Chapter 4　Marbles

When I was a boy I once overheard my father talking with a friend about marbles.

“You know，”said my father，“the Greeks made the finest marbles in the world.”

And his friend answered，“Yes, there is no doubt that the Greek marbles are the finest in the world.”I wondered why these grown-up men were talking about marbles, and I wondered who were these Greeks that made such fine marbles and where I could get some, for I played with some very fine marbles myself. I didn't learn until later that they were not talking about marbles to play with, but about statues that the ancient Greeks made out of marble.People call them simply marbles instead of marble bas-reliefs and statues.

Greece was, and still is, a small country in the Mediterranean Sea. But the ancient Greeks and the present-day Greeks are not the same.The ancient Greeks believed in gods and goddesses and heroes, and they told stories about them.This is called mythology.The Greeks also made beautiful statues of their gods as they imagined the gods looked and acted, and no one since has been able to make sculpture as beautiful.Sculpture is one of the things that we can't do much better than they did.

The Egyptians usually made their statues of granite that was too hard to carve with great detail. The Assyrians made theirs of alabaster that was too soft and did not last as