The Greek myths are so much part of our culture that we tend to forget how they entered it in the first place. Visual sources – vase paintings, engraved gems and sculpture in bronze and stone – often pre-date references to the myths in literature, or offer alternative, unfamiliar tellings. In some cases visual art provides our only evidence, as there is no surviving account in ancient Greek literature of such important stories as the Fall of Troy, or Theseus and the Minotaur.

T. H. Carpen...