The first story, called "The Riddle of the Sphinx," gives us in brief the whole Theban tale, from King Laius and the magical building of the city, to the incomparable scene from Sophocles' last play, describing the "Passing of ?dipus." It even includes the heroic action of Antigone, in burying with due rites her dead brother, in spite of the tyrant's threats, and at the cost of her own life. No tale was more often treated in ancient poetry than this tragedy of Thebes. Homer and Hesiod both refer to it, ?schylus wrote a whole trilogy, and Sophocles three separate dramas, on this theme. Euripides dealt with it in his "Ph?niss?," which survives, and in his "?dipus and Antigone," of which a few fragments remain. And several other poets whose works are lost are known by the titles of their plays to have dealt with the same subject.
One other tale in this selection rests in large measure on the Attic drama—namely, the story of Alcestis, the fourth in this series. As far as we know, Euripides alone of the ancients treated this theme, in his beautiful and interesting play "Alcestis," which is here closely followed by our author. The past history of Admetus, the king, which Euripides briefly summarises in the prologue, is here dramatized, and adds much interest to the story, including as it does the Argonauts' visit to Pelias, and the romantic imaginary scene of the king's first meeting with Alcestis.
The two charming love-stories which come second and third in this series, though unquestionably Greek in origin, reach us from Roman sources, and bear clear evidence in their form and spirit of belonging to a later age. The character of the love romance in "Hero and Leander" and the transparent allegory of "Eros and Psyche" (Love and the Soul), leave little doubt on this point. The former tale is ascribed to a late Greek epic poet, Mus?us, of whom nothing else is known; and the latter we owe to Apuleius, a Roman philosopher and man of letters in the second century a.d.
The fifth and tenth stories (in both of which Atalanta appears) rest in their present shape on the authority of Apollodorus; but the incidents of the Calydonian boar-hunt, and the race for the hand of the princess, won by the suitor's clever trick of the golden apples, are found as local traditions connected with two different parts of Greece, Arcadia and B?otia, and may be in their earliest form of great antiquity.
