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[Illustration: HERCULES AND THE GOLDEN APPLES]




                   HALF A HUNDRED
                     HERO TALES

           OF ULYSSES AND THE MEN OF OLD

                     EDITED BY

                   FRANCIS STORR
    EDITOR OF "THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION," LONDON

               WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
                   FRANK C. PAPE

                   [Illustration]

                      NEW YORK
               HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
                        1913




                  COPYRIGHT, 1911,
                         BY
               HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

              _Published January, 1911_

             THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
                    RAHWAY, N. J.




PREFACE


The apology offered for adding yet another book of Classical Stories
to the endless existing versions, ancient and modern, in verse and in
prose, is the plea that Vivien offers to Merlin for her "tender
rhyme":

    "It lives dispersedly in many hands,
    And every minstrel sings it differently."

"You Greeks," said the Egyptian priest to Herodotus, "are always
children," and Greece will never lose the secret of eternal youth. The
tale of Troy divine, of Thebes and Pelops' line, the song of sweet
Colonus, the most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby, Dido with a
willow in her hand--these old stories of Homer and Sophocles, of
Virgil and Ovid, have not lost their