Her text is accompanied by numerous ancient depictions of the gods in Greek myths, primarily from vase paintings. She also initiates an intermittent dialogue between Greek and Biblical myth. L’s Introduction sets forth her principal themes: the remoteness of Greek gods from mortals’ suffering and hardships, their essential self-involvement, Zeus’ lack of complete control, the Olympians’ very different sense of time as compared to mortals’. But this book does not concern itself much with theoretical developments, and seems aimed at a very general audience. Among her influences she lists Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Jasper Griffin, Jon Mikalson, and Dennis Feeney. Noting that some previous studies have minimized, if not entirely dismissed, the gods’ role (discussed in her introduction), she provides readings of many of the most well known myths, focusing on the doings of the gods. Lefkowitz (hereafter L) partly addresses this situation by offering a survey of Greek myth which takes the roles of the gods seriously and sees the myths as, at least in part, offering moral instruction. In the ironic climax of this tendency, Lucius witnesses a reenactment of the Judgment of Paris, only to launch into extravagant condemnation of how easily judges are corrupted, rather than learn from the myth, and realize that he is Paris. Western culture thus now resembles Lucius, Apuleius’ protagonist, who finds every inset tale he hears grand entertainment but fails to see that each story is actually about himself. Perhaps this is because post-classical Western culture, under the influence of Christianity (which too often denies or ridicules conceptions of other gods), has tended to strip the myths of much of their original significance and function, regarding them only as entertainment, fanciful, often absurd, invention devoid of serious instruction. The myths have fascinated and stimulated for millennia now, but succeeding periods have tended to content themselves with considering only a surface meaning. More people, I suspect, make their first contact with the study of classical Greece and Rome by reading Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Vergil, or Ovid, in translation, than through any other means. Greek myths are, arguably, the single most important gateway to the study of the classics.
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