\n
", "
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Book Cover]") ?>
\n
", "
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Frontispiece]", SmallCapsText("Pyrrhus viewing the Roman Encampment.")) ?>
\n
", "
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Title Page]") ?>
\n
", "
\n
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Copyright Page]") ?>
respect to the heroes of ancient history, who lived in
times antecedent to the period when the regular records of
authentic history commence, no reliance can be placed upon
the actual verity of the accounts which have come down to us
of their lives and actions. In those ancient days there
was, in fact, no line of demarcation between romance and
history, and the stories which were told of Cyrus, Darius,
Xerxes, Romulus, Pyrrhus, and other personages as ancient as
they, are all more or less fabulous and mythical. We
learn this as well from the internal evidence furnished by
the narratives themselves as from the researches of modern
scholars, who have succeeded, in many cases, in
disentangling the web, and separating the false from the
true. It is none the less important, however, on this
account, that these ancient tales, as they were originally
told, and as they have come down to us through so many
centuries, should be made known to readers of the
present
age. They have been circulated among mankind in their
original form for twenty or thirty centuries, and they have
mingled themselves inextricably with the literature, the
eloquence, and the poetry of every civilized nation on the
globe. Of course, to know what the story is, whether true
or false, which the ancient narrators recorded, and which
has been read and commented on by every succeeding
generation to the present day, is an essential attainment
for every well-informed man; a far more essential
attainment, in fact, for the general reader, than to
discover now, at this late period, what the actual facts
were which gave origin to the fable.
In writing this series of histories, therefore, it has been
the aim of the author not to correct the ancient
story, but to repeat it as it stands, cautioning the reader,
however, whenever occasion requires, not to suppose that the
marvelous narratives are historically true.
\n
", "
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Contents]") ?>
\n
", "
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Engravings]") ?>