Hey everyone! I have to do an English Talk on Myths & Legends. Not modern day ones but like the Greek ones and stuff. It has to be around 5 miutes long and i have to know it pretty much off by heart. I was wondering if anyone knew of any decent ones to do and any links to sites for them. I was thinking of doing odysseus and doing a couple of his tales. Bear in mind for the links i dont want them to be to detailed as i have to know it off by heart. Thanks in advance, Ross

There you go...

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/myths/

http://freespace.virgin.net/athesa.mills/trojan1.htm

I think you'll find the story of Odysseus quite interesting...

I liked it anyway...

Good luck for the talk!

Moiraine Sedai

Another interesting one might be Achilles(the legendery greek warrior)...if interested, just run a search with google

thanks, il have a look.

My tip to you is that you get a good book on Greek mythology (or Sumerian, Norse, Chinese, whatever - Greek mythology isn't the only one available, of course) or find a good website on the subject. Any 4 year old can do a Google search or ask a librarian for a book so that shouldn't be a problem. ;)
Then, just read the story of Odysseus (if that's the one you'd like to do your talk about), read it a few times, and you'll get engrossed in it and there will be no need to force it into your head since it's always easy to re-tell a story by heart if you like it. That's how I got into Greek Mythology at age 11 - I too had to do a presentation in class on a topic of my choice, and ended up spending most of the day talking about all the myths and getting an A+ for the presentation. You just have to do it by yourself, not expect others to be able to do it for you.

This site might help you as well. It's kind of a dictionary in mythology and folklore: http://www.pantheon.org/mythica.html

Are you supposed to just retell one or two myths, or do something more substantial, like discuss what they're about or what significance they had? One interesting source of Greek myths are Ovid's Metamorphoses. They consist of short tales of transformations of mythological beings that might be suitable. There's also lots of stuff online about what they mean and what sort of impact they had when they were written. I also agree with Melusine that it would be a good idea, for whatever myths you decide on, to read the actual book because using the original source is always more impressive than someone else's take on the original, even for just an English presentation.

ooooh, could be pretty tricky to read The Odyssey a few times over in a short timespan [img]tongue.gif[/img] Took me long enough just to read it once [img]smile.gif[/img] But then, I'm not the brightest spark in the campfire ;)
Alot of the sites posted in this thread seem pretty decent. And Aelia Jusa's metamorphoses link looks especially good. You've really gotta use as many primary sources (ie: 'raw' information that hasn't been subject to other people's interpretation such as original texts and scripts, archaeological findings etc.) as you can when doing a report on Ancient Myth [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] Although if this is for high school then you could probably get away with alot of the secondary stuff that's about (ie: Books by modern writers and scholars 'about' ancient myths), and there is ALOT of it concerning ancient Greek myth.

thanks for all the links!!! I decided to do odysseus after all and am going to talk about the first 2 books of it.

Melusine, thats pretty young for doing a talk! Im glad i didnt have to do one when i was that age.