TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY BOOKS (HONORABLE MENTION: CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY)

 

That’s right – I don’t just have a top ten mythology books, or my usual twenty special mentions. I also have honorable mentions.

My usual rule is that I have no cap on the number of individual entries I can list as honorable mention for any given top ten if there are enough entries beyond my top ten or special mentions – and I tend to just list them in chronological or date order, usually date of publication for books.

However, for mythology books, I have some different rules, except the lack of any cap or numerical limit on honorable mention.

My primary rule is that I have honorable mentions for books in selected subjects of mythology, where there are enough entries for that subject (potentially racking them up for a top ten in that subject) – as here, with the subject of classical mythology.

And where I have honorable mentions for particular subjects, I quickly recap the entries on that subject from my top ten or special mentions first before moving on to my further honorable mentions, in tier rankings and numerical sequence albeit with some degree of chronological or date order.

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

TO RECAP CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY ENTRIES FROM MY TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY BOOKS (INCLUDING THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF THE ILIAD & ODYSSEY)

 

 

 

 

(1) HOMER – ILIAD & ODYSSEY

 

“Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles”.

“Tell me, Muse, of the cunning man who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famed city of Troy”

Obviously the primary source and rosy-fingered dawn for classical mythology, as well as second top spot in my Top 10 Mythology Books with classical mythology also in second top spot in my Top 10 Mythologies. Those entries go into more depth and detail.

“The Greeks held Homer in something like reverence, viewing his works as the foundation of their society, in much the same way as modern Europeans view the Bible”.

Indeed, the Iliad is my Old Testament and the Odyssey is my New Testament. Aptly enough, given the Bronze Age battle hymns of Iliad and Old Testament, or the hero’s return from death in Odyssey and New Testament.

And while we’re on such comparisons, there’s my quip that the Second World War is the American Iliad and the Cold War the American Odyssey.

maritime magical mystery tour – or dare I say it, Poseidon adventure, as the Greek hero Odysseus just tries to return to his kingdom Ithaca after the Trojan War, barely escaping death as he is tossed from flotsam to jetsam in one shipwreck after another from Poseidon’s wrath. I mean, seriously, he could have walked home faster from Turkey to Greece, although Poseidon probably still would have got him somehow. And he loses all his ships and men en route, returning home as lone survivor – and stranger, as even then he has to remain disguised as a beggar to infiltrate his own household and outwit his wife’s persistent suitors partying it up there. And let me tell you, every dog has its day. Literally and heartbreakingly, as he is recognized by his faithful dog Argos who has awaited his return for twenty years (only to finally pass away with that last effort). But also figuratively and with undeniable satisfaction as he outwits and defeats the suitors.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

 

 

 

(2) BARBARA WALKER – WOMEN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS (1983)

 

She is the goddess and this is her body!

And this book is also third place entry in my Top 10 Mythology Books, where you can read more detail about it there.

While the book is essentially comparative mythology to variations on the theme of goddesses or the goddess, it has a substantial number of its encyclopedia on Biblical subjects or broader subjects within Jewish or Christian folklore.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT GODDESS-TIER?)

 

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

TO RECAP CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY ENTRIES FROM MY TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY BOOKS (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

 

 

 

(3) THOMAS BULFINCH –

BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY (1867)

 

I believe in all the gods –
especially the goddesses.

Bulfinch’s Mythology still remains a classic reference (and handily in the public domain) – as indeed it was for me as my introduction as a child to the world of classical mythology. Well, technically that was the first volume – the Age of Fable – or rather the overwhelming majority of that volume as it also featured a briefer recitation of Nordic mythology.

Looking back to it now, it’s somewhat dated and has its flaws as a reference, but it remains one of the most accessible single-volume references to classical mythology for the general reader – as Bulfinch wrote in his preface:

“Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.”

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

(4) ROBERT GRAVES –

THE GREEK MYTHS (1955)

 

My other favorite single volume study of Greek mythology, which essentially comes in two parts.

The first part is a conventional compendium of Greek mythology – literary retellings of the various myths from their sources – and it is this part that is the basis for the book as my favorite single volume study of Greek mythology, albeit somewhat dense in its prose style.

The second part – his interpretative notes or commentary – is where things get more wild, although Graves would say they get poetic. This is where Graves ‘decodes’ or reconstructs Greek mythology to his monomyth of the Goddess or prehistoric matriarchal religion.

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(5) WALTER BURKERT –
GREEK RELIGION (1985)

 

If Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths are my Old Testament of classical mythology, Burkert’s Greek Religion is my New Testament. Alternatively, the three are my holy trinity of classical mythology (which I suppose would make Nietzsche the Father, Graves the Son and Burkert the Holy Spirit of classical mythology).

His section headings say it all about his comprehensive survey of Greek religion – Prehistory and the Minoan-Mycenaean Age; Ritual and Sanctuary; The Gods (the Olympian dirty dozen and the balance of the pantheon); The Dead, Heroes and Chthonic Gods; Polis and Polytheism; Mysteries and Asceticism; and Philosophical Religion.

 

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

HONORABLE MENTION: A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(6) EURIPIDES & APULEIUS –

BACCHAE & GOLDEN ASS

 

It’s not all Homer. Honorable mention has to go to my next favorite primary sources of classical mythology, both by writers in the classical period itself, Greek and Roman respectively – the Greek dramatist Euripides and Roman writer Apuleius, with their works The Bacchae and The Golden Ass respectively.

I mean, that right there – just the phrasing of Bacchae and Golden Ass – encapsulates my personal  philosophy, my mythos if you will, of classical mythology. Indeed, the phrase Golden Ass encapsulates my personal philosophy of everything – my life has been a quest not for the grail, but the golden ass.

 

“Appear, appear whatsoever thy name or shape!

O mountain bill, snake of the hundred heads,

Lion of the burning flame

O god, beast, mystery, come!”

 

Firstly, The Bacchae by Euripides – literal Dionysian deus ex machina in the original folk horror story and clash of church against state  or cult against throne.

The greatest Greek tragedy – indeed one that has been argued to be one of the greatest ever written – in the usual style of Greek tragedies, which is the gods will screw you over and there’s nothing much you can do about it, even with that weird chorus telling you what’s happening, and even if they liked to call it nemesis for your hubris.

Yes, I know Dionysus personally appears, albeit in mortal disguise, to give Pentheus a repenting chance, but he doesn’t exactly go all out in the attempt because it’s much more demonstrative – and fun – setting up Pentheus for the Wicker Man to his Lord Summerisle. Except that the Bacchae makes the Wicker Man look like a picnic.

Anyway, the play by Euripides is based on the myth of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who is opposed to the new god Dionysus and his cult, despite being, you know, actually related to him. No, seriously, Pentheus is the cousin of Dionysus, because that’s how it was in those days, particularly with Zeus. Worse, Pentheus – and much of Thebes denies the divinity of Dionysus. And you can’t be disrespecting Dionysus.

So Dionysus does what any Greek god would do:
Step 1 – disguise yourself as a mortal priest of yourself and be captured only to respond cryptically to questions
Step 2 – drive your female worshippers or Maenads mad and trick Pentheus into spying on them in disguise as one of them
Step 3 – !!!
Step 4 – profit!

And by step 3, I mean sit back as your Maenads, including Pentheus’ own mother Agave, literally tear Pentheus apart with their bare hands in a crazed frenzy, believing Pentheus to be a wild beast.

That leads to a moment of classic horror as Agave proudly bears the head, still under divine delusion that it is the head of a mountain lion, to her own father Cadmus, only to see it for what it really is when Cadmus recoils and calls upon her to look more closely.

From a modern perspective, it’s hard not to identify or sympathize with King Pentheus cracking down on a strange new cult spreading through his city – particularly one with literal crazed worshippers like the Maenads, up there with the followers of Jim Jones or Charles Manson.

The Bacchae resonates on so many levels. I’ve already compared it to The Wicker Man, which replays many of its story beats for horror – and it’s easy to adapt the Bacchae for horror, from folk horror to cosmic horror – Dionysus as Yog Sothoth, perhaps?

More substantially, others have argued the parallels between it and the Gospels, with Jerusalem for Thebes and Jesus for Dionysus (and the Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate for Pentheus), except of course Jesus is far more morally palatable in his divine coup de grace than Dionysus.

And there’s the Nietzschean interpretations, most famously with his dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy – and it is tempting to see Pentheus as a good Apollonian, attempting to hold the line of order against Dionysian chaos. Or the Freudian interpretations with Pentheus as ego trying to hold back the wild ecstasy of the id…

 

“Queen of Heaven, whether you are known as bountiful Ceres, the primal harvest mother, who, delighted at finding your daughter Proserpine again, abolished our primitive woodland diet, showed us sweet nourishment, and now dwell at Eleusis; or heavenly Venus, who at the founding of the world joined the sexes by creating Love, propagating the human race in endless generation, and worshipped now in the sea-girt sanctuary of Paphos; or Diana, Apollo’s sister, you who relieve the pangs of countless childbirths with your soothing remedies, venerated now at Ephesus; or dread Proserpine herself, she of the night-cries, who triple-faced combats the assault of spirits shutting them from earth above, who wanders the many sacred groves, propitiated by a host of rites; oh, light of woman, illuminating every city, nourishing the glad seed with your misty radiance, shedding that light whose power varies with the passage of the sun; in whatever aspect, by whatever name, with whatever ceremony we should invoke you”

And then there’s The Golden Ass by Apuleius – she is the goddess and this is her body!

As a (bawdy) comic prose novel – “the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in entirety” – it lacks the tragic grandeur of The Bacchae, but what it lacks in grandeur, it makes up in, well, golden ass. The titular ass is what the writer is magically transformed into for a series of picaresque adventures, as well as snippets of classical mythology such as the myth of Cupid (or Eros) and Psyche.

He is restored to human form by the goddess – ironically perhaps given its keynote status as one of my top books of classical mythology, the Egyptian goddess Isis, who initiates Apuleius into her mysteries. O yes!

Isis was of course a popular goddess among the Romans, who took to her despite her Egyptian origin. However, in The Golden Ass, Isis is revealed to be not just a goddess, but effectively the Goddess – made manifest and known as other goddesses, including those in classical mythology.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

*

(7) BARRY STRAUSS –

THE TROJAN WAR: A NEW HISTORY (2006)

 

Yes – it’s where mythology meets history.

“In The Trojan War historian and classicist Barry Strauss explores the myth and the reality behind the war, from Homer’s accounts in The Iliad and The Odyssey to Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of ancient Troy in the late nineteenth century to more recent excavations that have yielded intriguing clues to the story behind the fabled city.”

Essentially, Strauss is able to reconstruct the Trojan War from the Iliad, even if it did not happen quite as Homer described it, although Homer got more right than people give him credit – hence the reconstruction. (I’d love to see someone argue that all the mythological gods stuff was true, but the historical war stuff is false).

And Hector? Thou art avenged! I like how history matches mythology as showing the Trojans as the civilized society, originating from the Hittites, besieged by the rowdy Greeks as the sea-roving barbarians, or dare I say it, the Sea Peoples – the Vikings of the Aegean.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

HONORABLE MENTION: B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

 

 

(8) BETTANY HUGHES –

HELEN OF TROY / VENUS & APHRODITE (2005 / 2019)

 

A thematic duo of books for my top two favorite female figures from mythology – Aphrodite Venus and Helen of Troy (which I understand to be adapted from or for TV series written and presented by Hughes).

And for those who think it a cheat to include two books within the one entry, I’d rank her Helen of Troy over her Aphrodite & Venus (despite ranking Aphrodite over Helen for my top female figure from mythology). Firstly because it was, well, first of the two (including in my reading order of them) and secondly because it seemed to me the more developed in depth. Don’t get me wrong – her Aphrodite book is an interesting presentation of the goddess in her many aspects, written in Hughes’ characteristic engaging style, but I just would have preferred it to be a little longer to consider its subject a little deeper.

“As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for nearly three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield”. And that’s literally as soon as men began to write, as she was enshrined within the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem that is the foundation of Western literary culture.

The subtitle of the book sums up her aspects in myth and history – goddess, princess, whore. I was aware of her divine mythic aspect from other sources – including one referenced in this book that saw Helen as a semi-divine figure in a blissful life, ironically with Achilles, but aptly enough coupling the world’s most beautiful women with its greatest warrior. And of course her divine origin as a daughter of Zeus in the form of a swan with Leda, with Helen hatched from an egg.

However, I was intrigued by Helen of Sparta, “the focus of a cult which conflated Helen the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess”. For that matter, I often tend to overlook that Helen was from Sparta (SPARTA!) – and Hughes is evocative in fleshing her out as a Spartan princess or Mycenaean aristocrat, as well as fleshing out Paris as delegate from Troy as Hittite satellite, doing the Bronze Age equivalent of sliding into her dms.

It reminded me of other reading – that while we moderns tend to query a casus belli as retrieving a stolen wife, substituting other theories for the Trojan War, when one looks at ancient or tribal war, that wars fought over women or a woman may not be so strange after all.

And that of course brings me to that other aspect of Helen – “the home-wrecker of the Iliad” and “bitch-whore of Greek tragedy”. It’s an aspect that evokes the original sin of Eve on a geopolitical scale, “held responsible for both the Trojan War and enduring enmity between East and West”. There’s even an apple in Helen’s myth!

As for Aphrodite & Venus, it’s summed up by its subtitle – history of a goddess. And what a goddess! It starts – aptly enough – with her mythic birth (or one of its versions at least), reminding us of something that Botticelli’s famous birth of Venus often charms us to forget, that Aphrodite wasn’t just born from the bubbles of sea foam, but the bloody foam formed by or around the severed genitals of a deposed divine ruler.

It evokes images of the Anatolian goddess Cybele imported into Greece and Rome, some of whose frenzied male devotees were reputed to have castrated themselves at the height of her ecstatic festivals – which I suspect at least of few them regretted in the distinctly, ah, un-ecstatic light of the next day.

I don’t know of any association or connection between Aphrodite and Cybele – the Greeks associated Cybele with mother goddess Rhea – but Aphrodite was certainly associated with ancient near Eastern goddesses of love and war like Ishtar, aptly enough for Aphrodite’s’ blood-foamed birth. Hughes explores this association, seemingly conflated with her origin in Cyprus, as demonstrative of a divine figure far more complex in all her aspects than the mere classical pinup or party girl to which she is often reduced.

One such aspect is as goddess of the Roman Empire itself – evoked in Hughes’ chapter Venus and Empire – as Romans traced their empire to legendary Trojan founder, Aeneas. Aeneas – leader of exiles from the Trojan War, heir to the Trojan royal lineage of Priam, Paris and Hector, and above all, son of Aphrodite. The Romans also looked more favorably on her consorting with the god of war, as while the Greek god of war represented the brutish violence of war (with Athena representing the art of war), the Romans saw their counterpart Mars as representing more martial virtue and honor.

 

RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

 

(9) PAUL ROBICHAUD –

PAN: THE GREAT GOD’S MODERN RETURN (2021)

 

Io Pan! Io Pan Pan!

Pan, the original horny god with the groin of a goat or as Bill Hicks styled him, randy Pan the Goat Boy. God of nature, mountains, shepherds and sexuality – also the source of our word panic, for the divine mad fear he could inspire in people, including as savior of Athens, the invading Persian army at Marathon.

As a Capricorn goat boy myself, I’ve long been a Pan fan. And so too is Paul Robichaud, a devotee of Pan. Well perhaps not the Capricorn part, but he has written a whole book as a paean to Pan.

Ironically, the only classical Greek god reported as dead – in a historical legend by Plutarch, with a sailor during the reign of Tiberius reporting a divine proclamation from an island that “the great god Pan is dead” – but reports of his death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, were greatly exaggerated. Pan was the one god that endured more than all the others, even to the extent of embodying in horned and hooved form all classical paganism as a whole in modern romanticism and neo-paganism. Perhaps aptly enough, given the pun on Pan – as the word for “all” in Greek also being Pan.

Robichaud comes from a background as an English professor – it shows in his fluent prose style, but also a focus on literature as he explores how Pan has been imagined in mythology, art, literature, music, spirituality, and popular culture through the centuries. The chapter titles best demonstrate this odyssey of Pan from mythic Pan – through medieval and early modern Pan, Pan’s romantic rebirth, Pan in the twentieth century (and his Edwardian height of popularity) and Pan’s occult power – to contemporary Pan.

All the usual suspects are here as cultural or literary devotees of Pan, but most notably those from Edwardian children’s literature of all places – prompting Bill Hick’s joke about his Goat Boy being available for children’s parties (“Mommy, I want Goat Boy to come play at our house”). Kenneth Grahame’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Peter Pan’s namesake, as well as much of his persona – with the Lost Boys as his satyrs.

Sadly, no C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, despite its deliciously Dionysian portrayal, maenads and all. Pan did often pal around with Dionysus after all, but generally not so much the other gods – not to mention all those fauns in Narnia. Wait a minute…Mr Tumnus is Pan! Spread the word.

Of course, there are bound to be omissions – Bill Hicks’ Goat Boy for one, Rhys Darby’s fleeting Pan-like figure in Flight of The Conchords’ Prince of Parties song for another. There’s just too much Pan – or is that too many Pans? – out there.

Also sadly, Rochibaud does suggest one of my favorite historical legends of how Christianity embodied Pan as its devil – as being just that, a legend dating back only to the nineteenth century (following the hypothesis of Ronald Hutton to that effect).

I still prefer the legend. In one of my story ideas, a somewhat lost and forlorn Satan muses to the protagonist (with whom he has occasional chats) of his origin from Pan (as one of his multiple-choice origin stories). The protagonist calls him out on his conflicting origin stories, to which Satan replies “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am legion, I contain multitudes”. But then he becomes sadly wistful “I would give anything just to dance in the moonlight again, when I was not evil but only wild and free”.

 

RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

 

 

(10) NATALIE HAYNES –

DIVINE MIGHT: GODDESSES IN GREEK MYTH (2023)

 

When it comes to classical mythology, I’m in it for the nymphs.

So naturally I’m up for the goddesses in this book by English classicist Natalie Haynes.

Where her previous book Pandora’s Jar celebrated the women of classical mythology, Divine Might playfully worships the goddesses, not surprisingly given the title (and subtitle) – “focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin”.

As one might expect, the six Olympian goddesses – Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Demeter, Hestia and Athene – take center stage. Through the lens of these goddesses, it does detour into other female figures or more minor goddesses, notably (and again not surprisingly) the chapter on Demeter detours into Persephone and Hecate. I hope for a sequel or companion volume extending that detour through the many minor goddesses or demi-goddesses in classical mythology.

The book also reminded me of the odd fact that fully half of the Olympian goddesses – Artemis, Hestia, and Athene – were virgins, which Haynes notes is strikingly at odds with the usual status of women at that time as one in which marriage and children would be expected. But then, the divine make their own rules and break them anyway.

Speaking of virgin goddesses, her chapter gave me a new appreciation of Hestia, a goddess that all too often is told to stay in the hearth, when she is not forgotten or overlooked altogether for the more glamorous Olympian figures. One might extend that by way of alliteration from Hestia to Hera – as the latter’s chapter also gave me a new appreciation of a figure often seen, conveniently for Zeus, as something of a shrew (and bunny boiler).

Aptly enough, both for symmetry and as representative of divine female figures in classical mythology, the book started with the Muses and ended with the Furies – dare I quip, not unlike my ex-wife.

My only complaint? It needed more nymphs! One can only hope for a book of nymphs – perhaps even a dictionary of nymphs…

 

RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

TL;DR – MYTHOLOGY BOOKS (CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY): TIER LIST

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) HOMER – ILIAD & ODYSSEY

(2) BARBARA WALKER – WOMEN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(3) BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY

(4) ROBERT GRAVES – THE GREEK MYTHS

(5) WALTER BURKERT – GREEK RELIGION

(6) EURIPIDES & APULEIUS – BACCHAE & GOLDEN ASS

(7) BARRY STRAUSS – THE TROJAN WAR: A NEW HISTORY

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(8) BETTANY HUGHES – HELEN OF TROY / APHRODITE & VENUS

(9) PAUL ROBICHAUD – PAN: THE GREAT GOD’S MODERN RETURN

(10) NATALIE HAYNES – DIVINE MIGHT: GODDESSES IN GREEK MYTH

 

You can return to or find more top tens in my indexed page for top tens of mythology.