"Songs on Bronze is the first major retelling of Greek mythology in half a century: a set of dramatic versions of the great myths, which are recognized more than ever as stories without equal." "Most of us would like to know the Greek myths better than we do, and books like Seamus Heaney's Beowulf have demonstrated the power of classic texts to enchant and enthrall us. And yet the modern translations of the Greek myths have sought to instruct, to edify, or to impart a personal philosophy. Songs on Bronze is different. With this book, Nigel Spivey - a Cambridge classicist and a documentary host - gives us the Greek myths as the spellbinding stories they are. He tells of Demeter and Persephone, of Jason and the Argonauts, of the wrath of Achilles and the travels of Odysseus, of Oedipus's crime and Orpheus's excursion into the Underworld. In his hands, these stories are revealed anew as outsize tales of love and strife, of secret compacts and open rivalries, of lust and desire."--BOOK JACKET.