Customer Reviews

Songs on Bronze: The Greek Myths Made Real

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Nigel Spivey is a brilliant scholar whose works related to antiquities have been the topic of numerous excellent books (his most recent 'How Art Made the World: A Journey to the Origins of Human Creativity', 'Understanding Greek Sculpture', 'Enduring Creation: Art, Pain, and Fortitude ' among the many). If there is a thread of continuity in his writing it is the kind aspect that he writes in a fashion that is immensely readable!

SONGS ON BRONZE: THE GREEK MYTHS MADE REAL is actually more of a novel than a translation or regurgitation of the old myths that have endured in many forms for centuries and still inform the arts and literature. Spivey researched these grand stories and has elected to relate them in modern terms. But purists need not worry: Spivey has not 'dumbed down' the classics. He has molded each of the myths and their interrelationships with a nod to contemporary psychology, and while this may chip away at some of the grandeur of the figures of these tales, that feature that can make the myths distant and fraught with excessive unpronounceable names and places, Spivey makes the mythological characters seem like real superheroes. At last here are vague, multi-named gods who become familiar folk under Spivey's pen.

The book is solid and in the relatively short space of 275 pages covers the creation, Prometheus and Pandora, Demeter and Persophone, Herakles, Theseus, Perseus, Jason, the Oresteia and Oedipus, the Odyssey, the Trojan War along with more minor myths and that is a lot of information to make palatable. But palatable it is and in the end this fine book reads like a terrific novel, one whose characters we completely understand! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, January 06

This is an abbreviated retelling of some of the most important stories from Greek mythology, in contemporary language. It is well written, with a literary style befitting the subject; but the stories have been abridged so that you don't get bogged down in trivial details; and the language is modern enough so that you don't have to agonize your way through it, struggling to figure out what the author is trying to say.

The contents include:

Prelude: Orpheus in Love

I. AN EARLY CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD
Out of Chaos
Prometheus and Pandora
Demeter and Persephone

II. HEROES IN THE MAKING
Herakles
Theseus
Perseus
Jason and the Argonauts

III. WAR ABOUT TROY
The Judgment of Paris
The Wrath of Achilles
Troy Taken

IV. A HERO'S COMING HOME
The Travels of Odysseus

V. THE STUFF OF TRAGEDY
The House of Atreus
Oedipus

Unending: Orpheus in the Underworld


To give you a better sense of what sort of book this is, here is a brief excerpt from the Author's Note:

"Songs on Bronze originated from the desire to fashion a single, organic narrative of as much Greek mythology as most people might want or need to know.

"This means a less than comprehensive work. Not every tale of the ancient Greek repertoire has been included here. Some stories ... are much abbreviated. I wanted this book to be a fluent read, not an unrelenting inventory of names, places, and atrocious events. ...

"At the outset I intended to write this book for my young children -- with due regard for their delicate sensibilities. They, however, grew up more quickly than I wrote. So I accepted the violence and sensuality of the myths, and made little effort to purify them. ..."

This is a fun introduction to the stories of Greek mythology.

Too often, our modern schools depend on gadgetry as opposed to old fashioned learning. As a result, many of today's computer generation are totally unaware of much of our cultural heritage. To know the future, one must know and review civilization's past; making the same mistake over and over only leads us nowhere. However, Spivey has given us an easy to follow, background read in ancient Greek mythology that serves to fill in some of the blanks. Concise, witty, and written by a master of our wondrous English language, Nigel Spivey has provided a delightful read that serves to shore up the continued lack of cultural background missing from the knowledge base of many people. Thank you, Dr. Spivey; may your "Songs on Bronze" be a best seller! It is easy to understand why you hold a responsible position at one of the world's great centers of learning -- Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.

I bought this book with high hopes, but could not finish it. While the intention might be honorable, the work is very poorly done and often even wrong.

Too light for nonfiction, too flat-footed for fiction, infused with 80's pop psychology, this book misses the point of every one of the stories. Worse, the author has made stunningly careless errors: in the most obvious example, he makes Ares, the God of War, responsible (due to boredom with the wedding of Peleus and Thetis) for the mischief that led to the Judgement of Paris. But it wasn't Ares, of course; it was Eris the goddess of discord who resented not having been invited to the wedding. Every Greek schoolchild knows this - why on earth wouldn't a highly educated adult 'expert?' This error makes the whole story incoherent, and drastically cheapens its meaning.

This is a sorry book; asking too little of history, giving too little to those who might honestly depend on it for information, so intent on modernizing that it forgets it must also involve compelling writing, careless with its subjects, and completely misunderstanding the purpose of myth.

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Nigel Spivey writes very entertaining short stories but claiming they are "Greek Myths Made Real" is very inaccurate. His story of Orpheus and Eurydice is entirely fictitious and not even remotely based on their myth, which begins, in all of the ancient sources, with her death on their wedding day from snake bite. As a teacher, I shudder to think that my students would read this novel and, unlike I, accept it as an accurate retelling of the myths. It is, at best, a creative recreation. There needs to be a disclaimer on the cover.

Spivey is a professor of Classics at Cambridge University, so I expected a little more from him than this. I can appreciate what he was trying to do, retelling the ancient myths for today's audience. But he didn't carry it off very well. Here's a clue: adding sex scenes does not make it modern.

Also his understandings of the myths leave something to be desired. An example, he makes Andromeda a black woman. Why? For the sake of political correctness? Well it's true that she was a princess of Ethiopia. But the nation of Ethiopia back then was not where the modern country is. Back then, Ethiopia was a Phoenician kingdom (not a black African one) stretching from Syria down to the shores of the Red Sea. Maybe Spivey thought having an interracial romance makes the story more hip, but it makes it less authentic.

I enjoyed listening to these stories (I have the audiobook version). I've heard bits and pieces of the Greek myths throughout my lifetime, but never as whole stories.

I was almost persuaded not to buy it based on the one negative review that referred to "psycobabble" [sic] but fortunately, I found nothing of the sort. The writing (and narration) just sounded fresh and current to me.

Maybe part of the lesson is not to trust people who cannot spell "psychobabble" correctly, a hint that they don't know the meaning of the word.

This is the best retelling of the Greek myths I have ever read. Unlike previous attempts which tend to be dry, this book reads like a narrative. For the first time ever in reading a book on the ancient myths, I found that I could not put the book down, and I ended up finishing it in a day. Besides general praise for the book as a whole, I think this is best retelling of the Judgement of Paris story I have ever read, much better than the version in Edith Hamilton's Mythology. I also enjoyed the telling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story as prologue and afterword to the book.

Despite the apparent similarities, the Greek world is so far away from ours as to be almost impenetrable. Without a rock-solid academic background, talking about Greek myths is risky, offering them to the general public is reckless. Dr Spivey, a well-known Cambridge classicist, must be praised for this effort. He simplifies a bit, but retains a lot. The result is excellent. His retellings are both informative and thoroughly enjoyable.

These myths were a lot of fun to read. The title of this book was a fairly accurate one. Lots of little details are added to the Greek myths to give them more dimension, making for more memorable and enjoyable myths. It's a great starter book for anybody interested in mythology, but be forewarned, there are mentions of homosexuality (Zeus and Gnaymede, for example) as well as incest and rape. But all of these things existed in the original myths) so people familiar with these myths should not be surprised. All in all enjoyable book, my favorites were the Demeter and Persephone one as well as the Hercules one. 4.5/5 stars for enjoyable and memorable stories.