Page:The story of Greece told to boys and girls.djvu/62

 CHAPTER XI

ACHILLES AND BRISEIS THE FAIRCHEEKED

The story of Perseus belongs to the Heroic Age of Greek history, to the time when heroes were half mortal, half divine. Many other wonderful tales belong to the Heroic Age, but among them all none are so famous as those that are told in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad tells of the war that raged around the walls of the city of Troy; the Odyssey of the adventures of the goodly Odysseus.

In the north-west corner of Asia, looking toward Greece, the ruins of an ancient city have been discovered. It was on this spot that Troy or Ilium was believed to have stood.

Strange legends gathered round the warriors of the Trojan War, so strange that some people say that there never were such heroes as those of whom the Iliad tells. However that may be, we know that in long after years, when the Greeks fought with the people of Asia, they remembered these old stories, and believed that they were carrying on the wars which their fathers had begun.

The Iliad and the Odyssey were written by a poet named Homer, so many wise folk tell. While others, it may be just as wise, say that these poems were not written by one man, but were gathered from the legends of the people, now by one poet, now by another, until they grew into the collection of stories which we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey.

At first these old stories were not written in a book; they were sung or told in verse by the poets to the people of Hellas. And because what is 'simple and serious lives longer than what is merely clever,' these grave old stories of