The ancient world's own handbook of Greek myth, from the first gods to the death of Odysseus, told plainly and fast. The voyage of the Argo takes a few pages.
Press this book. Your gift commissions the Great Library’s word-by-word interlinear The Library of Greek Myth, and the day it is made, it is free for everyone, forever. You are not buying a copy; you are paying for it to exist.
Give what you like. A few dollars helps, or fund the whole of Book 1: Jason and Medea and become its Founder. Every contribution presses it closer to real.
This is how every Great Library book reads, word beneath word. The Library of Greek Myth’s own first lines appear here the day its pilot is pressed.
The Library tells the Greek myths in order, family by family, without comment, and often notes where the versions disagree. The press starts with the Argonauts in Book 1: Jason's quest for the golden fleece, Medea's help in Colchis, the escape, and what happened afterwards in Iolcus, Corinth and Athens. Nothing is readable here yet; support it and it will be.
Nobody knows who wrote it. The manuscripts name Apollodorus, but the famous Athenian scholar of that name lived around 140 BC, and the book cites a writer of the 1st century BC, so it is usually dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD. The last part was lost and survives only in two shortened versions found in the late 19th century.
In 1921 James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, translated the Library and filled it with notes comparing each story with versions told around the world. Those notes are now in the public domain, and we plan to set them beside the Greek.
Making an interlinear The Library of Greek Myth is real work: freezing a scholarly source text, aligning every word to its dictionary form, glossing what resists translation, and proofing it all to a hard quality bar. Pressing a book is how that work gets funded. When enough readers press it, Book 1: Jason and Medea gets made, and then it is free to read forever, for you and for everyone who comes after.
This isn’t a purchase. It’s a commission. You’re not buying a copy; you’re paying for the thing to exist, and putting your name (if you like) on the first true The Library of Greek Myth that anyone can read for free.
Leave your email and we’ll write to you the day the The Library of Greek Myth opens. No other mail, ever.
Read our finished collection · the library · The Great Library Project
Reading is always free. Patrons and founders are the ones who keep it that way.