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The Greek Myths: Illustrated Edition

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Robert Graves' THE GREEK MYTHS falls between the Victorian bombast of Bulfinch and the popular style of Edith Hamilton, less stylistically intimidating than the former and more scholarly than the latter. Originally published as a two volume set in 1955 with author revisions in 1957 and 1960, this single volume text does not abridge the original text but merely confines it to a single binding.

One's reaction to THE GREEK MYTHS will depend to some extent on one's purpose in acquiring it. This is an exhaustive collection of Greek mythology that far outstrips any other modern anthology that I have encountered, including myths both better known and extremely obscure. Each myth is presented in concise, graceful prose, and where possible Graves includes genealogies of the characters and major variations of each myth; an interpretive essay also follows each myth.

While Graves' retelling of the myths themselves have been widely praised, his interpretations of the myths have been somewhat criticized--and justly so. Graves tends to see incarnations of the "White Goddess" and the "Sacrificial King" in every third story; more dangerously, he tends to tie the myths to historical events in a highly speculative way. While this does not undercut the interest of his interpretations, it does hold a number of traps for the casual reader, who may assume that Graves' essays offer standard, scholastically unbiased interpretations based on proven historical events.

For myself, I use Graves' THE GREEK MYTHS as both reference and pleasure-reading, and I enjoy it a great deal; it is an indispensable purchase for any one with a serious interest in Greek mythology for any one who must frequently reference the same for scholarly purposes, and I strongly recommend it to them. At the same time, however, I would hesitate to recommend it to readers who have not previously been exposed to Greek mythology or who wish only a general knowledge of the major Greek myths; in such cases I would instead recommend Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY: TIMELESS TALES OF GODS AND HEROES.

I could make a hobby out of "Graves-izing" popular stories. How about Cinderella? If Robert Graves got hold of that story, he'd say something like this: "Cinderella's name means Ash-lady, which denotes her as the ash-pale Death-goddess of winter. She and her two stepsisters form the classic Triple Goddess. Originally, the sisters' names were probably Destruction and Pestilence. Cinderella's transformation at the hands of the Fairy Godmother was really a late patriarchal addition; no doubt the original goddess transformed herself, showing her Love-goddess face rather than her more spectral one. Her dance with the Prince is an example of the White Goddess's choice of the King of the Waxing Year as her consort. In the version that has come down to us, she loses her shoe, but certainly in the uncorrupted, original myth, it was the Prince who lost his shoe, as the sacrificial king was often marked by a limp. This can be seen in the Welsh story of Math ap Mathonwy, and Dionysos's epithets also hinted at lameness. At the hour of midnight, that is to say, the witching hour, Cinderella reveals her terrible, ravening face by turning back into the ragged Death-goddess. Undoubtedly, the story ended with Cinderella's murder of the Prince, and her mourning for him by painting her face with the ashes of his funeral pyre, as the Welsh women mourned for Llew Llaw Gyffes. The happy ending we are familiar with is actually the record of the patriarchal takeover, when the White Goddess was forcibly married to the Year-King who had become the supreme god of the new mythology." Hey, that was fun!

Graves wrote in a poem once, "There is one story and one story only." This story is the myth of the White Goddess, beautiful and faithless, seducing her consort and then betraying him to death at the hands of his rival for her love. This is the only story Graves can see, and everything in this book is filtered through "White-Goddess"-colored glasses. Every myth in which a male figure dies is a record of human sacrifice to the Goddess. Every female figure is assumed to be triple, whether the myths show her in triple form or not. And he always chooses the bloodiest interpretation possible. For example, whenever the root "Perse" appears in a name, he insists it should really be "Pterse", "destruction". He is so caught up in his morbid mythos that he doesn't realize it might just really be "Perse", which means "light". So, certainly don't take this book as gospel. It is colored by the biases and assumptions of its author, and should definitely not be the only book you read on the subject of Greek mythology.

That said, I was fascinated by _The Greek Myths_. I had trouble following his _White Goddess_, but this book is more structured and easier to keep up with. And it gave me some tantalizing ideas for my neo-pagan practice. Just because the history may be dubious doesn't mean this book can't be inspirational--as long as one remembers that the theories came from Graves and not from the ancients.

Procrustes was a gentleman who made travel upon the byways of ancient Greece interestingly hazardous. He had an iron bed onto which he placed any traveler who fell into his hands. If the traveler was too long for the bed, jolly old Procrustes lopped off the excess. It the traveler was too short, Procrustes stretched him to fit. One day Theseus appeared before Procrustes' door and allowed the old bandit the opportunity to measure himself on his bed.

Robert Graves wrote with the intention of expounding and explaining Greek myths. Unstated but implicit in this intention were two ideas: that there is a more or less self-consistent thing called the Greek myths and that they have a more or less consistent meaning. Neither of these things is necessarily true.

The influence of Thomas Bullfinch is so all-pervasive that we are almost blind to it. He provided the English-speaking world with a convenient handbook of myths that made it appear that the Greek (and derivative Roman) world had a central core of beliefs as definable as the Bible, the Qur'an or, for that matter, the Book of Mormon. Admittedly, Graves offers some variant versions, but then, so does Genesis. Years later, Edith Hamilton, with more scholarship and a lot less charm, re-emphasized the lesson.

Was it Bullfinch's intention to assemble a handbook of Greek myths? Not really. In his preface, he makes his intention clear. He was a teacher whose students were unable to understand allusions made by great poets of the English language, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth and their ilk. His handbook is not of Greek myths but of English poetical allusions to Greek myths.

In Bullfinch's time and for many generations before, classical learning consisted of a great deal of Latin and a few snatches of Greek, as demonstrated by the fact that Pope's great translation of Homer has Jupiter, Minerva and Neptune rather than Zeus, Athena and Poseidon. It followed, then, that the two primary sources of mythology for those boasting classical education were Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid, both of which were entirely artificial constructs assembled during the time of Augustus Caesar. By and large, that's where the poets found their allusions and, by and large, that's what Bullfinch gave us.

Even in Bullfinch's time, the amount of mythological material from ancient Greece was greater in scope, even though it was only a tiny fraction of what once had existed. That material had a characteristic that Bullfinch suppressed: it was wildly inconsistent and self-contradictory to the point of anarchy. What two sources could be more authoritative than the poets of the earliest dawn of classical culture, Hesiod and Homer? Hesiod unequivocally states that when the children of the Titan Cronus were born, he swallowed up all but the youngest of them, Zeus. Homer, with equal authority, says that the eldest of the children of Cronus was Zeus, and that it is because he is the eldest that he is king of the gods. Then there is Pausanias. He was a born tourist who traveled up and down the Greek speaking lands, putting in at every tourist trap that he could find while writing a popular guidebook. He was perfectly happy to accept that this hero or that as buried here, there, in another place or in as many places as you want. Sightings of the gods and the rituals associated with them were even more varied. Sometimes he heard a local story that is familiar to us from Homer, but almost invariably the local story is grimmer and bloodier than Homer's version. Clearly, Homer edited out the less respectable bits in exactly the same way that Disney edited the Brothers Grimm.

If there is not necessarily a consistent corpus of myths, what about their meanings? About 2000 BC, tribes of tallish, fair-haired people (see the physical descriptions in Homer of almost every Greek hero except Odysseus) who some generations earlier had bid farewell to their cousins who spoke a variant of their shared language that would evolve into Latin, moved southwest toward the Greek peninsula. They carried with them a god whose name was Zeus who undoubtedly had a consort or two or three (dozen) and a set of stories attached to him and his family. Around 1200 BC, their descendants who lived at a place called Pylos were overwhelmed by sea-borne raiders. In the burning of their palace, clay tablets bearing their routine administrative records were miraculously preserved. Their gods included Zeus, Potnia ("Our Lady") and Enyalios. Eight hundred years later, Socrates talked about "the god," presumably Zeus, as a moral figure, using words very like those Christians might choose for their God. In Roman times, the indefatigable Pausanias jotted down that Enyalios was a title of Ares and made references to Athena Potnia ("Our Lady Athena.") Is the truth of a tale of the Zeus of a proto-Greek speaker who has never even set foot in Greece the truth of Socrates' Zeus? Are the blood-soaked superstitions recorded by Pausanias more true than the rationalized heroic lays of Homer? Would Our Lady of Pylos even recognize Our Lady of Athens?

Procrustes had a number of Twentieth Century descendants. One was Robert Graves, who lopped and stretched the Greek myths onto the bed of his own imaginings. Scan down through these reviews until you come to "Green Melusine," who very cleverly applies Graves' technique to Cinderella with predictable result. (While you're at it, look up the tale of Melusine and wonder with me why anyone would adopt that particular moniker.)

The Greek myths are an intellectual and scholarly Rorschach test. In the Nineteenth Century whole universities of bearded German professors elaborately proved to their own complete satisfaction that the tale of Troy was nothing but an allegorical weather myth. They were much put out when Schliemann started digging up gold, not allegories. In the Twentieth Century Sir James Fraser, Edith Hamilton, Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell have all seen wonderful things in the Rorschach myths and have fitted them perfectly onto their Procrustean beds.

But Theseus always comes knocking at the door.

I am reviewing the two volume edition of Robert Graves's "The Greek Myths."

For many years I have used Robert Graves's "The Greek Myths" as my primary source for information about Greek mythology, but recently I have had to reevaluate the book. The book should be used with a great deal of care and caution.

The need for this reevaluation started innocently enough. I was reading "Hercules at Nemea" a poem by Robert Graves, I wondered about the first line: "Muse, you have bitten through my fool's-finger." I wondered which muse bit through Hercules's finger. So I went to his "Greek Myths" vol. 2 p. 104 where I read that Heracles wrestled with the Nemean lion, not a lioness, and it bit off one of his fingers, but he held it in a chancery and choked it to death. So Graves was free with his material and the poem, which makes poetic sense, does not make mythic sense. Still some questions remained like who were the muses? I was stymied there. In "The Greek Myths" Graves tells us who the Fates are: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. The Erinnyes: Tisiphone,Alecto, Megaera. The Charities: Euphrosyne, Aglaia and Thalia. The Seven against Thebes:Polyneices, Tydeus, Capaneus, Hippomedon, Amphiaraus, Parthenopaeus, Adrastus, and some say Eteoclus. He even names the Sirens with all the variations: Aglaope, Aglaophonos, Leucosia, Ligeria, Molpe, Parthenope, Peisinoe, Raidne, Teles, Thelxepeia, and Thelxiope. But he does not name the Muses. In volume 1, page 53 Graves says that Zeus fathered the Three Muses on Mnemosyne with whom he lay nine nights, but in volume 2, p. 317 Graves says there are nine muses. How many muses are there? For the parentage and number of the muses Graves cites an Orphic fragment which I do not have, and Apollodorus 1. 3. 1-2. as his sources for this story. I checked Apollodorus and he states that Zeus and Mnemosyne are the parents of the nine muses and goes on to name them. In volume 1, page 55 Graves wrote that "Zeus's claim to be their [the Muses] father is a late one; Hesiod calls them the daughters Mother Earth and Air." In "Works and Days" and "Theogony" Hesiod says that Zeus and Mnemosyne are the parents of the Muses (see pp.3, 83-85 and 145 of the Loeb volume #57--"Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns"). Perhaps Graves is confusing the parents of Mnemosyne, Earth and Heaven, with the parents of the muses. Hesiod does names the Muses: Calliope, Cleio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, and Urania. Also on page 55 Graves cites Pausanius to say the number of the muses is three, but the citation he gives, ix.19.2, is wrong. The citation is actually ix.29.2.

This is not the only example of Graves' carelessness or his uncritical use of material. Graves does present a great deal of material, and generally he does present lively versions of the Greek myths, but you have to remember that these books have to be used with great caution. I would recommend that you use Graves' Greek Myths in conjuntion with other references.

I came to Graves' the Greek myths full of high expectations, having absolutely loved I,Claudius and knowing Graves' excellent reputation as both poet and scholar. Unfortunately, what I found was a textbook, not a retelling of the myths ala Edith Hamilton. I am not qualified to opine on The Greek Myths as a textbook; I'll leave that to those reviewers who teach mythology. As a lay reader, however, The Greek Myths is a bit cumbersome. Far too many of the myth stories consist of "but others say that his mother was XYZ, or YXZ, or ZXY and that this happened at QRS or TUV, but still others say . . . ." I found myself skipping entire paragraphs to avoid all of the variants on the main story. Graves' description of the Trojan War and Odysseus' journey are very well-done but are too little, too late to make the work as a whole truly enjoyable. The commentaries range from interesting to deadly dull - again, in this lay reader's opinion.

Bottom line, if you merely enjoy reading the myth stories you learned in childhood stick with Edith Hamilton. If you are looking for a more detailed *textbook* (or, as others have said, a *reference* book), then pick up Graves.

Many of us had to suffer through some rehashing of classical mythology when we were in high school, as often as not Edith Hamilton's book "Mythology." While having the stories re-told to us when we were young is a part of a literary education (a dwindling part, sorry to say), sooner or later you have to graduate to a more authoritative retelling of the myths, to use as a reference and a doorway into other disciplines, such as anthropology.

Graves' book fills that gap. He provides sources for all of the myths he tells, and gives variant readings. He also retells what the classical authors had to say about the myths, and gives a wealth of etymological information about the myths as well, which given that Graves was a formidable classical scholar is saying quite a lot.

The only reason I'm not giving this book five stars is because like a great deal of Graves' anthropological commentary in his various books, what he has to say is out of date. I suppose that this was inevitable with the passage of time, but on the whole this does not detract from the literary effort. Graves is still the only classical mythology reference on my bookshelf.

This book was a revolutionary work in it's time. It examined the Goddess religion and pre-Greek beliefs in an objective and interesting way. The fundamental problem with it is that Graves was not an anthropologist. He links practically every Greek myth with Pelasgian/Minoan king sacrifice rituals. This is really irksome in that while the Pelasgian/Minoan model was neglected by chauvinist academics for years and years (and still is), he makes some statements about pre-Greek Aegean culture which is pure conjecture and presents them as fact. Also, he states that Orphism came about because of Egyptian refugees fleeing from the Amonist backlash against Ahkenaton. Never mind that the dating does not work and he presents absolutely no material proof for this. He does this type of thing through the whole work. The bottom line is that sometimes he is dead on the money and other times he could be talking about "Star Wars!" The basic problem is that Graves approached the subject inductively, rather than deductively. So, one MUST read this book with a critical mind.

Despite being nearly 40 years old, Robert Graves' brilliant mixture of poetic prose and scholarly exegesis continues to make his Greek Myths a stunning read as well as a valuable resource for ancient greek mythology. As a poet, novelist, classicist, translator, historian and literary critic, Graves' had the ability to blend "poetic intuition" with scholarship to bring the myths of a distant time to life. As Graves himself always claimed, the ancient past is no less knowable than a contemporary political cartoon; however, a contemporary political cartoon seems easier to understand than an ancient myth because it's a product of what we know well. Graves sought to bring the past to life so that the ancient myth would seem as current and knowable and understandable as the present. Classicists and historians often reject Graves *because* he demystifies the knowledge they claim as their own.

Anyone at all interested in Greek mythology must come to own Graves' work. They can serve themselves well by also reading his The White Goddess, and The Hebrew Myths. His famous Claudius Novels, The Golden Fleece (Hercules, My Shipmate in America), and King Jesus are vaulable reads as well.

Much good stuff has been said about this book, right here on this page, so I would like to focus on just one important aspect: Graves's treatment of the Underworld. Here, for the first time in history, as far as I know, the author provides a genuine "map" of that dark realm, complete with Who judges Europeans, Asians and others, along with a superb description of the three roads of Hekate, the real ruler of the Three Realms -- Heaven, Earth, and Underworld -- a magnificent opus not to be intellectualized but felt in the heart, the Soul.

The only reason this doesn't get 5 starts is because it's too sparse for me, but I'm a myth freak. There is a two volume, expanded version of Robert Graves' Greek Myths and it includes notes and more stories. If you're really into myth I suggest getting that one. This is not a book of stories, this is a scholarly book of myths. This would not be the book to get if you're looking to read myths in story form. If you want to study myths this is a good book to use as introduction to the subject, the two volume version is a great reference.