Recently I embarked upon a new habit of writing little chorus pieces for various Greek mythological stories. The problem is that for the most part I have no clue where the various stories and legends stem from literarily. I.e., if I'm looking for some remote legend, say Midas's donkey-ears, Arachne and Athena, or what happened to Helen after the sacking of Troy - I would have no idea whether to look into Ovid, Aeschylus, or any other Greek or Roman poet who wrote about it.
Is there any kind of an online index/database/website where these stories and legends can be traced? It's simply going to take me several years to read through classical literature, and it won't be easy remembering all the sources for all the legends. Any clue on how to find the sources relatively quickly and conveniently?
Cheers, Jonathan
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
A brief digging through some old bookmarks pulled up this site, which might do you for a while (or until someone else comes up with a better one!).
(ETA: It's also only Greek myths. I was never terribly interested in those Romans...)
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
JH:
Pantheon.org Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
Jonathan! I haven't seen you in a while (then again, I haven't been around as much, either). How are you doing?
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
Robert Graves' books on Greek mythology have footnotes back to the source material. Though his take on the meaning of Greek myths is somewhat controversial, and googling around, I found at least one person who said some of his footnotes were wrong.
But if 90-95% of them are right, that'll help.
Posted by Dante (Member # 1106) on :
I would check out the Oxford Classical Dictionary from your local library.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
I thought this thread would be a place where we could say things like "Who do you think you are, Phrixus?"