Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton
This week, Reading Rooms is doing something new. After beginning with speeches, we are turning to our first full book: Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.
These stories sit underneath most of Western literature and art, and a child who knows Prometheus, Icarus, and other characters will recognize references that appear for centuries afterward.
That is why Hamilton is such a strong first book for ninth grade. It provides your child a set of names and stories that will return later in Homer, Shakespeare, Renaissance painting, Romantic poetry, and the modern world.
Greek mythology was one of the first mythologies that gave the ancient world a human shape which still affects our thinking today. The gods are powerful, but they do not feel distant. They compete for honor, grow jealous, act unfairly, reward loyalty, and punish insult.
What This Teaches
Mythology can teach your child how to move from story to meaning.
A child can read the myth of Icarus and remember only the event: he flew too close to the sun. That is accurate, but very thin. A stronger reader will see what the story is warning against. Icarus is about unchecked ambition and ignorance of wisdom.
The skill of finding meaning matters far beyond this book. Your child will begin to recognize the same pattern in poems, paintings, novels, sculptures, and later works of literature. Mythology gives her a language for ideas she will meet over and over.
1. Begin with Hamilton’s central idea
Before your child begins, explain that Hamilton sees something unusual in Greek mythology. The Greek gods, unlike past mythology, behave in ways human beings recognize. They compete for honor, grow jealous, act unfairly, etc. Greek mythology brings humans to the center.
You can ask your chid: What does this myth show about human nature?
This question guides your child to understand why the gods matter. When a Greek god acts out of jealousy, pride, or desire, the myth is also explaining what the Greeks thought about human nature. You can understand their world from it.
2. Turn each myth into one clear sentence
After each myth, help your child find the hidden meaning in one clear sentence.
For Icarus, the sentence might be:
“Icarus is a story about the danger of foolish ambition.”
Through this, your child will learn to separate the event from the meaning. This skill will translate to a deeper understanding of other works that depend on myth as well.
For example, C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche. A student who only knows the plot of the original myth will understand part of the novel, but a student who understands what the myth means (love, beauty, jealousy, etc.) will glean from Lewis much more deeply.
The same is true in museums. Mythological paintings and sculptures often assume the viewer already knows the story. When your child understands the myth, she can read the artwork instead of merely looking at it.
3. Keep a myth chart
Since Hamilton's book is a history of mythology, it has many names, which can blur together quickly.
To avoid confusion with the many characters, have your child keep a chart with four columns:
Myth | What happens | What it reveals | Where it appears again
For example:
Icarus | flies too close to the sun | ignorant ambition hurts| paintings, poems, etc.
This chart keeps the book organized while also providing a simple way to study the myths when going through the book.
Final Question
What does a myth reveal about the people who told it?
We hope this helps you feel better equipped to teach Hamilton’s Mythology with clarity and confidence. If you would like more suggestions for guiding your child through classical literature, please feel free to reach out to us. We would be happy to help.
A newsletter can point out the main idea and give you a few strong ways to teach it. Reading Rooms was built to help your child reach every point: helping students study great works carefully, understand the major themes, and write stronger essays about them.
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