A long time ago, when the world was much younger than it is now, people
told and believed a great many wonderful stories about wonderful things
which neither you nor I have ever seen. They often talked about a
certain Mighty Being called Jupiter, or Zeus, who was king of the sky
and the earth; and they said that he sat most of the time amid the
clouds on the top of a very high mountain where he could look down and
see everything that was going on in the earth beneath. He liked to ride
on the storm-clouds and hurl burning thunderbolts right and left among
the trees and rocks; and he was so very, very mighty that when he
nodded, the earth quaked, the mountains trembled and smoked, the sky
grew black, and the sun hid his face.

Jupiter had two brothers, both of them terrible fellows, but not nearly
so great as himself. The name of one of them was Neptune, or Poseidon,
and he was the king of the sea. He had a glittering, golden palace far
down in the deep sea-caves where the fishes live and the red coral
grows; and whenever he was angry the waves would rise mountain high, and
the storm-winds would howl fearfully, and the sea would try to break
over the land; and men called him the Shaker of the Earth.

The other brother of Jupiter was a sad pale-faced being, whose kingdom
was underneath the earth, where the sun never shone and where there was
darkness and weeping and sorrow all the time. His name was Pluto, or
Aidoneus, and his country was called the Lower World, or the Land of
Shadows, or Hades. Men said that whenever any one died, Pluto would send
his messenger, or Shadow Leader, to carry that one down into his
cheerless kingdom; and for that reason they never spoke well of him, but
thought of him only as the enemy of life.