sGENERAL MYTHOLOGY REFERENCE

Two key ancient sources for most of the myths we know are Apollodurus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae. They are convenient bound together in this single volume. I keep it at hand whenever I am reading ancient myth.

• Apolldorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology

The other most valuable reference that I use is Robert Graves’ excellently researched and presented The Greek Myths. Graves was a poet, author of I, Claudius, and the remarkable memoir of World War I Goodbye to All That, among many other works. His Greek Myths is the only secondary source for myths that I use. Graves tells the stories, provides thorough references to the ancient sources, and provides outstanding notes, commentary and sociological and cross-cultural interpretation of the myths and mythic figures.

• The Greek Myths, The Complete and Definitive Edition, by Robert Graves

I had to leave works by two Roman authors off our reading list in order to keep our seminar somewhat manageable. Both works offer versions of several of our seminar myths. Ovid’s Heroides offers imagined letters from Helen to Paris, Medea to Jason, Penelope to Odysseus, Deianara to Heracles, and Hypsipyle to Jason.

• The Heroides, by Ovid

The Roman philosopher Seneca was also a playwright, and he wrote his own versions of Medea, The Trojan Women, and The Madness of Heracles (Hercules Furens). Interesting stuff for those who want to dive deep.

• Six Tragedies, by Seneca

And, in no particular order:

• Further reading on Helen:

  • Helen in Egypt, by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

  • Helen of Troy: From Homer to Hollywood, by Laurie Maguire

  • Goddesses, Whores, Wives & Slaves, by Sarah B. Pomeroy

• Seamus Heaney’s version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes

  • The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney

• To see a bit more of Heracles, he plays both drunkard and great hero in Euripides’ tragic-comic play Alcestis.
  

• And, in an alternate presentation of Helen from the Helen he showed in the Trojan Women, Euripides makes her the heroine of the version that has her spend the entire Trojan War in Egypt. That’s in his play Helen.
  

• There’s more where this came from!—just ask me.