Monday 5 September 2016

Graeco-Roman mythologies


There was a time in my life when I could never get enough of Graeco-Roman mythologies. That period would be in the mid-1970s. 

I don't know how I got into that situation but over a period of about three years, I devoured nine books on Greek and Roman mythologies from the Penguin Classics series. 

Writers like Virgil and Ovid (they were the odd ones out as unlike the other writers, Virgil and Ovid were Romans), Aeschylus, Apollonius, Homer and Sophocles. Titles like The Aeneid, Metamorphoses, The Oresteian Trilogy, The Voyage of Argo, The Odyssey and The Illiad. With that kind of output, it was no wonder that Greece was once considered as the centre of European civilisation in the long distant past.

Then there were other fascinating books on other mythological works that interested me too - notably Tales from The Thousand and One Nights - but these nine books formed the bulk of my reading; and I enjoyed them immensely. 

And I just managed to dig them up again from the storeroom. Will I read them again? Probably not. That phase of my life is over. I'd be falling asleep first, before I can complete any chapter. 

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