The Greek Myths by Robert Graves | Book Review

The Greek Myths © book cover courtesy Bookshop.org

For the real lowdown on Greek mythology, Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths is an Imaginalia favorite. Don’t let the updated comic book cover fool you — this is Graves’ original book, including not only the content of the myths themselves, but Graves’ cultural and historical analyses, as well.

More than a recounting of the myths, this unique resource creates a doorway into the worlds of myth, giving readers a sense of the archetypal forces moving beyond and through these tales, enabling us to see how these forms appear and reappear across stories, locales and eras:

One-eyed Polyphemus, who sometimes has a witch-mother, occurs in folk-tale throughout Europe, and can be traced back to the Caucasus … (The Greek Myths, p. 728)
Circe means ‘falcon,’ and she had a cemetery in Colchis, planted with willows and sacred to Hecate. The men transformed into beasts suggest the doctrine of metempsychosis, but the pig is particular sacred to the Death-goddess … (The Greek Myths, p. 729)
The description of Scylla’s yelp is of greater mythological importance than it first appears: it identifies her with … the Spectral Pack … of British legend, which pursue the souls of the damned … (The Greek Myths, p. 730)

For those who have wanted to see deeper into the stories of ancient Greece, Graves’ The Greek Myths is not to be missed.

The so-called ‘Judgement of Paris,’ where a hero is called upon to decide between the rival charms of three goddesses and awards his apple to the fairest, records an ancient ritual situation, outgrown by the time of Homer and Hesiod. These three goddesses are one goddess in triad: Athene the maiden, Aphrodite the nymph, and Hera the crone — and Aphrodite is presenting Paris with the apple, rather than receiving it from him. This apple, symbolizing her love bought at the price of his life, will be Paris’s passport to the elysian Fields, the apple orchards of the west, to which only the souls of heroes are admitted. A similar gift is frequently made in Irish and Welsh myth; as well by the Three Hesperides, to Heracles; and by Eve, ‘the Mother of All Living,’ to Adam.

— The Greek Myths p. 21