It’s not like she describes babies being chopped up and eaten, but she does not leave anything out. Mediterranean mythology is often gruesome in its details. This made each story accessible and understandable. While not long, this sentence or two prepped me for the myth by explaining what it is about, what it might have meant to the Greeks or Romans, and what author she based her translation on. Hamilton usually summarizes the myths beforehand in an italics section. There is no pretense of the myths being true, as some of the original authors might have believed. When writing about the myths, however, her style is non-fiction.
She writes as if she is telling the reader a story that is true, trying to emulate the ancient authors. I may have known some of the gods’ names and a few of the stories surrounding their creation, but I knew little about how the gods interacted with mortals and how mortal heroes interacted with one another and the gods. I found this invaluable in deciphering the rest of the book, which goes into the ancient gods, the creation myths, heroes, love stories, the epic poems, and some less important myths.īefore I read Mythology, I thought I knew a bit about the ancient Greek myths.
Hamilton provides an introduction to classic mythology, Greek and Roman, that describes what historians in 1942 knew of mythology and how to approach the myths. Hamilton also adds some Norse myths however, they comprise a very small part of the book. Mythology is a collection of all the important-and some unimportant-myths from the Greeks and Romans.
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