Children of the Dawn
Old Tales of Greece
Elsie Finnimore Buckley
Children of the Dawn
Old Tales of Greece
Each night Hero lighted her torch;
each night Leander swam across the narrow sea.Page 117.
CHILDREN
OF
THE DAWN
OLD·TALES·OF·GREECE
WRITTEN·BY
ELSIE·FINNIMORE·BUCKLEY
INTRODUCTION·BY
ARTHUR SIDGWICK
ILLUSTRATIONS·BY
FRANK·C·PAPÉ
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
INTRODUCTION:
THE aim of this volume is to present, in a form suitable for youngreaders, a small selection from the almost inexhaustibletreasure-house of the ancient Greek tales, which abound (it isneedless to say) in all Greek poetry, and are constantly referred toby the prose-writers. These stories are found, whether narrated atlength, or sometimes only mentioned in a cursory and tantalisingreference, from the earliest poets, Homer and Hesiod, through thelyric age, and the Attic renaissance of the fifth century, when theyform the material of the tragic drama, down to the second centuryb.c., when Apollodorus, the Athenian grammarian, made a prosecollection of them, which is invaluable. They reappear at Rome in theAugustan age (and later), in the poems of Vergil, Ovid, andStatius—particularly in Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Many more aresupplied by Greek or Roman travellers, scholars, geographers, orhistorians, of the first three centuries of our era, such as Strabo,Pausanias, Athenæus, Apuleius and Ælian. The tales arevarious—stories of love, adventure, heroism, skill, endurance,achievement or defeat. The gods take active part,[Pg vii]
[Pg viii] often in conflictwith each other. The heroes or victims are men and women; and behindall, inscrutable and inexorable, sits the dark figure of Fate. TheGreeks had a rare genius for storytelling of all sorts. Whether thetales were of native growth, or imported from the East orelsewhere—and both sources are doubtless represented—once they hadpassed through the Greek hands, the Greek spirit, "finely touched tofine issues," marked them for its own with the beauty, vivacity,dramatic interest, and imaginative outline and detail, which werenever absent from the best Greek work, least of all during thecenturies that lie between Homer and Plato.
The eleven tales here presented from this vast store are (as will beseen) very various both in date, character, and detail; and they seemwell chosen for their purpose. The writer of these English versions ofancient stories has clearly aimed at a terse simplicity of style,while giving full details, with occasional descriptive passages whererequired to make the scene more vivid; and, for