A very good reference book to all those little details that one can love and hate.

Robert Graves writes the myths in a few paragraphs which do more to "telling" then to "showing" the myths. Yet there are things I do not agree with (the mix-and-mash of myths which were once religions unrelated to the Greeks) also I do not quite like his assumptions upon myths and the ancient Greek people themselves.

It isn't so clear to me as it seems cut to him; it makes me wonder where he got a lot of those assumptions from -what facts? He only tells what these are, his theory, he does not show you from what source. (The sources of the myths, yes, not of his "history" behind them).

In that way I feel a lot of unanswered questions. A lot of this is book is putting facts behind the myths, where one might confuse what is real with what wasn't. I think this book was once read a lot by authors (Mary Renault/Marion Zimmer Bradley?) and I would be interested to know if they had read this work and based their own setting to Greek "ancient history" upon it.

If so, it would go a long way to answering some unasked questions I have. There is also that it is claimed Robert Graves was attached to the early forming of "wicca" (his novel "The White Goddess") so may have shaped his "Greek history" and the "facts behind myths" to those budding beliefs.

Yet for a resource book, it's very good, if one ignores what Robert Graves attempts as history to explain myth and ancinet religions.