A JUSTIFICATION of such a book as this is happily no longer necessary. The value of the old Greek stories as material of the cultivation of the child’s imagination and the development of the ethical perceptions has long been admitted; and since the report of the conference on History to the Committee of Ten appointed by the National Education Association, some five years ago, the necessity of basing the formal study of History on some sort of elementary studies in biography and mythology has steadily become more and more generally recognized.

These are the ends which this little book is intended to sub serve; and that it will sub serve them, if intelligently used, is the firm conviction of its authors. The book is not altogether an untried one. Both of the authors have had practical experience in the use of such stories in primary classes; and many of the chapters here presented have been used by one of the authors as reading materials and as the basis for composition writing in the third and fourth year of work of the Indianapolis public schools. In giving them to the public, therefore, the authors only hope that the stories may prove as satisfactory in a more extended use as they have been in the limited field in which they have been tried.

In preparing the stories, the authors have tried to keep constantly in touch with the Greek literature from which the tales are ultimately derived. When more than one version of a story exists, choice has been made of that one which seems best adapted to further the objects above indicated. The Greek names have been retained in accordance with what is now recognized as the only scholarly usage; but in the list of pronunciations the Latin equivalents are given.

Bloomington, Indiana.
October, 1897.

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