"Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their "mythology." 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 "archaeology." 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 "mythical" of the Greek colonies - Cyrene, in eastern Libya."--Jacket.

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