The Penguin Book of Classical MythsThe figures and events of classical myths underpin our culture and the constellations named after them fill the night sky. Whether it’s the raging Minotaur trapped in the Cretan labyrinth or the twelve labours of Hercules, Aphrodite’s birth from the waves or Zeus visiting Danae as a shower of gold, the mythology of Greece and Rome is full of unforgettable stories. All the stories of the Greek tragedies – Oedipus, Medea, Antigone – are there; all the events of the Trojan wars and of Odysseus and Aeneas’ epic journeys; the founding of Athens and of Rome... |
From inside the book
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... gods with the twelve Greek Olympians. And along with the Greek gods, the Romans adopted the Greek myths, endlessly reproducing them in their literature and art. Often they made their own eloquent literary adaptations of the Greek ...
... gods, then Chapter 2 is devoted to the gods themselves: to the twelve great Olympians and a few of the minor gods who will play a part in the stories of mythology that follow. In Chapter 3 we meet the first humans and look at the ...
... gods and heroes. The identity of 'Homer' is controversial, there being disagreement as to whether the two epics were composed by one and the same poet or by two (or even by many). But to the Greeks there was only one Homer, and so ...
... gods, and Athene of the goddesses, usually in her role as patron of heroes. Third, these visual images can fill out the details of our literary sources in several ways. Sometimes we have little or no explicit description of an event in ...
... god, and it could be seen as a great honour to be chosen by one. Moreover, as a Hesiodic fragment puts it, 'the beds of the gods are not unfruitful', and the chosen woman would bear to the god a strong son or sons. (Only one mortal ...
Contents
The Gods | |
The First Humans | |
The Quest for the Golden Fleece | |
Theseus Athens and Crete | |
The Theban Saga | |
The Trojan | |
Odysseus and His Odyssey | |
The House of Pelops | |
Dangerous Women | |
Aeneas and the Destiny of Rome | |
The Foundation of Rome | |