Best Books on Greek Mythology: My Picks

Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (in two volumes)

This is my go-to book for Greek mythology research. I need the myths. I need the literary and visual sources. I need to know when a particular element arrived in a myth (was that Ovid fooling around again, or is there a Greek precedent?) I need the Olympian pantheon, the cosmogony, the heroes, the mythical families, and all the rest. Now.

In two volumes, Timothy Gantz untangles an awful lot of this. It's not a beginner's book: it's broken up with lots of references to primary sources. It's a research sourcebook. (And yes, that scan is my own dog-eared copy).

NOTE: That "Buy" link takes you to Volume One ONLY. You will ALSO need Volume 2.

Whoa, let's back up. Say you're just an undergraduate trying to get through Greek Mythology 101, and the professor's lectures bore you to tears (or Twitter), and you don't have an insane TA like me giving you dramatic renditions of Greek myths in our review sessions to help fix them in your memory. Help!

Well, here's a unique resource on Greek mythology. It actually might be a great resource for a teacher, too, if you've got a 17-foot-long wall. It's a fold-out chart of all the Greek gods, goddesses, heroes, monsters, and other mythical figures, organized into groups, with inset boxes covering important myths and lists like the labors of Hercules. There's also a constellations chart and a great map of Greece labeled with heroes' home towns. Yes, there's an index.

It tucks into a hardcover jacket, so you can slip it in your backpack and take it off to study at Starbuck's. Also, it folds more easily than a map, so you can flip through it without having to open the whole thing.

This is a fantastic book, a compendium of Greek mythology based on art instead of just literature.

Greeks did not just tell stories with words; they told them with art. The myths that artists depict aren't always the same as in the literary texts, because some myths work better as long stories, whereas others work better as dramatic vignettes. Also, Greek vases survive better than Greek manuscripts, which have to have been copied. Knowing Greek mythology through art gives you a much richer and more complex understanding of it.

T.H. Carpenter's book covers the gods, major heroes, a few notable events like the Caledonian Boar Hunt, and the Trojan War. It's a little dense, since he's throwing in a lot of art and archaeology, but for serious students of classics and Greek art, it's a must-have.

The photos are black and white (370 illustrations), but excellent quality; it's a great compendium of Greek art as well as myth.

This book deepens our understanding of Greek gods, myths and religion through archaelogical evidence, some of it excavated quite recently. In particular, it fills in a lot of the gaps in our understanding of early Greek mythology, before the literary sources took over and sorted many of the myths into neat narratives and genealogies.

The most valuable part of this book, for me, is that it digs into the evidence for many Greek gods (Athena, Poseidon, Hera, Zeus) in the Bronze Age, plucking out tantalizing clues from Linear B. It's surprising how old some of the gods (Dionysos) are, and how other gods (Apollo, Aphrodite) arrive in Greece much later.

Gods covered: Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Demeter & Persephone, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Dionysos, and some surprising minor deities.

For feminist scholarship in classics, this was a watershed book, although it is not without its detractors.

It is a very nuanced reading of Greek mythology, not simply seizing upon myth after myth as evidence of the patriarchy and repression, but rather, looking for the roles that women play in Greek mythology, the powers they have and the limitations they face.

Some readers have complained that Lefkowitz tends to treat gods and mythical figures as more like real-life people than mythic archetypes. However, ancient Greeks tend to describe their gods in very human terms, too.

This landmark work of feminist scholarship helps us understand Greek mythology and the Greeks from a fresh but not shallow perspective.

Walter Burkert is a must-read classicist, able to strike a balance between old-school classical studies and critical theories like structuralism. Burkert's specialty is Greek religion, and he's very good at untangling it for us.

In this book, Burkert focuses on myths and symbols of major and minor Greek cults: Hermes, Demeter, Hercules, e..g. Burkert steers a course between analyzing classical mythology and cult, and exploring modern scholarship on myth and ritual.

Extensive notes and bibliography add to the usefulness of this book.

Any student of classics should also check out Burkert's Greek Religion.

This is an excellent and thoughtful book not just about Greek mythology and irrationality (see below), but on the nature of mythology in general -- or, more importantly, how people with a mythology experience and regard that mythology.

Moreover, Veyne discusses how the Greeks viewed history, and what they thought of as "true."

This is not just a question of quaint superstitions and myths held by the ancients. Postmodern critical theory has forced us to reassess the idea of our own immutable "facts" in many fields.

Veyne explains what he calls the "constitutive imagination," in effect, the ability to believe in two things that we would now consider incompatible.

In part, Paul Veyne was responding to E.R. Dodd's famous work, The Greeks and the Irrational.

Dodds, in turn, was turning the field of classics on its head. It had long been traditional to praise the Greeks above all for their rationalism, their moderation.

Dodds pointed out how much of this was an idealized distortion. He explores the complex tug-of-war between rationalism and its alternatives in Greek society, starting with mythical examples in Homer and tracing shifts and changes in Greek culture and attitudes down into the Hellenistic period.

This books is dated, but still provocative and deeply insightful. Again, it's a must-read for any classics or myth major at some point.

Greek Mythology Trivia Quizzes

My series of Greek mythology trivia quizzes are a fun way for students to study and classics majors to review. After each quiz, I review the answers with art, links and fun mythology trivia.

Aeschylus: Ancient Greek Playwright

Aeschylus is hailed as the father of Greek tragedy. His plays are among the oldest surviving western literature. They are gripping, stately, troubling, and raise issues that are still pertinent...

Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journey

My diary of a trip to Greece with photos, discussion, and information about the archaeological sites I visited plus Greek art and mythology.

Olympias: Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Trireme

One thing I regret not doing as a classics graduate student: signing up for a summer program to row on an ancient Greek warship! Here's photos, videos and information about this amazing vessel.