Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, 75th Anniversary Illustrated Edition

Product Information

This book taught me that Troy was a city and Brad Pitt's name in the movie should have been Achilles. In 1950 Hamilton received an honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters from the University of Rochester and the University of Pennsylvania. Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, in which the titan Saturn eats all his children so that they won't be the death of him. There are reasons for the re-invention of the Sigurd story that are not entirely pleasant, and the re-invention of that story as the Wagnerian Ring Saga in opera. So should a reader looking for an initiation into the thrilling world of the ancient Greek imagination choose Fry’s book?

She is scrupulous about identifying her source materials (on this point Bulfinch is, sadly, more dilettante than scholar). Edith is quoted as saying, "the head of the University used to stare at me, then shake his head and say sadly to a colleague, 'There now, you see what's happened?I know this is an unfair comparison, but earlier in the month I had been reading Oscar Wilde's stories for children, as well as some of Kipling's poetry, and I kept waiting for Hamilton to dazzle me, even just a little bit. The sequel to her first book discusses the political ideas of such teachers and leaders as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Alexander the Great. According to classicist Joseph Casazza, that line about "taming the savageness of man" was created by Hamilton herself and has no direct relation to a single ancient text. Although Hamilton's reputation as an author is closely tied to her writings about Greece, much of her professional life focused on Latin. The greatest Greek epics, the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, were written during the Greek Middle Ages (roughly 1100–700 b.

I bought this book, looking forward to (especially) a female viewpoint of comparative mythology from various different countries around the world. Biographer Robert Kanigel states that " The Greek Way renders the ancient Greek mind accessible to the modern reader. This book can be considered the best reference material for those interested in knowing more about mythology.This story, along with a few others, got me wondering why no one has created any horror adaptations of the Greek Myths. Praised throughout the world for its authority and lucidity, Mythology is Edith Hamilton's masterpiece--the standard by which all other books on mythology are measured. After her father's business failed, Edith realized that she would need to provide a livelihood for herself and decided to become an educator. He carried his beaten, underlined and annotated copy around with him for years, reading sections aloud to audiences in a flat, unrhythmic voice with a mournful edge" and could recite from memory various passages of Aeschylus that Hamilton had translated. Some of the tales have a really insidious tone that I think could make for some chilling cinematics.

And although each chapter starts with a reference, every now and then I got the sense there were parts missing, like the ending of the story of Arachne, where Edith Hamilton has a happy ending showing Athena regreting her anger to Arachne, but my 3 translations of Ovid’s Metamorphosis shows her wrath is not appeased as she also curses her family. There are a few inaccuracies, and she barely mentions things like Hercules' trials or the Voyage of the Argo, which are studied in much greater depth generally. Political commentator David Brooks reported that Hamilton's essays helped him better understand and then recover from his brother's tragic death. Since fate is the only force to rule above both gods and men, the fates arguably have more power than anyone else in the Greek universe. Her father began teaching her Latin when she was seven years old and soon added Greek, French and German to her curriculum.

May I dream a most splendid dream in which my lips meet those of the blessed Aphrodite herself, only to awaken and find, in horror, that I am merely tongue-wrestling the three heads of Cerberus!

Its pharaohs erected giant monuments to themselves to impress future generations and its priests advised the slaves to "look forward to an afterlife. Hamilton credited her father for guiding her towards studies of the classics; he began teaching her Latin when she was seven years old. At that time, most North American women, including Edith and Alice, registered as auditors for their classes. I also enjoyed how the author included different versions of the tales and who originally wrote these down- for example, there are different versions of Jason on the Argo, whether Atalanta was part of the Argo or not and a different tale of Ipigneia’s demise (which I especially loved as her story was so sad!It is precisely the original stories I want to be told about or at least I want a thorough comparison! Hamilton draws from a number of other authors besides Homer: other Greeks, such as Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and Romans such as Ovid, Virgil, and Apollodorus. It's at once a primer on world mythology and a pretty exhausting compendium of pretty much any myth or godlike figure you'd want to know about (with an emphasis on western mythologies, which is a bit of a shame; I would have liked to see what Hamilton would have had to say about eastern myths, or African ones). She is kinder than Dionysus but also sadder, mostly because Hades has taken her daughter, Persephone, as his reluctant bride. John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus, in which Echo (who can only echo what other people say) fails to save Narcissus from drowning himself while admiring his own wonderful visage.