Greek & Roman Myths

The World's Greatest Myths and Legends

by Jake Jackson (Editor)

The classical gods of Rome uncoiled from the fertile imaginations of the ancient Greeks whose gods were passionate and violent, jealous of their powers and subject to both mighty outbursts of love and all-consuming bouts of vengeful war. These gods would constantly meddle in mortal affairs, taking sides and making things happen for their own amusement. Tales of epic wars sat alongside folk tales involving heroes and nymphs, enchantment and trickery, all influencing the resourceful and emerging civilization that formed the basis of Western culture, providing a tradition of fabulous tales that are retold in this new book.

Part of a new series on The World's Greatest Myths and Legends, these books capture the mystery and drama of ancient legends through all the key stories and folktales featuring gods, heroes, monsters and animals, as well as common themes such as creation, love, death and courage. Each book features an introduction to the history, landscape, characters and culture of the mythology.

Genres: Mythology, Collections, History, Religion, Classics, Nonfiction, Ancient History

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2014

About the author

SF and dark fantasy author but also a writer/creator of practical music books - Beginner's Guide to Reading Music, Guitar Chords, Piano Chords, Songwriter’s Rhyming Dictionary and How to Play Guitar. Other publications include Advanced Guitar Chords, Advanced Piano Chords, Chords for Kids, How to Play the Electric Guitar, Piano & Keyboard Chords, Scales and Modes and Play Flamenco. Also editor of Mythology books 

Released EP Jakesongs on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, LastFM, etc and on CDBaby. Lifelong passion for fantastic worlds of any kind, from movies to fiction, art to music, posters, album and paperback book covers.

Jake Jackson is the artist name for Nick Wells, Publisher of Flame Tree Press / Flame Tree Publishing.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it but found the flowery Romantic language in the Roman section strange.
Although it was interesting to learn about the origins of Rome in the first part of it.

My favourite parts were Troy and the Gods and nymphs section. I adore the story of Echo and Narcissisus. I found Echo was characterised really well.

I found that I got very involved in the Greek section and believed the characters who seemed part of the fabric, where the Roman section began as a history. In a few of the Greek sections there was an explanation of how it all tied into reality".

There was no explanation of who was who in names of the Roman God's: Juno was Hera.

I will probably reread this in a few years. I know there is a lot of myths book from this area.

[Anne kendall · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s an easy read but there are a lot of grammar and spelling errors, and they don’t explain stories well so I wouldn’t recommend for something who doesn’t already have a knowledge of mythology. There’s better books out there, skip this one.

[Issie Petrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was pretty good, had it’s moments but overall it was very informative

[Aja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am new to Greek and Roman mythology and thought this did a decent overview. I enjoyed that each story was just a short summary, although I did struggle at times to keep track of all of the characters. People who were secondary characters in previous stories would reappear in their own summaries and from my understanding some gods/goddesses/mortals/characters were referred to by different names and this was not always clear to me. I also had a hard time with the change in the way the stories were told in the Roman section, specifically the stories of Aeneas. Luckily, the Roman section of the book is short compared to the Greek and the books of Aeneas were only a few pages long.

[Frannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't know exactly what to say about this. But it was nice to read about all the myths and stuff. The Roman myths just got very confusing because it was in another writing style than the Greek myths

[Eduarda Fiúza · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 - extremely repetitive, and even though it contains a large amount of myths, they are all very summarized and required previous knowledge.
I found the Roman Myths section to be unnecessary and a bit boring, for it was entirely taken out of the Aeneid, which in itself is not bad, but it isn’t what I was expecting. The difference in the switch of writing styles annoyed me and I would have enjoyed this last section more if it had been written in the same style as the Greek one (keeping in mind that it too wasn’t great at all).

[Meagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was exactly what I was hoping for when I picked it up a the bookstore. It's a great collection of all sorts of stories involving the mythology of the Greeks and Romans.

[Linda Reed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a lot of the reviewers, I found the information interesting, although I wanted more analysis, and the writing is drier than the Gobi Desert.

[Ryan McNie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars.

The stories are incredible. The layout and editing of this retelling are not.

It's great. I love Greek mythology. But the stories are brief. The books offers a brief retelling in a matter if fact tone as apposed to full remaining of the classic tales. For instance, the story of the trojan war and illiad is told for the most part in just eight pages. These are quick summarys of the plots, like that which you would find on Wikipedia, not full blown mythological recreations. Despite this the stories themselves are incredible. And the contextualisation id the introduction as well as clearly reveals the writers passion and knowledge.

The myths in this book are also not in chronological order and no timeline or explanation is given that reveals the true order of events which could be confusing for those new to the myths. For instance, the first part of the book focuses on the beginning and creation of the gods but the next skips forwards to the events of the Trojan war and the oddessy before taking us back again to the time of the adventures of Jason and Heracles many years before. We then get further tales from before even these events and then are flung forwards to the Roman myths that take place AFTER the Oddessy. It would be a lot to figure out for those unfamiliar.

Another annoyance is this: there are many variations of Greek myths and also multiple names for the same figures, an example being Hades and Aides or another example being Prometheus who has his liver pecked out by either an eagle or a vulture depending on which chapter you are reading. This book occasionally switches between these variations and names between chapters without warning which can lead to confusion until the reader catches on.

Bad editing also leads to the book claiming that events have already been related when, in fact, they are yet to be told in chapters yet to come. This is particularly present in the 'Tales of Heracles' chapter of the book.

I also find it just plain strange that, unlike the rest of the book, the sections on Roman mythology (well, the chapter on Aeneas at least) are just extracts from Virgil's ' The Aeneid'. This wasn't the case for The Oddyssey or The Illiad so why is it being done here? It's a bizarre inclusion that makes little sense in a book that has given a brief overview of the stories and literature that came before. It doesn't fit with the style and makes for heavy reading that may not appeal to the same reader as the rest of the book.

Ultimately, the Greek myths are incredible. This retelling, however, is brief and riddled with editorial problems that really should have been picked up and sorted before publication. Despite all of its issues I did enjoy it. But some strange stylistic choices in the Roman myths section also hold it back from being great.
A nice, short overview to the tales of Greek mythology (it really is impressive how much has been crammed in even if it is at the expense of detail) that touches on Roman. If you can overlook its basic publication errors and strange stylistic choices.

[Adrien · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was stupid. I liked the beginning and I think some of the stories were told well but this is my least favorite retelling of the Greek Myths. The book spent soooooooooo much time on Hercules and the Odyssey, and like I know those are the cool Greek stories that this mythology is known for but they are over-told stories. (And my least favorite) I feel like this book could have been better if it focused more on telling less popular Greek stories. ALSO the Roman section of this book was less the 50 pages. Does the title not say Greek & ROMAN myths? And the Roman section sucked it didn’t even tell ANY good Roman myths. So yeah this book sucked.


Quotes: (I guess)

“Beware of a man with one sandal” Jason and the Argonauts page 95 (I just think this prophecy is funny)

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

To the point, without much excess. For the most part, a very informative read. Its layout definitely different than many other books on Greek mythology, plopping the Trojan War and wanderings of Odyssues early on and the coming back for Heracles, Perseus, and the like. The Roman section was the biggest flaw, as the story of Aeneas was probably 90+% passages from the Aeneid. The rest of the Roman section was extremely brief and choppy. The whole book ended without any sort of conclusion or ending chapter, so that felt a little weird too. There are much better mythology books out there, but there are plenty of worse ones too.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because I thought I'd like the format so actually ordered two of the books from this series.

I was correct. The format is concise, well written, and provides the type of overview that I enjoy. I'm adding this to my reference library and look forward to reading the other in this series that I ordered.

[Frank Fronk · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a pretty good book that's quick to fill you in on all the most well known stories in Greek and Roman mythology. A few grammer/spelling errors, however it's still readable. Would recommened to people that already have a decent grasp on Greek mythology, as there're quite a few names (people, places, etc) that were mentioned but not talked about too much.

[Brittany LeMoine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it pretty dull and also not very detailed.

[Jennifer Wiget · Rating 1 out of 5]

it wasn’t very well written. there are a lot of errors in it and the stories aren’t really structured nicely. they also aren’t told in an interesting manner.

[Ein Barney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fast read, covering the basics of most of the Grecian and Roman stories.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda all over the place. It didn’t often give varying tales of the myths, which is fair as that could have doubled the book, but would have been nice.

[ConnShawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is just meh... A few spelling mistakes and boring writing. Read something else.

[Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite of the series so far. Again, at times, the author explains stories rather than telling stories and I could do without the Roman section, but overall I enjoyed it.

[Meghan McNatt · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️

[Whitney · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book does an okay job with Greek mythology, a bad job with Roman mythology, and sticks them together with a hodgepodge of mediocre writing. Here, Epic poems were turned into brief ‘matter of fact’ sentences.

The biggest problem I had with this book was the Roman mythology. It should be noted that the book itself is 255 pages, and the Roman Mythology section begins on page 215. The Roman mythology was rushed and this led to little meaningful comprehension. The strangest part about this section was that the majority of the Roman Myths section was just excerpts from Virgil’s Aeneid. This choice is confusing given that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not told in this way.

Virgil wrote Aeneid specifically to mirror Odysseus. The goal was to make the Adventures of Aeneas as meaningful and heroic as the Wanderings of Odysseus. Romulus (the founder of Rome) was a descendent of Aeneas (a Trojan). In order to claim the ancestry proudly, the Romans created a Trojan hero that was just as close to the gods and faced just as much hardship as Odysseus. This is especially seen when Aeneas descends into the underworld. The Aeneid is supposed to be read like an epic poem, but instead the book lumps the entire poem into paragraphs while using direct quotes instead of summarizing. The difference in structure makes it difficult for the reader to compare the Aeneid to the Odyssey, which are two stories that were literally meant to mirror each other.

There were also a few general problems with the editing and publishing of this book. There were no sources or footnotes anywhere. I picked up bits and pieces of Ovid and Hesiod but had a lot of trouble deciphering where myths came from. Also, the myths are not in chronological order and there is no explanation of the timeline. This is especially difficult to understand when the book makes reference to myths in later sections. Each Greek/Roman god has many different names and the book switches between them like the reader is supposed to know all of them (ex: Hades and Aides). The stories are what makes this book interesting, but the layout and editing do nothing.

I gave this book 2 stars because of the thorough and very informative introduction. Being the best part of the book, the introduction shows a great understanding of Greek & Roman mythology and a passion for the subject matter.

[2 stars, hardcopy read]
[#1 of 2024 New Reads]

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve slowly begun to amass a modest collection of these Greco-Roman mythology retellings –Heroes Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths; Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths; The Penguin Book of Classical Myths; Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.

This attempt, unfortunately, does not quite match up to its competitors:

1. Identification of source materials, so scrupulously addressed in Hamilton, is glanced over or ignored;
2. The simplicity and straightforwardness of Bernard Evslin’s compilation—lending to younger audiences or first time readers of Greek mythology—is lost;
3. and, the examination of myth from an archaeological, anthropological, or psychological perspective is absent, such as the discussion of Grecian urn paintings in the Penguin Book of Classical Myths or the more scholarly treatment in Graves.

Finally, it should be noted that 20 or so authors worked in collaboration to produce this book, creating a hodgepodge of authorial style, spellings, and narrative structure that waffles between sections.

[Ci · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a handy little book summarizing the most commonly referred Greek and Roman Myths, sourcing from Homer, Ovid and Virgil. However I have not read anything along "Jason and Argonauts.

This book is easy to read and useful.