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hjswinford's review against another edition
4.0
Informative, interesting and straight-forward telling of the greatest myths. Hamilton is marvelous and breaking down the characters (giving you both Greek and Roman info) and making their often crazy and elaborate stories and histories concise, yet thorough enough to give the readers a clear idea of the personalities and motivations. Something I also particularly like is her brief introductions to each section where she not only cites her sources (be it Homer, Ovid or Euripides) but gives the reasons for her using their specific versions and the characteristics of their work. The book also has a splendid tone-and-context setting introduction.
Anyone who has been interested in learning a little about mythology, but has been a little intimidated by the many pages of the Iliad or the epic poetry of most Grecian writers would find this book useful and an entirely agreeable alternative. Or for the readers like me, who have read Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles but wants a much more modern break-down of the complex works, this book will happily suit your needs as well.
In the end, she even covers stories and legends outside the canon of Greek and Roman mythology, including some of the stories of the constellations known so well today. She also briefly covers Norse mythology which, while lesser known, is still kind of interesting.
Anyone who has been interested in learning a little about mythology, but has been a little intimidated by the many pages of the Iliad or the epic poetry of most Grecian writers would find this book useful and an entirely agreeable alternative. Or for the readers like me, who have read Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles but wants a much more modern break-down of the complex works, this book will happily suit your needs as well.
In the end, she even covers stories and legends outside the canon of Greek and Roman mythology, including some of the stories of the constellations known so well today. She also briefly covers Norse mythology which, while lesser known, is still kind of interesting.
mipsot's review against another edition
4.0
Kind of a stepping stone to other works like Bulfinch's. Handy, concise, bite-sized retellings of ancient myths.
paul_gallagher's review against another edition
1.0
This was really disappointing, in a most annoying way.
It reads like a lecturer's personal precis for a selection of myths, predominantly ancient Greek and Roman (with a short aside into Norse).
The damningly frustrating aspect is the ambiguous and inconsistent voice of the writer. In each paragraph you are left with few clues as to whether you are actually reading the myth, reading a summary of the myth, or reading the writer's commentary on the myth and related circumstances.
In short, maybe a good cram guide if you need to regurgitate a few facts in short order, but it fails to impart true and reliable knowledge and understanding. A complete waste of time.
It reads like a lecturer's personal precis for a selection of myths, predominantly ancient Greek and Roman (with a short aside into Norse).
The damningly frustrating aspect is the ambiguous and inconsistent voice of the writer. In each paragraph you are left with few clues as to whether you are actually reading the myth, reading a summary of the myth, or reading the writer's commentary on the myth and related circumstances.
In short, maybe a good cram guide if you need to regurgitate a few facts in short order, but it fails to impart true and reliable knowledge and understanding. A complete waste of time.
fantasticalsam's review against another edition
1.0
It was opinionated and biased in a funny way until part 7 where it got really racist really fast
lapeace_24's review against another edition
2.0
DNF and have no plans to pick it up again.
Ah, I guess, this version of Greek retelling was not for me.
I generally just wanted to only learn about Greek myths yet as I pursue my reading, there are passages filled with Hamilton's opinions (I was not expecting this because I'm after for the more truthful to the translation and what's really well researched or more accepted version); I was also expecting an organized comparison between Greek, Roman and Nordic mythology but it honestly did not deliver it; finally, there is something with the way it was written ... it makes me feel as if I'm reading a poorly written fanfiction. I also have issues with her choices of words but since this was first published in 1942, I'm just going to attribute that to her time.
Ah, I guess, this version of Greek retelling was not for me.
I generally just wanted to only learn about Greek myths yet as I pursue my reading, there are passages filled with Hamilton's opinions (I was not expecting this because I'm after for the more truthful to the translation and what's really well researched or more accepted version); I was also expecting an organized comparison between Greek, Roman and Nordic mythology but it honestly did not deliver it; finally, there is something with the way it was written ... it makes me feel as if I'm reading a poorly written fanfiction. I also have issues with her choices of words but since this was first published in 1942, I'm just going to attribute that to her time.
devontrevarrowflaherty's review against another edition
4.0
I first read Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton when I was in high school. It is unlikely that I read the entire thing, since it can be assigned in pieces and that is probably what my teacher did. Either way, closet nerd that I am, Mythology sparked a number of extracurricular exploits, or at least flourished them. My friends and I nicknamed each other from the Greek pantheon. We made jokes related to mythology. We spoke in them. Why? They were interesting to us. R-rated stories masquerading as historical text about the roots of literature and story-telling. And it all came across a little bit like personality types in the decades before Meyers-Briggs and Enneagram would take the kids of the 80s by storm.
I am currently teaching a ninth grade English class. We are in our first unit, which is mythology. Our first week of mythology covered Greek and Roman mythology. (Yes, we are moving fast, doing more of a comparative mythology than an in-depth study.) I like to bring other sources (the main one being Gods and Heroes by Korwin Briggs) to class to do a bit of a show ‘n’ tell and I also love inundating my students with suggested viewing and reading related to our current studies. We have two copies of Mythology in our house—one from high school and one that I picked up along the way from a relative who was downsizing. Since they are both marked up, it is an instance where I don’t want to get rid of either. So, being the still closet nerdy teacher that I am, I decided to read Mythology the week we were covering it in class. It took two. Or maybe closer to three. We have already moved on through Norse mythology and on to African and Egyptian mythology.
Not that Greek and Roman mythology isn’t still super interesting. It is. But Hamilton’s portrayal of it? Well, it’s less of a portrayal and more of an encyclopedia. So you cover stories and characters from a number of the most important texts that remain of Greek and Roman mythology (ie. Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, etc.), laid out in a scholarly and comprehensive way. She’s not going to embellish them: this is not her job. Her job is to present them as translations of excerpts, combining excerpts to give us a complete picture of the story/character (many times reminding us that this picture is reliant on what stories actually survived and from what time period). So, as is always true when an author is telling and not showing, it’s a bit dry, especially concerning the subject matter.
But it’s special because it is a cohesive, somewhat comprehensive, and clear retelling of the many stories and gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome. It makes me want to read The Odyssey and Iliad, The Aeneid, Medea, and Oedipus Rex, at the least, because no matter how dry you tell it, there is real imagination and juiciness to the tales. I have added a few of them to my current TBR (which, as you may know, is exceedingly long).
There was something that really needled at me while I was reading that I don’t remember from high school. It is possible I didn’t notice. Man, were those ancient myths chock-full of rape and bestiality! And the way Hamilton glazes over it—gods forever “grabbing” or “with” women who are then hiding in caves, pregnant—is, at this point in my life and in human history, unsettling to me. It does make the book more accessible for younger people and less controversial for a more general reading, but it feels a little wrong to basically ignore it. Hardly a god or hero wasn’t born without someone raping someone else, god or man. Gods were forever raping young women, abandoning them, torturing them, and getting it on with hooved creatures of all sorts weather they be a woman in disguise, a goddess in disguise, or just some really handsome livestock. It really makes you wonder about the culture from which these stories arose. Hamilton does remark repeatedly that later Greeks and Romans were turned off by the misbehaving of the gods and tried to sweep the original versions under the rug. It’s enough to make a girl real glad she wasn’t an ancient person, for reals.
It is also interesting—in a much sunnier way—to see the origins of so many things. Some of these things are literary and have their roots back in the mythology of the Greeks. Likewise, some of those literary things are more obvious (Till We Have Faces as the retelling of Cupid and Psyche) and some more subtle (the guard dog, Fluffy, in Harry Potter, sharing some important characteristics and plot-points with Cerberus, the guard dog of Hades). Other allusions go beyond literature, from the naming of Sirius Radio, Amazon, and Nike to phrases like the Midas touch, psychological references like Oedipus Complex and language, ie. “narcissism.” When you thought someone in history was being creative, chances are they were just borrowing from the creativity of the ancient 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.
In conclusion, I always enjoy reading about the Greek and Roman myths and Hamilton is the classic. Mythology is informative, straight-forward, and logically organized. In future (having read it twice), I will likely use it as a reference while I dive into more creative and derivative stuff, including the classic plays and poems. On my list are The Odyssey, The Iliad, Metamorphoses, The Aeneid, Medea, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Circe, Achilles, and maybe even A Thousand Ships, The Penelopiad, and Mythos by Stephen Fry.
***REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***
I am currently teaching a ninth grade English class. We are in our first unit, which is mythology. Our first week of mythology covered Greek and Roman mythology. (Yes, we are moving fast, doing more of a comparative mythology than an in-depth study.) I like to bring other sources (the main one being Gods and Heroes by Korwin Briggs) to class to do a bit of a show ‘n’ tell and I also love inundating my students with suggested viewing and reading related to our current studies. We have two copies of Mythology in our house—one from high school and one that I picked up along the way from a relative who was downsizing. Since they are both marked up, it is an instance where I don’t want to get rid of either. So, being the still closet nerdy teacher that I am, I decided to read Mythology the week we were covering it in class. It took two. Or maybe closer to three. We have already moved on through Norse mythology and on to African and Egyptian mythology.
Not that Greek and Roman mythology isn’t still super interesting. It is. But Hamilton’s portrayal of it? Well, it’s less of a portrayal and more of an encyclopedia. So you cover stories and characters from a number of the most important texts that remain of Greek and Roman mythology (ie. Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, etc.), laid out in a scholarly and comprehensive way. She’s not going to embellish them: this is not her job. Her job is to present them as translations of excerpts, combining excerpts to give us a complete picture of the story/character (many times reminding us that this picture is reliant on what stories actually survived and from what time period). So, as is always true when an author is telling and not showing, it’s a bit dry, especially concerning the subject matter.
But it’s special because it is a cohesive, somewhat comprehensive, and clear retelling of the many stories and gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome. It makes me want to read The Odyssey and Iliad, The Aeneid, Medea, and Oedipus Rex, at the least, because no matter how dry you tell it, there is real imagination and juiciness to the tales. I have added a few of them to my current TBR (which, as you may know, is exceedingly long).
There was something that really needled at me while I was reading that I don’t remember from high school. It is possible I didn’t notice. Man, were those ancient myths chock-full of rape and bestiality! And the way Hamilton glazes over it—gods forever “grabbing” or “with” women who are then hiding in caves, pregnant—is, at this point in my life and in human history, unsettling to me. It does make the book more accessible for younger people and less controversial for a more general reading, but it feels a little wrong to basically ignore it. Hardly a god or hero wasn’t born without someone raping someone else, god or man. Gods were forever raping young women, abandoning them, torturing them, and getting it on with hooved creatures of all sorts weather they be a woman in disguise, a goddess in disguise, or just some really handsome livestock. It really makes you wonder about the culture from which these stories arose. Hamilton does remark repeatedly that later Greeks and Romans were turned off by the misbehaving of the gods and tried to sweep the original versions under the rug. It’s enough to make a girl real glad she wasn’t an ancient person, for reals.
It is also interesting—in a much sunnier way—to see the origins of so many things. Some of these things are literary and have their roots back in the mythology of the Greeks. Likewise, some of those literary things are more obvious (Till We Have Faces as the retelling of Cupid and Psyche) and some more subtle (the guard dog, Fluffy, in Harry Potter, sharing some important characteristics and plot-points with Cerberus, the guard dog of Hades). Other allusions go beyond literature, from the naming of Sirius Radio, Amazon, and Nike to phrases like the Midas touch, psychological references like Oedipus Complex and language, ie. “narcissism.” When you thought someone in history was being creative, chances are they were just borrowing from the creativity of the ancient 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.
In conclusion, I always enjoy reading about the Greek and Roman myths and Hamilton is the classic. Mythology is informative, straight-forward, and logically organized. In future (having read it twice), I will likely use it as a reference while I dive into more creative and derivative stuff, including the classic plays and poems. On my list are The Odyssey, The Iliad, Metamorphoses, The Aeneid, Medea, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Circe, Achilles, and maybe even A Thousand Ships, The Penelopiad, and Mythos by Stephen Fry.
***REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***