Book Review: "The Library of Greek Mythology" by Apollodorus

It is not every day that I decide to change my usual path of reading modern horror but I was recently realising that I miss the old days where I read mainly the classics, or classical stuff. My horror addiction is not recently but is far more pronounced than it used to be and for a while now, I have missed the lingering flavour of something more academic. I decided to give The Library of Greek Mythology by Apollodorus a go since it had been sitting on my academic TBR for quite a long time (I am actually embarrassed to say how long). Not quite the depth I would usually choose but enough to get me restarted and recharged again. So I apologise if you do not want me exploring my passions of academic literature like I once did a while back, but here we are. You're going to get it anyway. That doesn't mean the other books will go anywhere, but I think I need to tone down the amount of horror I'm reading and make sure I'm balancing my mind correctly.

Starting with an introduction about how much of this we can trust is by the actual author, this part of the book takes us through the academic side of the text. With claims regarding the type of Greek being used that was actually over one hundred years after the supposed author's existence and the idea that the author of this text takes no sides and includes no embellishments making it nearly impossible to seem like a text from the supposed date - this text is more like a handbook. A common form of text during a time after it was supposedly written. An interesting and well-written opening, it does not turn away those who are not entrusted with the facts and histories of Greek Mythology already in their brains. Instead, it can be understood by absolutely anyone and is a great way to start the book.

The genealogies of every single lineage of Greek Myth that you can think of from before Zeus all the way down to the Trojan Cycle, this book literally has everything. Parts I enjoyed included:

• The story of Orpheus and Eurydice
• The story of Prometheus bound
• The 12 Labours of Heracles
• Jason and the Argonauts
• Perseus and Medusa
• Theseus, the Minotaur and then, The Amazons
• The Early Trojan stories considering the background to the Atreus family, the Spartan royal family and of course, Zeus and Leda
• Clytemnestra and her revenge
• Laios and Oedipus

There are probably many more but these are the ones that really stood out to me. I have always loved the story of Prometheus but I think my favourite tale of any Greek Myth is that of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. There is no evidence for their existence though they were the royalty of Mycenaen Greece and I have always hoped for some evidence of their reality (though I don't think there will be any). It is such a great story but the older I get the more I realise that maybe it is only a story.

Another thing I noticed throughout this is that there are certain repeated themes and ideas. For example: getting shot with a bow and arrow is a common way for a sudden death to happen and cannibalism seems to be up there too with things that are fairly common. Another thing that is common is pain: Sisyphus, Prometheus and a bunch of others go through some serious pain for doing something against the gods and their punishments are really quite horrible. Even though before this book, I had read my fair share of Greek Mythology and knew what was going on most of the time, it was still weird to read about that much darkness, death and pain in such a short space of time. I mean The Iliad is dragged out over hundreds of pages, whereas this book is tiny - it is so short. It has a much larger impact in recognising the frequency of destruction and the wrath of the Gods.

All in all, I think that this book is great for anyone looking to get started on Greek Mythology. I wish I had this book some fifteen years ago because it would have helped quite a bit. I have known about it for a long time and in the great history of my Greek Mythology studies, I have not encountered anything quite like it - it is concise but misses out relatively little.