A word may be necessary on one or two points, to those who are coming to these stories from the classics with an unfamiliar eye. It will be found that there is a singular reticence here on that aspect of love which engrosses modern literature. It is occasionally treated by Euripides; but even he handles the theme delicately and with reserve. Nowhere in these stories—with the exception of Dido, who of course belongs to a later civilization than the Greek women—is the love which leads to marriage dealt with explicitly. It is implicit sometimes, and we who have been born into a heritage of romanticism, may delightedly trace it out and make the most of it. But the old poet never does: indeed, he hardly seems to realize that he has put it there. He belongs to a time when women were not wooed and won, but literally bought ‘with great store of presents,’ or acquired in other prosaic ways, which vary according to the several epochs and their customs. The love of men and women is treated from the point of view of husband and wife, of sister and brother, of daughter and father, rather than from the standpoint of the feverish hopes and fears of romantic passion. Marriage is not so much the culmination as the starting-point of an eventful story; and the heroic devotion of sister and daughter is crowned, no less than wifely fidelity, with everlasting honour. We must therefore be prepared for a change from the warmth and glow of romance to the tonic air of a more austere idealism. Again, these women are not the complex creatures of modern civilization. The earliest of them, Homer’s women, are drawn in outline only. They are great and splendid; and because they were created for an aristocratic audience, they are noble, dignified, and placed high above the small things of common life. There is hardly any comedy in Homer, and reality is far away. When we come to the dramatists we find, as we should expect, a great advance in characterization. The women are stronger, more real, more complete. But they are still very far from the psychological subtlety of modern drama. There is, too, a singular reticence about the personal appearance of the heroines. We are rarely told what manner of women they were to look at. Virgil comes one step nearer to our modern love of description when he portrays Dido as she rides out on the fatal morning of the hunt; and when he paints the glowing figure of Camilla as she rushes into battle. But it would be very hard to discover what was the colour of Helen’s eyes, although the old German _Faustbuch_ of the Middle Age has dared to assert that they were ‘black as coals.’ Homer has a more excellent way. Instead of enumerating the charms of his heroine, as it were in a catalogue of perfections, he brings her into the presence of hostile folk, who on all counts have reason to hate her, and in a few vivid phrases shows the potent effect of her beauty upon them.