Young Readers' Zeus Who

GREEK GODS AND HEROES (160 pp.) --Robert Graves--Doubleday ($2.95).

Keeping the Greek myths untangled is something the Greeks themselves were never very good at. One reason is that, for religious, political and artistic reasons, the myths were always being changed. Another is that the Olympians, the lesser gods and the mortal heroes were virtually omnigamous; the nymphs were, if not nymphomaniacal. at least nymphoeccentric. But precisely because the myths are complex, they are best learned by the young, and it is hard to imagine a better --or more decorous--introduction than Robert Graves's new book.

The dust jacket of Greek Gods and Heroes suggests that the work is for teenagers, and a child of 14 or 15 could read the book without loss of dignity. Graves has too much sense to condescend. But the book, which is pleasantly illustrated by Dimitris Davis, is simply enough written to be read by an intelligent parent to an intelligent eight-year-old. Graves lets his readers see the Olympians as the more sophisticated Greeks saw them--beings more than mortal, but no more than human. He explains, for instance, that the sea god Poseidon "hated to be less important than his younger brother (Zeus), and always went about scowling. When he felt even crosser than usual, he would drive away in his chariot to a palace under the waves, near the island of Euboea, and there let his rage cool. As his emblem Poseidon chose the horse, an animal which he pretended to have created. Large waves are still called 'white horses' because of this."

Graves's short sheaf of stories tells the principal doings of the Olympians from the time Zeus seized power from Cronus (Saturn), son of Mother Earth, to the end of their reign. The author sets this date neatly at A.D. 363, the year in which the last Roman emperor to believe in the Olympians, Julian of Constantinople, was killed in battle. There are a lot of gods to discuss, and the result is that such notable heroes as Achilles and Ajax are ignored, and Odysseus, Paris and Helen are merely mentioned.

A good deal of Attic bawdry is left out. Graves mentions that Queen Omphale once bought Heracles as a slave, but does not add that Heracles was the Queen's lover and that the two of them deceived the lustful Pan by dressing Heracles in one of Omphale's gowns and decoying the god into a darkened grotto. Such goatly matters as remain are dealt with by an adroit blending of taste and truth, e.g., "Demeter had been rather wild as a girl, and nobody could remember the name of Persephone's father; probably some country god married for a drunken joke at a harvest festival." For young classicists who outgrow such simplicity, the author forehandedly has prepared two thoroughly adult volumes: his unsurpassed dictionary, The Greek Myths, and his fascinating and much argued-over book of theorizing about the origins of myths, The White Goddess.

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