Classical Mythology

I somehow forgot to make a blog entry upon completing the audio course Classical Mythology by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ph.D. My wife and I have a lot going on right now with our recent move to Maryland, so this somehow slipped through the cracks.

Although I have a strong interest in Classical history and culture, I never actually took a class in mythology in school. And although this particular course didn't cover quite as much ground as I thought, it did help to organize the pantheon of Greek (and to a lesser degree, Roman) gods into a semi-understandable genealogy.

Understanding Classical mythology is apparently as much art as science: There are about as many rules as there are exceptions. However, Professor Vandiver does her best to take one through the main characters and story lines. Despite this, one could clearly spend many lives trying to learn the entire genre and not quite get there.

Once again I was pleased to see so many citations of works that I've actually read. Hesiod's Works & Days and Theogony, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and various works of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides were each discussed at length. Ovid's Metamorphoses, which sits unread in my library, was one of the larger gaps in my experience. My wife and I have also been fortunate enough to visit and explore many of the famous sites of Classical mythology, including Agamemnon's Mycenae, Apollo's famous Temple of Delphi and the Palace of Knossos on Crete.

My only mild criticism was that Professor Vandiver didn't spend more time on the Roman pantheon, instead of tacking on a couple such lectures at the end of the course. Although the course topic is unimaginably large, it might have been better named Greek Mythology.