The pantheon

Gods, goddesses, heroes and monsters, from A handy dictionary of mythology — a public-domain dictionary this library publishes in full. Every line below is that book's, with the page it stands on.

925headwords
653with a definition
272cross-references
487mythology volumes behind it

What the labels mean, and what they do not

A tradition is shown only where the entry names one itself — where the book says "the Grecian Venus" or "In Scandinavian mythology". It is never inferred from a name. That is why 508 of the 653 definitions carry no label at all: the book simply does not say, and guessing would be inventing.

The dictionary indexes subjects as well as gods — MARRIAGE, MANURING LAND, MARCH 24 — and sends the reader elsewhere for them. Those cross-references are kept and marked rather than filtered out, because a reader who looks up MARRIAGE should be sent where the book sends them.

One sentence is not the whole story

A dictionary entry is a starting point and this one is frequently terse: "Aphrodite. A Greek name of Venus." Behind it stand 487 volumes of folklore and mythology on these shelves — Frazer, Budge, Bulfinch and several hundred others — which is why every definition carries a link that searches the whole library for that name. The dictionary tells you who a figure is; the shelves show you the arguments about them.

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