Review – Mythology, by Edith Hamilton

Mythology
Mythology, by Edith Hamilton. Back Bay Books, 1998. 
 
Hamilton works through the basic myths, mostly from Greek and Roman sources. Topics include “The Gods, the Creation, and the Earliest Heroes”, “Stories of Love and Adventure”, “The Great Heroes before the Trojan War”, “The Heroes of the Trojan War”, “The Great Families of Mythology” (Atreus, Thebes, and Athens), and “The Less Important Myths”. She closes with about 15 pages of Norse myths (just a taste). The stories are typically brief, easy reads in a fairly modern style. I was struck by how she describes the difference between different authors (though I’m not to the point of distinguishing them myself).