Roman and European Mythologies

This volume begins with Roman myths and traces their influence in
early Christian and later European literature. Ninety-five entries
by leading scholars cover subjects such as sacrificial cults and rites
in pre-Roman Italy, Roman religion and its origins, the mythologies of
paganism, the survival of the ancient gods in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, gypsy myths and rituals, romanticism and myth in Blake,
Nerval, and Balzac, and myth in twentieth-century English literature.

Mythologies offers illuminating examples of the workings of
myth in the structure of societies past and present—how we create,
use, and are guided by systems of myth to answer fundamental questions
about ourselves and our world.

Many of the sections in Mythologies, originally published as a
two-volume cloth set, will soon be available in four paperback volumes
(two are announced here; two more are scheduled for 1993). These
volumes will reproduce the articles, introductory essays, and
illustrations as they appeared in the full Mythologies set.