Hey guys! Adventure Van here with a blog on the collection of translations in The Myths of Greece and Rome, by H.A. Guerber. I've always been interested in ancient Greek and Roman mythology and religion, and it is one of the more famous ancient religions (there are still some who practice it, but it has certainly died down from previously being the ruling mythology over multiple countries.) Greek and Roman mythology are remarkably similar, in so much it's fairly easy to see when they just changed the names of a god and slapped on a new beard and called it their own. However, all of that is pretty basic lore of the subject. I especially enjoyed the book, due to how it's been translated, sorted and not 'explained' in a traditional manner.
The translation is always the most important part of any old text. The translator has a tremendous amount of power, especially when translating religious texts (there's a reason translators for holy texts are usually carefully checked by the ruling class), but the book is one of the more unbiased translations of the Greek/Roman mythos that I've read. There are some points where they actually don't translate a statement that could have multiple meanings and interpretations, and instead goes into an explanation about the separate meanings and how they could relate to the story. This is a huge change from some translations I've read, where the only one spoken of in the text is the one that the translator thought was correct. It's also sorted in a way that gives a solid timeline, both giving background and potential events at the time of conception for the myth or folktale, while keeping it in the "godly" timeline of which events happened when if you look at the stories from a literal perspective. All in all, a very good book for an intermediate grasp on the mythology of ancient Greece and Rome.
Adventure Van, singing out.
