Mary Macgregor - The Story of Greece

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

This edition, first published in 2010 by Yesterday's Classics, an imprint of Yesterday's Classics, LLC, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. in 1914. This title is available in a print edition (ISBN 978-1-59915-033-8).

Yesterday's Classics republishes classic books for children from the golden age of children's literature, the era from 1880 to 1920. Many of our titles are offered in high-quality paperback editions, with text cast in modern easy-to-read type for today's readers. The illustrations from the original volumes are included except in those few cases where the quality of the original images is too low to make their reproduction feasible. Unless specified otherwise, color illustrations in the original volumes are rendered in black and white in our print editions.

D EAR L ITTLE J OYCE ,One of the reasons why this book is to be your very own is that the story it tells begins in Wonderland, and that is a land in which you and all other little people wander at will.

Grown up children, men and women as we call them, do not know the secrets of this strange land, yet there are a few who can always find their way across its border, as they used to do when they were small like you. Some few others there are who remember its secrets well.

Shall I tell you some of the things you hear and see and do in Wonderland?

Why, when the wind blows soft, faint whispers reach your ear, but you alone know what the whispers tell. When the brooks gurgle you hear joyous laughter, and in the springs of water you see the sparkle of elfin eyes.

As the bluebells shake in the breeze, your tiny feet march to the music of fairy hands, as the raindrops fall you gather pearls with your little hands.

The secrets of this strange Wonderland make you so glad that you laugh and dance and sing.

"Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,

With the wonderful water round you curled,

And the wonderful grass upon your breast,

World you are wonderfully drest."

The ancient Wonderland of Hellas, of which this story tells, was unlike your Wonderland in this, that men and women dwelt in it as well as boys and girls, and they, too, saw and heard its secrets. And this was because, in a way not known to-day, each had kept the heart of a little child.

So it was that these men and women heard voices in the wind and laughter in the streams, so it was that they saw eyes in water springs and pearls in raindrops.

More even than these things the Hellenes saw. For across lone hillsides, through busy fields, in sacral groves and flower-sweet meadows, radiant figures sped. And the simple folk catching glimpses of these flitting forms said one to the other, "The gods have come to live among us. Their presence it is that makes the earth so fair, so wonderful." As the years passed and the Hellenes grew older, sterner times came. Cities sprang up on hillsides and by riverbanks, and the gods were seldom seen. Men went to war, battles were lost and won.

But never, in victory or in defeat, did the people lose their early love of beauty, or that strange, dreamy sense of wonder, which from the beginning was ever plucking at their hearts.

They longed to fulfil their dreams of beauty, they wished to re-shape the world.

But, because the world was so great, so wide, they began with one of their cities, the one of which a poet sang,

"O rich and renowned and with violets crowned,

O Athens the envied of nations."

Here they built temples which became the wonder of the world, and in them they placed statues of the old gods of Hellas, beautiful statues wrought by master hands out of ivory and gold.

Poets and philosophers lived in Athens, too, and so literature and art spread the glory of Greece far and wide, moulding the thoughts and quickening the deeds of many peoples.

Before the glory of Greece faded, Europe had learned from her to follow truth, to love beauty.

This story tells but a small part of the wonder of this land, yet I hope that it will make you love her and wish to learn more about her.Your friend,

MARY MACGREGOR

T HE story of Greece began long, long ago in a strange wonderland of beauty. Woods and winds, fields and rivers, each had a pathway which led upward and onward into the beautiful land. Sometimes indeed no path was needed, for the rivers, woods, and lone hill-sides were themselves the wonderland of which I am going to tell.

In the woods and winds, in the trees and rivers, dwelt the gods and goddesses whom the people of long ago worshipped. It was their presence in the world that made it so great, so wide, so wonderful.

To the Hellenes, for that is the name by which the Greeks called themselves, there were eyes, living eyes in flowers, trees and water. "So crowded full is the air with them," wrote one poet who lived in the far-off days, "that there is no room to put in the spike of an ear of corn without touching one."

When the wind blew soft, the Hellenes listened to the whispering of a voice. When it blew rough, and snatched one of the children from their midst, they did not greatly grieve. The child had but gone to be the playmate of the gods.

The springs sparkled clean, for in them dwelt the Naiads or freshwater nymphs, with gifts as great as the river gods, who were ofttimes seen and heard amid the churning, tossing waters.

In the trees dwelt the Dryads, nymphs these of the forest, and whom the Hellenes saw but seldom. Shy nymphs were the Dryads, born each one at the birth of a tree, in which she dwelt, fading away when the tree was felled, or when it withered and died.

Their revels were held in some wooded mountain, far from the haunts of men. Were a human footfall heard, the frolics ceased on the instant, while each Dryad sped swift for shelter to the tree of her birth.

So the gods wandered though the land, filling the earth with their presence. Yet there was one lofty mountain in central Greece, named Mount Olympus, which the Hellenes believed was the peculiar home of the gods. It was to this great mount that the actual roads on which the Hellenes walked each day seemed ever to lead.

On the sides of the mountain, green trees and dark pines clustered close. The summit reached high up, beyond the clouds, so used the ancient people to tell. Here, where no human foot had ever climbed, up beyond the twinkling stars, was the abode of the gods.

What the Hellenes never saw with their eyes, they saw quite clear with their imagination. Within the clouds, where the gods dwelt, they gazed in this strange way, upon marble halls, glistening with gold and silver, upon thrones too, great white thrones, finer far than those on which an earthly king might sit. The walls gleamed with rainbow tints, and beauty as of dawns and sunsets was painted over vast arches of Olympus.

T HE supreme god of the Hellenes was Zeus. He dwelt in the sky, yet on earth, too, he had a sanctuary amid the oak-woods of Dodona.

When the oak-leaves stirred, his voice was heard, mysterious as the voice of the mightiest of all the gods.