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Read the iliad, it's pretty much the earliest work that contains a miriad of information on the topic. Draw your own conclusions, they will probably make more sense to you than some stuffed shirt scholars trickled down list of information, plus, you'll retain this knowledge moreso than if you just read some kind of cliff notes on the greek gods.
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This is just stupid. The Iliad is a bad introduction to Greek mythology. Period. If he reads the Iliad without any background, he's going to think there's a guy named Atrides running around. He won't know anything about the Judgment of Paris or the abduction of Helen because, guess what, those aren't in the Iliad. He'll have no idea why Hera hates Troy, why Aphrodite likes it, or why Ares sides with Aphrodite.
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im pretty sure you can figure all that out contextually though. did you read the prose/abridged version or something?
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It's extremely difficult to figure this out contextually if you have no background in Greek mythology. It might be possible to start with the Iliad/Odyssey if you were reading along with an English commentary like
A Companion to the Iliad, something that's useful for readers with any level of familiarity. But why would you want to start from scratch like that when there are so many simple and unbiased sources of pertinent background information?
The purpose of the two epics are not be introductions to mythology, and just because by the vagaries of time they happen to be the "first" examples we have doesn't make them the logical start. Furthermore, the large majority of those works have nothing to do with mythology. If you really want to go along those lines, why not just start with Hesiod's Theogony - which is not only contemporaneous with at least the Odyssey (slightly younger than the Iliad), but also starts at the "beginning" of Greek mythology.
With all that being said it is still worthwhile to just dive right into the Iliad/Odyssey; they're incredible works of art and arguably the foundation of the entire western literary tradition. Just don't expect an easy introduction to mythology and be prepared for a lot of hard work.