Most authors within this collection are famous exclusively for their work with mythology and heroic legends, while others are famous for their advancement of the philosophy of stoicism. If the reader is interested in myths belonging to the ancient Greeks and Romans concerning their gods and heroes, then this collection is right for you. This collection contains the following works:
Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s Complete Tragedies: Agamemnon, Hercules, Hercules Oetaeus I & II, Medea, Oedipus, Phaedra, Phoenissae, Thyestes, and Troades
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound
Hesiod’s Theogony
Apollodorus’ Library of Greek Mythology
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and—in one work—humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes. Seneca's plays were widely read in medieval and Renaissance European universities and strongly influenced tragic drama in that time, such as Elizabethan England (William Shakespeare and other playwrights), France (Corneille and Racine), and the Netherlands (Joost van den Vondel). He is regarded as the source and inspiration for what is known as "Revenge Tragedy," starting with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and continuing well into the Jacobean era. Thyestes is considered to be Seneca's masterpiece, and has been described by scholar Dana Gioia as "one of the most influential plays ever written."
The Metamorphoses (Books of Transformations) is a Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus. Comprising fifteen books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Although meeting the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple genre classification by its use of varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from the genre of metamorphosis poetry, and some of the Metamorphoses derives from earlier treatment of the same myths; however, he diverged significantly from all of his models.
Plutarch was a Greek biographer and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia, the latter of which On Isis and Osiris is derived. On Isis and Osiris was one of Plutarch’s essays containing vast and beautiful descriptions of Egyptian rites and myths.
Prometheus Bound is an ancient Greek tragedy often attributed to Aeschylus. The tragedy is based on the myth of Prometheus, a Titan who defies the gods and gives fire to mankind, acts for which he is subjected to perpetual punishment.
Theogony is a poem by Hesiod (8th – 7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed c. 700 BC. It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek. Hesiod's Theogony is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the Cosmos. It is the first Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos, a dark indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared. Theogonies are a part of Greek mythology which embodies the desire to articulate reality as a whole; this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first later projects of speculative theorizing.
To round out the end of the collection, The Bibliotheca (Library of Greek Mythology) is a compendium of Greek myths and heroic legends, arranged in three books, generally dated to the first or second century AD. The Bibliotheca has been called "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times".
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