Customer Reviews

La mitologia/ Mythology (Spanish Edition)

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Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" tell the "Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" of classical mythology and this volume, first written in 1942, is now a timeless classic itself. This was the first book of mythology that I ever read and it is still my personal favorite. When Hamilton retells the love story of Cupid and Psyche or the tragedy of Agamemnon and his children, she does so with a full sense of what it meant when first told by Apuleius or Aeschylus. These are not children's tales, but the heroic legends and religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks. Furthermore, the illustrations by Steele Savage have the elegance of wood block prints, which, for all I know, is exactly what they are. I appreciate Hamilton's choice to avoid relying on Ovid, for while the "Metamorphoses" is the most comprehensive ancient text dealing with the classical myths, Ovid is an unbeliever. For Hamilton the writings of Homer, Hesiod and Pindar are more abbreviated in terms of providing details for the myths, but at least they take the tales seriously.

Another strength of the book is how she organizes the myths in her seven parts: (1) Covers the complete pantheon of deities, including the lesser gods of Olympus and Earth and the later Roman additions, as well as the earliest heroes. (2) Retells the various tales of love, between mortals and the gods or each other, along with the Quest for the Golden Fleece and other early heroic adventures. (3) Focuses specifically on the greatest heroes, Perseus, Theseus and Hercules, with Atalanta thrown in the mix in a curious but understandable editorial decision by Hamilton. (4) Puts together Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid into a giant epic stretching from the Judgment of Paris to the founding of Roman, with the Odyssey and the tragedies of Euripides. (5) Tells about the great mythological families, namely the House of Atreus (Agamemnon), the Royal House of Thebes (Oedipus and Antigone), and the Royal House of Athens. (6) Covers all of the lesser myths, most notably Midas. (7) Goes off in a new direction, providing a very brief introduction to Norse mythology that seems woefully inadequate given the comprehensive compilation of classical mythology that precedes it.

When I first looked over other possibilities as a basic textbook for my Classical Greek & Roman Mythology course (I know, it sounds redundant and repetitive to me too), but I selected this one as my basic text (with "The Greek Myths" by Robert Graves to provide more details and alternative tales). Unfortunately our bookstore is convinced this book is now "out of print" and I had to replace it and the rest of my texts with one giant textbook with lots of photographs. It is a nice textbook, with lots of excerpts from various works to go along with the analysis, but I miss the storytelling of Hamilton. Yes, if you want analysis of these myths, then you certainly want to look elsewhere. But if you want a solid retelling of the key stories of classical mythology, then Edith Hamilton's volume is still at the top of the list as far as I concerned. I fully admit that I am biased because I read this during my formative years and her language and rhythms are engrained in my brain).