Key Dates.

A general survey of literature in the world of ancient Greece and Rome takes us from the eighth century B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E., a span of nearly 1,400 years. Greek literature began with the development of the Greek alphabet in the eighth century B.C.E. that became the basis of the Latin alphabet still used by the romance languages. Greek literature then spawned Roman (Latin) literature as the Romans fell under the influence of Greek culture; the conventional date for the beginning of Latin literature is 240 B.C.E. when the Greek ex-slave Livius Andronicus translated the Greek poet Homer's Odyssey into Latin. The unofficial end of Greco-Roman literature can be linked to the closing of the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens in 529 C.E., which marks the end of Athens as a center for the teaching of...