Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece

"Often have I told my youngest daughter the legends of ancient Greece, and have found myself wishing that I could give her a book that would show her more of that magic world which was the delight of my own youth and to which I love to return now that I am older. Then a while ago I heard of the plan of a publisher who had had a similar experience with his son, and I hailed his project. He had the happy though of preparing an English edition of Gustav Schwab's Die Sagen des Klassischen Alterturm, and at once I declared I was eager to help him realize this plan."

The speaker is editor Werner Jaeger, the publisher was Kurt Wolff, and in the fall of 1946 Pantheon Books published an English-language translation of Schwab's classic volume entitled Gods and Heroes. It has been continuously in print ever since and is the oldest active title on the Pantheon backlist.

Icarus who flew too close to the sun, the mighty Hercules, poor old Achilles and his heel, that sneaky Trojan horse, brave Perseus and beautiful Andromeda -- their stories and the stories of the powerful gods who punish and reward, who fall in love with and are enraged by the humans they have created, are set forth here simply but movingly, in language that retains the drama of the original works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Homer, but that, in Gustav Schwab's masterful retelling, is accessable to readers of all ages.