The Heroes of the Greeks [antikvár]

PREFACEThe book which i now offer to the public is again full of matter, even more so than was my Gods of the Greeks. It continues indeed the narrative of that learned Greek islander of our times into whose mouth the story of the gods was put, and complements it at every point where that ran into the story of the heroes. But we may as well take the opposite route, starting from the heavy destinies of these demi^gods who were often for that reason all the more suffering men, and so passing on to the playful existence of the 'easily/living' gods. Here it is not the world of the gods, but a whole world which will be revealed; sometimes it will seem familiar to us, sometimes strange, and handled from this side perhaps for the first time. It is a world which lies between the mouth of the Guadalquivir and the Caucasus, over a space of time beginning about 1500 b.c. and lasting for at least two thousand years. It carried the glory of great gods and goddesses in the shape of their sons, who were venerated as heroes.It is a part of that history which we may call our own, in the sense of the common inheritance which enables us to remember and adopt it. On the basis of the results of psychologists I doubt if it be possible to eliminate such a portion of history entirely, and as a historian I would account it a falsifying of the general history of mankind to wish to suppress the knowledge of it. I do not for a moment believe that I have presented it in a final form. That is why I have dedicated it to future poets; be itxxi