Mythology

As I mentioned in my review of Heroides, I've been trying to read about Greek and Roman mythology. One of the standard texts on this subject is Edith Hamilton's 1942 book, simply called Mythology. She points out: "A book on Mythology must draw from widely different sources. Twelve hundred years separate the first writers through whom the myths have come down to us from the last, and there are stories as unlike each other as 'Cinderella' and 'King Lear.'

As previously stated, the myths of ancient Greece are very complicated, as a firm understanding of family trees and the various stories must be carefully delineated. Hamilton uses as her sources many different writers, such as Ovid, Homer, Virgil, the great Greek playwrights like Aeschylus and Euripides, and many other writers. Her stories are lucid and, dare I say, even funny, with a wink in one eye.

She runs through the major Greek and Roman myths. About the similar myths between those two cultures, and how the Romans simply borrowed the Greek myths with different names: "It was a simple matter to adopt Greek gods because the Romans did not have definitely personified gods of their own. They were a people of deep religious feeling, but they had little imagination. They could never have created the Olympians, each a distinct, vivid personality. Their gods, before they took over from the Greeks, were vague, hardly more than a 'those that are above.'

Hamilton, in a well-thought out structure, lays out the basics: the Titans, the Olympians, all the way down to the Lesser Gods. She tells many stories that we learn as children, but might never have fully understood, such as Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion and Galatea, the Pegasus and Bellerophon. She writes of great heroes, like Perseus, Hercules, and Theseus. My favorite line from the Hercules story: "The fifth labor was to clean the Augean stables in a single day. Augeas had thousands of  cattle and their stalls had not been cleaned out for years. Hercules diverted the courses of two rivers and made them flow through the stables in a great flood that washed out the filth in no time at all." Perhaps only the Greeks could have had their great hero be a whiz at housecleaning.

We also hear about a goddess I'd never heard of before, Atalanta, who was a great athlete, though a woman. Nobody could beat her at races, until one day a fellow distracted her with golden apples and she lost, thus having to marry him. It's just typical of a woman to be mollified by shiny objects.

Hamilton also goes over, in summary, the Trojan War, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. We also get the sad story of Oedipus, one of mythology's unluckiest men.

Throughout, Hamilton provides a droll voice. Also speaking of Hercules: "He seems not to have liked music, which was a most important part of a Greek boy's training, or else he disliked his music master. He flew into a rage with him and brained him with his lute." Also speaking of music: "The flute was invented by Athena, but she threw it away because in order to play it she had to puff out her cheeks and disfigure her face. Marsyas, a satyr, found it and played so enchantingly upon that he dared to challenge Apollo to a contest. The god won, of course, and punished Marsyas by flaying him." Ouch!

Then there's the ongoing sit-com of Zeus and Hera. Zeus was a very busy fellow, constantly mating with humans and producing many offspring. Hera spent most of her time exacting revenge on Zeus' mates or their children.

Hamilton ends the book with a brief discussion of Norse mythology, which is quite a bit different than those of the Mediterraneans, and fitting when thinking of brooding Scandinavians. "The only sustaining support possible for the human spirit, the one pure unsullied good men can hope to attain, is heroism; and heroism depends on lost causes. The hero can prove what he is only by dying. The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeats." I think Garrison Keillor would agree.

I only wish I had read this book in school, and had more time to fully delve into this fascinating world. It's a violent, funny world, full of evil and heartbreak. It's the very first soap opera.