Epics are long poems which tell the story of a hero.
A kind of epic from Western Asia , written about 2500 BC , is the Epic of Gilgamesh . Another epic, from Rome in 19 BC , is Virgil 's Aeneid . Sappho's poems are the only surviving literature by a Greek woman. Tragedies are generally sad, while comedies are funny. The oldest tragedies that we still have were written by Aeschylus around 500 BC .