Collection
Myths and Legends
The great myth cycles and legend traditions of Greece and Rome, the North, Finland, Celtic Ireland and Wales, medieval Christendom, Mesopotamia, India and the Maya, with the handbooks and retellings that carried them to later readers, linked to the texts in the library.
See also Great Debates, Great Court Cases.
Entries list the primary sources first and the later retellings after them. Every work in this hub is in the public domain, and most carry the full text in the library reader (the Epic of Gilgamesh has a summary and guide only). Older translations keep their translators' spellings of names (Grethel, Voluspo, Hovamol).
Greek Myth
Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days · c. 700 BC
The Theogony tells the origin of the gods, from Chaos and Earth through the overthrow of Ouranos and Kronos to the reign of Zeus, with the stories of Prometheus and Pandora. Works and Days sets out farming, the seasons and the five ages of mankind as advice to the poet's brother Perses.
The Homeric Hymns · 7th-6th century BC
Thirty-three hexameter hymns to the Olympian gods, composed in the Homeric style and long attributed to Homer. The long hymns tell of Demeter's search for Persephone, the birth of Apollo and the founding of Delphi, the infant Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle, and Aphrodite's love for Anchises.
Apollodorus, The Library · 1st-2nd century AD
A compact prose handbook of Greek myth, attributed to an Apollodorus, that runs from the origin of the gods through the great family sagas to the returns of the heroes from Troy. It is a main source for the labours of Heracles, the deeds of Theseus and Perseus, and the Theban and Argive legends.
The Iliad and the Odyssey · c. 8th century BC
The two Homeric epics stand at the head of Greek literature. The Iliad tells of the wrath of Achilles in the tenth year of the Trojan War; the Odyssey follows Odysseus on his ten-year journey home to Ithaca and Penelope.
The Argonautica · 3rd century BC
Apollonius of Rhodes's Hellenistic epic of Jason's voyage on the Argo to Colchis for the Golden Fleece. Its third book, on Medea's love for Jason, was much admired and imitated in antiquity, including by Virgil.
Athenian Tragedy on the Myths · 458-405 BC
The Athenian tragedians retold the old stories of the houses of Atreus and Cadmus and of the Trojan War for the festival stage. Aeschylus's trilogy follows the curse on Agamemnon's house to the founding of a court at Athens; Euripides's plays take up Medea, the women of Troy, Iphigenia, Orestes, Helen, Heracles and Dionysus.
Greek Myths Retold for Children · 1851-1921
Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers retold the Greek stories for young readers, each in a different spirit. Hawthorne set his tales in a New England frame with a college student as narrator, Kingsley wrote for his own children with a Christian moral emphasis, and Padraic Colum wove many myths into one continuous voyage of the Argonauts.
Roman Myth
The Aeneid · 29-19 BC
Virgil's epic of Aeneas's flight from burning Troy, his love for Dido at Carthage, his descent to the underworld and his war in Latium. It gave Rome a founding legend that tied the city to the Trojan story.
Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heroides · c. 25 BC-AD 8
Ovid gathered some two hundred and fifty myths of transformation into one continuous poem running from the creation to his own day. In the Heroides he gave the heroines of myth their own voices, in verse letters from Penelope, Dido, Ariadne, Medea and others to the men who left them.
Norse and Germanic
The Poetic Edda · c. 800-1100 (manuscript c. 1270)
Old Norse poems on the gods and heroes, preserved chiefly in an Icelandic manuscript of about 1270. They include the seeress's prophecy of the world's making and ending, the sayings of Odin, the comic Thor poems, and the lays of Sigurd and the Volsungs.
The Prose Edda · c. 1220
Snorri Sturluson's handbook of Norse myth and poetic diction, written in Christian Iceland for poets who needed to understand the old kennings. It tells the stories of Odin, Thor, Loki and the death of Baldr and ends with Ragnarok.
The Volsunga Saga · 13th century
An Icelandic prose saga of the Volsung family, from Sigmund to his son Sigurd, who slays the dragon Fafnir, wins the cursed hoard and awakens Brynhild. It tells in prose the story behind the Eddic heroic poems and the Nibelungenlied.
Beowulf · c. 700-1000
The Old English heroic poem of Beowulf's fights with Grendel, Grendel's mother and, in old age, a dragon. It is set among the Danes and Geats of Scandinavia and told by a Christian poet looking back on a pagan past.
The Nibelungenlied · c. 1200
The Middle High German epic of Siegfried, his murder at the instigation of Brunhild, and Kriemhild's revenge at the court of Etzel. It shares its heroic matter with the Volsung lays of the Poetic Edda.
Finnish Myth
The Kalevala · 1835; enlarged 1849
Elias Lönnrot's compilation of Finnish and Karelian folk songs into one epic. The old singer Väinämöinen, the smith Ilmarinen and the reckless Lemminkäinen contend with the Mistress of Pohjola over the Sampo, a mill that grinds out plenty.
Celtic Myth and Legend
The Mabinogion · stories written down c. 1350-1410
Medieval Welsh prose tales preserved in the Red Book of Hergest and other manuscripts, including the Four Branches of the Mabinogi and early Arthurian stories. Translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1838-1849.
Lady Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne · 1902
Lady Gregory's English arrangement of the Ulster Cycle, the stories of King Conchubar's Red Branch heroes and above all of Cuchulain, from his boyhood deeds through the Cattle Raid of Cooley to his death. W. B. Yeats wrote the preface.
Medieval Legend and Romance
Charlemagne and His Paladins · c. 1100-1863
The Old French Song of Roland tells of the rearguard at Roncevaux and Roland's horn. Later Italian poets spun the paladins' adventures into long romances, which Thomas Bulfinch retold in prose for American readers.
King Arthur and the Round Table · late 14th century-1903
The Arthurian legend reached English readers chiefly through the Gawain poet's tale of the Green Knight's challenge and Malory's prose gathering of the whole cycle, printed by Caxton in 1485. Howard Pyle retold the early stories for young readers.
Mesopotamia, India and the Americas
The Epic of Gilgamesh · c. 2100-1200 BC
The Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and his friendship with the wild man Enkidu. After Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh seeks the secret of everlasting life from Utnapishtim, the survivor of the great flood.
Valmiki, The Ramayana · c. 5th-1st century BC
The Sanskrit epic of Prince Rama of Ayodhya: his exile to the forest with Sita and Lakshmana, Sita's abduction by Ravana, king of Lanka, and her rescue with the help of Hanuman and the monkey army. Read here in Ralph T. H. Griffith's verse translation.
The Popol Vuh · written down c. 1554-1558
The sacred book of the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala, telling the creation of the world and of people, the adventures of the hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the underworld Xibalba, and the history of the K'iche' lords. Read here in Lewis Spence's 1908 account.
Retellings and Handbooks
Bulfinch's Age of Fable · 1855
Thomas Bulfinch's prose handbook of Greek and Roman myth, with chapters on Norse, Egyptian and Eastern stories, written so that general readers could follow the allusions in English poetry. It quotes the poets freely alongside the stories.
Journey to the West (A Mission to Heaven) · c. 1592 (English 1913)
The Ming-dynasty novel of the monk Tripitaka's pilgrimage to India for the Buddhist scriptures, guarded by the Monkey King Sun Wukong, Pigsy and Sandy. The library text is Timothy Richard's abridged English version, which adds his own notes and a Christian-allegorical reading of the story.
Grimm and Andersen · 1812-1872
The brothers Grimm collected German household tales such as Hansel and Grethel, Snow-white and Rumpelstiltskin from oral and written sources. Hans Christian Andersen wrote literary fairy tales in Danish, some drawn from folk tales and most of his own invention, among them The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen and The Little Match Girl.
Irish Fairy and Folk Tales · 1888
W. B. Yeats's anthology of Irish stories of the trooping fairies, changelings, merrows, the banshee, ghosts, saints and giants, gathered from nineteenth-century collectors and writers. Yeats added short introductions to each section.
Christ Legends · 1904
Selma Lagerlöf's retellings of Christian legends about the birth and childhood of Christ and his Passion, among them The Holy Night, The Wise Men's Well and The Legend of the Christmas Rose. The Holy Night opens with her memory of hearing the story from her grandmother.