For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch's Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods
and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity; Scandinavian, Celtic, and Oriental fables and myths; and the age of chivalry
have been known.
The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes; The Age of Chivalry,
which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of
Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages. For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sags
of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus
and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the
legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of
Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood.
The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature
of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated.... Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling
the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."