Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable

Bulfinch's Mythology opens a sweeping gateway into the classical world, where gods, heroes, monsters, and transformed mortals shape the imagination of Greece and Rome. From Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Minerva, Mercury, Mars, Apollo, Diana, Ceres, Bacchus, and Vulcan to the Muses, Graces, Fates, Furies, Pan, and Janus, it maps a divine society with vivid symbols, rivalries, and powers. The book explains how Greek myth and Roman religion blended, how ancient names echo through literature, and how the old cosmic order imagined a flat earth, encircling Ocean, distant paradises, and the underworld. Alongside this framework come enduring tales of love, loss, labor, and metamorphosis: Prometheus, Pandora, Hercules, Theseus, Penelope, Ulysses, Troy, Orpheus and Eurydice, Aristaeus, and Amphion. Music, sacrifice, and divine favor move mountains, soften the dead, and restore lost bees, while tragic errors bring ruin. Blending myth, anecdote, and poetic allusion, the work makes classical literature intelligible and reveals why these ancient stories still resonate in later poetry and culture. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.