Handbook of Classical Mythology (review)

William Hansen’s excellent Handbook of Classical Mythology, part of an ongoing ABC-CLIO series of accessible handbooks on mythologies worldwide, offers a distinctive overview of Greek and Roman mythology. This book focuses on the mythological stories themselves, and comparison with some of its English-language rivals will be instructive. Fritz Graf ’s Greek Mythology: An Introduction (in German: Artemis, 1984; in English: Johns Hopkins, 1993) concentrates more on ways of studying myths than on myths themselves. Edited by Lowell Edmunds, the aptly titled Approaches to Greek Myth (Johns Hopkins, 1990) does the same. G. S. Kirk’s The Nature of Greek Myths (Penguin, 1974) presents mythological stories, but it does so chiefly to test theories, or universal explanations, of myths, mostly those from the social sciences. H. J. Rose’s once-standard Handbook of Greek Mythology (Dutton, [1928] 1958) begins with a dismissal of all theories save that of E. B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, John Murray, 1871) and then provides summaries of the myths themselves, oddly giving little attention to hero stories. Robin Hard’s Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology (2004) is based on Rose’s book, but with such modifications as to be virtually a new book. It omits even a cursory discussion of theories. Like Rose’s Handbook, Mark Morford and Robert Lenardon’s widely used Classical Mythology, now in its seventh edition (Longman, [1971] 2003), offers an introductory survey of theories and then proceeds to a bland telling of the stories. Robert Graves’s idiosyncratic The Greek Myths (Penguin, 1955) does almost the same, but it is written with the author’s characteristic sprightliness.

Hansen’s Handbook is not atypical in its alphabetical organization or in its inclusion of places and events, as well as gods and heroes. Both Pierre Grimal’s standard Dictionary of Classical Mythology (in French: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951; in English: Penguin, 1985) and Edward Tripp’s Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology (1974; formerly titled Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology, 1970) give wonderfully detailed alphabetical listings of thousands of gods, heroes, places, and events. Jenny March’s Cassell Dictionary of Classical Mythology (1974) does the same, though in less detail. Like most others, Hansen treats the stories in their present form. By contrast, Timothy Gantz’s huge Early Greek Myth (Johns Hopkins, 1993) seeks to trace myths back to their original versions and then forward through later embellishments.

Hansen’s Handbook is most distinctive because of its author’s enviable dual expertise in folklore and classics. Where Rose’s professed folkloristic expertise seems limited to differentiating among basic genres of folklore, Hansen’s professional training is evinced in his categorization of individual myths. Repeatedly, he types stories on the basis of Aarne and Thompson’s international tale types. His approach is comparativist in other ways as well. He offers not only entries for particular figures, places, and events but also entries for categories—for example, “Combat Myth and Legend,” “Culture Hero,” and “Monsters.” His entries are not only concrete but just as often thematic—for example, “Absent Deity,” “Anthropogony,” and “Biographical Pattern.” I know of no other handbook that contains such entries as “Epithet,” “Promotion and Demotion,” “Sexchangers,” “Triads,” and “Tricksters.”

The advantage of the book is not that Hansen always discloses information unavailable in other handbooks. The strength here, rather, is that he does so by subsuming classical examples under cross-cultural categories. He thereby connects Greek and Roman mythology to mythology worldwide. Few other classicists harbor either the inclination or the competence to do so. Hansen’s presentation of classical topics as cases of general categories sets the stage for theoretical work that seeks to account for the similarities found. Hansen’s chapter “Odysseus and the Oar: A Folkloristic Approach” in Edmunds’s Approaches and his own Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (Cornell University Press, 2002...