, whether to any known person in the domains
of olden time can be truly attributed the high honor of such an
invention. Indeed, the views that may justly be entertained as to what
constitutes an invention may be various and diverse. Perhaps, in a
qualified sense, any signal addition or improvement deserves to be so
distinguished. What was precisely the subject matter of Atossa's
invention is not told, nor is anything recorded to lead to the
conclusion that she invented any new material; but, if she discovered
any way of committing the communications between persons, separated or
at a distance from each other, to paper--whether composed of the
interior bark of trees, or of the Egyptian papyrus, or other flexible
substance--and making it into a roll or volume, to be sent by some
carrier, that Persian queen may be accredited as the inventress of
epistolary composition.

It has been conjectured that letter writing was an art existing in the
days of Homer; because one of that great poet's characters, named
Pretus, gives a folded tablet to another personage, Bellerophontes, to
deliver to a third individual, Jobates. But the learned commentators,
both German and English, agree in the fact that the Iliad and the
Odyssey were never written, but recited to various audiences by

'The grand old bard of Scio's rocky isle.'

Writing, however, was in use throughout Greece before the time of Homer,
if not in ordinary intercourse, certainly for memorials and
inscriptions. The age of Homer may be regarded as preceding the
Christian era by about one thousand years. It synchronizes with the time
of Solomon. Thus the greatest of poets and the wisest of kings
coexisted--truly a noticeable fact, a theme for the imagination.

But the Holy Scriptures afford instances of letter writing, in some form
or other, at a period considerably anterior to the age of Solomon. David
wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah: 'And he wrote
in the letter, saying.' (2 Samuel xi, 14, 15.) And, about one hundred
and forty years afterward, Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab's name (1 Kings
xxi, 8, 9), and 'sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto
the elders and to the nobles that were in the city, dwelling with