Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

This is the thread for the September 2024 buddy read of The King Must Die. I am opening it early for posting of reference materials and general comments.

I am opening with a couple of posts I put up on the original thread during the last couple of days, so they may look familiar.

I am still working on my Theseus list, but I just noticed that on of the books on it has been marked down to $2.99 in Kindle: I don't know for how long. This is Robin Hard's Oxford World's Classics translation of "The Library of Apollodorus," an ancient handbook of Greek (but not Roman) mythology.

See https://www.amazon.com/Library-Mythol...

I reviewed it many years ago, but Amazon has deleted it, along with many of the my early reviews. However, more recently I have surveyed the various translations on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Library-Apollo....

I have recovered the Hard translation review, and posted it on Amazon. I will also post it on Goodreads, to be sure it is available.

The review is now available at The Library of Greek Mythology

Without searching for it, try https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..

I plan to start posting a list of useful books with contents concerning Theseus, inevitably covering material in The Bull from the Sea as well as The King Must Die.

"The King Must Die" covers the parts of the legends of Theseus that get into popular books on mythology, especially those aimed at children: the rest of his life forms the basis of "The Bull from the Sea," and it is more largely based on surviving Athenian tragedies, in some of which Theseus wanders into stories that probably did not originally concern him.

Picking up from yesterday: what would have been the best ancient summary is the "Library of Apollodorus" (see above for translations).

This is a kind of ancient 'Greek Mythology for Dummies,' and, unfortunately it does not survive in a complete text. In the manuscript tradition, the story of Theseus is cut off in mid-story. Fortunately, there is an early summary that has also survived, and the missing adventures can be filled in from it, although with less detail, and the chance that some things went missing entirely.

However, use of the index (or search function) will turn up more stories involving Theseus, as a character in what may have been independent myths, plus one that seems to have been familiar to Homer, but rarely shows up in retellings -- Renault acknowledges it in a paragraph in which Theseus decides not to do something.

The other main source, the one summarized by Renault as an appendix, is the account by Plutarch in his "Parallel Lives" (of Greeks and Romans). There are innumerable translations/editions of this. The one I favor at the moment is an annotated Penguin Classics collection, The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives

Next, some lesser classical sources, and then various handbooks of mythology

Real life is getting in the way. I will resume work on this at a later date.

Ian wrote: "Real life is getting in the way. I will resume work on this at a later date."

Thanks Ian for the research.

Some problems yesterday have been resolved. To resume where I left off:

Mary Renault presents Theseus as an historical character, stripped of most (not quite all) supernatural features. She was not alone. A "rationalized" Theseus already appears in Plutarch. However, a more relentlessly de-mythologized Theseus appears in the Complete Works of Diodorus Siculus.

The stories there are best traced using the index, since, as with Apollodorus, there are mentions of him in contexts other than the main retelling.

Of great value for the place of Theseus in the Greek landscape, including some mythical versions of tales, is another Roman-era writer, Pausanias, whose "Guide to (or Description of) Greece" has been translated many timess, such as Pausanias (translated by Peter Levi) (Penguin Classics), in two volumes, and Pausanias; W. H. S. Jones (now in Delphi Classics, from the Loeb Classical Library version) in five. The Delphi edition does not include the final volume of maps and plans. See https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Pausa...

Theseus appears mainly in the first two books, especially Book I (Attica and Athens), but makes appearances elsewhere. Again, the index or search engine is your friend.

There is a lovely translation in six volumes by J.G. Frazer (of The Golden Bough, and the Library of Apollodorus -- see above). The lavish commentary describes Greece as seen by a traveller in the late nineteenth century, before modernization and industrialization had changed the landscape forever. All the volumes can be found free on the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/texts?tab...). I suggest downloading the PDFs, as conversion to other formats makes a mess of the Greek names, etc.

This is not searchable, but there is an index. It is clumsy to work with, of course, but free.

Peter Levi's 1973 Penguin Classics version rearranged the order of the books, which makes it harder to find cross-references, and the reproduction of the line drawings seem to me have deteriorated since the first printing. Or maybe it is my eyes. It was archeologically up-to-date, more-or-less, when it was first published -- much less so today. It is in print, but only the second volume is currently in Kindle, and that is not the one we need most.

The archeology is important, because, by and large, it has confirmed Pausanias' accuracy, a point defended by Frazer against the attacks of the German philologist Wilamowitz, who insisted that this was the work of an armchair traveler who never left his library. That position may have had something to do with the fact that Wilamowitz, a prominent German philologist, made a mess of using Pausanias as a guidebook, and in front of some very important people.

It was Wilamowitz who was the armchair tourist! British military officers, notably Engineers, with schoolboy Greek, but much more experience in finding their way through unfamiliar terrain, had found Pausanias a reliable guide, and Frazer agreed with them.

Wilamowitz is also known to some non-classicist for his early attack on Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music." Some of Wilamowitz's methodological points were well taken, but Nietzsche was later viewed as having gotten the main points right, and as having left a generation or so of classicists "toiling in his wake.")

Picking up after the Wilamowitz digression:

Theseus occasionally appears in Greek lyric verse, notably two poems by Bacchylides, at least one of which Renault incorporated in her novel. Bacchylides was almost entirely lost until papyrus fragments turned up in Egypt in 1896. The first English-language translation, with a Greek text, was by R,C, Jebb, and this is available in Kindle in a very inexpensive Delphi Classics Complete Works edition, https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Bacch...

There is a modern translation by Robert Fagles, later translator of Homer and Virgil, among others: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poems...

I don't think the higher price for Fagles is worth it for our purposes here, and it would not have been available to Renault, but I really prefer it as poetry. And it had the advantage of almost a century of additional critical study of the texts.

Bacchylides is doubly relevant: he was the nephew of an famous archaic Greek poet, Simonides {Archilochus: see post 19)}, and a contemporary and rival of Pindar: and he appears, mainly as the former, in Mary Renault's "memoir" of Simonides, The Praise Singer This is a book I strongly recommend.

There are a great many modern accounts of Greek (and sometimes Roman) mythology out there. I do NOT recommend Bulfinch or Edith Hamilton, although both have their charms. Both are largely aimed at children, and a good deal about Theseus is left out.

More comprehensive, but also NOT recommended, is Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: Complete Edition. Even if one ignores the tendentious and sometimes absurd commentary, Graves tends to throw in details not found in his source texts (I noted one case with Theseus in particular); and the notes giving references to classical sources need proofreading. (I have several times found them blind alleys.) On top of it, although Graves seems to be relying on personal study of the original literature, he made use of nineteenth-century German handbooks....

I do recommend some dictionary-style acounts of Greek (and sometimes Roman) mythology. Edward Tripp's thick (656 pages) The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology (a paperback) unfortunately is out of print, but usually available used.. It conscientiously mentions the sources in each article. It was originally published in hard covers as Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, and inexpensive copies of that sometimes show up on Amazon, too.

Available in Kindle, and with similar merits, is the revised edition of Jenny March's Dictionary of Classical Mythology, available in Kindle. The revised edition also includes excellent line drawings of classical art, instead of fuzzy reproductions, and there are more of them.The first edition, Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology, is not as good.

The "Dictionary" should not be confused with her"The Penguin Book of Classical Myths," which is arranged as narratives, and not as a dictionary, and some may prefer it that way. There is a Kindle edition: https://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Book-C...

For other non-dictionary formats: For decades (from 1928 until the last decade or so), a standard guidebook was H.J. Rose's A Handbook of Greek Mythology, sometimes subtitled' "with its extension to Rome." It was very thorough, but Rose was not a good writer, and, although philologically sound, had a rather unsophisticated and date view of what mythology is really.

However, it was revised several times by Robin Hard, and is currently available as The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology. For the eighth (cumulative) edition, see https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Hand...

It is available in Kindle, but still very expensive, twice as much as March's Dictionary.

Ian, please take this in the best possible way, but you should have been Jimmy Wales collaborator. Wikipedia would have been much more readable this way.

Theseus is a frequent character in Greek tragedy, most notably in
Sophocles' "Oedipus at Colonus" which Renault reworks.* He also wanders into accounts of, variously, the Seven Against Thebes,such as Euripides' 'The Suppliants," (also used by Renault), and the "The Children of Heracles" (Latin: Hercules), also by Euriipides (Hērakleidai, Heracleidae). The Athenian tragedians liked to show their national founding Hero in a favorable light,

Sophocles also wrote the "Hippolytus," which is an integral part of the Theseus story. like the other plays mentioned, they are relevant, if at all, to The Bull from the Sea, rather than The King Must Die

I may have missed some other tragedies in which Theseus figures: I will check again, later. You can check the ones I have mentioned on Wikipedia, but they are loaded with "spoilers." On the other hand, one of the pleasures of reading Renault is seeing how she gives a new 'take' on stories "everyone" used to know,

Unfortunately, Classical Mythology has largely dropped out of the curriculum, although it is available for some on-line home schooling, usually with parental notice of disturbing contents**

*I feel the need to point out that "Oedipus at Colonus" is not really part of a trilogy, although otten presented as such. Sophocles wrote several plays on the Theban story, and two others, all presented in different years, happen to have survived along with it: so it is not directly tied to, say, "Antigone."

** I have a friend who taught it to her elementary school students, in a simplified and "cleaned up" form. It is largely about family relationships, and so made sense to a lot of children. The official curriculum called for Norse mythology, which is less sexualized, and looks simpler, but the Frost Giants were a little hard to explain in Southern California. And she could use astral mythology to teach basic astronomy, too, which made a hit with some parents.

For me, Antigone is Sophocles best play (?) I read the Cocteau version in high school. Great book.

Antigone the character does such up in The Bull From the Sea. Yes, a terrific play. I was in High School and College in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and it was "relevant," with resistance to the draft, etc., as big issues, and that may cloud my perceptions a bit.

Luffy Sempai wrote: "Ian, please take this in the best possible way, but you should have been Jimmy Wales collaborator. Wikipedia would have been much more readable this way."

Okay, I will take it the best possible way.

Given the totally collaborative nature of Wikipedia, and constant editing, getting a consistent prose style for it is beyond hope; so it tends to even out as bland. And the guidelines tend toward "dull reference work"

I started getting interested in Greek mythology in elementary school in the mid-1960s, read as much as I could find in public and school libraries through high school, and then got access to a University Research Library (Heaven, or at least the Elysian Fields). I have managed to find a great deal of more recent material on-line, although I don't have transportation to a major library anymore, and I'm missing a lot of developments.

But I am condensing (with some digressions I find interesting -- I could have said much more about Robert Graves) a whole lot of experience, in the hope of saving others time and trouble.

I asked about this subject to someone on another site, and they said that having the knowledge is different from disseminating it well.

This is all extremely helpful, Ian. I envy you your knowledge, but I would have to put in the years of work you have surely done to get it, which doesn't seem likely at this point. So thank you for sharing so much! I'm happy to see your recommendation of the Robert Graves volume, as it's the one I most hope to get to.

My only real background in this story comes from a visit to Knossos, the Minoan archeological site on Crete, which was fascinating.


Really looking forward to this discussion!

Excuse me, but I mentioned Graves as a warning, not an encouragement to use him. I gave several better alternatives. Graves just isn't reliable enough, for reasons too complicated to repeat, and his interpretations are a sketch of a personal mythology put together with bits and pieces, and some then-prevalent ideas of the older generation of anthropologists.

It is set forward in his The White Goddess, which I regard as one of the great fantasy novels, except for the lack of characters, dialogue, plot, and a few other commonplaces of fictional writing.

Ian wrote: "Excuse me, but I mentioned Graves as a warning, not an encouragement to use him. I gave several better alternatives. Graves just isn't reliable enough, for reasons too complicated to repeat, and hi..."

No need to repeat--sorry I misread!

I just noticed that in my discussion of Mary Renault’s The Praise Singer I said it was about Archilochus. I have no idea how that name slipped in: I meant a very different Archaic poet, Simonides. Sorry for the confusion. It looks like I am going to have to proofread this stuff more carefully.

I downloaded the Kindle ebook. I hate to promise because I am so bad about over-promising and only reading half of the books I want to get to.

Ian wrote: "I plan to start posting a list of useful books with contents concerning Theseus, inevitably covering material in The Bull from the Sea as well as The King Must Die.

"The King Must Die" covers the ..."

Ian you always make me chuckle I love what you said about Theseus wandering into other people's stories:

"...the rest of his life forms the basis of "The Bull from the Sea," and it is more largely based on surviving Athenian tragedies, in some of which Theseus wanders into stories that probably did not originally concern him."


I can't help but hear Monty Python, "No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition."

Ian wrote: "There are a great many modern accounts of Greek (and sometimes Roman) mythology out there. I do NOT recommend Bulfinch or Edith Hamilton, although both have their charms. Both are largely aimed at ..."

I did read Edith Hamilton as a freshman in college. I had a semester of Mythology from the Epic of Gilgamesh through Egyptian, Greek and Roman Mythology (highlights). The next semester was Art History. The two went well together, and I loved both classes. Edith Hamilton was one of the texts along with Classical Mythology in Literature, Art, and Music, and The Nature of Greek Myths. They are probably outdated now.

I have started with Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans translated by Arthur Hugh Clough. The chapter on Theseus is only fifty pages or so and provides the Classical background from which Renault will build. Since I have never read Plutarch's Parallel Lives this gives me an incentive and it is not much added reading. I will begin our work when I have finished.

Mayerson’s survey of classical mythology in modern literature and the arts is probably still valuable.

I must confess that I disagreed with a good deal of Kirk on the Nature of Greek Myths, although I admired some of his other books. He was hostile to Mircea Eliade’s ideas of the nature of mythology in general, and I thought, and still think, that Kirk had not read his work with sufficient care.

But Kirk, a specialist, was covering a lot of ground, and Eliade, a comparativist , wrote a great deal, and presented ideas in long and short versions, the latter more memorable but less well defended, and sometimes less clear.

I have been giving mostly secondary sources of Greek mythology, and some major classical works. But a lot of what we know comes from less literary works. For those interested in pursuing those classical sources, there is a major anthology, designed as a class text: unfortunately, Goodreads only lists the first edition, Anthology of Classical Myth

For the second, expanded edition, see "Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation," available in Kindle, https://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Clas...
It is edited by Stephen M. Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, and Stephen Brunet, with an important appendix on the gods in the Linear B (Mycenaean) texts by Thomas Palaima. This is not made up of the major literary sources, but of the scraps of many ancient programmatic works and handbooks, plus somewhat abridged versions of those that have survived in longer, but not intact, form. They are the sources of many familiar stories you just can't find in Homer, Hesiod, and the tragedians, or even the encyclopedic Ovid (to look to Latin versions of Greek stories).

Theseus can be most easily traced through the search function.

There is an excellent appendix on the Mycenaean gods, as revealed in Linear B texts. Renault was writing early after the decipherment, and there is considerably more data than she had to work with, so there are marked differences from the background she used.

A comment on the book: the King Horse is derived from Vedic India, not Greece; Renault is emphasizing the Indo-European past of the “Hellenes” (which she herself points out is a convenient anachronism, but better than the Latin Graeci and its derivatives).

The comment on the danger from mares is apparently correct, according to several books on horses and horse-based cultures. There is a story of the very young Ulysses Grant toddling among the foals, to the consternation of neighbors: but his mother thought that he would be safe from the mares, “they know him.”

I hope I am not intimidating anyone with information. I am trying to avoid spoilers while still saying something about the action.

Ian wrote: "I hope I am not intimidating anyone with information. I am trying to avoid spoilers while still saying something about the action."

Ian you know I like the background. Sometimes I read the background information you provide in threads even if I don't have any intention of reading the book.

Renault does a good job on Theseus worries about his height, and what it might signify. It is so persuasive a part of the story that the time-traveling protagonist of Poul Anderson’s “Dancer from Atlantis” is surprised that the ‘real Theseus’ is tall, and reflects on Renault’s influence on our reading of the myth.

Renault seems to have taken the point from an ancient comparison to Herakles (or Heracles; Hercules to the Romans), which might have been a comment on the literary form, or even the political influences on the early versions of the Theseus legend, especially his “labors” on his journey to Athens.

If anyone has questions about the early development of the Theseus story, I will be able to answer at least some of them in detail in the near future. I finally ordered used copies of the two-volume paperback of Timothy Gantz’s “Early Greek Myths: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources.” This is NOT a book for the casual reader, but the serious student of Greek myths, art, and literature, and the light they shed on each other. I have not read it in 20 years, and not remembering how Grants dealt with Theseus has become an annoyance…. Repeat, this is not a book of stories, and you will be lost if you don’t know at least the major myths and their variants pretty well: the more the better. And be prepared for surprises.

A simpler, and beautifully illustrated, alternative to Gantz is the second edition of T.H. Carpenter’s “Art and Myth in Ancient Greece” (1991; revised and expanded, 2020), published by Thames and Hudson (UK and US), which is in Kindle. It covers the period of 700 to 300 BC, and therefore includes much excluded by Gantz’s study of mostly the Archaic Period. The revised edition runs to 476 pages, with illustrations on a high percentage, not counting the full-page plates. Chapter 7 is devoted to Theseus, but he appears elsewhere, too.

I was delayed a bit, but finally started this. It was a little difficult to get into at first, but think I'll be okay now. I appreciate your comment about the King Horse, Ian. Is anyone else reading?

I will get there in two days.

I am, Kathleen, and particularly enjoying the imagery .

Glad to hear it, Sam and Sara. I am enjoying the imagery too, and also I'm finding it so interesting the way Renault works in the worship and rites around the deities.

The King Horse passage gave me a lot of trouble when I read the book in Junior High, and expected its Ancient Greece to have a lot to do with books on Ancient Greek. But even in High School, when I had access to a University Research Library (the old meaning of URL) with a huge Classics collection, I drew a blank.

However, I did encounter a Roman horse sacrifice, Equus October (yes, October Horse), which was weird and had no apparent relation. But I eventually found comparative references to other Indo-European horse sacfrices, in Ireland and India, and in following up the latter I at last found the King Horse.

No reason for anyone else to do that. Even now, I think you need to know the answer to find it on Wikipedia. See “Ashvanedha.”

I finished this and don't really have a lot to say about it. It wasn't profound on any level for me, but I did enjoy the way she filled the gaps in the mythological account. For instance, (view spoiler)[I always wondered why Ariadne would betray her father so easily for Theseus, and for that matter, how does one fall in love so deeply or have a chance to pass a ball of yarn, from the distance that his being a prisoner implies. I especially liked her explanation of why Theseus left her and the dilemma of changing the sails not being just forgetfulness or bewitchment. (hide spoiler)]

I will probably read The Bull From the Sea, but I'm not sure I will get to it this year. Thank you, Ian, for the background on the origin of the King Horse.

I have also been emphasizing the King Horse because the story given as its origin sets up a controlling motif for both the Theseus novels (often raising the question of who is really the king). I omit details, which would require Spoiler tags, especially for The Bull From the Sea.

It even makes an appearance in Renault's Socrates novel, .The Last of the Wine, in a reference to the semi-historical tale of Codrus (or Codros, or Kodros), the last, or next-to-last, King of Athens.

The important, but fragmentary, chronicler/mytholgrapher Hellanikos, is our oldest Greek source. He tells how the Peoloponessians invaded Athens, but, having been warned by an oracle that the Athenians would win if their king was harmed, took great care not to harm him. The secret leaked, and Kodros disguised himself as a farm laborer and picked a fight with two of the invaders, killing one, and being killed by the other. Hellanikos doesn't say so, but apparently the invaders left when they realized what had happened.

As an aside: The story later became known in medieval Europe, where a Latin version was included in some texts of the vastly popular Gesta Romanorum, or "Deeds of the Romans," which included the Greeks, not to mention beast fables and excerpts from Bestiaries,, tall tales, even a version of the early life of the Buddha, all provided with Christian expositions. (Obvious for Codrus, not so much for others.) There is a recent translation, supplanting the nineteenth-century version in which I and other English readers have known it.

Of course, the ritual death of the king has another background source at work in the novel: The anthropological theories in James G. Frazer’s @The Golden Bough,” which ultimately ran to a dozen learned volumes, but is now almost as obsolete as the Universal Ether is in physics. (Killed by Relativity and experiments.)

In 1959 there was a careful update by Theodor H. Gaster, as “The New Golden Bough,” but he was faithful to much of Frazer’s theory, and now the updates badly need updating. Frazer’s own one-volume abridged edition of the 1920s is also readily available, and these days the early editions in up to three volumes, are too.

I took on so much this month. I will join on as soon as I can . . . .And I will be able to fit in one more Euripides play as an additional secondary read. A two-fir-one really as I often remember I want to read more Euripides.

Euripides is relevant to The Bull From the Sea. The ancient plays relevant to The King Must Die have not survived.

Okay. Thanks Ian. I will go through comments again and see if I can find a shorter work as secondary/informative to our book. I will go through list later. No need to worry to repeat.

Your help is valuable, Ian.

Oh dear. I've been looking forward to this for a very long time, but I'm afraid I didn't like it. It turns out this myth just didn't hold much interest for me. The beginning was okay, but I couldn't get into his heroics in the bull ring (that seemed to go on and on).

So it's not Mary Renault fault that Theseus and I didn't click, and I hope others are enjoying it!

Sorry to say, I landed where you did, Kathleen.

I am sorry that the book was disappointing for some. I must have read it half a dozen times, but I can’t suggest a reading strategy to get around this, although Theseus’ heroics and resulting fame are central to the plot.

In passing, Renault was taking sides in an ongoing controversy about what exactly the Minoan Bull Dancer frescoes depicted.

I'm sure the depths of your reading have added an entirely other dimension to (and understanding of) these novels, Ian. I could recognize the skill in Renault's writing, I think sometimes it is just a personal matter of relating or not to a book. I was always standing outside watching Theseus.

A cogent reason to stop. I found it very easy to sympathize with the young Theseus worrying about his height, when I first read it in Middle School, and that got me to still identify with him as he got older. (Right, I was a short kid.)

LOL. I can relate--only 5 feet tall myself.

I agree with Sara that having even a portion of your background knowledge would have helped me to enjoy this more, Ian, and I really appreciate all you've offered us here.

At only 25% in I am withholding judgement, but Ian has already made this much more enjoyable for me. I spent a couple of hours on the Aśvamedha reference alone.