I'm genuinely surprised by all the positive ratings and reviews of this book. My guess would be that most people are reading the abridged version, which keeps only Robert Graves's retellings of the myths themselves, and excises his commentary.

And to be honest I wouldn't blame anyone for excising the commentary, because once you step outside the mythological encyclopaedia, the majority of this book is a never-ending stream of either tenuously supported or entirely baseless conspiracy theories. Removing Graves's nonsense, under half of the book remains. Everything I've read by Robert Graves has been either homophobic or misogynistic (despite his own dubious sexuality), so understandably that makes me a bit leery about him. The first thing I read of his was an essay on Vergil called "The Anti-Poet," in which he claims that, because there's evidence that Vergil had sexual or romantic relationships with men, that meant Vergil feared women who weren't asexual or motherly. Another oft-touted example of his conspiracy theory-level "scholarship" is his book/essay "The White Goddess," which even Wikipedia says "represents an approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly creative and idiosyncratic perspective," which is probably the closest Wikipedia will get to saying "it's bullshit." Graves proposes the existence of a European deity, a certain "White Goddess of Birth, Love, and Death" (similar to the Mother Goddess archetype and inspired and represented by the phases of the moon), who is really behind all the various goddesses of assorted European and/or pagan mythologies; Graves then argues that "true" or "pure" poetry is inextricably linked with the allegedly ancient cult-ritual of his proposed White Goddess (and her son). This is, of course, absolutely fabricated by Graves himself, with little to no philology to back it up. Thankfully, Graves is a pretty universally ridiculed figure in modern classical scholarship, which is fair because he was a pretty bad classicist. All jokes aside: the fact that Graves is nigh-ubiquitously dismissed in modern-day classics as a pseudoscientific conspiracy theorist with some incredibly weird ideas about women and about the formation of mythology in general (as well as someone who appeared to genuinely believe he had communicated with the Roman emperor Claudius) is a goddamn relief, given the unfortunate prevalence of conspiracy theory-esque nonsense masquerading as genuine scholarship. For example: Marija Gimbutas and Jack Weatherford are both widely read. For example: Joseph Campbell's shit still exists.

The conspiracies in this book range from the weird but interesting (the idea that pre-Hellenic Greece was a matriarchal society centred around a trinity-like Mother Goddess archetype common to all Mediterranean and/or European religion, see above) to the creepy (the idea that rape in early Greek mythology was analogous to to invading armies conquering, and sometimes destroying, shrines to this goddess) to the flat-out bizarre (the idea that pre-Hellenic rulership was divided between a sacred king an earthy "tanist" king, often in competition with each other; the sacred king would be ritually sacrificed at the end of his reign; this alleged duality is apparently the reason why there are so many stories of women bearing twins after being impregnated by gods) to the overly simplistic (the idea that the reason so many sons kill their fathers in Greek mythology is because of the theory that these pre-Hellenic kings were ritually sacrificed, unless they used stand-ins such as their own children, which explains stories such as Iphigenia). Graves argues that the reason the number three appears so frequently in Greek mythology can be traced back to his idea of a proto-goddess present in all mythology, the "White Goddess" who has three forms: the virgin, nymph, and crone. The reason there were various sets of fifty siblings is, according to Graves, because they were based on groups of fifty priestesses of this archetypal goddess, themselves representative of the fifty months of a "great year" (a king's reign, which lasted one year). The reason the discus was involved in the deaths of various mythological figures (such as Hyacinth, Crocus, Phocus, Acrisius, etc.) is, according to Graves, because the discus represents the solar disc, itself representing the length of a single year, which was the extent of a king's reign. The "big three" of Greek gods—Zeus, Poseidon, Hades—represent what Graves calls the "three successive Hellenic invasions, commonly known as Ionian, Aeolian, and Achaean." Graves decides that Hera's marriage to Zeus represents (and commemorates) conquests of Crete and Mycenae, because Zeus "probably came to [Hera] disguised as a bedraggled cuckoo, in the sense that certain Hellenes who came to Crete as fugitives accepted employment in the royal guard, made a palace conspiracy, and seized the kingdoms."

All of this is absolute bullshit. It's fake. It's made up. None of Graves's theories hold water. There are many far, far better introductory compilations of Greek myths that don't tout about nonsense conspiracy theories. The D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths is a classic, beautifully illustrated, appropriate for children and well-written enough to be interesting even for adults. Stephen Fry recently retold an immense collection of the Greek myths in his book Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold, which would be excellent as a non-academic source with some more contemporary humour and delightful storytelling. There's even Edith Hamilton's timeless book, Mythology, not limited to Greek myths but also including some Roman and Norse as well, which remains a superb introduction into the field. None of those books are themselves without flaw, but at least they try to be accurate, which is more than can be said for Robert Graves. Seriously, don't read this book. It's bad.