Review : Epic Greek Myths (I)

It's time to play a desperate game of catch-up between reading and blog reviewing with another offering from Flame Tree, this time their "Epic Tales" collection of Greek myths.

Having already given their Celtic, Norse and "Viking" collections a go, it would have been amiss not to read their Greek selection. Particularly given that the foreword is by Richard Buxton, author of Thames & Hudson's analytical offering that first sent me down this whole mythological rabbit-hole. For the sake of completeness, in terms of Greek myth I've also covered Hamilton's Mythology and Matyszak's Ancient Magic; I have Robert Graves lined up on my bookshelf but that's a while off.

This ended up being a rather hefty post so I've had to split it for the sake of sanity. In this first part, I review the book itself and look at how the versions of the myths presented here differ from some of the other collected stories. I also look at how Greek literary tastes were only somewhat similar to modern-day ideas of how tales should be told, which is part of what makes them fascinating. This is a prelude to the main event in part two, where I'll examine how pagan mythology was not, contrary to other claims, an amoral belief system.

Review Of The Flame Tree Edition

I've complained about this in every single one of the Flame Tree publications, but the lack of clear description about where each text comes from in this anthology is even more irritating than usual*. For example, its retelling of the Trojan War is pretty darn decent, a comprehensive coverage from start to finish (unlike the Iliad, which ends at a morally poignant but narratively insignificant point), but nowhere does it describe which source was used for which section. It also heavily excises the role of the gods, sometimes digressing to present more rational interpretations though at other times – with unsatisfying inconsistency – opting to keep the gods in after all.

* Some of these are clearly Scottish, using "bairn" and "shoon" as though those were normal English words (sorry people of Scotland, they're not !). One short story is even repeated verbatim, which is very lazy editing. There's also the usual sporadic lack of punctuation e.g. lack of speech marks, misplaced paragraphs etc. – infrequent, but annoying.

These stochastic digressions into plausibility, such as how Achilles couldn't possibly have dragged Hector three times around Troy because it was just too hot (yes, really), feel very much like the author is desperately trying to sneak in some educational lessons; I always thought Hector was tied to Achilles' chariot anyway, which would seem to solve the problem. But it's especially weird in being so sporadic, implying that the rest of the tale should be treated as factual : some gods and superhuman feats are criticised, whereas others are apparently totally fine. 

Other tales are even more clearly aimed at children, with one example pointedly omitting Medea's murder of her children as something "you will learn when you are older". Come on Flame Tree, you ought to check these things a little more carefully ! References to Christian scripture as literal truth are even worse. A more amusing slip is saying that Asclepius was associated with pineapples, which this article says was a frequent mistake in Victorian mythologies (they meant pinecones); the remark that the "Irish peasantry" still believe in fairies is similarly entertaining. 

Finally, while it's nice to have the complete Samuel Butler text of the Odyssey, the extracts from the Aeneid seem chosen entirely at random. The text of this is set in prose but written in a very poetic style. When done well, this can be be magnificent, but here it isn't*. Many individual sentences have great literary beauty, but the meaning of the text as a whole is too often entirely lost. Several times I had to re-read passages very carefully and tried to parse them as best I could, but I was forced to admit that the meaning as I read it was, unambiguously, exactly opposite to what the later narrative suggested. This is simply a bad translation : I don't remember any such difficulties when I read David West's translation many years ago.

* Incidentally I decided to search for whether Butler's Odyssey is considered any good, and found to my horror complaints that this is considered too difficult because of its Victorian prose. I just... uh... eh... WHAT ?!?

In fairness, most of the text is extremely readable. Actually, it's an easy style that makes this 475 page tome a lot less of a slog than some of the other Flame Tree collections, but it does sometimes become amusingly twee :

When the Athenians had made all necessary preparations to repel the invaders, an oracle announced that the sacrifice of a maiden of noble birth was necessary to ensure them victory, whereupon Macaria, the beautiful daughter of Heracles and Deinira, magnaminously offered herself as a sacrifice, and, surrounded by the noblest matrons and maidens of Athens, voluntarily devoted herself to death.

Despite all the deficiencies, of which more throughout the rest of the post, I still find these to be excellent collections of texts that are hard to find elsewhere. But enough of the review – time to see what all this has to teach us about those crazy Greeks.

Themes

This is a long and comprehensive anthology. In the interests of keeping things below 10,000 words, here's what, for whatever reason, immediately struck me as interesting on reading it.

... And Variations

By this point the fact that the stories as told here are often substantially different to other versions comes as no surprise. The original Greeks, translator and editors all had different ideas about which one was "correct" and what the purpose of the stories were. Some contain distinct moral lessons but many feel more like pseudo-histories in which imperfections add to the realism (or at least believability) rather than serving any clear narrative or moral purpose. Nevertheless, individual differences are still interesting, including here the remarks of the commentators.

A simple case would be Hercules. The other texts describe him as a very simple chap, sometimes even outright stupid. Here he's viewed as actually very intelligent, though I'm at a loss as to why. True, he outwits Atlas and solves a few simple puzzles, but this is a low bar. Whether this reflects the original Greek belief or just the passing folly of the commentator is impossible to say, but it feels to me more like the modern author just couldn't grasp the idea that a hero could also be a bit thick.

Likewise, there's a strong tendency in many of the entries to describe the gods in almost entirely positive terms, cheerfully omitting any of the less family-friendly incidents. The evolution of the mythologies themselves, said Hamilton, was one that gradually rose above the "muck and slime"; here this has often been extended too far (though by no means always). Presenting the gods as infallible champions of virtue, often being no more than personifications of them, becomes sanitising to the point of sterility. Oh, it's compelling and engrossing sterility, I'll grant that. But in depicting Zeus as a model of perfect justice and Dionysus as a happy bloke who liked wine – and wine having nothing but beneficial effects ! – is missing out on an awful lot of the interesting stuff, and potentially putting out a very strange message indeed in the case of Dionysus. "Hey kids, have some of this ! C'mon, it's just fermented grape juice !"

By far the biggest contrast with Hamilton comes from the stories of Theseus. She said that he was uniquely venerated by the Athenians because of his compassion and intelligence. None of that is on display here, being apparently a very run-of-the-mill Greek hero : a powerful warrior but morally as flawed as anyone else (ironically, the tales of Theseus present here are one case where the whole family-friendly sanitisation is dropped completely – these tales are if anything especially violent, not compassionate). It could, however, just be a selection effect, and even Hamilton presented cases where Theseus behaved despicably. 

What's especially interesting in this selection are Theseus' pre-Labyrinth journeys. Here Greece is a barbarous wasteland full of monsters and savage villains who fling their enemies apart using pine trees, apparently just for the sheer hell of it, or construct vicious automatic beds that chop people's legs off. It feels much more like the Celtic stories of Arthurian Britain : vast, unexplored, and replete with the muck and slime – and corpses hung from trees – that the later tales of the fine palaces of Olympus would often lack. And in other example of randomly attempting to educate the reader :

Some say that at the foot of the cliff dwelt an enormous tortoise, which ate the dead and the dying when they fell near his lair, but as tortoises do not eat flesh, generally, this may be a mistake.

Yes, well, that one's on par with the AI claims that the Titanic's swimming pool, "might still be partly full of water". And again, how come a giant flesh-eating tortoise is impossible but a hybrid carnivorous man-bull is apparently just fine ?

It's not just the monsters though. With the Theseus tales, even the character motivations have a distinctly Celtic unworldliness to them. Medea's motivation for attempting to murder him, and her subsequent loyalty when she fails, are much less straightforward to understand than most characters in Greek myths, with no reason for this behaviour ever stated. She's also portrayed very positively (at least at first), with her indecisiveness being entirely understandable and not due to any innate flaw. This only makes her later evil behaviour all the more inscrutable; she turns into a monster to aid Jason, but this does not explain (let alone excuse) her baseless attempt to murder Theseus*.  

* A final, incidental point here. Famously Theseus forgets to change the colour of his ship's sails when he arrives back in Greece, so his father thinks he's dead and kills himself (rather than waiting to check with the crew just in case). Here, however, it's because the crew have been entirely replaced with Cretans, which at least partly explains this foolish oversight. Not much though.

As mentioned the lack of anything about the provenance of the text is often frustrating. Minor details like thinking the Colossus of Rhodes really did straddle the harbour, or being confused as to whether the voyage of the Argo was before or after Troy, are a bit disorienting but nothing worse than that. In other cases they potentially change the whole meaning of a story. For example, other retellings have Demeter's return to Earth from Hades as bringing the fertility of spring, but in one version here it's her reunion with he daughter, not her mere presence, that brings rejuvenation. That changes the moral interpretation of the tale and brings me slowly towards my central claim : that pagan mythology was not a wholly amoral world view.

An Alien Past

Before tackling morality head on, it's worth briefly noting that in terms of literary conventions too, Greek myth shares many similarities with modern writings but also has plenty of differences. Recognising that the whole basis was quite different to modern ideals, in terms of storytelling itself as well as the morality presented, helps a good deal in getting a grip on this : treating the stories as modern literature sometimes works, but sometimes leads to disappointment and confusion. 

The Iliad in particular is downright frustrating from a modern perspective, beginning with Achilles being a whiny little bitch and ending with him temporarily doing the decent thing, rather than bothering to note such frivolities as what happens in the rest of the war*. This was my first taste of Greek myth from many years back and I remember being thrilled with every word right up to the ending, at which I was distinctly nonplussed despite the translator's explanatory comments (the point being to start with a petition which was refused, leading to disaster, and end with one which is accepted, leading to harmony – this is pointless though since the "peace" lasts about twenty minutes).

* Which is a terrible shame, because the version here presents some great stuff – not only the famous Horse, but also a pointless commando squad of sexy but useless Amazons, followed by a whole army of sensible, pragmatic Ethiopians (who are just about the only people in the entire saga with any common military sense, excepting Odysseus).

On the other hand, it describes key conflicts in great detail. This is in marked contrast to most other stories, where there's usually a lengthy build-up to a crucial boss-level fight only for the actual deed to be extremely brief and usually effortless*. And really powerful monsters, especially dragons, are almost subdued rather than fought. Repetition (as in Celtic mythology) is embraced, with the story of Penelope un-weaving her web described in full no less than three times in the Odyssey. Finally, as noted previously, the stories weave into a vast pseudo-history rather than being self-contained tales, making it difficult to even give them a clear ending in which the hero is permanently rewarded : no "happily ever after" can be complete if you need to go on to the next movie in the franchise. 

* Imagine if Frodo had simply walked into Mordor with an invisibility cloak and dropped the Ring into Mount Doom and you've got a fair idea of how most Greek myths proceed. Unnecessary digressions aren't much of a thing.

All the same, they use flashbacks, events happen without a moral reason but simply because the narrative demands it, and character motivations are usually clear. They are definitely stories written as stories to be enjoyed, but as with the different prevailing wisdom on what constituted ethical behaviour, so too did they have different expectations of what made for good literature.  

Nevertheless there are some clear moral lessons to be drawn; Plato is full of innumerable examples of discussions on the ethical implications of assorted mythological tales. They aren't wholly theology or literature but truly a genre unto themselves. Yet the ancient Greeks did have a moral compass, and sometimes their mythology reflects this to an unmistakable degree. But for that, you'll have to wait for part two.