Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths

by Mary R. Lefkowitz

The mythology of ancient Greece has fascinated readers for two millennia and has formed the basis of Western civilization. The Greek gods are a perennial source of delight because they seem so much like us: in their rages, their love affairs, and their obsession with honor, the gods often appear all too human.



In

Genres: Mythology, History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Philosophy

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 2003

About the author

Mary R. Lefkowitz (born April 30, 1935), American scholar of Classics. She studied at Wellesley College before obtaining a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Radcliffe College in 1961. Lefkowitz has published on subjects including mythology, women in antiquity, Pindar, and fiction in ancient biography.
She came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. In Black Athena Revisited (1996), which she edited with Guy MacLean Rogers, her colleague at Wellesley College, the ideas of Martin Bernal are further scrutinized.

Reviews

[R. C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first choice of book to re-read when I'm feeling too distracted to process something new. Great literature. Great gods. Great insights.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book on the role of the gods in Greek mythology and how that related to (or relates to) human life . . . especially compelling because we are so often told that the Greeks' myths about their gods were not meant to be in any way instructive about how to live life. Myths analyzed from primary sources by Mary Lefkowitz, whose scholarship and common sense prevailed in the "Black Athena" controversy.

[Augustus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the book is just retelling the Greek myths - which is not what I was looking for.
I shall keep it as a reference work in case I want to know what happens in the Oresteia or whatever, btu as to addressing how the gods play a part in our lives, she doe that in the last chapter, which is six pages long.
I don't think she even believes in these gods, so I don't really feel I got anything from it.
Disappointing.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasn't quite what I was expecting but was still mildly interesting but very repetitive.

[Sidney Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It actually inspired me to get my tattoo depiction of Leda from “Leda and the Swans”.

[The Sleepy Nightowl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Greek Gods, Human Lives provides an in depth literature analysis of the most well known myth with respect to the action of the gods and the resulting repercussions for humans. While certainly thorough, it is at times repetitive offering an exhausting evaluation and interpretation on how to understand a mortal’s place in the world ruled by unaffected and at times hostile gods.

The reading flow of the book is interrupted by successive sentences that logically do not belong together. Frequently, a connection between sentences is missing altogether, or seems out of place. Furthermore, there are grammatical errors in the earlier chapters of the book. Overall, this book reads more like a draft than a final version, and would have greatly benefitted from an editor.

[Cressida · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! The only book I read slowly on purpose. It's a really good read.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Skip this one. Reads like a truck radiator manual -- in Mandarin.

[Bowdoin]

Professor Watterson–The past is a foreign country. One side of the culture wars sees "otherness" almost exclusively in terms of contemporary ideas and/or patterns regarding race, gender, class, and sexual preference, but as Mary Lefkowitz demonstrates, Greek myths dating back to Homer and beyond in many ways comprise a more complex and nuanced view of human identity vis a vis the gods:

They enable us as onlookers to place ourselves in the world, and to get a sense of what we may reasonably expect in the course of our lives. Suffering and hardship cannot be avoided; death is inevitable; virtue is not always rewarded. Justice may not be done in the short run, although eventually wrongs will be righted, even if many innocent people will suffer. There is no hope of universal redemption, no sense that in the future victims of the terrible action of the drama will receive any recompense for their suffering.

Without god or gods, there is only "self,' self,' self" as Zenobia says in The Blithedale Romance. But the gods of Greek myth, who did not create a world designed to make us happy, do not diminish our humanity. They enhance it by virtue of their mysteriousness.