evensong's review against another edition
5.0
I almost made the mistake of getting too caught up In the forward and intro material and getting bored before I got into the heart of the book.
By the end of it, I felt as if my humble library card had treated me to a classics course at a world class university. It's a little nerdy and might lose the interest of some but I found it fascinating and approachable. Like a feast prepared for a hungry man, my enjoyment may have been colored by circumstance. This was the only book I had through power outage and loss of TV and internet during Atlanta's Snowmageddon 2014. I read the bulk of it then.
The concept of hero is often overused today and has lost its original meaning. It makes it harder for modern folk to "get" the heroes of the classics. Nagy helps you understand the contrast between the flashy immortal gods and the mortal heroes who go up against them and monsters and fate and how the ancient Greeks would have seen them.
He gives a nice survey of Greek Literature from Homer to Euripides and looks at different flavors of heroes during the different hours then draws threads of them together. I enjoyed the pacing of the book giving me natural times to put it away and busy myself with something else while I digested the earlier points.
By the end of it, I felt as if my humble library card had treated me to a classics course at a world class university. It's a little nerdy and might lose the interest of some but I found it fascinating and approachable. Like a feast prepared for a hungry man, my enjoyment may have been colored by circumstance. This was the only book I had through power outage and loss of TV and internet during Atlanta's Snowmageddon 2014. I read the bulk of it then.
The concept of hero is often overused today and has lost its original meaning. It makes it harder for modern folk to "get" the heroes of the classics. Nagy helps you understand the contrast between the flashy immortal gods and the mortal heroes who go up against them and monsters and fate and how the ancient Greeks would have seen them.
He gives a nice survey of Greek Literature from Homer to Euripides and looks at different flavors of heroes during the different hours then draws threads of them together. I enjoyed the pacing of the book giving me natural times to put it away and busy myself with something else while I digested the earlier points.
kjn's review
4.0
It takes its time to finish this but I must say it is worth it. A very interesting insight in ancient Greek culture.
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