The legends themselves are very dry, descriptive accounts redolent of an essay on the story at hand rather than a retelling. It's clear that the author carried out very thorough reading on the subject but was too determined to fit in every alternative version when sketching the tales (and he does sketch them - the characters never come to life and the stories are mere accounts); 'according to some' and 'others say' are phrases which occur frequently throughout the book and sometimes even lists of alternative names are provided in this manner. Such details have their place - in the footnotes where the interested reader can find them if they wish. Herodotus wrote The Histories before the 'rules' of prose-writing had been established, and intended it for live public recitation as much as for private reading. Robin Waterfield's acclaimed translation is widely regarded as the authoritative modern rendering, balancing fluency with fidelity to the original text, capturing Herodotus' distinctive authorial voice while keeping him highly readable, and allowing ancient characters to talk directly to us across the millennia. This engaging text was originally published with an introduction by Professor Carolyn Dewald, and this is included here too along with a judicious selection from her notes and a helpful timeline by Peter O’Neill. Robert Graves “The Greek Myths” is a wonderful resource for learning about the myths of ancient Greece. Originally published in 1955, it was updated for the last time in 1960. There are two volumes, but they are often available in a single book, which makes it easier for the reader to handle. Graves does a wonderful job of making the myths easy to read and understand, and discusses the variations which often occurred in the myths. His interpretation of the myths is a bit subjective, so the reader needs to treat that aspect as such. Starting with the Pelgasian creation myth and ending with Odysseus’s homecoming, this compendium covers all the traditional ancient Greek myths and legends over the course of 171 chapters.

H. J. Rose, agreeing with several of the above critics, questions the scholarship of the retellings. Graves presents The Greek Myths as an updating of William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (originally published 1844), which Graves calls "the standard work in English", never brought up to date; Rose is dismayed to find no sign that Graves had heard of the Oxford Classical Dictionary or any of the "various compendia of mythology, written in, or translated into, our tongue since 1844". Rose finds many omissions and some clear errors, most seriously Graves's ascribing to Sophocles the argument of his Ajax (Graves §168.4); this evaluation has been repeated by other critics since. [12] [13] One of the saddest pictures in the world - a favourite bookshop in the process of getting demolished.The Greek Myths presents the myths as stories from the ritual of all three stages, and often as historical records of the otherwise unattested struggles between Greek kings and the Moon-priestesses. In some cases Graves conjectures a process of "iconotropy", or image-turning, by which a hypothetical cult image of the matriarchal or matrilineal period has been misread by later Greeks in their own terms. Thus, for example, he conjectures an image of divine twins struggling in the womb of the Horse-Goddess, which later gave rise to the myth of the Trojan Horse. [2] Pelasgian creation myth [ edit ] Jacob Bryant's Orphic Egg (1774)

This was such an opportune find. I did not know who the hell Robert Graves was at the time - I was captivated by the covers of the Penguin India edition (it was in two volumes), and I was nuts over mythology, so I immediately bought it. It opened a whole new vista for me. I do not know if Robert Graves has a certain predilection towards the salacious (his books, I, Claudius and Claudius the God were pretty lewd) or if he is simply preserving a faithful translation of the stories. He has been criticized for relying too heavily on Suetonius' histories, who is also known for creating scandals that are not as historically reliable as they should be. Kevin Herbert: review of TGM; The Classical Journal, Vol. 51, No. 4. (Jan. 1956), pp. 191–192. JSTOR 3293608. Graves himself was well aware of scholarly mistrust of The Greek Myths. In a letter to Ava Gardner, he wrote:Also there were certain facts that I had in my head that I certainly proved to be wrong here. Little things I know but I always thought that it was Pandora’s box and not the jar and I had never even heard of The Sprites until I arrived at this part of the book. Also the Minotaur, well my own interpretation of that was completely wrong.

In this category, we have Virgil’s Aeneid, published in 1993. This volume is translated by John Dryden, introduced by Peter Levi, and illustrated by Francis Cleyn. A full-leather limited edition (not part of this series) of the same volume was later released in 2010.

Reviews

The second volume rounds the set out with the remaining two of the big five – Grettir’s Saga and the Laexdala Saga – and several other tales. Fabulous illustrations are by John Vernon Lord and the endpaper maps are drawn by Reginald Piggott. Also included are the Homeric, Orphic and Olympian creation myths, as well as two "philosophical" creation myths. Why are there so many sets of 50 siblings? (The Danaids, the Nereids, and the Menae are three examples). Because there were colleges of 50 priestesses, who represented something like the 50 months of a "great year" of a king's term in office... yep.

Richard G. A. Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 5. ISBN 0-521-33865-4 Each chapter is about 50% myth and 50% Robert Graves' analysis of the myth. Robert Graves believes in some really weird things, like that pre-Hellenic Greece was a matriarchal society that believed in a "Mother Goddess" or "Triple Goddess" that was common to all Eastern Mediterranean worship. Most of the rapes of early Greek myth can be explained by the invading Hellenes conquering goddess shrines, according to Graves. Graves also claims that in pre-Hellenic Greece, kings' rules were limited to solar cycles (such as one year, or 'great years' of 4 or 19 years, when the moon and sun are in greater alignment), and rule was divided between a sacred king and a 'tanist' (an earthly king), who were often in competition. And at the end of their reign, the sacred king had to be sacrificed (there was apparently a lot of human sacrifice in pre-Hellenic Greece); eventually, substitutes were found for the king (such as his children). A second way to use the book is to simply browse until you find a myth that interests you and spend some time reading about it and its variations. Each myth is explained in clear English and divided into paragraphs relating to each of the ancient Greek works which mention the myths. These ancient references are then listed which easily provides the reader the information they need to do further investigation. Lastly, additional notes are included which help to better understand the myths and put them into an historical perspective, though again this is not necessarily factual as much as it is supposition on the part of Graves. The first volume contains three of the big five with Egil’s Saga, Eyrbyggia Saga and Njal’s Saga, along with other gems including the stories that relate to the discovery and attempted colonization of the Americas in the 10 th century, and one of the Sagas of the Poets which features two poets in love with the same woman. It’s not a happy ending. This volume is illustrated by Simon Noyes. Purtroppo le espressioni formulari divengono gettoni non più analizzati dal parlante: penso, per esempio, all’avverbio affatto, probabilmente risalente a una locuzione del latino parlato (ad factum) e significante “interamente, del tutto”, come anche oggi nell’espressione colta: “L’onestissimo Giovanni è affatto privo di doppiezza”. Però questo avverbio, usato spesso come rafforzativo in frasi negative (“non la penso affatto come te”, “non ho affatto voglia di impegnarmi”), ha preso, nell’uso corrente, il significato contrario di “per nulla”, specie nelle risposte a domande che chiedono un sì o un no: “Hai freddo?” “Affatto”; il quale affatto evidentemente sottintende un niente (niente affatto) e assume su di sé il senso della parola sottintesa».

Credo che nessuna parola in nessuna lingua possa/debba esprimere un concetto ma anche, veltronianamente, il suo contrario. Casomai la versione colta, direi unica, dell' utilizzo di questa parola è (vedi sotto) come rafforzativa; è "volgare" (nel senso di non colto), se non sbagliato, l'utilizzo in forma negativa, perché implica l'accettazione nel tempo di un errore di interpretazione, da parte di chi colto non è, di una espressione, al contrario, colta, in combinazione con una negazione sottintesa. In poche parole credo sia accettabile, solo per prassi, nel parlato, e in una sola forma; ma credo si possa altresì concludere che sia sbagliato nello scritto. Robin Hard, bibliographical notes to his edition of H.J. Rose, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, p. 690, ISBN 0-415-18636-6, quoted. Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons". The book of essays is selected from "Myths of the World", which has been compiled and written by famous mythologists. Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. All four 1992 issues of this literary magazine from The Folio Society. The Spring issue contains: William C. Spengemann on Columbus; Giles Gordon on the short story; Philip Hyman on medieval cookery; Graham Handley on Trollope; and Peter Levi on Sir Richard Fanshawe. The Summer issue contains: Julian Symons on Erskine Childers; Philip Hoare on Nancy Mitford and Stephen Tennant; Celia Lamont-Jones on Jerome K. Jerome; Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe on Humphrey Repton; and Peter Levi on sea poems. The Autumn issue includes: Andrew Birkin on Peter Pan; Peter Khoroche on Sanskrit writings and Sakuntala; Paul Roberts on Kenneth Hopkins; G.H. Bunting on James Woodforde's "Diary of a Country Parson"; and Peter Levi on Anthony Hecht. The Winter issue includes: Kenneth McLeish on Greek myths; Stephen Goddard on Guy de Maupassant; and Peter Levi on youth and poetry. Three of the issues contain David Holloway's column "Talking About Books". Four journals stapled into printed wrappers. All near fine.