Excerpt from Stories From a Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys The stories that you are to read in this book are some of the oldest and most beautiful in the world. Long, long ago they were told by Greek mothers to their children, and even in those days they were old. When they were first imagined nobody can tell, nor know for certain what they first meant. Some learned men in our own times have fancied that they were not stories about real people that lived in the world, but about sun and stars, about sky and clouds and wind and sea, about day and night and the passing seasons. They have thought that as men and women in the childhood of the world watched the wonderful changes that pass over the face of sky and land and sea, they explained those changes to themselves as scenes in the lives of mysterious beings, gods in Shape like unto men, but in power infinitely greater. Others, again, have held that Hercules and Bellerophon were real heroes, and Midas a real king, and that after their death the fame of their valour and riches grew into the marvellous legends that you will read here. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.