The Book That Taught Me the Most the Fastest

It's Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths."

AI generated. Not a real vase. The abs give it away, plus the whole extra leg thing. And the hands.

Ancient mythology and epics are fascinating. Whether it’s the Mahabharata, the Bible, the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Ramayana, or Kalevala, I’m game; even The Book of Mormon and Arthurian romances are quite interesting.

I picked up a copy of Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths at one point and it was a game changer for how I see the ancient world. It’s like everything I knew about Greek mythology was down in the weeds, while Graves was up on Mount Olympus and could see the whole thing and explain how it all fits together.

A lot of Graves’ thing is looking for the triple-goddess maiden/mother/crone. I don’t know what the latest scholarship is on that; I do know that it’s highly criticized. In any case, I never found that aspect of The Greek Myths particularly interesting or really compelling. If in this aspect he looks too far, fine by me—it’s all the other little stuff I learned that made this book a favorite.

You see, there’s these little patterns throughout all the Greek myths that I never paid any attention to. Consider Theseus and Oedipus, for instance; they both start their stories by leaving the home in which they grew up to go become a king in another land. In Oedipus you see it most clearly—he marries the widowed queen and so becomes king: kingship is passed down matrilineally. In old ancient Greece you don’t become a king because your dad is a king. You become king because your father-in-law is a king, because you married the princess. Now, being a prince yourself helps a lot with that, of course, but becoming a king always means questing out into another land to earn a throne rather than staying on the couch at home and inheriting one.

Now, you’re thinking, you mentioned Theseus—well, wasn’t Theseus the son of the king of Athens and inherited the Athenian throne? Graves argues and I am persuaded that this was a later alteration to the myth. Original Theseus wasn’t Athenian, but like any good comic book character he was retconned to be Athenian for political purposes. And political purposes there were! Theseus was the state hero, the patron saint, the mascot of Athens, which itself was a major regional power. The Theseus myth in all its parts served as Athenian propaganda.

The most notable other king that inherits from his father, Odysseus, does so in the Odyssey—which comes from a much later date than the old Oedipus/Theseus/Heracles myths. The classical Greek period was one of cultural change! By the time the Odyssey is written patrilineal succession has become accepted, but in the beginning it was not so.

Speaking of Odysseus’ parentage, The Greek Myths also taught me that originally Odysseus was not the son of Laertes king of Ithaca. That’s the story the Odyssey endorses, because in the Odyssey Odysseus is more of a noble hero. But what is Odysseus really known for? His cunning and his tricks, right? He has the bright idea for the Trojan horse and even before that, knowing the prophecy that the first man to set foot on Trojan sand will die, leads the way by throwing a shield out of his boat and jumping on that, keeping the appearance of leading but not really putting himself in danger. And there was that time he pretended to be mad so Agamemnon wouldn’t drag him off to Troy in the first place, of course.

But this tricksy Odysseus—he is not Laertes’ son. He is Sisyphus’ son. Sisyphus whose whole modus operandi is tricking people, deceiving gods, etc., actually snuck in and fathered Odysseus by Laertes’ wife. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

There’s also this interesting fact of Greek myths, which perhaps you like me have glanced past many times without thinking anything of it—the king always has a brother mentioned with him. Right? For every Castor you have a Pollux, Heracles his Iphicles, Agamemnon his Menelaus, and so on. Almost always the king has some form of divinity, fathered by a god, while the brother is a mortal man. Why is this?

Graves sees it as evidence of an ancient tradition already ancient and dying out by the time of the Bronze Age. Every king has a second, a brother, what he terms a “tanist,” who ceremonially assumes the kingship for one day every Great Year of seven years while the real king ceremonially dies to be reborn and resume the throne the next day. Maybe way, way, way back the king was actually ritually sacrificed every seven years, Graves says, but this was no more than a symbol by the Bronze Age and by the Golden Age it was already an archaic practice. But this is where the roots seem to come from. Perhaps, again, Graves goes too far and sees too much in this, I don’t know what the scholarship is saying nowadays, but it’s a fascinating story and opened my eyes even to the question of whether it is true where before I knew nothing at all.

In the conflicts of heroes and monsters Graves always sees actual historical conflicts between peoples immortalized as battles between their kings and symbolic figures; half-horse half-man centaurs, for instance, he sees as an image originally depicting the Centaur people’s miming of horse-riding as part of a rain dance. Most interesting is his take on the Trojan War itself, that is was nominally fought over Helen but was really fought over the Hellespont. A simple war over rights to the lucrative Black Sea trade route.

What other fun tidbits did I learn from this? There’s the interesting figure of Memnon, a latecomer to the Trojan War (he shows up only after Hector’s death). “He was black as ebony, but the handsomest man alive, and like Achilles wore armor forged by Hephaestus.” There’s Bellerophon, analogous to the patriarch Joseph (the dreamcoat one) in that he rejects a married woman’s advances, suffers for it, but then wins in the end. Until he falls off the pegasus and dies at the end, that part doesn’t happen to Joseph.

Lots of little stuff like this. There’s also Graves’ argument that the Iliad was really written for the Greeks, yes, but by a Trojan supporter—the Trojans always behave honorably in it and the Greeks are like animals (c.f. Achilles with Hector’s body). And his argument that the Odyssey is written by someone else entirely is convincing enough too, as well as his explanation of all the trials Odysseus faces as symbolic of the end of a king’s traditional reign. He avoids all these because he is the face of the new, modern king who rules for life more absolutely and inherited the throne patrilineally.

Yes, there’s lots in this book. Well worth a read if you like this sort of thing. And if you have any disagreements with Graves’ takes, let me know in the comments, I’m all ears.