Legends and myths of ancient Greece. Kun N.A.

Nikolai Albertovich Kun (1877-1940)-an outstanding historian and teacher who devoted his life to the study of antiquity.

Greek culture is the basis of modern civilization. According to Kun himself, she "had an immeasurable influence on the culture of Europe." Without knowing ancient Greek myths, it is impossible to understand many literary, art, musical works in which the images of Orpheus and Eurydice, Narcissus and Odyssey were embodied. Our speech is filled with expressions that go to ancient Greece by the roots of the Avgian stables, the Sisyphus Labor, the Achilles heel, the apple of the discord, “Get in the summer”, “Pandora's box”. And in the sky we are looking for the constellations Andromeda and Perseus, Hydra and Centaurus, Pegasus and Lira.

In 1914, the Kun’s book “What the Greeks and the Romans told about their gods and heroes” was published. In the middle of the 20th century, the text was somewhat reduced and released under a different name - "Legends and myths of ancient Greece." And it was this book that became one of the most famous popular-popular expositions of Greek mythology, withstood hundreds of reprints, including foreign languages, and inspired more than one generation of scientists (for example, M. L. Gasparova).

An exciting retelling of ancient primary sources - the poems of Hesiod, Ovid, Homer - makes the distant world of the ancient Greeks closer and more understandable. And even if there are no winged horses, evil Gorgon and immortal gods on Olympus, but in the Greek myths the life of a person that it has always been, and that inexplicable and unknown, is reflected, which we strive for and where we want to return.