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

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Either way, closet nerd that I am, Mythology sparked a number of extracurricular exploits, or at least flourished them. Hamilton's education continued at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from which she graduated in 1894 with an M. 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. I bought this book, looking forward to (especially) a female viewpoint of comparative mythology from various different countries around the world.

Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, disrespected the Goddess Leto by exclaiming to the people that they should worship and burn incense to her and not to the Goddess. I mean this in the sense that whatever your subjective idea of beauty is, that is the form in which the Gods should appear to you. But before I let it go, I picked up Hamilton's book, and checked out the index entries for Eumenides (248) and Furies (see Erinyes) - so to Erinyes, where among other entries was (Orestes pursued by, 246-248) - which closed the circle. No one in modern times has shown us more vividly than Edith Hamilton 'the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. It's almost as bad as Bulfinch telling the readers which myths are Christian enough to be included and which had to be shortened/changed for his "genteel" readers.Although the myths remain unchanged, the way that we think about them has evolved considerably over the last 150 years. In fact, I’ll just come out and say it, if you read the dull little paperback version, you’re an inferior human being, it is what it is. For more than seven decades readers have chosen this book above all others to discover the enchanting world of mythology -- from Odysseus's adventure-filled journey to the Norse god Odin's effort to postpone the final day of doom. There was this one guy, whose name I'm forgetting at the moment, whom you can tell she just despised, but was too polite to say. In 1930, when she was sixty-three years old, she published The Greek Way, in which she presented parallels between life in ancient Greece and in modern times.

I wish I had found this book sooner, I liked the books by Robert Graves, The Greek Myths vol 1 and The Greek Myths vol 2, and remember at the time being amazed and dazzled, especially with the footnotes where there were so many.The Roman versions are only mentioned, because the Romans stole their myths wholesale from the Greeks. It was also interesting to note how our thought (in the western world via Europe) has developed in a line pretty clearly from the ancient Greeks.