treated it just as he believed to be best. His great work was his
history, and this he begins with a little preface, as independent as it is
graceful. "Whether I shall gain any share of glory," he says, "by writing
a history of the Roman people, I do not know. The work, however, will be a
pleasure to me; and even if any fame that might otherwise be mine should
be hidden by the success of other writers, I shall console myself by
thinking of their excellence and greatness." No such thing happened,
however, for the kindly historian was so praised and his work so fully
appreciated that he said he had all the fame he could wish.

Herodotus was a Greek who liked to travel. The world was very small in his
day, for little of it was known except some of the lands bordering on the
Mediterranean. To visit Tyre, Babylon, Egypt, Palestine, and the islands
of the eastern Mediterranean, as he did, made a man a great traveler five
centuries before Christ. Herodotus enjoyed all these wanderings, but they
also "meant business" to him. Whenever he came to a place of historical
interest, he stayed awhile. He explored the country thereabouts, he
measured the important buildings, he talked with the people who knew most
about the place. Then, when he came to write of its history, he did not
write like a man who had read an article or two in an encyclopaedia and was
trying to recite what he had learned, but like one who knew the place
which he was describing and liked to talk about it, and about what had
happened there. It is no wonder that his history has always been a
favorite; and to be a favorite author for twenty centuries is no small
glory.

Ovid was a Latin poet who knew how to tell a story. He could not only
invent a tale, but he could tell it so well that the reader feels as if it
must be true. His most interesting stories, however, he did not invent,
for they are a rewriting of the old mythological tales. In one respect he
is like Homer; he never forgets the little things, and he tells so many
details that we can hardly believe he is imagining them. In his story of
Baucis and Philemon, for instance, Ovid does not forget to say that the
cottage door was so low that the two gods had to stoop to pass through it;
that Baucis hurried to brighten the fire with dry leaves and bits of bark;
that one leg of the table was too short and had to be propped up with a
piece of tile. He tells us that the kindhearted couple tried to catch
their one