Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Pleasure and Leisure 295
Most myths are preserved merely in part. The only one that re ceives
exhaustive treatment in any surviving work is Jason’s search for the
golden fleece, as narrated in an epic poem entitled Argonautika, or
Voyage of the Argo, by Apollonios of Rhodes in the third century
b.c.e. Even the events of the Trojan War have come down to us only
in a piecemeal condition. The lengthiest and most detailed treatment
is provided by Homer’s The Iliad; however, the action of this poem,
which is limited to a period of 10 days in the final year of the war, covers
only a minor incident, namely Achilles’ temporary withdrawal
from the battlefield as the result of an insult from his commander in
chief. The poem does not refer directly to either the cause of the war
or its conclusion, nor does it contain a plot summary. So well known
was its course, however, that Homer’s audience could be relied upon
to put the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in its context
and see within the events covered by the poem a foreshadowing and
anticipation of the destruction of the city of Troy.
The following is a list of the most important literary sources for
the study of Greek mythology:
Homer, The Iliad: The havoc that is caused among the Greeks and the
Trojans as a result of Achilles’ anger.
Homer, The Odyssey: Odysseus’s return to Ithaka and his reunion
with his wife Penelope.
Hesiod, Theogony: How the present Olympian dynasty came to
power.
Hesiod, Works and Days: Zeus as the upholder of justice and champion
of the common people against the kings, coupled with a breakdown
of the agricultural year.
The Homeric Hymns: Stories about the early days of the gods and how
they came to acquire their powers.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon: Agamemnon’s murder at the hands of his
wife Klytaimnestra and her lover Aegisthos.
Aeschylus, Choêphoroi, or “Libation Bearers ”: Orestes’ invocation of
the shade of his father Agamemnon to aid him in a revenge killing of
his mother and her lover.
Aeschylus, Eumenides, or “Friendly Ones ”: Orestes’ acquittal on the
charge of matricide before an Athenian court.
Sophokles, Oedipus the King: Oedipus’s discovery that he is guilty of
murdering his father and marrying his mother.
Sophokles, Antigone: Antigone’s defiant determination to give burial
to her brother Polyneikes in violation of Kreon’s edict.
Sophokles, Oedipus at Colonus: The elevation to heroic status of the
blind and aged Oedipus.