The Iliad is the account of the Trojan War. The Odyssey tells of the Grecian hero, Ulysses, and of his years of wandering and adventure, after the fall of Troy, before he finally reaches his home and wife and son, in Ithaca. Later, Virgil, greatest of Roman poets, in his desire to do for the Latin nation what Homer did for the Greeks, wrote the Æneid. In this he describes the adventures of the Trojan hero, Æneas. As you will see, his book is modelled after Homer’s, even in small details. Homer and Sir Thomas Malory may be said to have each performed for his native country a somewhat similar task, each, of course, in his own way. Each retold the current folk tales in such a superior manner that his became the accepted version, to the practical exclusion of all others, and it is thus in a very real sense that we are indebted to Homer for Ulysses and to Malory for King Arthur. The old Greek tales at the beginning of the book are from Ovid (43 B. C.), Apollodorus (140 B. C.) and Pindar (522 B. C.), and they have been retold in delightful fashion by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Kingsley and Miss Buckley. As the stories from Homer and Virgil, in the versions here given, can only be looked upon as introductory to more extended reading, and are, consequently, something with which scholarship can have little if any quarrel, it has seemed desirable to make them as simple and clear as possible. For this reason the Latin names for the gods and goddesses of the Greek mythology have been used throughout. These names have been handed down to us in the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and many others, and usage has made them familiar. Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Diana and Neptune, are old friends whose attributes are recognized at once, while to many the Grecian Zeus, Hera, Ares, Artemis and Poseidon are strangers whose names might have to be looked up in the classical dictionary. With the exception of a word here and there, there has been no editing of the stories, but occasional passages that delayed the movement of a story have been omitted. WILLIAM PATTEN. THE PRINCIPAL GODS AND GODDESSES MENTIONED IN THESE PAGES WITH THEIR LATIN AND GREEK NAMES _Latin_ _Greek_ CYBELE The Great Mother of the Gods, Mother RHEA of Jupiter and Juno. SATURN Father of Jupiter (the greatest Olympian CRONUS God), of Pluto, and of Neptune. The world was divided between the three brothers; Pluto was given the lower world, Neptune the sea, and Jupiter the heavens and upper regions of the air. PLUTO Son of Saturn and Cybele, king of the AÏDONEUS lower world. Metals and all the OR HADES productions of the earth are his gifts.