The myths were formed early in Greek history—between, say, 1500 and 500 BCE. On the whole, then, and wherever possible, in this book we have stuck to the earliest extant versions of the stories (starting with Homer in the eighth century BCE), and have used later authors (such as the Roman poet Ovid, a brilliant storyteller from the beginning of the first century CE) sparingly and with caution.
Good, or adequate, translations of the ancient Greek and Roman authors who preserve or reflect the myths—such as Homer, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, Pindar, the tragedians, pseudo-Apollodorus, Hyginus, and Ovid—are readily available, especially in the Oxford World’s Classics and Penguin Classics series. Gaps in these two series may be filled by the Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, though the Loeb translations may be old-fashioned. Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Library of Greek Mythology is the most thorough source (though written late, perhaps in the second century CE), and there are three newer translations: Keith Aldrich, Apollodorus: The Library of Greek Mythology (Lawrence: Coronado Press, 1975); Michael Simpson, Gods and Heroes of the Greeks: The Library of Apollodorus (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976); and—containing two of the most important texts—R. Scott Smith and Stephen Trzaskoma, Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007). There is also a good anthology, containing extracts from many literary sources in translation: Stephen Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, and Stephen Brunet (eds.), Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004).
General Reference
Simon Price and Emily Kearns (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). This consists of lightly edited essays extracted from the third edition of The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), which is a treasure trove of information on all aspects of the ancient world.
Greek Religion in General
Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel, Religion in the Ancient Greek City, trans. by Paul Cartledge (2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Jon Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
The World of the Heroes
Moses Finley, The World of Odysseus (London: Chatto & Windus, 1956).
John V. Luce, Homer and the Heroic Age (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975).
Barry Strauss, The Trojan War: A New History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).
Ancient Sources for the Myths
The standard reference work on the iconography of ancient Mediterranean myth is the 16-volume Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, popularly referred to as LIMC (Zurich: Artemis, 1981). Far more accessible are:
Gudrun Ahlberg-Cornell, Myth and Epos in Early Greek Art: Representation and Interpretation (Jonsered: Paul Åströms, 1992).
Thomas Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991).
Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993; 2-vol. paperback edn., 1996).
H. Alan Shapiro, Myth into Art: Poet and Painter in Classical Greece (London: Routledge, 1994).
Later Artistic Reception of the Myths
Apart from what can be found online, the following books are recommended:
Colin Bailey, The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1992).
Jane Davidson Reid, The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300–1990s (2 vols, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Maria Moog-Grünewald (ed.), The Reception of Myth and Mythology: Classical Mythology in Literature, Music and Art (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
Discussion
Jan Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London: Croom Helm, 1987).
Richard Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Ken Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology (London: Routledge, 1992).
Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone (eds.), A Companion to Greek Mythology (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
Lowell Edmunds (ed.), Approaches to Greek Myth (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
Richard Gordon (ed.), Myth, Religion and Society: Structuralist Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Fritz Graf, Greek Mythology: An Introduction (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
Geoffrey Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974).
Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Martin Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (2nd edn., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).