Heracles

In those distant days when men believed that mighty Zeus ruled over gods and men, mythology tells us that in the land of Greece there lived a hero whom men admired and loved above the gods themselves. His name was Heracles, and in daring and in number, his feats outshone any the world had ever seen before.

Heracles was such a towering figure that no single region could hold him within its narrow boundaries. He became the hero of all Greece and something beyond that still: the heroic expression of the hopes and yearnings of all the Hellenes.

At that time, as everybody knows, Greece was divided into many small city-states forever making war on one another, and the result was ruin and despair.

[Απόσπασμα από κείμενο του εκδότη]