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 PREFACE

So many Greek Readers are already in circulation, that a new one requires a few words of explanation.

The first difficulty which we have to encounter in teaching Greek is the want of any classical writer, who is sufficiently simple in style and at the same time interesting in subject-matter, to form a suitable introduction to the language. However interesting Xenophon may be as a whole, he can hardly prove attractive in the small doses of a third-form lesson. The great mass of anecdotes, historical and mythological, which are likely to appeal to the imagination of a boy, and which indeed are far more familiar to most people than the great masterpieces themselves, are to be found for the most part in the post-classical writers such as Plutarch or Apollodorus.

The Greek Readers which have been compiled to meet this difficulty may be divided roughly speaking, into two classes. The first class, of which Dr. Smith's Initia Graeca may be taken as a type, have selected