Ancient Greek literature refers to literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until roughly the rise of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature are the two epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, comprised the major foundational works of the Greek literary tradition.
The other highly esteemed writers from the earlier part of Greek history included the poets Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar, the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander, the historians Herodotus of Halicarnassus and Thucydides, and the philosophers Plato and Aristotle.
Important later writers included Apollonius of Rhodes, who wrote The Argonautica, an epic poem about the voyage of the Argonauts, Archimedes, who wrote groundbreaking mathematical treatises, Plutarch, who wrote mainly biographies and essays, and Lucian of Samosata, who wrote primarily works of satire.