86 pages • 2 hours read
Edith HamiltonMythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Preface and IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
Content Warning: This book includes descriptions of sexual violence, family violence, bigoted language, suicidal ideation, incest, kidnapping, and death.
In the Preface, Hamilton introduces her approach to retelling ancient myths, noting that the stories of Mythology were told across 1,200 years by very different writers (xi). Some, e.g., Hesiod (of the eighth or seventh century BC), were “simple,” “naive,” “childish,” “crude,” and pious (xi-xii). Others, e.g., Ovid (of the first century), were “subtle, polished, artificial, self-conscious,” and skeptical (xii). Thus, from the outset, she “dismisse[d] any idea of unifying the tales” (xi). Her goal was to differentiate for readers “the very different writers from whom our knowledge of the myths comes,” so readers unfamiliar with the classics would derive not only “knowledge of the myths” but insight into the writers “who told them” (xii).
Introduction Summary: “Introduction to Classical Mythology”
Hamilton begins by addressing what she believes to be a popular misconception about mythology, which is that it portrays how people thought and felt in a time before “civilization” separated humans from nature. Rather than being the idyllic world imagined by poets, however, pre-civilized humans lacked reason and so dealt with fear and the unknown with magical rites and human sacrifices. Before civilization, human life was “savage,” “ugly and brutal” (4). The remainder of the introduction is divided into two subsections. The first discusses the mythology of the Greeks, and the second addresses the sources she relied on to retell the myths.
In the first subjection, Hamilton notes that the Greeks too would have had “primitive” origins, but their myths do not offer insight into that time, according to Hamilton (4). Instead, they show “how high [the Greeks] had risen above the ancient filth and fierceness by the time we have any knowledge of them” (4). Their stories are important because they are “our” ancestors “intellectually, artistically, and politically” (5). The “Greek miracle,” Hamilton explains, refers to the “awakening of Greece,” where a new world was born, and a “revolution in thought” placed “mankind [at] the center of the universe” (5-6).
Hamilton contrasts the Greeks’ “human gods” with the Egyptians’ and Mesopotamians’ “inhuman” ones (6). Before the Greeks, humans worshipped unrecognizable hybrid deities, but the Greeks modeled their gods after themselves. In this way, they “humanized” the world and “freed” people “from the paralyzing fear of an omnipotent Unknown” (8). Though Greek mythology has fantastical elements, they are tempered by what she believes is rationality. Hamilton portrays the transition as happening over time. Though “bits of savage belief” linger, they are (in her view) surprisingly few (11).
In some cases, she believes the myths can be seen as an early form of scientific inquiry that seeks to explain the natural world, but in other cases, the myths are solely for entertainment, an early form of literature. Though she cautions against making a Bible of the Greek myths, Hamilton concedes that religion features, as the Greeks “had a perception of the divine and the excellent” (13). Zeus gradually becomes associated with Justice and a protector of the vulnerable, for example.
In the second subsection, Hamilton briefly discusses her ancient sources. Though the Latin poet Ovid is the primary source for many myth retellings, Hamilton preferred to rely on him as little as possible, since his point of view was very different from the Greeks’. She refers to the Greek writers as the “best guides” to the Greek myths because they “believed in what they wrote” (17).
Preface and Introduction to Classical Mythology Analysis
Hamilton’s Preface and Introduction establish how she will approach the myths of ancient Greece and Rome. In the process, two interconnected themes emerge, which she will develop across the book. First, Hamilton is Claiming Ancient Greece and Rome as the Foundation of Western Culture. Second, she is Defining Western Civilization as progressive, rational, enlightened, and human-centered.
To claim ancient Greek and Rome as the foundations of the West, she first differentiates between “East” and “West,” linking the characteristics of early Greek society to modern Western values. In the East, by which she means ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, gods were monstrous, hybrid creatures. Fear and the unknown were managed through the use of magical rites and human sacrifices. By contrast, in the West, by which Hamilton means Greek and Roman antiquity, humans put themselves at the center of reality. Sculpture and literature provide her evidence. She contrasts the stylized statues of Egypt with naturalistic Greek versions.
From literature, she draws on Homer’s description of Hermes as “like a young man at the age when youth is loveliest” (7). She concedes that Hercules—Heracles in Greek tradition, though Hamilton uses his Roman name throughout— fought “preposterous monsters,” but his home was in the very temporal and visible human city of Thebes. Ancient tourists could visit Aphrodite’s putative birthplace, and the winged horse Pegasus had a stable in Corinth. By being concerned with what was “visible,” the Greeks introduced the idea of a rational universe (7). Thus, “heaven” was a familiar and comfortable place in which “the Greeks felt at home” (7). They could poke fun at Zeus attempting to hide his affairs from Hera and at her jealousy, tricks, and punishment of her rivals. Though the gods were powerful and could be fearsome, humans could be “at ease with them” through “proper care” (7).
From these differences between East and West and textual evidence that portrays the gods in human terms, Hamilton determines that the Greeks tempered fantastical and nonsensical elements with rational ones. In other words, putting humans at the center of reality is rational, and rationality is superior to fancy. To make this argument, Hamilton necessarily handpicks evidence, omitting what does not fit her argument or smoothing over contradictory evidence.
One important facet of ancient life that Hamilton does not reckon with is the fundamentally-theistic worldviews that shaped civic live in ancient Greek city states as well as Hellenistic and Roman empires. Whatever private people believed, civic institutions were centered on worship of divine power, whether it was personified in the form of Athena or inhered in the emperors of the here-and-now. Hamilton’s argument depends on personification of the gods being the starting point for divine belief rather than being one of numerous ways that ancient Greeks attempted to relate and appeal to divine power.
A third theme introduced in her opening section is that she is Crafting a Coherent Narrative of Ancient Mythologies to support her vision of Western civilization. Though she claims that a unified narrative cannot be constructed, ultimately, her project is to collect under one coherent banner stories in very different forms, times, and places, handpicking details that support her vision of “Western” culture.
Homer and Hesiod are the oldest among her principal sources, neither of whom can be dated with certainty. From the Classical period (approximately 510/490-323 BC), Hamilton mentions the lyric poet Pindar; tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; the comic playwright Aristophanes; the historian Herodotus; and the philosopher Plato. From the Hellenistic period (approximately 323-31 BC), she cites Apollonius of Rhodes and the pastoral poets Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus.
Among the Roman poets, Apuleius is the only extant source for the story of Psyche and Cupid, and Virgil’s Aeneid appropriates the story of Trojan prince Aeneas to provide a foundation myth for the Roman Empire. Poets Catullus and Horace also allude to mythical narratives. Writers from the Roman Empire who composed in Greek are satirist Lucian, travel writer Pausanias, and encyclopedist Apollodorus. While Hamilton is aware of their stylistic differences, she does not delve into the different contexts out of which these styles and narratives emerge.
Hamilton claims to omit Ovid as much as possible due to his very different perspective on the myths, but at the same time, it is his view that she parrots when she describes Zeus as a figure of ridicule, attempting to hide his affairs from Hera. In Homer, Zeus is portrayed as a serious figure of authority, who is perpetually forestalling overthrow by attempting to balance the needs and desires of the various gods in the Olympian pantheon. Rather than hiding his affairs from Hera, he enumerates them without concern, even when he is attempting to seduce her.
