I give it either a high 3 or low 4, a bit closer to an educational book instead of a casual reader, still enjoyable for those with an interest in the subject – however if you only have a casual passing interest in Greek Mythology I would suggest reading Homer instead. This book was first released in 1996 and it is a fairly scholarly study of the myths, relating them to the way the ancient Greeks lived and thought.

Since Graves was happy to present his own ideas in the footnotes as well and all the supporting evidence and theories he uses are not referenced it's impossible to sort his own fancies from others'. This would be an invaluable tool to an academic but as some one who only wanted to read and enjoy the stories I skipped all that and consequently probably only read half the near 750 pages.is, according to Graves, because the discus represents the solar disc, itself representing the length of a single year, which was the extent of a king’s reign. Etsy’s 100% renewable electricity commitment includes the electricity used by the data centres that host Etsy. Heracles murdering his 6 children by Megara; Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia; Cepheus and Cassiopeia sacrificing Andromeda; and about a million other examples). It includes all the most iconic stories, drawing on Plutarch, Virgil, Livy and Ovid amongst others, but also lesser-known traditions, including some of the more bizarre Roman superstitions, such as the Lupercalia in which youths dressed in animal skins and smeared with dog blood would whip female onlookers with strips of goatskin to promote fertility. Robert Graves has translated and collected the chief Greek myths and extracted their fancy stories and moral lessons in one exciting volume.

It's also notable that all of the sources he does present conform to his own ideas - a further sign of his writing to an agenda (Murray influenced or not).

Green’s gift is to draw on the most authoritative classical Greek authors – Homer, Ovid, Apollonius of Rhodes – representing 2,000 years of Greek literature, and present them in simple but exciting language for readers of all ages. While other collections depict the stories in isolation, Green creates drama and tension by presenting his myths as a sequence of events, so that the Heroic Age is relived as a complete historical era. Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford.