From Ikaria to the Stars: Classical Mythification, Ancient and Modern

This collection of essays represents Peter Green's observations on classical myth and is wide-ranging in the questions it asks, including, what did the Greeks think about myth? what factors were responsible for it? what was the role of magic and who designed it? From Hesiod's Works and Days , to Herodotus and Periclean Athens, to the mythicisation of Alexander's Alexandria, Green often sets Greek myth and history against one another, opening the door `into non-rational and quasi-rational modes of thought in which it becomes possible to write painful truths and unacceptable history'.