"The Golden Fleece And the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles" is Padraic Colum's classic retelling of principally the ancient mythological tales of Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. Also included are tales of the creation of the heavens and the earth, Zeus's battle with the Titans, Pandora's box (a jar in this case), Persephone in the Underworld, and the adventures of Hercules. With numerous illust ...
If you have ever heard phrases like, «look before you leap,» «necessity is the mother of invention,» or «two wrongs don't make a right,» you are not alone. These phrases and many like them, which have become so commonplace, were first coined by Aesop. Born into slavery in ancient Greece, Aesop supposedly won his freedom with his learned wit. Collected here are his famous fables translated by George Fyler Townsend with a short biography of A ...
In the year 778 A.D., Charles the Great, King of the Franks, returned from a military expedition into Spain, whither he had been led by opportunities offered through dissensions among the Saracens who then dominated that country. On the 15th of August, while his army was marching through the passes of the Pyrenees, his rear-guard was attacked and annihilated by the Basque inhabitants of the mountains, in the valley of Roncesvaux. About this disa ...
Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe, friends since childhood, collaboratively published a series of Norwegian legends and folktales. In order to overcome language and dialect difficulties, the two modeled their style after the Brothers Grimm. The stories were originally published in pamphlets, but by 1870 the current collection was published, and the entire work was translated by Sir George Webbe Dasent, a professor of English literature an ...
Written in Old Norse by the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson sometime around 1230 AD, the «Heimskringla» is one of the best known of all sagas. It is in actuality a collection of sagas concerning the various rulers of Norway, from about A.D. 850 to the year A.D. 1177. While scholars and historians continue to debate the historical accuracy of Sturluson's work, the «Heimskringla» is still considered an important original source ...
The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen having delighted readers young and old for decades. Collected here are some of his most love tales. This collection includes the following tales: The Emperor's New Clothes, The Swineherd, The Real Princess, The Shoes of Fortune, The Fir Tree, The Snow Queen, The Leap-Frog, The Elderbush, The Bell, The Old House, The Happy Family, The Story of a Mother, The False Collar, The Shadow, The Little Match ...
Chretien de Troyes was a French poet in the late 12th century whose work represents some of the best examples of Arthurian legend from medieval times. Contained in this volume are the four complete Arthurian romances that have survived. The first of these stories is that of «Erec and Enide», which recounts the story of Erec, one of King Arthur's knights, and the conflict between love and knighthood he experiences in his marriage to Enide. T ...
Upon his arrival in Japan in 1890, Lafcadio Hearn found himself enamored with the culture, people, and stories of the country, and would make Japan his home until his death in 1904. His collections of stories published during this time became the most popular of Hearn's writings, and earned him veneration worldwide as not only a great translator of Japanese mythology, but as a sensational teller of strange and wonderfully macabre tales. «In ...
"The Aeneid" is considered by some to be one of the most important epic poems of all time. The story is as much one of the great epic hero, Aeneas, as it is of the foundation of the great Roman Empire. Aeneas, a Trojan Prince, who escapes after the fall of troy, travels with others to Italy to lay the foundations for what would become the great Roman Empire. Virgil's «Aeneid» is a story of great adventure, of war, of love, and of the e ...
