How did the Greeks and the Romans define literature?
Literature was more like legends written down – which in that time period, that was all there was to understand their past and their rich and growing history. Legends and stories of the gods, heroes and their adventures, etc, was what was known orally and then written down to be passed along to the next generation. Legends and literature was seen as fact, real, in those days, it wasn’t make believe. They took it as seriously as the Christians do the Bible, etc, for them every story was magical and really happened. Literature was praised because it came from Zeus’ mouth or was written by Aristotle (?) after following the expliots of Alexander, for example. Everything was made bigger than what it was back then, and because of that, we still know of it today.
