Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, 75th Anniversary Illustrated Edition

Product Information

The majority of Hera’s misdeeds are a result of the fact that Zeus can’t keep his Jörmungandr in his pants (Yes, we’re mixing mythologies, just roll with it). Of those two, Hamilton is better at identifying the mainly Greek sources she relied on - it's worth reading her Introduction as to why she preferred gifted Greeks who believed in their gods, heroes and myths to the poetic Romans who rehashed them for "literary" purposes.

I have an old tattered paperback copy of this which helped guide me through the Odyssey and the Iliad. In future (having read it twice), I will likely use it as a reference while I dive into more creative and derivative stuff, including the classic plays and poems. When you thought someone in history was being creative, chances are they were just borrowing from the creativity of the ancient Greeks.This 75th anniversary illustrated edition does have colour plates but I don't find them as detailed or compelling as those in our older edition. The first is that Hamilton’s bias towards particular poets comes through too strongly at times and she can be quite opinionated. This is not the fault of the book, it’s just the way these myths are, where there are loads of them that are not connected to a myth that is part of bigger story, for example one of the families like the House of Thebes. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes is a book written by Edith Hamilton, published in 1942 by Little, Brown and Company. Well, I am just trying to be a gracious hospitable host allowing my foreigner friends happy during their visit.

One could add many more but overall in this book one can see clearly the basis of a civilisation that was destined to become great and provide Europe with its mind and soul. Moreover, the one thing I expect at the very least from an encyclopedia of mythology is a good overview. Pentheus, a King of Thebes, questions Dionysus’ divinity and Dionysus satiates his need for vengeance by placing the women of Thebes into a Frenzy and, long-story-short, Pentheus’ Mother and Aunties tear him limb from limb only to be awakened from their frenzy to look in horror at what they’ve done.Anyways, mythology is always something I was interested in and loved, it's in so much of our everyday life still in the stories we tell and our history. Mythology" even comes with a bunch of nifty illustrations, done by someone with the improbable name of Steele Savage (with a great fondness for winged horses, apparently). All her knowledge came from classic literature; she has never been to Greece, and never participated in archaeology.

I was enjoying this so much that sometimes I wished more was explained on why different versions of the same myth exist, but liked how Edith Hamilton is not shy of making it clear which versions she prefers.What's more (displaying my ignorance here) I was confused over the title of the play, and some of the main protagonists of the play, the Furies. And it all came across a little bit like personality types in the decades before Meyers-Briggs and Enneagram would take the kids of the 80s by storm. It's not just the over-representation of winged steeds, there's also way too much use of the threatening dark thundercloud effect, and the human figures are invariably depicted as shrieking heavenward as they shake their evidently double-jointed limbs in panic.