Discover what Hercules did to deserve his twelve labors, how Narcissus found the love of his life, and why Odysseus took ten years to travel 500 miles—not to mention the origins of the Oedipus complex—in this introduction to 50 mythological topics. In fact, so many of our stories and ideas trace their origins back to Greek and Roman myth that these explanations can provide a key to better understanding our culture. Each topic is presented with a full page color illustration and a 300-word brief (readable in half a minute), along with a one-line summation, names of key writers and characters, and suggestions for further study.