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Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their 鈥渕ythology.鈥� Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of modern-day misconceptions on this front and the lax methodology that has allowed them to prevail. He argues that the Greeks viewed their abundance of narratives not as a single mythology but as an 鈥渁rchaeology.鈥� They speculated symbolically on key historical events so that a community of believing citizens could access them efficiently, through ritual means. Central to the book is Calame’s rigorous and fruitful analysis of various accounts of the foundation of that most 鈥渕ythical鈥� of the Greek colonies—Cyrene, in eastern Libya.

Calame opens with a magisterial historical survey demonstrating today’s misapplication of the terms 鈥渕yth鈥� and 鈥渕ythology.鈥� Next, he examines the Greeks鈥� symbolic discourse to show that these modern concepts arose much later than commonly believed. Having established this interpretive framework, Calame undertakes a comparative analysis of six accounts of Cyrene’s foundation: three by Pindar and one each by Herodotus (in two different versions), Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. We see how the underlying narrative was shaped in each into a poetically sophisticated, distinctive form by the respective medium, a particular poetical genre, and the specific socio-historical circumstances. Calame concludes by arguing in favor of the Greeks鈥� symbolic approach to the past and by examining the relation of mythos to poetry and music.