Robert Graves and Archaeolmythology

[Robert Baird]

We have another gold mine of knowledge here. Link problems throughout! I figured out the first one, got the last one finally, the others are not so good..

http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content...mmata.com_.pdf

"Robert Graves was born in 1895 at Wimbledon, son of Alfred Perceval Graves, the Irish writer, and Amalia von Ranke. He went from school to the First World War, where he became a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His principal calling is poetry, and his Selected Poems have been published in the Penguin Poets. Apart from a year as Professor of English Literature at Cairo University in 1926 he has since earned his living by writing, mostly historical novels which include: I, Claudius; Claudius the God; Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth; Count Belisarius; Wife to Mr Milton (all published as Penguins); Proceed, Sergeant Lamb; The Golden Fleece; They Hanged My Saintly Billy; and The Isles of Unwisdom. He wrote his autobiography, Goodbye to All That (a Penguin Modem Classic), in 1929. His two most discussed non-fiction books are The White Goddess, which presents a new view of the poetic impulse, and The Nazarene Gospel Restored (with Joshua Podro), a re-examination of primitive Christianity. He has translated Apuleius, Lucan, and Svetonius for the Penguin Classics. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1962"

Full text of "Greek Mythology 1 - Deities" - Internet Archive

This is not so well formatted for easy reading.

http://archive.org/stream/GreekMytho...ogy-1_djvu.txt

[PDF]ROBERT GRAVES THE WHITE GODDESS
This is the best book of his. http://72.52.202.216/~fenderse/The-White-Goddess.pdf

http://robertgraves.org/issues/18/2686_article_56.pdf

Items 558 - 566 - The Greek Myths (1955) as a translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, .... GRAVESIANA THE JOURNAL OF THE ROBERT GRAVES SOCIETY.


From The White Goddess we have him saying a load of truth and giving glimpses into code or wisdom (yes, the two connect). It is hard for me to over-emphasize the importance of his work.

"But even after Alexander the Great had cut the Gordian Knot—an act of far greater moral significance than is generally realized—the ancient language survived purely enough in the secret Mystery-cults of Eleusis, Corinth, Samothrace and elsewhere; and when these were suppressed by the early Christian Emperors it was still taught in the poetic colleges of Ireland and Wales, and in the witch-covens of Western Europe. As a popular religious tradition it all but flickered out at the close of the seventeenth century: and though poetry of a magical quality is still occasionally written, even in industrialized Europe, this always results from an inspired, almost pathological, reversion to the original language—a wild Pentecostal 'speaking with tongues'—rather than from a conscientious study of its grammar and vocabulary.

English poetic education should, really, begin not with the Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin, (1) an ancient Celtic calendar-alphabet, {Ogham} found in several purposely garbled Irish and Welsh variants, which briefly summarizes the prime poetic myth. I have tentatively restored the text as follows:

(Notes: 1 As Shakespeare knew. See Macbeth, IV, i, 25. 12)

I am a stag: of seven tines,
I am a flood: across a plain,
I am a wind: on a deep lake,
I am a tean the Sun lets fall,
I am a hawk: above the cliff,
I am a thorn: beneath the nail,
I am a wonder: among flowers,
I am a wizard: who but I Sets the cool head aflame with smoke?
I am a spear: that roars for blood,
I am a salmon: in a pool,
I am a lure: from paradise,
I am a hill: where poets walk,
I am a boar: ruthless and red,
I am a breaker: threatening doom,
I am a tide: that drags to death,
I am an infant: who but I Peeps from the unhewn dolmen arch ?
I am the womb: of every holt,
I am the blaze: on every hill,
I am the queen: of every hire,
I am the shield: for every head,
I am the tomb: of every hope.

It is unfortunate that, despite the strong mythical element in Christianity, 'mythical' has come to mean 'fanciful, absurd, unhistorical'; for fancy played a negligible part in the development of the Greek, Latin and Palestinian myths, or of the Celtic myths until the Norman-French trovires worked them up into irresponsible romances of chivalry. They are all grave records of ancient religious customs or events, and reliable enough as history once their language is understood and allowance has been made for errors in transcription, misunderstandings of obsolete ritual, and deliberate changes introduced for moral or political reasons. Some myths of course have survived in a far purer form than others; for example, the Fables of Hyginus, the Library of Apollodorus and the earlier tales of the Welsh Mabinogion make easy reading compared with the deceptively simple chronicles of Genesis, Exodus, Judges and Samuel. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in solving complex mythological problems is that:

*
Conquering gods their titles take
From the foes they captive make,
and that to know the name of a deity at any given place or period, is far less important than to know the nature of the sacrifices that he or she was then offered. The powers of the gods were continuously being redefined. The Greek god Apollo, for instance, seems to have begun as the Demon of a Mouse-fraternity in pre-Aryan totemistic Europe: he gradually rose in divine rank by force of arms, blackmail and fraud until he became the patron of Music, Poetry and the Arts and finally, in some regions at least, ousted his 'father' Zeus from the Sovereignty of the Universe by identifying himself with Belinus the intellectual God of Light. Jehovah, the God of the Jews, has a still more complex history."

How can we teach the 'speaking in tongue' reversal to Ogham dialects if there is no etheric bank of knowledge called Ein Sof, the Akashic or other similar conceptualizations in language? Is it through that same ether or medium that we can attune to achieve bibliomancy, soul mates, decrees, action-at-a-distance and enhanced horizontal gene transfer now being proven?

For other ancient and pre-historic Keltic calendars see this thread.

http://forum.world-mysteries.com/thr...thic-Calendars

[araucaria]

I, and others, have mentioned Robert Graves quite a few times on this forum over the years, most recently here; just do a search for "Robert Graves".

[Robert Baird]

Sorry. I have far better info than Hancock the druggie and what is there. I will also give the actual process Graves recommended which they merely abuse.

[Robert Baird]

Why do I get such joy proving people like Robert Graves and Sir James Frazer to be correct? Does it have any merit to the present for people to learn how true it is that "history is prologue to the present"? Does it help religious scholars to learn where the myths of g-ds began or what a bard like Homer or Hesiod studied?

Archaeomythology might not be a 'see this is proof' kind of exploration but it leads places that people who need to see artifacts will miss.

"Mariolakos I.D.1 1 National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment, Department of Dynamic, Tectonic & Applied Geology, Panepistimioupoli, Zografou, 157 84, Athens, Greece, mariolakos@geol.uoa.gr
Abstract

Many believe that the Greek Mythology is a figment of the vivid imagination of the ancient Greeks. Consequently, the Greek Myths are all fantastic stories. In my opinion, this view is erroneous, at least on the subject concerning the geographic and physical-oceanographic characteristics of the Atlantic Ocean, as these were described mainly by Homer, Hesiod, the Orphics and Plutarch. In the present paper (i) some of the references made by the above mentioned authors are selectively reported, and (ii) the physical and geological validation is given, based on the present-day scientific views and knowledge. Namely, the prehistoric Greeks knew about the Hyperboreans, the island of Ierne (Ireland), the British isle etc., by the Orphics. From the writings of Plutarch, they knew (i) the relative position of the present-day Iceland (Ogygia) and its distance from Britain, (ii) that to the west of Iceland, three other islands are located, where the sun sets for only an hour a day, (iii) that further to the west there is a “great continent”, which surrounds the Ocean and more. Homer and Hesiod wrote that (i) the Ocean is a “river” that flows continuously, (ii) that this river encircles the Earth and (iii) that its flow is turbulent not only on the surface, but in depth as well. Unfortunately, all this knowledge was gradually forgotten by all. This is the reason why Odyssey is considered just an entertaining poem and Ulysses’ nostos a fantastic story, with no trace of historic reality."

We will explore more of this proof that Homer's work on the Trojan War probably leads to saying there was a worldwide war in 19 separate theatres of operation. In knowing that you will just begin to grasp how much we have to uncover about our true past. Starting at page 91 we have the above abstract.

http://www.geology.upatras.gr/files/...%20Vol%201.pdf

[araucaria]

Posted by Robert Baird (here)
Sorry. I have far better info than Hancock the druggie and what is there. I will also give the actual process Graves recommended which they merely abuse.

You are mistaken: I never mention "Hancock the druggie". Take another look: my post is a sober examination of the sober work of David Talbott - not a mushroom in sight.

[Robert Baird]

Posted by araucaria (here)

Posted by Robert Baird (here)
Sorry. I have far better info than Hancock the druggie and what is there. I will also give the actual process Graves recommended which they merely abuse.

You are mistaken: I never mention "Hancock the druggie". Take another look: my post is a sober examination of the sober work of David Talbott - not a mushroom in sight.

I looked and saw Hancock in the thread. Your thread did not address Graves, it mentions him as you said. I will look again - by your command.

[Robert Baird]

I just went - and it is even worse than I thought.

Here is some of your initial post.

"sun vs Sun. David Talbott describes how in many cultures, Saturn is identified with the Sun; for example, in Greek, Cronos identified with Helios. This makes no sense if we see it as mistaking an outer planet for our star, Sol. It makes a great deal of sense, on the other hand, if we take ‘sun’ in the generic sense of as source of light and warmth from the standpoint of a satellite. This suggests that at one time Saturn was the Earth’s only such source, thereby placing the Saturn system outside the solar system.

Timelessness. Venus, Mars and Earth were then presumably locked together, rotating around Saturn with the same side facing the central ‘sun’, i.e. Saturn. We know this is possible because it is precisely how our own Moon behaves to this day (i.e. one lunar day equals one lunar year). This is possibly what is meant by the timeless era before time: with the spatial movements of each planet relative to the others being cancelled out, time was virtually measureless. The beginning of time is associated with Saturn, when Cronus (meaning Crow) became known as Chronos (time). (This by the way is not a mistake or a case of popular etymology but a pun, similar to Petrus the rock on which the Church was built.)"

[araucaria]

Posted by Robert Baird (here)
by your command.

Your tone is insufferable. I'm outta here.

You may have seen Hancock in the thread but not in my posts. It is not my thread.

Please don't quote people back at them without saying why you don't like about what they are saying.

[Robert Baird]

It is the post you referred me to - that makes it your post. In the actual post from the thread I just quoted you with a theory beyond the pall of any other than Flat earth fiction. Yes, I certainly would not want to post in such a thread - the work of a real scholar like Robert Graves.

The reason I would not post to such a thread is due to people like you who say my attitude is insufferable because I correct their nonsense and provide evidence to the contrary. Which is also why I will probably have little to say on most threads here.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Robert Baird (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)

Posted by Robert Baird (here)
Sorry. I have far better info than Hancock the druggie and what is there. I will also give the actual process Graves recommended which they merely abuse.

You are mistaken: I never mention "Hancock the druggie". Take another look: my post is a sober examination of the sober work of David Talbott - not a mushroom in sight.

I looked and saw Hancock in the thread. Your thread did not address Graves, it mentions him as you said. I will look again - by your command.

[mod hat on]

Clarifying here definitively, if I may. Rather puzzled by the exchange, I went to check myself.

1. The thread — called David Talbott | The Electric Universe, The Saturn/Sun Swap, & The Reconstructing Of Mythology — was started by giovonni.
2. It was earthdreamer who mentioned Graham Hancock, in her one post here.
3. araucaria never mentioned Hancock at all.

All the above is pretty easy to see. Mistaken attributions are always likely to get people irritated and/or upset.

[Robert Baird]

Dear Bill

It was not the cause of the misinterpretation. =When I mentioned Graham it was just one cause of why I did not wish to post anything about Robert Graves to a thread which clearly has zero to do with him - even though some people will misinterpret and put words in his mouth about his methods on Symbolism and the use of science to verify the myths.

However, the point you make can be and usually is true. People run off making assumptions rather than doing research. That is not my thing!!!!!

Here we have something back on the point of this thread but also relating to what you say about misinterpretations.

A major part of our problem as a society and race, is the use of language designed for something we have addressed is not truthful, but is intended to manage people. That does not mean we could not come up with common agreement about words and have some words universally understood as indeterminate and requiring discourse before using them in a conversation. When I have tried to do this with the word spirituality I often get people responding as if I meant spiritism or religion but then the discussion ends up with some really foul outcomes in many cases.

It can be fun doing the pin the tail on the donkey routine with Scientologists and those who already KNOW the meaning and truth.

It is a horror show for all life on Earth because we have words that sound like one thing and mean the opposite to others. For example "Shalom" is thought to mean Peace and yet it actually means 'Peace through Victory'. Clearly victory and honor or other concepts have meanings different than Peace or understanding. Same thing with the Biblical phrase "The Meek shall inherit the Earth."

A person like Robert Graves will understand it, but how many will? "Mensch" is the original word used in the Bible text. It can appear to mean 'meek' at some level - but it means loyal and strong, a supporter of Right and honor (See the Pharisaic Golden Rule of Gamaliel). Yes, it is great when a Mensch is meek and confident in the faith they have in their self.

Here is what Wikipedia says about spirituality, they are right but wrong.

Spirituality may refer to almost any kind of meaningful activity,[1][note 1] personal growth, or blissful experience.[3]

Traditionally, spirituality refers to a process of re-formation of the personality[4] but there is no precise definition of spirituality.[5][6][note 2]

It might mean a re-forming of the self towards the SELF - is that what they mean? Personal growth is far too encompassing and in this society it is often associated with the exact opposite of spirituality. You might not know that if you go to Church and hear about Prayer leading to wealth and other things entirely selfish.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Robert Baird (here)
The reason I would not post to such a thread is due to people like you who say my attitude is insufferable because I correct their nonsense and provide evidence to the contrary. Which is also why I will probably have little to say on most threads here.

So if the general attitude of various members and moderators of this forum is that the attitude you are displaying on this forum is insufferable, does this mean that you would not post on this forum? (Just checking ...) That could be arranged .

[samildamach]

The victor writes the history .its as true now as its ever been.peoples have been handing down fables by word of mouth for generations cleverly disguising truths of the own history within.a lifetime of studying would only scratch the surface to this vast pool of knowledge.

[norman]

If you can find a remaining member of the Weedon family, you may get to find out a lot about what RG really thought. If I'm not mistaken, it's the same Robert Graves who ended his days on a Mediterranean Island with only his closest friends around him.

I've heard stories, from the Weedon family, about that man and his unpublished views. Not a too dissimilar tale from that of Eric Blair/Orwell.

From my own personal point of view, I think I'd have found the stuff he didn't ( dare?) write about more interesting than the stuff he did write about.

[araucaria]

Posted by Robert Baird (here)
It is the post you referred me to - that makes it your post. In the actual post from the thread I just quoted you with a theory beyond the pall of any other than Flat earth fiction. Yes, I certainly would not want to post in such a thread - the work of a real scholar like Robert Graves.

The reason I would not post to such a thread is due to people like you who say my attitude is insufferable because I correct their nonsense and provide evidence to the contrary. Which is also why I will probably have little to say on most threads here.

Let’s try and get something substantive out of this non-debate. The term nonsense, if itis to be applicable to anything, it might be to an opinion dismissing a forty-page essay outright without even reading it, and worse than that, hallucinating a non-existent reference to Graham Hancock. However, it is far too crude a tool for my liking. Your OP provides a link to an article which I have read, “Poetic Mythography” by Michael Pharand, which appears to be rather more nuanced. It contains enough negative criticism to sink a battleship, but it doesn’t sink Robert Graves and is actually published in Gravesiana, The Journal of the Robert Graves Society, in the “Critical Studies” section. In other words, Graves spouts a lot of “nonsense” that is not nonsense at all; it is something much more interesting than that, otherwise the sensible position would be to leave him alone altogether.

That is what you have done with my work, which is so “beyond the pall” (sic) that you didn’t read very far at all. Let me tell you why Robert Graves is interesting, but only as far as he goes. His reading of Greek myth explains it in terms of the workings and evolution of Greek society, which makes a great deal of sense. But it fails utterly to explain the celestial factor, the planetary connection: why the gods give their names to the planets, why the planets are in a real sense gods; and beyond that, why the heavens are the domain of the gods, all the way down to Heaven being the place where Christians meet their singular God. Why that should make sense to many still in the 21st century while being utter nonsense to many others is something worth trying to understand. David Talbott’s theory provides a framework for explaining all that in some detail, and a whole lot more besides. The planetary configuration he describes would inevitably be hardwired into the Earth and its inhabitants. A living creature such as a scallop has this amazing shell; whatever for? Now we have a highly plausible explanation. I even suggest why the continental landmasses are the shapes they are and why they are moving. The human mind in general and Greek society in particular are only a part of that, but they fit into this bigger picture as well. In other words, a balanced critical approach to Robert Graves gains hugely greater mileage from his material than an all-or-nothing stance whereby he is “correct” (you say, but haven’t actually shown anything yet), and others are wrong.

Another application of the nonsense notion might be to alienate as immediately and as dismissively as you are doing those very people who have actually studied a long and difficult book like The White Goddess. Why would you do that? It cannot be in the spirit of open-minded discussion and helpfully friendly exchange that is the Avalon trademark. If that is nonetheless your intention, then you’d better get your act together, or you might find yourself literally “beyond the pall”. An apology might be a good start, but I wouldn’t insist on it.

[Citizen No2]

How the hell are we ever going to advance with ego in the way?


Regards.

[Robert Baird]

Sorry

As Bill referenced the Hancock stuff is in the thread and I quoted your Talbott guy who is a flake and your forty pages are garbage. Talbott is a Velikovskian rip off from way back. You are not capable of insight or reason. You invade my thread and insist you have something valid to say - do it in your own thread.

Dear Citizen

Ego stops reason and the NEED to BELIEVE stops growth. There is no chance humanity will grow without the implant technology (wireless by 2020) it would appear. Such growth towards control has been the long term goal of religions and social engineers - Reading the confessions of same in The End of History and the Last Man should be required reading before leaving grade 8.

[Robert Baird]

Posted by norman (here)
If you can find a remaining member of the Weedon family, you may get to find out a lot about what RG really thought. If I'm not mistaken, it's the same Robert Graves who ended his days on a Mediterranean Island with only his closest friends around him.

I've heard stories, from the Weedon family, about that man and his unpublished views. Not a too dissimilar tale from that of Eric Blair/Orwell.

From my own personal point of view, I think I'd have found the stuff he didn't ( dare?) write about more interesting than the stuff he did write about.

I suspect you are correct - Orwell was a top level Mason and he actually THOUGHT - investigated and learned. A rare thing - but very much like Graves. Then there are those who hallucinate and see Gods rather than do the research to actually grasp what mind control they have been subjected to.

[Robert Baird]

Posted by Paul (here)

Posted by Robert Baird (here)
The reason I would not post to such a thread is due to people like you who say my attitude is insufferable because I correct their nonsense and provide evidence to the contrary. Which is also why I will probably have little to say on most threads here.

So if the general attitude of various members and moderators of this forum is that the attitude you are displaying on this forum is insufferable, does this mean that you would not post on this forum? (Just checking ...) That could be arranged .

Yes, indeed I have no reason to cast pearls or participate in promoting scams and mind control. I can develop the facts for all manner of things I see here which in fact are doing just that. So whenever the people who NEED myths decide to gather their collective ignorance I will be banned - I know.

[Robert Baird]

http://forum.world-mysteries.com/thr...f-Christianity

Graves gives us a great deal to fully grasp when he asserts there were no Gods before Empire in Greece. Think long and hard as you read this. It also tells us how women became deprecated at the same time Ariadne was made the last Queen of the all-important Crete center of culture. You might ask (if you know Crete was gay or be-sexual) why this was taking place as Temples were built and captives or commoners were used as 'Devoted Ones'. Cahill's Gifts of the Jews tells us their 'devotion' included being harvested for ritualistic and divinatory purposes after they were used and abused by the Temple Priests. Because the Amazons are true history according to archaeology I say there was a major change which took place around the 13th Century BPE and sexuality of some southern people seems involved. I can think of many cultural initiative in Babylon and Egypt which accounts for these changes - including the cult of the dead enhanced by drugs we know came from Peru which were found in Mummies. The Amazons had to take their families and friends to escape these patristic theoganies or kingly quests, and move north to places like Scythia where we have kurgans showing men were subservient to them to at least some degree. Graves tells us about the acceptance of coitus as the cause of children - could this have been also part of the mix, and women were thus made into baby-factories in the Abrahamic era? Was the Trojan War shortly after this a part of the ethos?

"INTRODUCTION

THE mediaeval emissaries of the Catholic Church brought to Great Britain, in addition to the whole corpus of sacred history, a Continental university system based on the Greek and Latin Classics. Such native legends as those of King Arthur, Guy of Warwick, Robin Hood, the Blue Hag of Leicester, and King Lear were considered suitable enough for the masses, yet by early Tudor times the clergy and the educated classes were referring far more frequently to the myths in Ovid, Virgil, and the grammar school summaries of the Trojan War.

Though official English literature of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries cannot, therefore, be properly understood except in the light of Greek mythology, the Classics have lately lost so much ground in schools and universities that an educated person is now no longer expected to know (for instance) who Deucalion, Pelops, Daedalus, Oenone, Laocoön, or Antigone may have been. Current knowledge of these myths is mostly derived from such fairy-story versions as Kingsley’s Heroes and Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales; and at first sight this does not seem to matter much, because for the last two thousand years it has been the fashion to dismiss the myths as bizarre and chimerical fancies, a charming legacy from the childhood of the Greek intelligence, which the Church naturally depreciates in order to emphasize the greater spiritual importance of the Bible. Yet it is difficult to overestimate their value in the study of early European history, religion, and sociology.

‘Chimerical’ is an adjectival form of the noun chimaera, meaning ‘she-goat’. Four thousand years ago the Chimaera can have seemed no more bizarre than any religious, heraldic, or commercial emblem does today. She was a formal composite beast with (as Homer records) a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. A Chimaera has been found carved on the walls of a Hittite temple at Carchemish and, like such other composite beasts as the Sphinx and the Unicorn, will originally have been a calendar symbol: each component represented a season of the Queen of Heaven’s sacred year—as, according to Diodorus Siculus, the three strings of her tortoise-shell lyre also did. This ancient three-season year is discussed by Nilsson in his Primitive Time Reckoning (1910). Only a small part, however, of the huge, disorganized corpus of Greek mythology, which contains importations from Crete, Egypt, Palestine, Phrygia, Babylonia, and elsewhere, can properly be classified with the Chimaera as true myth. True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially on temple walls, vases, seals, bowls, mirrors, chests, shields, tapestries, and the like. The Chimaera and her fellow calendar-beasts must have figured prominently in these dramatic performances which, with their iconographic and oral records, became the prime authority, or charter, for the religious institutions of each tribe, clan, or city.

Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, or kingdom—queendoms having, it seems, preceded kingdoms throughout the Greek-speaking area—and amendments to these, introduced as circumstances required. Lucian’s essay On the Dance lists an imposing number of ritual mimes still performed in the second century AD; and Pausanias’s description of the temple paintings at Delphi and the carvings on Cypselus’s Chest, suggests that an immense amount of miscellaneous mythological records, of which no trace now remains, survived into the same period. True myth must be distinguished from:

(1) Philosophical allegory, as in Hesiod’s cosmogony.
(2) ‘Aetiological’ explanation of myths no longer understood, as in Admetus’s yoking of a lion and a boar to his chariot.
(3) Satire or parody, as in Silenus’s account of Atlantis.
(4) Sentimental fable, as in the story of Narcissus and Echo.
(5) Embroidered history, as in Arion’s adventure with the dolphin.
(6) Minstrel romance, as in the story of Cephalus and Procris.
(7) Political propaganda, as in Theseus’s Federalization of Attica.
(8) Moral legend, as in the story of Eriphyle’s necklace.
(9) Humorous anecdote, as in the bedroom farce of Heracles, Omphale, and Pan.
(10) Theatrical melodrama, as in the story of Thestor and his daughters.
(11) Heroic saga, as in the main argument of the Iliad.
(12) Realistic fiction, as in Odysseus’s visit to the Phaeacians.

Yet genuine mythic elements may be found embedded in the least promising stories, and the fullest or most illuminating version of a given myth is seldom supplied by any one author; nor, when searching for its original form, should one assume that the more ancient the written source, the more authoritative it must be. Often, for instance, the playful Alexandrian Callimachus, or the frivolous Augustan Ovid, or the dry-as-dust late-Byzantine Tzetzes, gives an obviously earlier version of a myth than do Hesiod or the Greek tragedians; and the thirteenth-century Excidium Troiae is, in parts, mythically sounder than the Iliad. When making prose sense of a mythological or pseudomythological narrative, one should always pay careful attention to the names, tribal origin, and fates of the characters concerned; and then restore it to the form of dramatic ritual, whereupon its incidental elements will sometimes suggest an analogy with another myth which has been given a wholly different anecdotal twist, and shed light on both.


http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content...mmata.com_.pdf

link active in above thread or posts herein.