Gods and Heroes of the Greeks.

Methuen, London, 1957. IX,202p. Bound wrps. Name on half title. Tail spine slightly bumped. This book sets out to tell plainly and unsentimentally, the chief stories which were current in Ancient Greece and have influenced European literature for many centuries. It goes on to give some account of the later development of these tales, in and out of the Greek world, but does not profess to go into the complicated details which the imagination of writers added or the researches of ancient scholars unearthed from obscure corners. It assumes that the reader wants to know something of mythology, but not that he is an intending expert or even that he has studied or ever will study Greek. It therefore will be useful to those who read to please and amuse themselves, and also th students to students of modern liteeratures who may be puzzled by classical allusions and adaptations of classical plots which they find there. If anyone wants more detail, he will find it in the books listed in the Bibliography; if he does not, he may be sure that nothing is said in these pages which is not taken from some ancient author, generally a poet, to whom the myths, sagas and folk tales were not things they learned from books, but stories which he had known all his life, till they had become part of his mental furniture and it did not occur to him to ask whether or not they were historically true. (Publisher's information).