ROMAN MYTHS

In this companion to Greek Myths (1993), McCaughrean and Clark present 15 tales, some expropriated from the ancient Greeks, others, such as the origin of the Lares, and the rivalry of Romulus and Remus, distinctively Roman. With her usual flair, McCaughrean writes of happy, doomed—or, in the case of Diana and Endymion, eerily dysfunctional—romances between gods and mortals. She relates the gruesome story of heedless woodcutter Erisychthon, cursed by Ceres with such an insatiable appetite that he ends up eating himself, and brings high drama to the devastating confrontation between arrogant King Tarquin and the Cumaean Sibyl. Sex and violence are toned down not only in the retellings (e.g., “The Theft of the Sabine Women”) but also the illustrations, for which Clark draws inspiration from sources as diverse as ancient mosaics and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to depict a set of distinctly un-Olympian immortals. A cast list of those immortals, and notes on the stories’ origins, close this eye-opening introduction to a mythology less politicized and derivative than generally billed. (introduction, notes) (Mythology. 9-13)