Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, 75th Anniversary Illustrated Edition

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Anyways, mythology is always something I was interested in and loved, it's in so much of our everyday life still in the stories we tell and our history. I know most of my real life friends read this in the 10th grade, but my class read The Odyssey only and I've always meant to get to this book but didn't until now. What's more (displaying my ignorance here) I was confused over the title of the play, and some of the main protagonists of the play, the Furies. They are represented by a chorus, pursuing Orestes for his murder of his mother. But where does the title come from? Roman name: Ceres. Though a sister of Zeus, Demeter lives on earth. Demeter is the goddess of corn and harvest. She is kinder than Dionysus but also sadder, mostly because Hades has taken her daughter, Persephone, as his reluctant bride. Demeter thus lies in mourning for four months of the year, leaving the fields barren. Persephone Edith Hamilton, the eldest child of American parents Gertrude Pond (1840–1917) and Montgomery Hamilton (1843–1909), was born on August 12, 1867, in Dresden, Germany. Shortly after her birth, the Hamilton family returned to the United States and made their home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Edith's grandfather, Allen Hamilton, had settled in the early 1820s. Edith spent her youth among her extended family in Fort Wayne. [6] [7] While I was pleased to see that Hamilton had included the Volsunga saga in the chapter about Norse mythology (in many books it is replaced by the Nibelungenlied which was penned much later), she dismissed the saga by saying that the story is so well-known thanks to the Nibelungenlied that the original can be told briefly and THAT is an absolute no-go for me.

A fearful goddess who presides over the realm of the dead, which is called Hel (not synonymous with our word “hell,” however). The fact that a female occupies this position is a significant and striking difference from Greek and Roman myth. The ValkyriesIntelligence did not figure largely in anything he did and was often conspicuously absent." (about Hercules) What I’m not sure about is if I would have found this easy to read when I knew a very tiny amount about Greek and Roman Mythology and Norse Mythology. Though the explanations are clear, I found I got more from this this time as I am more receptive now to the chapters that have more of an encyclopaedic feel. This is not the fault of the book, it’s just the way these myths are, where there are loads of them that are not connected to a myth that is part of bigger story, for example one of the families like the House of Thebes. According to her biographer, Barbara Sicherman, Hamilton's life was "ruled by a passionately nonconformist vision" that was also the source of her "strength and vitality" as well as her "appeal as public figure and author." [30] However, Hamilton was not, and did not claim to be, a scholar. She did not attempt to present excessive detailed facts from the past. Instead, Hamilton focused on readability and uncovering "truths of the spirit," which she found from ancient writers. [30] Drawing from Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and early Christian writings, Hamilton put into words what ancient people were like by concentrating on what they wrote about their own lives. Using the qualities and styles of the ancient writers, she emulated their directness, strived for perfection, and did not include footnotes. [31] The Greek Way Edith Hamilton may have written Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes more than a half century ago and she may have been fairly ancient when she did so, but she still put out one seriously readable book!

Edith's grandparents lived in the old homestead, called Old House; her uncle, Andrew Holman Hamilton, and his family lived in Red House; and Edith and her family lived in White House on the family compound. See Weber, p. 40. Critics have acclaimed Hamilton's books for their lively interpretations of ancient cultures. She is described as the classical scholar who "brought into clear and brilliant focus the Golden Age of Greek life and thought... with Homeric power and simplicity in her style of writing". [4] Her works are said to influence modern lives through a "realization of the refuge and strength in the past" to those "in the troubled present." [5] Hamilton's younger sister was Alice Hamilton, an expert in industrial toxicology and the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University. a b c d e Catherine E. Forrest Weber (Winter 2002). "A Citizen of Athens: Fort Wayne's Edith Hamilton". Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society. 14 (1): 40. I was a history major in college, so this was fascinating to me. I get that it's not for everyone, but if you want to learn more about mythology in general, this is the book for you.So, I thought I'd throw in these words about this quite wonderful book, most of which I've never read in the decades that I've owned it (basically having used it as a reference book).

Another son of King Priam, Hector is the bravest and most famous of the Trojan warriors. Unlike his brother Paris, he faces challenges with great strength and courage. His death ends the Iliad. Aeneas Hamilton died in Washington, D.C. on May 31, 1963, at the age of nearly 96. Four years after her death, Doris Fielding Reid published Edith Hamilton: An Intimate Portrait. As of 2017 the memoir remains the only full-length biography of Hamilton. The first and most famously foolish woman of Greek myth. Married to Epimetheus, Prometheus’s simple-minded brother, she has been entrusted with a box that the gods have told her never to open. Pandora peeks inside the box, unleashing evil into the world. She manages to close the box just in time to save Hope, humankind’s only solace. OrpheusThis is a tough review, just because this isn’t really a novel. It’s more a collection of stories within the framework of certain mythologies (but for the sake of this review, let’s call it a novel). This is an ambitious work, which Edith Hamilton brings to life Greek and Roman Mythology (mainly and Norse partly), being a keystone of Western I have this now on Kindle, I come across this book constantly referenced in other books, so got my own copy.