Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“For example, Hesiod is a notably simple writer and devout; he is naive, even childish, sometimes crude, always full of piety. Many of the stories in this book are told only by him. Side by side with them are stories told only by Ovid, subtle, polished, artificial, self-conscious, and the complete skeptic.”

For Hamilton, the problem of crafting a coherent view of Greek and Roman cosmology is also one of quality: Hesiod is not a “polished” and “self-conscious” writer as is, for example, Ovid (xii). What she does not point out—either in the Preface or across the text—is that Hesiod and Ovid were not composing out of the same system. The earliest Greek verse of Hesiod (and Homer) was composed at the dawn of written language, whereas Ovid was a writer during a literate age. Her contrasts—simple vs. subtle, childish vs. polished, piety vs. skepticism—reveal more about her own beliefs than about the stories and storytellers.

“The myths as we have them are the creation of great poets.”

Hamilton returns repeatedly to the idea that the myths are poetry, literature, in the way the term is understood by modern people: products of literacy. The truth is more complex. The epics of Homer, from which she draws much of her Trojan war myth, was composed in verse, likely before or contemporaneously with the adaptation of the Greek alphabet, but it is not believed to have been composed in writing. “Homer,” if such a person existed, could, perhaps more accurately, be described as a bard than a poet and his poems as music as well as poetry.

“The tales of Greek mythology do not throw any clear light upon what early mankind was like. They do throw an abundance of light upon what early Greeks were like—a matter, it would seem, of more importance to us, who are their descendants intellectually, artistically, and politically too.”

Though Hamilton claims to aspire to shed insight on the “poets” who composed the stories of Greek and Roman mythology, she repeatedly returns to the idea of ancient Greek and Rome as her own “cultural” ancestor. This can cause her to focus on what she finds relatable and/or admirable as well as to distort the source material, taking it outside of its own context. An archaeological equivalent could be the projects of Heinrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans, which created and confirmed products of their own imaginations rather than seeking to uncover what existed and to understand it on its own terms.

“With the coming forward of Greece, mankind became the center of the universe, the most important thing in it.”

For Hamilton, “mankind” as “the center of the universe” seems to represent progress. It moved beyond what she elsewhere describes as a less rational vision that she associates with the ancient Near East and Egypt, whose gods were “inhuman,” “monstrous" creatures (6). By contrast, the Greeks, according to Hamilton, “were preoccupied with the visible” and “finding the satisfaction of their desires in what was actually in the world around them” (7). This is a somewhat handpicked view that overlooks significant intersections across the Near East, Egypt, and Greece, cultures evident in the myths she retells. The Sphinx, for example, which Hamilton derides as a Mesopotamian “monstrous” mystery features significantly in the Oedipus myth (6).

“Homer says that he felt awe to slay a man who had been taught his divine art by the gods. Not the priest, but the poet, had influence with heaven—and no one was ever afraid of a poet.”

Hamilton’s tendency for distortion and handpicking is reflected in the above passage, which describes Odysseus’s slaughter of the suitors in Odyssey book 22. In the poem, the man Odysseus spares is a bard, not a poet, and he spares him because it was understood that the bard performed for the suitors under compulsion. The Greek term for the priest Odysseus chooses not to spare describes him specifically as a sacrificial priest. By Odysseus’s reckoning, if this man interpreted sacrifices, then he would have prayed for Odysseus to stay gone. In the cases of both men, Odysseus is not concerned with who has more “influence with heaven” but with who was loyal to him on Ithaca.

“The great hero of mythology, Hercules, might be an allegory of Greece itself. He fought the monsters and freed the earth from them just as Greece freed the earth from the monstrous idea of the inhuman supreme over the human.”

It is noteworthy that throughout the text Hamilton chooses to refer to “the great hero” by his Roman name, Hercules, rather than his Greek name, Heracles. Both the choice of name and the sentiment further reflect Hamilton’s distortions of Greek culture. Myths around Herakles/Hercules do depict him vanquishing various monstrous creatures, but they also portray him committing monstrous acts himself, including the murder of his family. Hamilton herself describes him as overly emotional, unworthy of leadership, and unintelligent.

“Greek mythology is largely made up of stories about gods and goddesses, but it must not be read as a kind of Greek Bible, an account of the Greek religion. According to the most modern idea, a real myth has nothing to do with religion. It is an explanation of something in nature.”

Hamilton repeats this view across the text in various ways. It does not reflect current scholarship, which argues that myth and ritual are integral to and frame each other. The comparison/contrast to the Bible reflects a particular belief and value system that “true” stories are “stable” stories. This does not seem to be the belief and value system of the ancients. Their stories feature both stable/traditional and variable/innovative elements. For them, “truth” does not seem to have been found in factual consistency but in a particular approach to knowledge.

“[O]vid says in effect to his reader, “Never mind how silly they are. I will dress them up so prettily for you that you will like them,” And he does, often very prettily indeed, but in his hands the stories which were factual truth and solemn truth to the early Greek poets Hesiod and Pindar, and vehicles of deep religious truth to the Greek tragedians, become idle tales, sometimes witty and diverting, often sentimental and distressingly rhetorical. The Greek mythologists are not rhetoricians and are notably free from sentimentality.”

Hamilton’s interpretation of Ovid does not seem to factor in his historical context. As Hamilton points out elsewhere in Mythology, Ovid wrote during the reign of emperor Augustus, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses has been interpreted as acutely aware of and responsive to the abuses committed by the powerful over the vulnerable. His rendering of the myths returns repeatedly to the inability of the vulnerable to escape the whims of the powerful. He aestheticizes violence in a way that some have attributed as “distressing,” and he was critiqued even in antiquity for relying on linguistic play over developing his deeper talents, but this is not attributed necessarily to his view of the stories as “silly”; rather, each reteller shapes the myths to speak to his times. For Ovid, it was a time of absolute rule, and his rendering of the myths reflects that.

“In the earliest account of her, the Iliad, [Athena] is a fierce and ruthless battle-goddess, but elsewhere she is warlike only to defend the State and the home from outside enemies. She was pre-eminently the Goddess of the City, the protector of civilized life, of handicrafts and agriculture; the inventor of the bridle, who first tamed horses for men to use.”

The above passage exemplifies the contradiction between Hamilton’s stated goal not to conflate the myths and the inevitability of doing so given her project to create a compendium of Greek and Roman myths together under one banner. While it would be neither surprising nor unusual for Greek texts to offer various manifestations of Athena, in this case, the two versions Hamilton refers to seem to exemplify a contrast between Greece’s Athena (“a fierce and ruthless battle-goddess) and Rome’s Minerva (protector of the home). The two are not interchangeable. They overlap in certain qualities, and perhaps Athena was an inspiration for Minerva, but Athena’s central place in Athens could not be replicated in Rome.

“[Apollo] ideas were fighting in him as in all the gods; a primitive, crude idea and one that was beautiful and poetic.”

Hamilton tends at times to attribute what she alternately calls “primitive,” “brutal,” or “crude” qualities in the myths to “earlier” versions of myth, which ancients increasingly moved away from as they became more “sophisticated” and “rational.” Hence, in the above excerpt, her view of Apollo’s two aspects as “fighting” each other rather than, as ancients may have viewed it, the light and dark that exist within everything. Hamilton recognizes this in the portrayal of Dionysus but misses it in other places.

“Homer knows nothing of [Eros], but to Hesiod he is “Fairest of the deathless gods”. In the early stories, he is often seen as a beautiful serious youth who gives good gifts to men.”

This excerpt exemplifies Hamilton’s propensity for making absolute statements (“knows nothing of”) and judgements. Here, she assumes that because Homer’s epics do not mention Eros, “he” does not know who Eros was. Another way the absence of Eros in Homer can be interpreted is that god may not have been necessary to the meaning and purpose of the Iliad and Odyssey for their time.

“From time to time, a few mortals were translated to Olympus, but once they had been brought to heaven they vanished from literature. Their stories will be told later.”

In this section, Hamilton is describing gods of Olympus and noticing that “mortal” figures at times ascend into the divine sphere and become deified. Because she approaches these figures as characters in the story, Hamilton misses the significance of them “vanish[ing] from literature.” If the myths are narratives that, in part, explain the relationship between the mortal and immortal realms, then heroes” stories can be understood to reach fulfillment with their apotheosis.

“The influence of Greek art and literature became so powerful in Rome that ancient Roman deities were changed to resemble the corresponding Greek gods, and were considered to be the same. Most of them, however, in Rome had Roman names.”

Characteristic of her time, Hamilton views Rome as a sort of “inheritor” of Greek culture, rather than its eventual conqueror. Whether Greeks and Romans would have seen their gods as “the same” is debatable. The Romans were influenced by the Greeks, as the Greeks had been influenced by the Near East, but both put their unique stamp on the gods and shaped them in a way that responded to their historical necessities and reflects their values and beliefs. Greek speakers’ Ares, for example, was rather unpopular overall, but Rome’s Mars was a valued military god.

“For the most part the immortal gods were of little use to human beings and often they were quite the reverse of useful: Zeus a dangerous lover for mortal maidens and completely incalculable in his use of the terrible thunderbolt; Ares the maker of war and a general pest; Hera with no idea of justice when she was jealous as she perpetually was; Athena also a war maker, and wielding the lightning’s sharp lance quite as irresponsibly as Zeus did; Aphrodite using her power chiefly to ensnare and betray. They were a beautiful, radiant company, to be sure, and their adventure made excellent stories; but when they were not positively harmful, they were capricious and undependable, and in general mortals got on best without them.”

Hamilton was not an archaeologist, and this is reflected in the above passage, which reflects her approach to the myths across her book as “literature” rather than cultural artifacts defined by their context. Her interpretation above of the gods’ “usefulness” is more characteristic of the biases of her time than the Greeks’ worldview, which considered gods to be inscrutable but powerful and thus potentially harmful and potentially useful. The ancients’ rituals were designed to invoke the gods’ power for their benefit. In the ancient world, there was ongoing debate about what and who the gods were, but one thing they were not was merely characters in stories who could be disregarded.

“As yet there were no human beings; but the world, now cleared of the monsters, was ready for mankind. It was a place where people could live in some comfort and security, without having to fear the sudden appearance of a Titan or a Giant.”

Allegorizing Greek mythology has a long history, of which Hamilton is a part. The above passage offers a romanticized, “progressive” view of Greek cosmology, which reflects Hamilton’s view of western history progressing upwards. In contrast, the ancient Greeks held a cyclical worldview. Titan Cronus’s overthrow of his father follows with Cronus being overthrown by his own son, Zeus, who is constantly on guard not to be overthrown himself.

“But nothing, no threat, nor torture, could break Prometheus. His body was bound but his spirit was free. He refused to submit to cruelty and tyranny. He knew that he had served Zeus well and that he had done right to pity mortals in their helplessness. His suffering utterly unjust, and he would not give in to brutal power no matter at what cost.”

This excerpt demonstrates an interpretive tendency of Hamilton’s at times to romanticize the motives of figures from myth such that they reflect modern, individualist values. Here, Prometheus becomes an exemplar of the courageous freedom-fighter who stands up against a tyrannical system. In Greek source texts, however, the conflict has a more complex dimension. By giving men knowledge, Prometheus exposed them to new responsibilities and burdens. Holding knowledge or power is not innocent but comes with its own burdens that affect the whole group.

“The materials for this story are taken from two poets, the Greek Aeschylus and the Roman Ovid, separated from each other by four hundred and fifty years and still more by their gifts and temperaments. They are the best sources for the tale. It is easy to distinguish the parts told by each, Aeschylus grave and direct, Ovid light and amusing.”

The above passage refers to Hamilton’s retelling of Prometheus and Io. Her contradictory goals are well-exemplified here. Against her claim in the Preface that it is not possible to “unify” stories that unfolded over more than a thousand years, again and again, Hamilton handpicks plot points across considerably different texts, cobbling them together into a single narrative. Aeschylus composed his tragedies in the glow of Athenian ascendancy, when they may have viewed their democratic ideals as having preserved their freedom from Persian subjugation. In contrast, Ovid composed during the reign of the first proper Roman emperor, Augustus, at a time when emperors were associating themselves with divine power.

“But still greater than Zeus’ love was his fear of Hera’s jealousy.”

The precedent Hamilton set for handpicking details presents interpretive problems that resonate in contemporary myth retellings, which insist on a single interpretation of divine motives and meanings. This is perhaps best exemplified in the characterization of Zeus above. In Homer’s Iliad, Zeus enumerates his conquests when attempting to seduce Hera, and his consorts are present and acknowledged as his companions. Hera’s anger creates problems that Zeus has to solve, which is different from his fearing her. The story Hamilton reproduces is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses book one, in which Jupiter turns Io into a cow and gifts her to Juno. In the context of Augustan Rome, this version of the story could have had political dimensions: Immediately before it, Ovid compares Augustus to Jupiter.

“Europa had waked early, troubled just as Io had been by a dream, only this time not of a god who loved her but of two Continents who each in the shape of a woman tried to possess her, Asia saying that she had given her birth and therefore owned her, and the other, as yet nameless, declaring that Zeus would give the maiden to her.”

Hamilton’s 20th century biases often seem to blind her to the relationship between Greek speakers and the East, as exemplified here. This bias seems grounded in the intention to claim ancient Greece as the cultural ancestor to the modern “Western” world. Hamilton repeatedly reproduces details that demonstrate the way their early stories represented Greek speakers as intricately interwoven with Eastern cultures. Europa’s abduction brings Cadmus to Thebes to found a new city in concert with autochthonous people. Perseus marries Ethiopian princess Andromeda, who gives birth to a new generation of heroes, and so on.

“Before their eyes the tiny, lowly hut which had been their home for so long was turned into a stately pillared temple of whitest marble with a golden roof.”

Today, it is understood that ancient buildings were not white but decoratively painted. Remains of these temples that were cut apart and transported out of their original locations were often scrubbed clean, making it difficult to reconstruct what they may have been like in their original context. It can serve as a fitting analogy for what myth retelling projects like Hamilton’s can do to the stories: scrubs them clean of their original context to the point that it is difficult to “see” what the myths might have meant in their own context.

“Theseus, the thinker, rejected the idea that a man could be guilty of murder when he had not known what he was doing and that those who helped such a one could be reckoned defiled. The Athenians agreed and welcomed the poor hero. But he himself could not understand such ideas. He could not think the thing out at all; he could only feel.”

Here, Hamilton sets up a contrast between Theseus the “thinker” and Hercules the “feeler,” emblematic of her tendency to see things in contrasting versus complementary terms and to prioritize reason over emotion. In the ancient Greek concept, thinking and feeling are two parts of the whole. This is exemplified in the Greek word phrenes, the contemplative capacity that encompasses thinking and feeling, both of which must be mastered to achieve balanced outcomes.

“There was no man of genius in the Northland to weld the poems into a whole and make it a thing of beauty and power; no one even to discard the crude and the commonplace and cut out the childish and wearisome repetitions.”

Hamilton essentially argues that Norse mythology could have surpassed Greek and Roman, if only they had great poets. Her standards for “great” poetry reflect the standards of literate verse compositions, reflected repeatedly across her interpretations of Greek and Roman poetry. Of particular note in this passage is her description of repetitions as “wearisome.” In oral poetics, repetition is a complex tool that can be used for both metric and thematic purposes.

“Clytemnestra would fade beside her if there had been a Norse Aeschylus to write her story.”

In the above excerpt, Hamilton contrasts Norse mythology’s Signy with Greek mythology’s Clytemnestra. Both women arrange for their husbands’ deaths, but Signy dies with her husband, which Hamilton apparently defines in preeminent terms. This exemplifies an inconsistency that bears out across her text concerning forms of violence. In some places, she seems to regard it as a remnant of “primitive” culture. In others, she regards it in aesthetic terms (e.g., Ovid’s “distressingly rhetorical” version) or holds it up for admiration, as here with Signy.