ILLUSTRATIONS

  “It is strange that they let that dog lie there”
                                                L.F.  Schutzenberger

  “I am afraid there will not be half enough supper” Walter Crane

  They leaped out of the bottomless hole George Wharton Edwards

  To him at last the three goddesses intrusted the judgment
  and the golden apple Giulio Romano

  Fierce was the fight about the body of patroclus Giulio Romano

  A great image of A horse Franz Cleyn

  The cyclops in his wrath brake off the top of A great hill
                                                L.F.  Schutzenberger

  “Dear son, have you come home at last?” G. Truffault

  The flight from Troy Franz Cleyn

  The victory of Euryalus Franz Cleyn

TO THE CHILDREN

The greater part of this book is made up of stories from the poems of Homer and Virgil.  Homer is thought to have lived in Greece about three thousand years ago, and yet his poems never seem old-fashioned and people do not tire of reading them.  Boys and girls almost always like them, because they are so full of stories.  If you want to read about giants or mermaids or shipwrecks or athletic contests or enchanters or furious battles or the capture of cities or voyages to strange countries, all you have to do is to open the Iliad and the Odyssey, and you will find stories on all of these subjects.  Homer can describe a foot-race or the throwing of a discus so that you hold your breath to see who will win; and he can picture a battle so vividly that you almost try to dodge the arrows and spears.  He can make the tears come into your eyes by telling you of the grief of the warrior’s wife when he leaves her and their baby son to go to battle; and he can almost make you shout, “Hurrah for the brave champion!” when he tells you what wonderful deeds of prowess have been done.  He can describe a shield so minutely that you could make one like it; and he can paint a scene of feasting so perfectly that you feel as if you had been in the very room.

How is it that Homer makes his stories seem so real?  There are several reasons, but one of the strongest is because he tells the little things that writers often forget to put in.  When he describes the welcome given to two strangers at the house of the lost Ulysses, by Telemachus, son of the wanderer, he begins, “When they were come within the lofty hall, he carried the spear to a tall pillar and set it in a well-worn rack.”  That one word, “well-worn,” gives us the feeling that Homer is not making up a story, but that he has really seen the rack and noticed how it looked.  The same sentence shows why it is that people do not tire