The Greek Myths

Foreword

Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator of some classic Latin and Greek texts. He was in this order, more or less, as testified by his extensive and varied work. Without a doubt, he always considered himself first and foremost as a poet (as a poet who wrote novels and other prose books to earn money). And, moreover, a sensitive scholar and fanciful visitor to the ancient world, a tenacious lover of Greek and Latin literature, and of the mythical and historical world of the most classic past, who evoked in brilliant prose some classic figures and themes in novels, essays and studies where he mixed erudition and poetic fantasy. Among these learned works stands out, both for its breadth and for its detailed erudition, The Greek Myths. The work was first published in 1955, in two volumes, in the well-known and popular Penguin Books series. This mythological repertoire, elaborated with a solid documentation, that is to say, with an exhaustive collation of the ancient sources, and with a remarkable expository clarity, soon became a very widespread manual, which has had numerous editions and translations into several languages. Since its appearance it has remained an entertaining “best seller”, which continues to retain its usefulness as an excellent popularization and reference book half a century later.

The extensive literary work of Robert Graves shows very clearly his long intellectual and affective relationship with the world of classical antiquity. In his youth he went to Oxford with a scholarship to study classical studies, studies that he did not complete, having to enlist as a combatant in the First World War, an experience that would mark him forever, and that he vividly recounted in his life. well-known autobiographical story Goodbye to all that, from 1929. But from those years he maintained a solid level of knowledge of classical languages ​​and literatures. A series of historical novels, some translations and a few essays, as well as a series of loose echoes in his poems, testify to this, as much as his Greek Myths. His historical novels, and most especially those on a Greek and Roman theme, brought Graves widespread popular fame. Let us remember the names and edition dates of the five: Yo, Claudio (1934); Claudius, the god, and his wife Mesalina (1935); Count Belisarius (1938); The Golden Fleece (1944); and Homer’s Daughter (1955). It is enough to cite the titles to notice how in them he evokes different and distant times. From the imperial world of Augustan Rome, and the Byzantine world of the time of Justinian, to the mythical setting of the Argonaut travelers and an idyllic Sicilian court where a young princess writes the Odyssey, almost always attributed to old Homer.

All of these novels were written before the publication of The Greek Myths. (Homer’s Daughter is published the same year as these.) The last two, like The Greek Myths, were written in Majorca, in the rugged seaside town of Deia, where Robert Graves spent almost half of his long life. I will remember that in the first chapter of The Golden Fleece, curiously titled “The Island of Oranges”, there is a subtle homage to the landscape of the island (more of Mallorca than of Crete, as indicated by the allusion to oranges, unknown to the Greeks). Robert Graves is an excellent historical novelist, due to his ability to recreate scenes and characters with great vivacity and drama, based on the pattern of ancient historical documents. This can be seen very well in I, Claudius, the most successful of the series (on the testimonies of Tacitus and Suetonius Graves recreates a world of impressive dramatic and psychological force, presenting the figure of the emperor in a very favorable light and in a very original way Claudio, who is the narrator and the protagonist), and in The Golden Fleece (inspired by the epic story of the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautiká, or “The Journey of the Argonauts”).

After 1955 Graves wrote two short books for young people, Greek Gods and Heroes (1960) and The Siege and Fali of Troy (1964), two accounts of Greek myths for a young audience, something very usual in the British tradition. He translated several classical Latin authors: The Metamorphosis of Lucius of Apuleius (1950), Lucan’s Farsalia (1956), and Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars (1957), and gave a version of the Iliad entitled The Anger of Achilles (1959). ). He also published some curious articles on classical themes, such as those gathered in The Two Births of Dionysus (translated into Spanish in 1980). And some excellent stories on Roman and Greek themes, which are collected in his book The Scream (translated in 1983).

The back cover of the English edition of The Greek Myths insists on reminding us of the fortunate combination of Classical scholarship (“philological erudition”) and anthropological competence (anthropological sagacity) that its author had already demonstrated in works such as The White Goddess and The Fleece. Prayed. That allusion to two of Graves’s best-known mythological background works is not bad, but it should be pointed out that here he did not intend to appear as original as in the Celtic and matriarchal allegations of The White Goddess or to recreate, in a new novelistic format, a famous and ancient epic saga, as he had done with that of Jason and the Argonauts, in the wake of the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes. The Greek Myths is a very well compiled repertoire of Hellenic mythical tales, retold with excellent precision and clear detail, without introducing fantastic elements in a very orderly arrangement. And in a narration of course very well programmed, with serious philological erudition and anthropological attention. (Later, in 1964, and in collaboration with a renowned Hebraist, R. Patai, R. Graves published The Hebrew Myths [«Los mitos hebreos»], a parallel compilation, but, in my opinion, rather less successful. Graves also published a historical novel with a biblical theme, his King Jesus.)

Let’s go on to gloss the most outstanding features of The Greek Myths as an encyclopedic compilation of mythology destined for a reference and reading book. The mythical stories are presented in two volumes, the first dedicated to the gods and the second to the heroes. Then the successive articles are ordered by figures and thematic cycles, with an ordering number, and after each character the episodes, motifs or sequences are counted, one after another, designated with a letter. Thus, with a fine analysis, the variants of each myth are collected, since it is a characteristic feature of a mythology such as the Greek, transmitted by poets throughout an extensive tradition of centuries, the wealth of minor and very significant variations in many subjects. After this gradual exposition of the reasons, the classical sources that attest to them are cited, with exemplary precision. This way of recounting the myths allows an easy vision and analysis of its components (both of the mythical motifs that Jung called «mythologemes», and of the «mythemes» or basic narrative sequences of C. Lévi-Strauss). A mythical narrative is made up of these minor elements, and it is very important for an understanding of it to facilitate analysis.

As a third section, in each chapter, comes the gloss or comment with which Graves tries to explain the strangest and most curious traces of the myth, those features of symbolic intention that he considers that the expert in myths must decipher the reader. This section, which is the most original, is also the most debatable, because here Graves makes use of a vast anthropological knowledge that links with his poetic fantasy. Here we find echoes of the books by Sir James Frazer and Jane Harrison, which he must have read in his youth, studies closely linked to the hermeneutical theories of the so-called «Cambridge School», and to his own ideas about primitive matriarchy and pre-Olympic lunar cults. These explanations, which are always curious, and very often picturesque, are witty and poetic, show Graves’ interest in anthropology and archaeology, but are closely linked to his fantasies and his ideas about the origins of Hellenic mythology. which now seem quite questionable. The reader should see them as suggestive comments, but much less objective than the stories so neatly collected in the previous sections.

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