GODS,
HEROES,
AND
MONSTERS
NEW YORK
OXFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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A SOU RC E BO OK of
GR E E K ,
ROM A N , a nd
NEAR EASTER N
MYTHS
2nd E d ition
d i n Tr a n s l at ion d
Edited by
C A ROL I NA LÓPEZ -RU I Z
T he Oh io St ate Un iver sit y
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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
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University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Names: López-Ruiz, Carolina, editor.
Title: Gods, heroes, and monsters : a sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near
Eastern myths in translation edited by Carolina Lâopez-Ruiz, The Ohio
State University.
Description: Second edition. | New York : Oxford University Press, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016059221 | ISBN 9780190644819 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Mythology, Greek. | Mythology, Roman. | Mythology, Egyptian.
| Mythology, Assyro-Babylonian.
Classification: LCC BL312 .G63 2017 | DDC 201/.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059221
987654321
Printed by LSC Communications in the United States of America.
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ADVANCE PR AISE
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“In this generously filled volume, Carolina López-Ruiz has produced a wonderfully rich and wide-ranging selection of texts for the study and enjoyment
of mythical themes from the ancient world: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hittite
Anatolia, Syria and Palestine, and Greece and Rome. They range from
early hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts to later classical literary treatments
by writers such as Ovid and Apuleius. The collection is arranged in [six]
sections, and each section and each text is preceded by a succinct but informative introduction. The volume incorporates various maps and illustrations and a ‘Timeline’ in five parallel columns that enables readers to place
the material from the different areas in its chronological contexts. Some
of the items are short extracts of a page or so, but others are much longer:
we are given the greater part of Hesiod’s Theogony, the Babylonian Atrahasis
and Enuma Elish, the Hittite Kumarbi Cycle and Song of Release, the Ugaritic
Baal and Aqhat poems, [two] books from the Iliad and Odyssey, three of
the longer Homeric Hymns (to Demeter, Apollo, and Aphrodite), and more
than half of the Epic of Gilgamesh, [including an excerpt from the Sumerian
version]. There are also substantial excerpts from the Hebrew Bible,
Herodotus, Plato, Virgil, Ovid, Apollodorus, and Plutarch, giving readers
a good sense of the variety of the ancient literatures of the classical world
and the Near East.”
M ARTIN L. WEST,
All Souls’ College, University of Oxford.
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CONTENTS
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List of Maps xv
List of Figures xv
Introduction xvii
Acknowledgments xxv
Note on Text Arrangement, Transliterations, and Chronology xxvii
About the Editor xxix
Contributors xxx
Timeline xxxii
Maps xliii
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PART ONE
AND SO IT BEGAN:
COSMOGONIES AND THEOGONIES 1
MESOPOTAMIAN
1.1. Babylonian Epic of Creation: Enuma Elish
1.2. Theogony of Dunnu 22
7
EGYPTIAN
1.3. Egyptian Cosmogonies 23
1.3.a. The Memphite Theology: Ending of the Shabako Stone
1.3.b. “A Hymn to Life”: Coffin Texts Spell 80 26
1.3.c. Excerpt from The Teachings for Merikare 29
24
ISRAELITE
1.4. God’s Creation, from the Book of Genesis 1 29
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GREEK
1.5. Hesiod’s Theogony 32
1.6. The Demiurge, from Plato’s Timaeus 49
1.7. Orphic Cosmogony: The Derveni Papyrus 54
1.8. Short Cosmogony in Apollonios of Rhodes’ Argonautika 56
PHOENICIAN
1.9. Phoenician Cosmogonies 57
1.9.a. Philon of Byblos: Excerpts from the Phoenician History 57
1.9.b. Phoenician Cosmogonies Mentioned by Damaskios 63
ROMAN
1.10. Creation Myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 1 64
1.11. Two Short Cosmogonies, from Virgil’s Aeneid and Eclogues
1.11.a. A “Tyrian” Cosmogony, from Aeneid, Book 1 66
1.11.b. Cosmic Song of Silenus, from Eclogues 6 67
PART TWO
66
MANKIND CREATED, MANKIND ESTROYED 69
MESOPOTAMIAN
2.1. Mesopotamian Flood Stories 74
2.1.a. Atrahasis 75
2.1.b. Flood Story from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI 87
EGYPTIAN
2.2. Egyptian Texts on the Creation and Destruction of Mankind
2.2.a. Excerpts from the Coffin Texts 90
2.2.b. Excerpt from the Book of the Heavenly Cow 92
90
ISRAELITE
2.3. Adam and Eve, from Genesis 2–3 94
2.4. The Story of Noah, from Genesis 6–9 97
GREEK
2.5. Hesiod’s Prometheus, Pandora, and Five Races of Mankind,
from Works and Days 100
2.6. The Creation and Attributes of Mankind, from Plato’s
Protagoras 105
2.7. Deukalion and Pyrrha: The Greek Flood, from Apollodorus’
Library 108
ROMAN–LATE GREEK
2.8. The Ages of Mankind and the Flood, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
Book 1 112
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CON T E N T S
2.9. Virgil’s Golden Age, from Georgics, Book 1
2.10. An Orphic Anthropogony 121
PART THREE
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120
EPIC STRUGGLES: GODS, HEROES,
AND MONSTERS 123
MESOPOTAMIAN
3.1. The Epic of Gilgamesh (selections) 128
EGYPTIAN
3.2. The Disputes between Horus and Seth 143
3.3. Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor 145
ANATOLIAN
3.4. Hittite Myths 149
3.4.a. Anatolian Myth of Illuyanka 150
3.4.b. The Hurro-Hittite Kumarbi Cycle 154
CANAANITE
3.5. Ugaritic Epic Poems 176
3.5.a. The Baal Cycle 177
3.5.b. The Aqhat Epic 191
ISRAELITE
3.6. Yahweh as a Storm God: Psalm 29 199
3.7. David and Goliath: 1 Samuel 17 201
GREEK
3.8. Homer’s Gods and Heroes in Battle: Iliad, Book 5 204
3.9. Apollo’s Journey: The Homeric Hymn to Apollo 234
3.10. Dionysos’ Many Faces 247
3.10.a. The Homeric Hymn to Dionysos 248
3.10.b. The Opening of Euripides’ Bacchae 250
3.10.c. Dionysos’ Birth and Wanderings, from Apollodorus’
Library 252
3.11. Jason and the Argonauts, from Apollodorus’ Library 254
3.12. Argive Heroes: Bellerophon, Perseus, and Herakles, from
Apollodorus’ Library 262
3.12.a. Bellerophon and the Chimaera 264
3.12.b. Perseus’ Adventures 265
3.12.c. Herakles’ Life and Labors 268
3.13. The Theban Saga: Oedipus and the Seven against Thebes, from
Apollodorus’ Library 286
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CON T E N T S
PART FOUR
OF CITIES AND PEOPLES 293
EGYPTIAN
4.1. The Foundation of a Heliopolis Temple by Senusert I 299
ANATOLIAN
4.2. The Hurro-Hittite Song of Release (Destruction of the City
of Ebla) 301
ISRAELITE
4.3. Cain and Abel: Genesis 4 310
4.4. The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11 311
4.5. Abraham’s Test, from Genesis 22 312
4.6. Moses and the Israelites’ Exodus, from the Book of Exodus
MESOPOTAMIAN
4.7. The Sargon Legend 319
4.7.a. The Sumerian Sargon Legend 320
4.7.b. The Neo-Assyrian Sargon Birth Legend
313
322
GREEK–PERSIAN
4.8. Birth of Cyrus the Great, from Herodotos’ Histories
322
GREEK
4.9. The Foundation of Cyrene 326
4.9.a. Herodotos on the Foundation of Cyrene 326
4.9.b. Cyrene in Pindar, Pythian Ode 5 329
4.10. Athens and Atlantis, from Plato’s Timaeus and Kritias 333
4.11. Theseus, an Athenian Civic Hero 346
4.11.a. Theseus’ Exploits, from Apollodorus’ Library 346
4.11.b. The Unification of Attica, from Plutarch’s Life of Theseus 353
4.12. Kadmos, Europa, and the Foundation of Thebes 355
4.12.a. The Foundation of Thebes, from Apollodorus’ Library 355
4.12.b. The “Rape of Europa” and the Foundation of Thebes, from
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books 2–3 357
PHOENICIAN–WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
4.13. Tyre’s Foundation Story, from Nonnos’ Dionysiaka 361
4.14. The Foundation of Carthage 364
4.14.a. Carthage’s Foundation Legend, from Justin, Epitome of
Trogus 364
4.14.b. The Dawn of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 1 367
4.15. Gargoris and Habis: Culture Heroes in Iberia, from Justin, Epitome of
Trogus 372
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CON T E N T S
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ROMAN
4.16. The Foundation of Rome 375
4.16.a. Beginnings of Rome, from Livy’s History of Rome, Book 1 375
4.16.b. Romulus and Remus, from Plutarch’s Life of Romulus 381
PART FIVE
EROS AND THE LABORS OF LOVE
MESOPOTAMIAN
5.1. Ishtar and Gilgamesh: Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI
383
387
EGYPTIAN
5.2. Story of the Two Brothers 390
ISRAELITE
5.3. Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife: Genesis 39 392
GREEK–ROMAN
5.4. Aphrodite and Anchises: The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 394
5.5. Medea and Jason, from Euripides’ Medea 401
5.6. The Origins of Love According to Aristophanes, from Plato’s
Symposium 406
5.7. Teiresias: A Transgendered Seer, from Apollodorus’ Library 409
5.8. “Hymn to Venus,” from Lucretius’ De rerum natura 411
5.9. Aeneas and Dido, from Virgil’s Aeneid, Books 1 and 4 412
5.10. Pasiphae and the Cretan Bull 420
5.10.a. Minos, Pasiphae, and the Bull, from Apollodorus’ Library 420
5.10.b. Pasiphae’s Passion, from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Book 1 421
5.10.c. Minos and the Bull, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 8 422
5.11. Theseus and Ariadne 423
5.11.a. Ariadne’s Fate, from Plutarch, Life of Theseus 423
5.11.b. Ariadne to Theseus: Ovid, Heroides 10 424
5.12. Phaedra to Hippolytus: Ovid, Heroides 4 428
5.13. Penelope to Ulysses: Ovid, Heroides 1 432
5.14. Hermaphroditus, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 4 434
5.15. Cephalus and Procris, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 7 437
5.16. Hyacinth and Apollo, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 10 441
5.17. Pygmalion’s Statue, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 10 443
5.18. Myrrha and Cinyras, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 10 444
5.19. Caenis–Caeneus, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 12 448
5.20. Achilles at Skyros, from Statius’ Achilleid 449
5.21. Cupid and Psyche, from Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Books 4–6 457
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CON T E N T S
PART SIX
DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE JOURNEY 469
MESOPOTAMIAN
6.1. Sumerian Poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld (Excerpt) 475
6.2. Gilgamesh and the Underworld: Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablets X–XI 481
6.3. Ishtar’s Descent to the Underworld 488
EGYPTIAN
6.4. Great Hymn to Osiris 492
6.5. The Fight between Re and Apep, from the Book of the Dead 495
GREEK–EGYPTIAN
6.6. Isis and Osiris, from Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride 497
GREEK
6.7. Odysseus’ Nekyia in Homer, Odyssey, Book 11 503
6.8. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter 523
6.9. Instructions for the Hereafter: An Orphic Gold Tablet
6.10. The Story of Er, from Plato’s Republic 536
534
ROMAN
6.11. Adonis, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 10 541
6.12. Orpheus and Eurydice, from Virgil’s Georgics, Book 4 544
6.13. Aeneas’ Katabasis, from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 6 546
6.14. The Dream of Scipio, from Cicero’s De re publica 573
6.15. Psyche’s Descent to the Underworld, from Apuleius, The Golden Ass,
Book 6 580
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Glossary of Technical Terms 583
Bibliography 587
References 599
Index of Places and Characters 611
Color plates follow page XXX
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LIST OF MAPS
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Inside Front Cover: The Near East and the Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age
Inside Back Cover: The Mediterranean in the Archaic Period, eighth–sixth centuries BCE
Map 1: The Near East and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age
Map 2: The Near East during the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires, eighth–sixth centuries
BCE
Map 3: Greeks and Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, eighth–sixth centuries BCE
Map 4: Greece and the Aegean in Archaic-Classical Times
Map 5: The Roman Empire at the Death of Augustus (14 CE)
Map 6: Babylonian World Map
Map 7: World Map According to Hecataeus of Miletos
LIST OF FIGUR ES
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Figure 1: Osiris as king of the dead and first mummy, painted in Egyptian tomb.
Figure 2: A hare-looking cat or “solar cat,” painted in Egyptian tomb.
Figure 3: Mesopotamian cylinder seal with bull-man fighting a lion and hero fighting a bull.
Figure 4: Mesopotamian clay mask of Humbaba.
Figure 5: North-West Semitic storm god Baal in a stele from Ugarit.
Figure 6: Neo-Hittite storm god in a stele from Babylon.
Figure 7: Assyrian statue of a hero taming a lion, probably Gilgamesh.
Figure 8: Perseus slaying the Gorgon Medusa with the aid of Athena, from Selinous, Sicily.
Figure 9: Yahweh and Asherah (?) in an ostracon from Kuntillet Ajrud (Sinai).
Figure 10: “Rape of Europa” on a coin from the Phoenician city of Sidon.
Figure 11: Dionysos, Hades, and Persephone on a volute crater from Apulia.
Figure 12: Orphic Gold Tablet from Petelia (Italy).
Figure 13: Alexander the Great as Amon on a tetradrachm.
Figure 14: Herakles Melqart on a Carthaginian silver double shekel.
Figure 15: Aeneas on a denarius of Julius Caesar.
Figure 16: Interior of the temple of Venus and Roma in Rome.
Figure 17: “Prometheus mosaic” from Edessa, Syria.
Figure 18: Aphrodite and Cupid in a Byzantine mosaic from Madaba, Jordan.
Figure 19: Achilles revealing himself as a man on a Late Roman silver plate.
Figure 20: Adam and Eve banned from Eden in the Sistine Chapel, Rome.
Figure 21: Theseus slaying the Minotaur in a Neoclassical sculpture, Paris.
Figure 22: Contest between Athena and Poseidon in the Parthenon replica in Nashville,
Tennessee.
Figure 23: Statue of Prometheus by Paul Manship (1934), New York.
Figure 24: Detail of The Lightning’s Bride, by Elliot Hundley (2011).
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INTRODUCTION
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UNLIKE other introductions to classical mythology, this volume sets itself
apart by systematically including, alongside more familiar Greek and Roman texts,
comparable narratives from the ancient Near East, specifically from Mesopotamia,
Egypt, Anatolia, Ugarit, Phoenicia, and Israel. These sources amount to about one
third of the volume you are holding. This more comprehensive approach requires
some explanation, especially for readers who might intuitively associate the term
“classical” with the literatures of Greece and Rome.
This anthology reflects our increasing knowledge of the interconnected cultures
of the ancient world and the growing realization that important mythological
narratives of Greece and Rome evolved from and were in dialogue with their
counterparts in the ancient Near East. Moreover, in the critical and most creative
period, reaching from the mid-second to the late first millennium BCE, Greece
and Rome participated in a world whose center of gravity lay to their east, in the arc
from the Nile to Mesopotamia. This volume, therefore, proposes a reconsideration
of the “classical.” The Epic of Gilgamesh, from Mesopotamia, was, after all, a true
“classic” in its time, required reading for all who claimed to be educated. It was
translated into a host of languages and used in schools throughout the Near East
and beyond, and it is now becoming clear that it also directly influenced Greek
heroic motifs. Many mythological stories were shaped in response to each other, not
only within the region where they originated but across languages and peoples and
down through the centuries. Even with the dramatic changes that Christianity and
Islam brought, so-called pagan myths and even religious practices adapted to the
new religions and survived.
Why have the Near Eastern masterpieces, then, not been considered “classical”?
The fates of these literatures were shaped by historical developments. First, the
more ancient languages of the Near East had more time in which to change, to be
overridden, and even to be lost, as happened to Sumerian and Akkadian, whereas
more recent ones, such as Greek and Latin, were encoded as the official languages
of the two halves of the Roman Empire, so their literatures survived. The Hebrew
Bible obviously has its own remarkable history of transmission and preservation, but
that also required a continuous investment of effort by later generations. Greek and
Latin texts were copied and used for educational purposes in the Greek-speaking
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eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) and in the medieval Latin West. It was this part
of the world in which the modern nations of Europe developed, and it is from them
that our traditions of scholarship derive, including our notion of the “classical.”
By contrast, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and other non-Greco–Roman texts
were excluded from this canon, at least in their original languages. By the time
of Thucydides and Herodotos, composers of the first histories, some early
civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as those of Ugarit and the Hittites,
had long since disappeared, both destroyed in wars and unknown to Greeks of
the “classical” period, though the legacies of these lost cultures partly survived in
Anatolia and Syro-Palestine. Later Near Eastern cultures, such as Neo-Assyrian,
Neo-Babylonian, Phoenician, and Egyptian, were eventually subsumed into the
Hellenistic and Roman Empires. Their texts, at least those that survived inscribed
on papyri, stone monuments, or clay tablets, were buried and had to wait for
millennia before they could be uncovered and deciphered. (Paradoxically, tablets
from these lost cultures were often preserved by the very same fires that destroyed
them since the fires “cooked” the sun-dried clay.) Thus, as the great literary
traditions of the Near East fell into oblivion, the Greek and Latin “classics” were
codified and partially preserved for posterity. Their uninterrupted transmission in
manuscript form, thanks in large part to the efforts of Arab scholars during the
ninth and tenth centuries CE, ensured that they would be studied and commented
upon. In the process, they exerted powerful influences on philosophy, literature,
and the arts, inspiring such movements as the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and
Romanticism.
During this long period of time, stretching over a thousand years, little was
known about ancient Near Eastern cultures. In the Western view of history, ideas
about the ancient Near East were principally represented by whatever classical
historians (mostly Herodotos) and the Hebrew Bible had to say about them. This
changed dramatically with the beginning of archaeological exploration in the
nineteenth century, enabled first by Napoleon’s campaign in Ottoman Egypt
(1798–1801) and the excavation of Mesopotamian sites in the nineteenth century by
European diplomats and explorers, who thus became the first archaeologists. The
decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion in 1822 and
of cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia in the 1850s opened up a whole new phase
in our knowledge of these languages and cultures. Additional sites, cultures, and
languages, including Hittite and Ugaritic, were discovered in the twentieth century.
Tablets and even archives continue to appear today, enriching our corpus of Near
Eastern literatures and filling in the blanks of the mosaic of ancient cultures, forcing
us to reconsider their legacy and mutual interrelations.
But by the time this amazing process of discovery began to peak in the nineteenth
century, the concept of Greco–Roman literature as “classical” was too entrenched
to readily make room for the “oriental” newcomers. Ancient literature was perceived
as a fundamentally “Western” inheritance. Preconceived dichotomies between East
and West, rooted entirely in the political and religious developments of the Middle
Ages (especially the conflict with Islam) and the advent of “modernity” (especially
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the “Eastern question” regarding the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire), greatly
impacted the classification of cultures and literatures. In recent decades, however,
increasing collaboration and dialogue between the fields of classics and Near
Eastern studies are bringing us closer to a more accurate and comprehensive view
of the ancient world and the different ways in which its inhabitants, their literatures,
and intellectual traditions interacted.
Independent developments within the field of classical studies have encouraged
such collaboration, though more always remains to be done. Specifically, for the
past half-century classical Greece has gradually ceased to be regarded as a singular
exemplar of virtuous qualities such as freedom, democracy, purity, and reason.
Historical scholarship has broken down this notion, and at the same time it has
removed some of the barriers that had been erected around classical culture to keep
it free of “contamination” by the “other,” such as the Semitic cultures of the Near
East. One of these barriers was the theory that Greece should be classified among
the Indo-European cultures, together with Celtic, Nordic, and Aryan–Indian.
While it is true that the Greek language is part of the Indo-European language
family, a genetic model cannot be so easily transferred to its culture as a whole. The
selection of texts in this volume is premised on scholarship that finds that Greek
mythology developed within its contemporary Near Eastern context and borrowed
extensively from it.
This immediately raises the problematic concept of “influence.” There are, of
course, cases of direct influence or simple diffusion, but we are mostly dealing with
texts that are far apart in time and space: narrative themes and elements would
normally have passed through many stages of adaptation and creative reelaboration,
usually oral, before they acquired their final form (i.e., the written version that we
have). And adaptation means that they would have been thoroughly formatted
to fit their new host culture and the narrative goals of each poet, bard, or writer.
Sometimes the direction of transmission can be ascertained: for example, the
Mesopotamian flood story was adopted in ancient Israel and Greece and the Greek
myths were taken up and reworked by the Romans. Still, it is in the variations
and adaptations themselves that we can appreciate the uniqueness of each act of
reception. Every instance, every text, is a unique literary artifact, and many of them
have generated whole disciplines of study. With their fascinating similarities and
sharp contrasts, the texts gathered here represent some of the most famous stories
that have fueled the imaginations of generations across the Mediterranean and the
lands of the Fertile Crescent for millennia.
The stories we call “myths” were much more than entertaining tales. The Greek
word mythos, which was eventually attached to fictional or legendary stories, was in
earlier times used for any speech, utterance, or narrative. For the ancients, what we
call “myths” were stories about gods and heroes, stories valued and preserved as part of
the tradition of particular communities, for whom these stories were inseparable
from all central aspects of culture. Gods were real. They were worshipped, prayed
to, and feared, in a world organized to a great degree around religious festivals and
daily rituals. Heroes, on the other hand, were central in ancient people’s perception
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of their remote past and their recent history. They were often part of stories
about city founders, lawgivers, beginnings of institutions, etc. Indeed, in Near
Eastern cultures (for instance in Mesopotamia) king lists, rituals, law codes,
and historical events were written down at the same time as epic stories and
cosmogonies. But in Greece before the eighth century BCE no written records
preserved information (except for Linear B texts, which apparently were for
purely administrative purposes). Hence, “myths” carried the torch of community
memory for centuries, preserving and reshaping genealogies and ideas of origins
of whole cities and peoples (whether true or invented) and explaining the current
religious order. Myths did more than reinforce abstract theological beliefs; they
explained the role of festivals and ritual practices and provided narratives to
which people pinned their beliefs in the afterlife. However, while myths were the
prime carrier for narratives and beliefs about the gods, we should be cautious
about reading them as ancient “doctrine”: these narratives were malleable, and
there was no scripture or official church. Not everyone even believed that Homer
and Hesiod had accurately represented the gods; playwrights and philosophers,
such as Aristophanes, Xenophanes and Plato, to mention some, were especially
skeptical of the traditional gods.
Even as mythical narrative gradually became distinct from other historical,
scientific, philosophical discourse, myths still had a place in the new literary and
intellectual modes, as shown by the self-conscious use of myths in Herodotos,
Livy’s histories, and Plato’s philosophical dialogues. Far from being discarded in
the light of “reason,” narratives called myths could be used to express higher truths,
and in turn myths have continued to be studied as containing “hidden” and deeper
messages for centuries, whether through allegorical interpretations in antiquity and
the Middle Ages or through psychoanalytical, anthropological, and structuralist
approaches (among others) today. These multifaceted and porous narratives were
in continuous dialogue with the realities of people’s lives and beliefs: myths helped
to create the mindscapes of ancient peoples, offered some stability to the universe’s
ungraspable nature, while, in turn, the changing world continuously reshaped
the myths as needed. Only think of the complex function of literary, visual, and
performative fiction works today (e.g., our relationship to motion pictures) and
how they can be both fictional and still poignantly and deeply real and meaningful.
Hesiod’s Muses captured it in a sentence: “We know how to tell many fantasies that
seem real, and we know, if we want, how to sing of real things” (Th. 27–28). The
subject of the use and meaning of myths is vast, and the reader will find suggested
readings in the Bibliography at the back of this volume.
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How This Book Is Organized and How to Use It
SELECTIONS are always difficult to make, and choice requires exclusion.
My guiding principle was to represent major themes and myths around which
Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman texts coalesce. Another goal was to include
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at least some entire books or self-contained sections in them, tablets, or poems
when possible, while avoiding the complete texts of accessible classical works
that can easily be assigned separately to complement the present selection, such
as the poems of Homer, the Greek tragedies, and Hellenistic and Roman epics.
Hence, the Trojan War is represented here by one token book of the Iliad, and
some large mythical themes, such as the Theban saga and the story of Jason and
the Argonauts, are represented here by the summarized (but very informative)
versions in Apollodorus’ Library, besides two brief excerpts from Euripides’ Medea
and from Apollonios Rhodios’ Argonautika. The readers will find masterful poetic
elaborations of these stories in the corpus of Greek tragedies (Aeschylus’ Seven
against Thebes, Sophocles’ Oedipus King, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus) and in the long
epic the Argonautika. Perhaps the most important omission is the story of the house
of Atreus. Its truculent past of family murders and revenges made the stuff of some
of the most intense Greek and Roman tragedies, which can be read outside this
volume: Tiestes and Atreus’ feud, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s return
from Troy and his own murder at the hands of his wife Cleitemnestra, followed by
the revenge of their children Orestes and Electra.
Within each thematic section or part, the texts are arranged by cultures
(Mesopotamian, Egyptian, other Near Eastern texts, then Greek, then Roman)
and in a roughly chronological order (archaic Greek before classical, and so on).
In this second edition, I have signaled within each part the texts from the different
ancient Mediterranean realms, such as “Mesopotamian,” Egyptian,” “Greek,”
and “Roman.” The reader must see these labels as a broad orientation, not a rigid
territorial, ethnic, or cultural division. The categories are not always mutually
exclusive. For instance, texts written by Roman or Roman-period authors (whether
in Latin or Greek) often deal with Greek myths and Latin and Greek texts transmit
Persian and Phoenician traditions (for which there are no original Phoenician texts
left). Sometimes the traditions and are so difficult to disentangle that I had to resort
to more inclusive, double categories such as “Greek–Roman,” “Greek-Persian,”
and “Greek-Egyptian.”
A selection of the stories inserted by Plato in his philosophical dialogues is
also integrated within this scheme in their chronological place within the Greek
sources, one chosen for each chapter. The one exception is the epic chapter, for
which there is not really a match in Plato’s repertoire. Plato’s “myths” present
their own set of fascinating interpretive problems and could form a separate
section of their own (as they did in our first edition). Their integration within the
chapters, however, allows for a more direct comparison with other myths within
broad themes.
The introductions to each of the six thematic sections and the headnotes that
accompany each document are addressed to nonspecialists, especially undergraduate
students and the general public. I avoid entering into detailed discussions and theoretical
interpretations. The goal is to offer guidance for the major motifs and facilitate
comprehension, contextualization, and cross-textual comparison. Rather more detail
has been allowed for texts that are less well known outside specialized circles, such as
the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Hittite sources. Footnotes are also minimal
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and intended to clarify obscure references and occasionally provide background as
well as cross-references to other sections in the book. Beyond that, each instructor
can decide how much general historical, archaeological, and theoretical background
to include in lectures. Both teachers and independent readers will find suggestions for
further readings for each author and theme in the Bibliography, which can serve as
a point of departure for a more profound exploration. I have privileged monographs
over articles or collections of essays when possible and English and recent books
where available. Other aids, such as maps (including two historical maps) and a
timeline, will help the reader situate the texts in their historical context. Because
the book covers a wide range of cultures, genealogical charts of the Greek gods are
not included. Greek myths represent just one genealogical tradition (with frequent
variants), so to represent all of the divine family trees from different cultures included
in this volume would have been extremely complicated and not especially helpful.
Instead, I hope the reader will benefit from the glossary at the back of the volume.
The glossary explains technical terms used in scholarship, which are highlighted in
bold the first time they appear in the text. The Index of Place Names and Characters
will help the reader search and navigate the volume as needed.
The six parts in the book are not mutually exclusive as stories touch on many
themes that resist strict classification. The intention was to group together those stories
that have a core theme in common so as to facilitate and stimulate comparison across
traditions and cultures, even if that meant delivering sections of some works piecemeal
through the thematic chapters (e.g., The Epic of Gilgamesh, Virgil’s Aeneid). In any event,
the thematic organization of Gods, Heroes, and Monsters does not preclude reading those
stories uninterruptedly or using the texts in a different order or in combination with
other texts (e.g., broader selections of the Iliad and Odyssey, entire Greek tragedies).
These and other works are easily available in multiple translations and are only
minimally represented here.
In principle, I have chosen texts that are literary elaborations of a myth. For
instance, I have, where possible, privileged Ovid’s poetic retelling of a Greek myth
over Apollodorus’ summaries, and for the story of young Achilles, I have chosen
Statius’ Achilleid epic over the summaries of the lost Epic Cycle poems. In other
words, this anthology is also conceived as a reader of ancient mythological literature
and not simply a myth sourcebook. It is for this reason that nonliterary inscriptions
and other sources such as the bureaucratic Linear B tablets have been avoided. Egypt
presents a special case in that, despite its vast corpus of texts written in a variety
of media (on papyri, on walls of pyramids and other buildings, inside the panels
of coffins, etc.), mythical narratives are usually not directly represented, especially
in the earlier periods. To quote Ian Shaw (2004, p. 116), “Egyptian texts have a
tendency to allude to various divine myths through references to rituals and the
use of various epithets, but their literature is notoriously lacking in straightforward
narrative-style myths. Reconstructing Egyptian mythology from ancient texts can
be rather like piecing together the biblical account of the birth of Jesus from a series
of Christmas cards and carols.”
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About the Translations
THIS volume offers new translations of important Near Eastern mythological texts
that are generally not accessible to the public. Offering their expertise, Christopher
Woods (Sumerian), Sam Meier (North-West Semitic), and Andrés de Diego (Egypt),
have contributed new translations that reflect the latest advances in their fields. In
the case of the Hittite texts, Mary Bachvarova has produced a critical edition with
new readings and reconstructions of the fragments. For the translation of another
fragmentary text, the Derveni Papyrus, two leading experts in that field, Alberto
Bernabé and Miguel Herrero, have also contributed the latest readings of the
damaged text. The translations of Pindar and Lucretius are also fresh contributions
by Hanne Eissenfeld, who specializes in Pindar and the intersection of ancient
Greek religion and literature. Mark Anderson, a specialist in Greek philosophy,
has translated a selection of Plato’s myths. Other Greek texts have been translated
afresh by me (Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns being my area of expertise in archaic
literature), while new rhythmic translations of one book of Homer’s Iliad and one
of the Odyssey have been generously provided by Barry B. Powell, whose complete
translations of the two works have appeared with this press (Powell 2014 and
2015). I have composed the general introductions to the six thematic sections. The
contributing translators listed above have provided shorter (section) introductions to
their texts (with some editorial input), while I have written the headnotes to all other
texts and to the Homeric passages.
Some translations for other texts have been taken from the Oxford World
Classics series, for instance, the Mesopotamian texts by Stephanie Dalley, Virgil’s
Aeneid (set in rhythmic verse by Frederick Ahl), and Apuleius’ Golden Ass (by
P. G. Walsh). I am also indebted to their notes, which I condensed and adapted.
Minor editorial changes to these translations include regularization of the spelling
and punctuation to conform to standard American practice. (See also the Note on
Text Arrangement, Transliterations, and Chronology.)
Finally, translations have been reused and adapted from the older volumes of the
Loeb series and other out-of-copyright editions, usually for Latin texts, for instance,
Ovid’s Metamorphoses by F. J. Miller and Apollodoros’ Library by J. Frazer, which are,
in my view, not inferior to more recent versions. In any event, the language has been
updated to remove archaisms. I also have annotated all of these texts, generally by
using select notes from the existing edition, sometimes shortening them or adding
my own clarifications.
About the Second Edition
The first several years of life of this book in classrooms and in general readers’
hands have provided good ideas for improvements in this second edition. Besides
taking the opportunity to correct a few inevitable typos and implementing some
formatting improvements, this volume includes an important body of additional
texts. The majority come from Apollodorus’ Library and cover mythological sagas
not represented in the first volume, such as the Argonauts and the Theban saga
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of Oedipus and his children. Other excerpts from Apollodorus’ work provide
additional Greek versions of themes already represented by other texts in the first
volume, such as the stories of Deukalion, Dionyosos, Bellerophon, Kadmos, and
Teiresias. These expand on the themes of the Flood, the Greek gods and heroic
patterns, the foundation of Thebes, and transsexual transformations. An excerpt
from Virgil’s Georgics also supplements the texts that deal with a legendary golden
age of humankind. I have also included two texts that relate to myths from the
Phoenician realm and the western Mediterranean, respectively: the foundation
of Tyre (from Nonnus’ Dionysiaka) and the story of the kings of the Tartessians
(in Iberia) Gargoris and Habis (from Justin’s Epitome). A particularly valuable
addition to this volume is an excerpt of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, with a
unique description of the underworld, for which Christopher Woods has provided
a new translation in English. Mary Bachvarova, in turn, has significantly updated
her translations of the Hittite myths. Additionally, in this edition Plato’s myths are
not set aside in a separate section but integrated in each of the six parts of the book.
This will facilitate their discussion within those thematic units. Finally, I have
augmented the annotation in some texts, updated the bibliography where needed,
and (with pain in my heart) eliminated some texts, choosing those that seemed less
accessible or less essential for the themes of this collection. Besides a few short texts,
these include the Anatolian story of Telipinu, the story of the Cyclops from Odyssey,
Book 9, and the story of Attis and Cybele from Arnobius’ Adversus Nationes. All are
accessible either in the first edition, in other translations, or in online resources.
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ABOUT THE EDITOR
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CAROLINA LÓPEZ-RUIZ is associate professor of classics at The Ohio
State University in Columbus, Ohio. She studied at the Universidad Autónoma of
Madrid, Spain (Classics), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of
Chicago (Ph.D. 2005, Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World). LópezRuiz has published articles on Greek and Near Eastern literatures and mythology
and the Phoenician presence in the Iberian Peninsula. She is the co-editor of Colonial
Encounters in Ancient Iberia: Phoenician, Greek, and Indigenous Relations (University of
Chicago Press, 2009, with M. Dietler), author of When the Gods Were Born: Greek
Cosmogonies and the Near East (Harvard University Press, 2010), and co-author of
Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia (Oxford University Press, 2016, with S. Celestino).
She is co-editing the Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean (Oxford
University Press, forthcoming) and is working on a book on cultural contact across
the “orientalizing” Mediterranean during the eighth–seventh centuries BCE.
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CONTRIBUTOR S
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MARK ANDERSON is associate professor of philosophy and director of classics
at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of Pure: Modernity,
Philosophy, and the One (Sophia Perennis, 2009), Plato and Nietzsche: Their Philosophical
Art (Bloomsbury, 2014), and Moby-Dick as Philosophy: Plato–Melville–Nietzsche (S. Ph.
Press, 2015).
MARY R. BACHVAROVA is associate professor in the Department of Classical
Studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She has published articles
on Hittite and Greek literature (especially poetry) and linguistics, co-edited the
volume Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and Their Neighbors (with B. J. Collins and
M.Woodbridge, Oxbow Press, 2008), and is the author of From Hittite to Homer: The
Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
ALBERTO BERNABÉ is professor in the Department of Greek Philology and IndoEuropean Linguistics at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain. He is
an expert in Greek religion and mythology as well as Indo-European and Hittite
linguistics, on all of which he has published extensively. Among his works are Hieros
logos: poesía órfica sobre los dioses, el alma y el más allá (Akal, 2003) and the latest edition
of the Orphic fragments, Poetae Epici Graeci Testimonia et Fragmenta Pars II: Fasc. 1.
Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia (Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 2004–2007).
ANDRÉS DIEGO ESPINEL is a tenured researcher at the Spanish National
Research Council in Madrid, Spain. His work focuses on Egyptian activities outside
the Nile Valley during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, on which he has published
articles and the books Etnicidad y territorio en el Egipto del Reino Antiguo (Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, 2006) and Abriendo los caminos de Punt: Contactos entre Egipto
y el ámbito afroárabe durante la Edad del Bronce (ca. 3000 a.C.–1065 a.C.) (Editorial
Bellaterra, 2011). He works as epigraphist for the Spanish–Egyptian mission at Dra
Abu el-Naga, Luxor.
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CON T R I BU TOR S
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HANNE EISENFELD is assistant professor in the Department of Classical Studies
at Boston College. She has published several articles on the intersections between
religion and poetry, such as “Ishtar Rejected: Reading a Mesopotamian Goddess
in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite” (Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 2015). In her
monograph, Only Mostly Dead: Immortality and Related States in Pindar’s Victory Odes (in
preparation), she contextualizes Pindar’s mythological narratives within the Greek
religious landscape.
MIGUEL HERRERO DE JÁUREGUI is assistant professor in the Department of
Greek Philology and Indo-European Linguistics at the Universidad Complutense
in Madrid, Spain. He has written articles on Greek epic and religion and is the
author of Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity (De Gruyter, 2010) as well as a
co-editor of Tracing Orpheus: Studies of Orphic Fragments (De Gruyter, 2011) and of
Redefining Dionysos (De Gruyer, 2013).
SAM MEIER is professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at The Ohio
State University in Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of articles on Ugaritic and
Hebrew languages and literatures and broader Near Eastern topics as well as the
monographs The Messenger in the Ancient Semitic World (Society of Biblical Literature,
1988), Speaking of Speaking: Marking Direct Discourse in Biblical Hebrew (Brill, 1992), and
Themes and Transformations in Old Testament Prophecy (InterVarsity, 2009).
BARRY B. POWELL is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a specialist in Homer and in the history
of writing, as well as Greek mythology and Egyptian language and culture. He has
published a number of widely used textbooks and handbooks on Classical myth
and Greek civilization and is the author of Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet
(Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Writing: Theory and History of the Technolog y
of Civilization (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). His annotated translations of Homer’s Iliad
(2014) and Odyssey (2015) are available from Oxford University Press.
CHRISTOPHER WOODS is associate professor of Sumerology at the Oriental
Institute, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and
the Program in the Ancient Mediterranean World at the University of Chicago.
His research interests include Sumerian writing and language as well as early
Mesopotamian religion, literature, and administration. He is currently completing
two monographs, including Gilgamesh in Sumerian Literary Tradition for the SBL series
Writing of the Ancient World, which will provide new translations and commentary
for the six Gilgamesh tales preserved in Sumerian.
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