Greece and Rome [antikvár]

PREFACE The myths of Grcece and Rome have inspired so much of the best thought in English literature that a knowledge of them is often essential to the understanding of what we read. " When Byron calls Rome," says Thomas Bulfinch, "'the Niobe of nations,' or says of Venice, ' She looks a Sea-Cybele fresh from Ocean,' he calls up to the mind of one familiar with our subject illustrations more vivid and striking than the pencil could furnish, but which are lost to the reader ignorant of mythology." Literature abounds in such poetic borrowings from the classics, and it is impossible to enjoy fully the works of some of our best writers if wc cannot immediately appreciate their imagery. Again, expressions such as " the heel of Achilles" are part of the common language, but their meaning is lost upon those to whom the myths from which they are derived are unfamiliar. But apart from the practical utility of the myths, as necessary to the comprehension of much that we read and hear, they have a great aesthetic value, presenting, as they do, a mine of imaginative material whose richness and beauty cannot fail to appeal even to the colder sensibilities of this more prosaic age. It would be difficult, indeed, to exaggerate the importance of these old-world stories, with their wonderful admixture of pagan faith and riotous imagination, in correcting the tendency to mere utilitarianism in the education of the young, and there is need to lay stress upon this because of the increased attention now being given to science and modern languages at the expense of the classics. Translations of the exquisite writings of the Greek