Greek Myths
Gustav Schwab and Michael Siebler
This edition contains 47 tales based on the most famous episodes in Greek mythology, from Prometheus, the Argonauts, and Theseus to the Trojan War and Homer’s Odyssey. The individual texts are selected from the seminal work Sagen des klassischen Altertums (Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece) by Gustav Schwab (1792–1850), and strikingly illustrated by 29 artists, among them outstanding representatives of the Golden Age of Book Illustration and the Arts and Crafts Movement, including Walter Crane (1845–1915), Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), William Russell Flint (1880–1969), and Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900–1930).
These illustrations are complemented by scene-setting vignettes for each story and a genealogical tree of Greek gods and goddesses by Clifford Harper, commissioned especially for this volume. Placing the tales in context, the book contains a historical introduction by Dr. Michael Siebler and is rounded off with biographies of all featured artists as well as an extensive glossary of ancient Greece’s most famous protagonists. The heroism, tragedy, and theater of Greek mythology glimmer through each tale in this lavishly illustrated edition, awakening the gods and heroes to new life.
Gustav Schwab (1792–1850) was a German author, teacher, and professor. From 1828, Schwab worked at Johann Friedrich Cotta’s eponymous publishing house in Stuttgart, where he was a patron and mentor of young authors. After issuing a collection of his own poetry, he composed the seminal Sagen des klassischen Altertums (Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece, 1838–1840), an indispensable standard work of Greek mythology that has popularized its tales in Germany and across the globe.
Michael Siebler studied classical archaeology and earned his doctoral degree through his study of the Roman Mars Ultor. He has taken part in several excavations, for example at Olympia, and after receiving his doctorate he initially worked in the German Archaeological Institute in Damascus. Subsequently he was a research associate at the Institute for Classical Archaeology at Mainz University and then a long-standing editor of the feature pages of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He currently works as a freelance writer, and since 1990 has published various works on Troy and Olympia.
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