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 . Plays are also written in verse, like poems. Two major histories that we still have are those by Herodotus and Thucydides . About 450 BC, Herodotus wrote a history of the Persian Wars . About 400 BC, Thucydides wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War .