As you read these ancient tales, you must forget what knowledge
you have of the world, and think of it as the Greeks did. It was
only a little part of the world that they knew at all,--the
eastern end of the Mediterranean,--but even that seemed to them a
great and marvellous region. Beyond its borders were strange and
mysterious lands, in which wonders of all kinds were found, and
round all ran the great world-river, the encircling stream of
Ocean.

In the mountains of Olympus, to the northward, lived the gods.
There was Zeus, greatest of all, the god of thunder and the wide
heavens; Hera, his wife; Apollo, the archer god; Athene, the wise
and clever goddess; Poseidon, who ruled the sea; Aphrodite, the
goddess of love; Hephaestus, the cunning workman; Ares, the god of
war; Hermes, the swift messenger; and others still, whom you will
learn to know as you read. All these were worshipped by men with
prayer and sacrifice; and, as in the early legends of many races,
the gods often took the shape of men and women; they had their
favourites and those whom they hated; and they ruled the fate of
mortals as they chose.

If you let yourselves be beguiled into this old, simple way of
regarding earth and heaven, you will not only love these ancient
tales yourself, but you will see why, for century after century,
they have been the longest loved and the best loved of all tales--
beloved by old and young, by men and women and children. For they
are hero-tales,--tales of war and adventure, tales of bravery and
nobility, tales of the heroes that mankind, almost since the
beginning of time, have looked to as ideals of wisdom and strength
and beauty.