The Gods of Olympus: A History

Durham University classics professor Graziosi offers an engaging, if simplistic, history of the Greek pantheon. She recounts mythic tales, of course, but her focus is on the Olympians’ changing cultural role throughout human history. Fittingly, the gods are most prominent as individualized characters, as the archaic Greeks understood them to be human-like deities traversing the “very real landscape” of the Aegean. Their identities become more abstract as cultural tides subsequently cast the gods as “strictly literary” allegorical concepts, amoral political allies useful for “personal advantage,” and “trivial apparitions” and “incidental decoration.” Graziosi crosses the centuries elegantly, using the gods’ constant presence to suggest that history is an ongoing continuum, era divisions being the somewhat arbitrary constructions of later generations. Disappointingly, this account of the Olympians stops short of the modern era. Though Graziosi insists on their significance to any contemplation of humanity, and even suggests that her work is an addition to an ongoing dialogue, no attention is paid to more recent interpretations, such as the beloved and influential Harryhausen films, among other popular contemporary treatments. Still, it’s an intelligent and entertaining examination of the Greek deities’ timeless ability to “express different, human truths.” (Mar.)