Robert Graves, classicist, poet and unorthodox critic, retells the Greek legends of gods and heroes for a modern audience. He demonstrates with a dazzling display of relevant knowledge that Greek mythology is ‘no more mysterious in content than are modern election cartoons’. All the scattered elements of each myth are assembled into a harmonious narrative, and many variants are recorded which may help to determine its ritual or historical meaning. Full indexes and references to the classical sources make the book as valuable to the scholar as the general reader. And a full commentary on each myth interprets the classical version in the light of contemporary archaeological and anthropological knowledge.