Welcome To Styngia

Anonymous asked: hi! Im pretty new to the whole greek mythology thing. I know the basics, but do you have any recommendations for good or interesting websites or books? should I read the Percy Jackson series? Sorry to bother and thank you for your time, I love your writing btw

odiko-ptino:

WELCOME TO THE COOLEST CLUB! Greek mytho enthusiasts!!!! I’m glad you’re joining us! Let me pile a huge list for you to peruse and keep your eye out for them ❤️

(Also thank you for your kind words about my fics :) I’m not at academic levels of accuracy by a long shot, but I do try pretty hard to research them)

In my humble opinion, no media is bad media to consume about the gods, as long as you check it against ancient source material to be aware of artistic licenses taken :) as far as checking sources, for me personally, that’s Theoi.com. That’s almost the only website I use… it’s got TONS of info and it’s all very well sourced. It will even mention things like vase art and second-hand stories, and stories that aren’t particularly “significant” - just scenes of Ares and Hermes wrestling around at a party while Apollo sings and Artemis and the Muses dance; or Hermes teasing baby nymphs by pretending to be a scary Cyclops. Little things like that, inspire a lot of my fics :)

JSTOR is another website that will let you access a certain number of scholarly articles for free each month.

For Percy Jackson… I haven’t actually read it beyond the first book so idk. I think it’s a fine launching point but from what I hear, there’s a lot of inaccuracies and it’s mostly about the OC creations of Rick Riordan, the modern au children of the gods. I have heard the latest series, with mortal!Apollo, is markedly better though. His Poseidon seems sexy but ooc. Anyway the series is popular so you might enjoy it, just keep in mind it’s not very accurate.

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I think my recommendations for accurate-yet-accessible books for beginners/refreshers are GEORGE O’CONNOR’s OLYMPIAN SERIES!!!! They’re at a few libraries I’ve seen, there’s currently ten books and #11 (Hephaestus) is coming out end of January. O’Connor researches very well with each book and covers a lot of ground, and I find him inspiring because he writes each god’s story sympathetically. There are no villains on Olympus the way he writes. Even when they do awful things, it’s handled sensitively and without trying to dismiss the awfulness, just show how complicated they are. HIGHLY recommend.

I also thought Stephen Fry’s book on mythology (I hear there’s a second one now but I haven’t read it yet) was amazing. He’s a great storyteller and also tries to show the complexity of the stories.

Some people don’t care for Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey but I think it’s my favorite version for the very easy-to-read language she uses.

I found the Greek Classics Cliffs Notes at a library and it’s mostly just got summaries and a little background info… nothing you couldn’t find on Wikipedia but it’s useful to have around if you find one.

To round off the beginners book set, “Classical Mythology” by Helen A Guerber, which isn’t all-encompassing but includes some helpful analyses/backgrounds when new characters or concepts are introduced and has gorgeous illustrations.

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I’m including a few books with more specific topics that I really liked, in case you wanna move on from the basics.

“Homosexuality in Greece and Rome,” edited by Thomas K Hubbard. He compiled a collection of every reference he could find to homosexuality he could find, in any context, and explained a bit about the customs and culture. I thought the translations he made/selected were pretty accessible (always important). Invaluable book.

“Daily Life of the Greek Gods” by Giulia Sissa and Marcel Detienne. another interesting thing to me, trying to figure out what a god’s existence is in general, even when they’re not meddling with mortals. My only caution would be that it’s very academic and also translated to English from another language, so it’s really not an easy read, but fascinating topic.

“Women in Greek Myth” by Mary Lefkowitz. @coloricioso recommended this once and I’ve learned a lot from it. I gather it’s controversial, and there’s a number of points where I thought it was stretched a bit far. But ultimately this makes a lot of sense to me to… not really tear down the concept of ancient rape culture, but at least make me realize it wasn’t quite as bleak as I’d thought, and it definitely taught me that our use of the words “rape” and “virgin” are almost meaningless in ancient contexts.

“Homer’s Daughter” by Robert Graves. I don’t personally buy his theory that the Odyssey was actually composed by a young woman, but I can’t disprove it either and in any case Graves is a talented writer, I enjoyed this a lot.

“The amazons” by Adrienne Mayor. Like anyone else with sense, I thought the Amazons were the coolest aspect of Greek mythology… unfortunately, they weren’t seen as badasses to aspire to, but aberrations of the natural order. Still this book gives a pretty good rundown of the badass ladies.

“A dance with Hermes” by Lindsay Clarke. LOVE this book! It’s literally just a book of poems about Hermes. And it’s absolutely my conception of Hermes: hilarious, mischievous, sometimes playful, sometimes scary serious, sometimes incredibly wise, encouraging us lowly mortals. Amazing poems.

“Celebrity in Antiquity” by Robert Garland… not sure how interested you were in history, but i got a kick out of this.

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Honorable mentions: not directly relevant but still good.

“The Road to Sparta” by Dean Karnazes. Not actually mytho, but a Greek man who loves ultra distance running, tries to match Pheidippides’ Original Marathon run time/route, using only the resources an Ancient Greek would have, and honestly his description of how hard it was, and what it meant to him to be trying to do this in his ancestral home, was really like reading about a religious experience. It gives a little insight on what it really meant for Hermes to be a messenger god.

“The alphabet versus the goddess” by Leonard Shlain. Full of extremely interesting talking points about how the rise of literacy meant the subjugation of women. His grasp of mythology is sketchy but if you keep that in mind, he had a lot of cool points about misogyny in the ancient world. Although I rolled my eyes pretty fucking hard at the inclusion of the myth of vagina dentata as it related to Cadmus.

“Spinning Straw into Gold” by Joan Gould. She analyses a lot of myths/fairy tales from the perspective of messages to women, and her take on Demeter when Hades took Persephone was incredible- because Gould, an older woman with a grown daughter, came at it from that point of view: an older woman trying to come to terms with the fact that her daughter doesn’t need her anymore. I’ve never seen that portrayal anywhere else, and I think it’s invaluable for that reason. I feel like all the perspectives I’ve seen on the story are either old men or young girls/women - hearing from an older woman with a grown daughter she had to let go, was great.

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Ultra honorable mention (because I haven’t actually finished it yet):

“Medousa” by Michael Butchin ( @mbutchin ) . I’m only at page 150 or so out of 650 but I’ve already cried 9,572 times. Poor Medusa!!

Anyway I hope that gives you some starting points! I get most of my books from thriftbooks.com, definitely look there first.

If anyone else has recommendations, add it in the notes! And anon tell me if you liked them if you read any of them!! ❤️