Excerpt from Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. 27: November, 1872 to April, 1873Greece; and his work; called after the nine Muses, was' indeed the first ance of Clio. The historical spirit was the form in which the general scepticism of the age acted' on the belief in the heroic-legends. For Herodotus himself, the heroes are still godlike. But for' Thucydides, towards the: end of the century, the genuine hero-ship of Aga memnon and Pelops is no more; he criticises their probable resources and motives as he might have discussed the conduct or the income of a contemporary. They are real to him but they are real as men and, for that' very reason, unreal as claimants of a half-divine character. The great cycles oi' heroic legends furnished the principal subjects of Attic tragedy; Three distinct methods of treating these legends appear in [eschy lus, Sophocles, and Euripides.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.