The Greek Myths

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This article is about the book by Robert Graves. For the body of myths of the ancient Greeks, see Greek mythology.

The Greek Myths
First editions
AuthorRobert Graves
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherPenguin Books
Publication date
1955
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages2 volumes (370 pp, 410 pp)

The Greek Myths (1955) is a

mythography, a compendium of Greek mythology, with comments and analyses, by the poet and writer Robert Graves
. Many editions of the book separate it into two volumes. Abridged editions of the work contain only the myths and leave out Graves's commentary.

Each myth is presented in the voice of a narrator writing under the

Antonines, such as Plutarch or Pausanias, with citations of the classical sources. The literary quality of his retellings is generally praised. Following each retelling, Graves presents his interpretation of its origin and significance, influenced by his belief in a prehistoric Matriarchal religion, as discussed in his book The White Goddess and elsewhere. Graves's theories and etymologies are rejected by most classical scholars. Graves argued in response that classical scholars lack "the poetic capacity to forensically examine mythology".[1]

Contents

Graves interpreted

Pelasgians to a patriarchal one under continual pressure from victorious Greek-speaking tribes. In the second stage local kings came to each settlement as foreign princes, reigned by marrying the hereditary queen, who represented the Triple Goddess
, and were ritually slain by the next king after a limited period, originally six months. Kings managed to evade the sacrifice for longer and longer periods, often by sacrificing substitutes, and eventually converted the queen, priestess of the Goddess, into a subservient and chaste wife, and in the final stage had legitimate sons to reign after them.

The Greek Myths presents the myths as stories from the ritual of all three stages, and often as historical records of the otherwise unattested struggles between Greek kings and the Moon-priestesses. In some cases Graves conjectures a process of "iconotropy", or image-turning, by which a hypothetical cult image of the matriarchal or matrilineal period has been misread by later Greeks in their own terms. Thus, for example, he conjectures an image of divine twins struggling in the womb of the Horse-Goddess, which later gave rise to the myth of the Trojan Horse.[2]

Pelasgian creation myth

Orphic Egg
(1774)

Graves's imaginatively reconstructed "Pelasgian creation myth" features a supreme

Cosmic Egg and bids Ophion to incubate it by coiling seven times around until it splits in two and hatches "all things that exist ... sun, moon, planets, stars, the earth with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living creatures".[4]

In the soil of

Phoebe and Atlas for the Moon; Metis and Coeus for Mercury; Tethys and Oceanus for Venus; Dione and Crius for Mars; Themis and Eurymedon for Jupiter; and Rhea and Cronus for Saturn.[3]

Also included are the Homeric, Orphic and Olympian creation myths, as well as two "philosophical" creation myths.

Olympian creation myth

Graves offers his interpretation of “The

Hundred-Handed Ones and the other three the Cyclopes. The role played by the children of Mother Earths three original Cyclopes' offspring is specified by the author as he explains the interaction they would eventually have with the mythological figure of Odysseus.[5]

Reception

Graves's retellings have been widely praised as imaginative and poetic, but the scholarship behind his hypotheses and conclusions is generally criticised as idiosyncratic and untenable.[6]

Ted Hughes and other poets have found the system of The White Goddess congenial; The Greek Myths contains about a quarter of that system, and does not include the method of composing poems.[7]

The Greek Myths has been heavily criticised both during and after the lifetime of the author. Critics have deprecated Graves's personal interpretations, which are, in the words of one of them, "either the greatest single contribution that has ever been made to the interpretation of Greek myth or else a farrago of cranky nonsense; I fear that it would be impossible to find any classical scholar who would agree with the former diagnosis". Graves's etymologies have been questioned, and his largely intuitive division between "true myth" and other sorts of story has been viewed as arbitrary, taking myths out of the context in which we now find them. The basic assumption that explaining mythology requires any "general hypothesis", whether Graves's or some other, has also been disputed.[8] The work has been called a compendium of misinterpretations.[9] Sibylle Ihm refers to Graves's "creative mishandling of the Greek myths."[10] Robin Hard called it "comprehensive and attractively written," but added that "the interpretive notes are of value only as a guide to the author's personal mythology".[11] The Disraeli scholar Michel Pharand replies that "Graves's theories and conclusions, outlandish as they seemed to his contemporaries (or may appear to us), were the result of careful observation."[12]

Ajax (Graves §168.4); this evaluation has been repeated by other critics since.[13][14]

Graves himself was well aware of scholarly mistrust of The Greek Myths. In a letter to Ava Gardner, he wrote:

I am not a Greek scholar or an archaeologist or an anthropologist or a comparative mythologist, but I have a good nose and a sense of touch, and think I have connected a lot of mythical patterns which were not connected before, Classical faculties will hate me, and I will get a lot of sniffy reviews.[when?][15]

Editions

  • In two volumes (Penguin Books nos 1026 and 1027), 370 pp. and 410 pp. respectively, with maps in each volume and an index in Vol. 2; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955; reprinted with amendments 1957; revised edition 1960; numerous reprintings
  • in one volume (Penguin Classics) 793 pp, 2012.
    ISBN 978-1101580509

References

  1. ISBN 0-374-50493-8
  2. ^ Graves, Robert (1996). The Greek Myths. Folio Society. p. 629.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0-14-001026-8
    .
  4. ^ "Books: The Goddess & the Poet". TIME. 18 July 1955. Archived from the original on 6 June 2008. Retrieved 5 December 2010.
  5. ^ a b Graves, Robert (1955). The Greek Myths: Volume One. Penguin Books Inc. p. 31.
  6. JSTOR 1086782. "the paraphrases themselves are wittily written, and take a twinkly delight in promoting extra-canonical alternative versions of familiar stories." Nick Lowe, "Killing the Graves Myth", Times Online, 20 December 2005. Times Online
  7. ^ Graves and the Goddess, ed. Firla and Lindop, Susquehanna Univ. Press, 2003.
  8. ^ Robin Hard, bibliographical notes to his edition of H.J. Rose, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, p. 690,
    ISBN 0-415-18636-6
    , quoted.

    G.S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 5.

    ISBN 0-520-02389-7

    Richard G. A. Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 5.

    ISBN 0-521-33865-4

    Mary Lefkowitz, Greek Gods, Human Lives

    Kevin Herbert: review of TGM; The Classical Journal, Vol. 51, No. 4. (Jan. 1956), pp. 191–192.

    JSTOR 3293608
    .

  9. ^ As quoted in: Pharand, Michel W. "Greek Myths, White Goddess: Robert Graves Cleans up a 'Dreadful Mess'", in Ian Ferla and Grevel Lindop (ed.) (2003). Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves's The White Goddess. Associated University Presses. p.183.
  10. ISBN 9780198738053
    .
  11. ^ Hard, Robin. The Library of Greek Mythology. Oxford University Press, 1997. p. xxxii.
  12. ^ Pharand, Michael W., 2003 "Greek Myths, White Goddess: Robert Graves cleans up a 'dreadful mess'", in Ian Ferla and Grevel Lindop (ed), Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves's The White Goddess, p. 188. Associated University Presses.
  13. JSTOR 704652
    .
  14. ^ For other criticisms of the accuracy of Graves' retellings, see for example, Nick Lowe, "Killing the Graves Myth", Times Online, 20 December 2005. Times Online. Lowe called the work "pseudo-scholarly".
  15. ISBN 9780198738053
    .
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