The purpose of the course. This is a course about ancient Greek and Roman myth. We will try to discover what the myths meant to their original audiences, but we'll also reflect on what they can mean to us now. We'll also consider how these stories are represented in ancient art, so that next time you're in a museum you'll be able to identify who's who in European art.
Myths are stories with religious content, about gods, goddesses, and heroes.
We study Greek and Roman myths because they have had a wide influence on European literature. But we will also talk about myths of earlier civilizations that influenced the Greeks, such as Babylonian and Hebrew creation myths, the Gilgamesh epic, and the story of the Egyptian goddess Isis and her husband Osiris. All reading is in primary source materials, works by Greek and Roman authors themselves, in English translation. Reading what the ancients themselves wrote is both more interesting and challenging than using a textbook. Textbooks make the job of studying myth easier, because they interpret the meanings of the myths for you.