Party on Olympus
Gods and Heroes of the Greeks. By H. J. Rose. (Methuen, 10s. 6d.)
STUDYING Professor Rose's exact and scholarly collation of Greek mythology is like being present at an unusually hectic Olympian cocktail party. The reader is introduced to a huge number of guests in rapid succession, never has time to talk to any of them, and yet is expected to remember all their names, occupations, family connections, and antecedents.
The book is compressed to the point of dehydra- tion—though it covers with great ingenuity all the important stories of giants, monsters, gods, demigods, and heroes, from ancient Greece. Professor Rose faithfully gives the skeleton of every tale from the Iliad to Cupid and Psyche, and writes in a learned, subordinate-clause style which has its own kind of dogged clarity : 'She married Xuthos, a son of Hellen, epony- mous ancestor of all Hellenes (Greeks), but they were long childless, and Xuthos, consulting the oracle at Delphi, was bidden to take as his son the first person he met on leaving the temple. This was Kreusa's child, exposed by his mother and rescued by Apollo, and because he found him while going (i'on) from the shrine, Xuthos named him I'on, and he became the ancestor of the Ionians.'
Perhaps it is unfair to carp at Professor Rose for not being a rehasher of twenty-times-told stories. His avowed intention is to avoid detail and sentimentality, and to provide an easy refer- ence book. But the author himself admits to the omission of much subsidiary material, and thus leaves his reader with the uncomfortable know- ledge that this reference book is incomplete. But reference books ought to be complete. Only story- tellers can afford to choose what they will include. Professor Rose's book neither tells stories nor is complete, and for that reason, in spite of its neatness and exactitude, and the honesty of its purpose, it makes the sad thump of someone fall- ing between two stools.
KENNETH CAVANDER
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