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In the Western world, biographical literature can be said to begin in the 5th century bce with the poet Ion of Chios, who wrote brief sketches of such famous contemporaries as Pericles and Sophocles. It continued throughout the classical period for a thousand years, until the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the 5th century ce. Broadly speaking, the first half of this period exhibits a considerable amount of biographical activity, of which much has been lost; such fragments as remain of the rest—largely funeral elegies and rhetorical exercises depicting ideal types of character or behaviour—suggest that from a literary ...(100 of 9625 words)