GREEK myths present universal themes afresh to every generation. Stephen Fry’s retellings in Mythos awakened my daughter’s interest in them. Now she is looking forward to reading Richard Buxton after me.
As a classicist, I was relieved to find that he did not separate the myths from their cultural contexts. He is an academic and a skilled communicator, who does justice to the mysterious otherness of the mythic world. His writing is uncluttered by nitpicking qualifications and exceptions. There are footnotes to help people to find literary references and so broaden their understanding of particular myths if they wish. But these are short and to the point.
I was dreading an introductory “what is myth” chapter. Thank the gods there was none. This deserves a mention, because so many studies start by defining what myths are, obscuring thrilling stories with methodological finessing. Buxton shows heroic restraint by following one main thread for each subject, and yet without misrepresenting myths as more stable and consistent, over time, than they are. Each one is a shapeshifter, adapting to its time and context.
The book reveals how myths explore boundaries: social (insider/outsider), moral (sex/chastity), familial (parents/children), and even ontological (divine/human). They do so in dramatic (plays) or story (epic poetry) form; and in the visual arts, too. What is a human/god? Why are we so often agents of our own downfall? How do families fall out?
The perception in ancient Greek thought is that the universe has a balance to it, so any extreme (person or action) leads to a corrective counter-extreme. Buxton’s scrutiny of Oedipus is especially effective in getting this across: it could be encapsulated in the epigraph of Apollo at Delphi: “nothing to excess”.
© mary ellen croteauThe Judgement of Paris, 1997, by Mary Ellen Croteau, a feminist comment on the myth in Renaissance art: one of the illustrations in Richard Buxton’s book
Buxton focuses on eight representative examples, male and female: Prometheus, Medea, Daedalus, the Amazons, Oedipus, Paris, Heracles (Hercules), and Orpheus and Eurydice. Like modern superheroes (Marvel, X-Men), his chosen characters have either supernatural capacities or some human ability to an extreme degree.
If I could add one feature, somewhere, somehow, it would be help for readers in pronouncing all the strange names. One can fully enjoy a book without this, but one cannot comfortably discuss it with someone else while constantly stumbling over MEE-de-a or Me-DEE-a, or Eu-ri-DICE or Eu-RI-di-see.
By all means buy this book as a gift for someone. Better still, buy it for yourself.
The Revd Dr Cally Hammond is the Dean of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
The Greek Myths that Shape the Way We Think
Richard Buxton
Thames & Hudson £20
(978-0-500-51880-9)
Church Times Bookshop £18