rue rather to the tone of a nation than to its literal
history--by which I mean that Achilles was more really a Greek hero
than any Greek who ever lived, because he was the apotheosis of Greek
chivalry, and as such was the expression of the Greeks rather than
merely a Greek. The Iliad and the Odyssey are not merely epics of
Greece--they are Greek.

This is an age of story-telling. Never before has the world turned so
attentively to the shorter forms of fiction. Not only is this true of
the printed short-story, of which some thousands, more or less new,
are issued every year in English, but oral story-telling is taking its
deserved place in the school, the home, and among clubs specially
organized for its cultivation. Teachers and parents must therefore be
increasingly alert, not only to invent new stories, but--this even
chiefly--to familiarize themselves with the oldest stories in the
world.

So it is to such sources as these race-narratives that all
story-telling must come for recurrent inspirations. The setting of
each new story may be tinged with what wild or sophisticated life
soever, yet must the narrator find the big, heart-swelling movements
and passions and thraldoms and conquests and sufferings and elations
of mankind stored in the great epics of the world.

It were a life-labor to become familiar with all of these in their
expressive originals; even in translation it would be a titanic task
to read each one. Therefore how great is our indebtedness to the ripe
scholarship and discreet choice of the author of this "Book of the
Epic" for having brought to us not only the arguments but the very
spirit and flavor of all this noble array. The task has never before
been essayed, and certainly, now that it has been done for the first
time, it is good to know that it has been done surpassingly well.

To find the original story-expression of a nation's myths, its
legends, and its heroic creations is a high joy--a face-to-face
interview with any great first-thing is a big experience; but to come
upon whole scores of undefiled fountains is like multiplying the
Pierian waters.

Even as all the epics herein collected in scenario were epoch-making,
so will the gathering of these side by side prove to be. Literary
judgments must be comparative, and now we may place each epic in
direct comparison with any other, with a resultant light, both
diffused and concentrated, for the benefit of both critics and the
general read