LIVES OF THE GREEK HEROINES.

BY LOUISA MENZIES

October, 1879

PREFACE.

A LITTLE book bearing as its title "Lives of the Greek Heroines" seems scarcely to require a word of introduction. The women who have been made famous by the genius of Homer, of Aeschylus, and of Sophocles, have so stamped their noble and vigorous nature into the literature of Europe that their names have a familiar ring in the verses, even of the modern poet.

To give a true picture of these women and of their lives and occupations is all that the writer of the following pages has aimed at. To have entered on the field of comparative mythology, however inviting it may look, would have been foreign to the purpose with which the work was undertaken, which was to show that, whatever ideas they might or might not embody, to the poets who sung of them, the Greek Heroines were as really and as truly women, with minds to think and hearts to feel, as Portia and Lady Macbeth were to Shakespeare.

Should these pages lead any woman to study one of the finest and purest literatures in the world, to help to clear away the notion that Classic learning is unsuitable to women, the writer will be amply rewarded.