Complete and unabridged, with 45 full-page plates by Peter Paul Rubens, Niccolò Bambini and Gaston Bussière. The myths and hero-tales of Europe gathered into one volume for the general reader: Prometheus and the labours of Hercules, the Golden Fleece and the sack of Troy, Beowulf and the fire-dragon, the coming and passing of Arthur, Siegfried, Lohengrin, Frithiof and Wayland the Smith, the Polish Faust and the Russian Ilya Muromets, Roland and the Cid. Logan Marshall compiled it in 1914, when the old heroic stories had become popular reading again. The arrangement moves from Greece northward and westward, and the likenesses between the nations are the argument the book does not make out loud. Forty-five plates by painters including Rubens and Jordaens carry the same heroes the text recounts, from Prometheus bound to the Valkyrie's vigil.