Anyone who teaches Greek mythology to first year undergraduates will recognise the problem. Buoyed by their love of the Percy Jackson novels, their visceral immersion in the latest action-packed Hollywood remake, or their defeat of Zeus in the computer game God of War 3, students are keen to study the ancient myths. They want to read stories about their favourite heroes and gods and to learn ‘the truth’. On entering the classroom, however, these students discover that ‘mythology’ is a modern concept, stories are disjointed, fragmented and malleable, and their ‘truths’ are multiple and contingent. Rather than reading easy-to-digest narratives, they must break down the familiar stories, identify their modes of distribution and sites of performance, and situate them firmly within ancient society, knowledge of which they are only now developing. This is a challenging intellectual process. Several books already help students navigate it. Beginning with the myth of Europa, Classical Mythology: a Very Short Introduction by H. Morales (2007) offers a succinct demonstration of how myths might change their contents and meanings between media and over time. D.'s The Uses of Greek Mythology (1992) introduces the spread of sources and traces how Greek myth worked in various contexts, while R. Buxton encourages readers to consider the ideas explored through situated myths in Imaginary Greece (1994). Students imbibing these general approaches can enhance their knowledge of specific sources, stories and contexts by reading chapters from Greek Mythology: an Introduction by F. Graf (1993), or the recent Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology edited by R. Woodard (2007), and the myriad of articles on Greek mythology that populate other edited collections and journals. For those who are successful, it is a rewarding journey, and they emerge from their study of Greek mythology primed for further analysis of the literature, art, culture, politics and society of ancient Greece. And for those who struggle, the first steps in that journey have just got easier, thanks to this recent addition to the ‘Blackwell Companions’ series.
It is in the recognition and treatment of the complexity of Greek myth that the strength of this volume lies. From the first, Greek myth is a complicated socio-cultural phenomenon that defies easy categorisation or analysis; its individual manifestations must be broken down and analysed in their own terms (D. & L., Chapter 1). The concise and clearly written essays that follow exemplify this, covering some familiar ground but also pursuing innovative directions. The volume begins predictably enough with ‘Establishing the Canon’ (Part 1), but the juxtaposition between Homer (Létoublon, Chapter 2), writers of poetry and prose down into the fifth century (D., Chapter 3) and Orphic cosmologies (Edmonds, Chapter 4) emphasises the diversity and contested character of that canon. Similarly ‘Myth Performed, Myth Believed’ (Part 2) presents Greek myth through a standard generic filter (epinician: Rutherford, Chapter 5; philosophy: L., Chapter 6, Murray, Chapter 9; tragedy: Alaux, Chapter 7; visual arts: Woodford, Chapter 8; history: Griffiths, Chapter 10). However, the attention to performance contexts, invention, purposes and effects also encourages consideration of two tricky issues: the ‘historicity’ of Greek myth, and the extent to which ancient people ‘believed’ their myths. Then again ‘New Traditions’ (Part 3) encourages an examination of Greek myth as adopted and adapted by ancient individuals and communities in later periods to establish some political and social ramifications. Ethnic and political expressions (Graf, Chapter 11; Mori, Chapter 12; Fox, Chapter 13; Newby, Chapter 14) sit side-by-side with religious appropriations (D., Chapter 15; Newby, Chapter 16; Graf, Chapter 17), simultaneously connecting the Hellenic and Roman worlds and distancing them from one another. ‘Older Traditions’ (Part 4) then extends the connections back in time by foregrounding Indo-European and Near Eastern influences on Greek narratives and cosmological conceptions (Allen, Chapter 18; A. Livingstone and Haskamp, Chapter 19; Marinatos and Wyatt, Chapter 20).
Given that many people today are drawn to Greek myth through modern retellings of ancient tales (as mentioned above), it is noteworthy that the Companion eschews an explicitly – and for contemporary scholarship near-obligatory – ‘receptions’ strand. (Compare the Cambridge Companion, and items in the Routledge series on ancient Greek gods and heroes, for example, as well as the Blackwell Companion to Greek Religion, edited by D. Ogden, 2010.) This could be viewed as a missed trick. Although the term is sparingly used, the focus lies throughout on the ‘reception’ of Greek myth, the adaptation and transformation of myths within new contexts before specific audiences resulting in new meanings. Certainly, the dynamic is firmly at play in the ‘New Traditions’ section (Part 3), which traces Greek myth beyond its Archaic and Classical boundaries, locating it in towns across the wider Mediterranean and pushing it forward into the Hellenistic and Roman times. Similarly, essays examining ‘Interpretation’ (Part 5) illustrate how modern prisms rebound on the myths, complicating interpretations of visual images (Woodford, Chapter 21) and transforming stories into quasi-historical fantasies (Hertel, Chapter 22), gendered expressions (Lewis, Chapter 23), components in discourses upon ethnicity (Rutherford, Chapter 24) and reflections of psychological and sociological experience (Armstrong, Chapter 25; D., Chapter 26; Calame, Chapter 27). Study of Greek mythology is a study of receptions. At any rate an attempt to sketch the full array of post-antique responses to Greek myth could only be reductive (see p. 19), and readers of this Companion might anyway emerge equipped to conduct their own reception studies, even if they would not define them as such.
As this summary shows, the analysis shifts forwards and backwards in time, turning from Hellenistic and Roman reworkings (Part 3) to explore the Indo-European and Near Eastern backgrounds (Part 4) for Archaic and Classical manifestations described earlier (Parts 1 and 2), before leading on to nineteenth and twentieth century re-evaluations (Part 5). For readers who approach the book from beginning to end, rather than dipping into individual essays, this is a successful strategy, requiring them to reframe the understanding of myth they have developed at every stage. Capping this productive structure, the volume ends where it might have begun: with a study of the history of scholarship on Greek mythology (Part 6: Conspectus). In keeping with the extended chronological perspective, the reader is first reminded that attempts to collate and categorise Greek myth were underway already by c. 500 b.c.e. They are then shown how the approaches taken, questions asked and insights gleaned have changed over the millennia, opening up rather than closing down future discussion (Bremmer, Chapter 28). The closing statement that ‘Greek mythology is not an easy subject’ (p. 543) is both a balm to those who have woven their way through the complexities of Greek myth presented in the Companion, and an invitation to keep working at it. For students new to the topic, or for the interested general reader, Greek myth is often more complicated and difficult than anticipated. But this volume offers instruction and illumination in myth and the methods of studying myth, making it an excellent starting point for, and stimulus towards, further investigation.
