Текст книги "The Library of Greek Mythology"

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

THE LIBRARY OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY

APOLLODORUS is the name traditionally ascribed to the author of the Library. Although he was formerly identified as Apollodorus of Athens, a distinguished Alexandrian scholar of the second century BC, it is now recognized that the Librarymust have been written at a later period, probably the first or second century AD. It is not known whether Apollodorus was the author’s true name; in any case we know nothing about him. Essentially an editor rather than an original writer, he compiled this brief but comprehensive guide to Greek mythology by selecting and summarizing material from the works of earlier writers. Based in the main on good early sources, it is an invaluable reference work.

ROBIN HARD studied Greek at Aberystwyth and Reading, writing a doctoral thesis on Plato’s Symposium, and is currently combining writing and translating with the part-time teaching of ancient philosophy and Greek.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Note on the Text and Translation

Select Bibliography

THE LIBRARY OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Contents

Genealogical Tables

Map

The Library

Appendix: Some Interpolations and an Unreliable Passage from the Epitome

Explanatory Notes

The Twelve Gods

References to Animals and Transformations

Index of Names

INTRODUCTION

THE Libraryof Apollodorus is a concise but comprehensive guide to Greek mythology. It covers the full span of mythical history from the origins of the universe and the gods to the Trojan War and its aftermath, and between these limits it tells the story of each of the great families of heroic mythology, and of the various adventures associated with the main heroes and heroines.

This is the only work of its kind to survive from classical antiquity. Although the Greeks developed an extensive and varied mythographical literature in Hellenistic and Roman times, the few handbooks which have been preserved are mostly specialist anthologies, recording myths of the constellations, for instance, or tales of transformation, and many of the stories contained in them are relatively obscure and of late origin. The author of the Library, by contrast, wanted to provide his readers with a general handbook which would offer them an account of the most important myths as related in the earlier tradition (with only the occasional late or recondite variant). Otherwise we possess only two works which are at all comparable. There is a Latin compendium, the Myths (Fabulae)of Hyginus, probably dating to the second century AD, which was based on a Greek predecessor, but conveys its contents in a very imperfect form; it presents summaries of myths and various catalogues in many separate chapters. Although it is a valuable source for myths or versions of myths which would otherwise have been lost, it is disorganized and sadly unreliable, and has to be approached with caution. Secondly, when Diodorus of Sicily was compiling his historical compendium in the first century BC, he departed from the more austere practices of many fellow historians and included a section on the mythical history (or pre-history) of Greece. Although it contains a useful biography of Heracles and other interesting material, Diodorus’ account of Greek myth is not nearly as complete as that in the Library, and much of it is based on inferior Hellenistic sources.

It may seem surprising that this unpretentious handbook should have survived when the most important works of the ancient mythographers have been lost. Fortune, of course, plays a large part in such matters; all surviving manuscripts of the Libraryderive from a single archetype. But if it is unpretentious to a fault, the Libraryencloses a mass of reliable information in a short space, and it is clear that the scholars of later antiquity found it exceptionally useful for that reason. It is often cited in the scholia (explanatory comments on the works of the classical authors) and similar sources, and in the twelfth century the Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes made extensive use of it. This suggests that the preservation of this particular handbook was not simply a freak of fortune, and that the writers of this later period thought that it had its virtues, at least from a purely practical point of view. As it happens, we know directly what one of the finest Byzantine scholars thought of the Library, for Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, registered his opinion in a brief review. While travelling abroad on a diplomatic mission, Photius kept a record of his reading for his brother, and in this record, after summarizing the contents of another mythical work, he noted:

In the same volume, I read a small work by the scholar Apollodorus; it is entitled the Library. It contained the most ancient stories of the Greeks: all that time has given them to believe about the gods and heroes, and about the rivers, and lands, and peoples, and towns, and thence everything that goes back to the earliest times. And it goes down as far as the Trojan War, and covers the battles that certain of the heroes fought with one another, and their exploits, and certain of the wanderings of the heroes returning from Troy, notably those of Odysseus, with whom this history of ancient times concludes. All in all, it is a general summary which is by no means lacking in usefulness to those who attach some value to the memory of the ancient stories.

If the Libraryhad been lost, like so many of the works reviewed by Photius, we might feel some regret on reading these words; as it is, we can refer to the original and judge for ourselves whether for the modern reader too it fulfils the claims that Photius makes for it. These claims are by no means extravagant. It is indeed a useful synopsis of the mythical history of Greece; and, it may be added, it is based for the most part on good early sources, and the author was content to summarize them as he found them without imposing his own interpretations, or attempting to reconcile conflicting traditions, or making any alterations for literary effect.

In the manuscripts, this book is entitled the Library of Apollodorus of Athens, the Grammarian. ‘Library’ was a title applied to compendia; for a compendium, which draws together material from a multitude of other books, could be regarded as a library in itself. Diodorus called his much larger historical compendium the Historical Libraryfor the same reason. In Photius’ copy of the Library, a little poem was placed at the beginning in which the book itself addresses the reader and expresses this thought directly. It ran like this:

Now, due to my erudition, you can draw upon the coils of time, and know the stories of old. Look no longer in the pages of Homer, or in elegy, or the tragic Muse, or lyric verse, and seek no longer in the sonorous verses of the cyclic poets; no, look in me, and you will discover all that the world contains.

Whether this was really written by the original author is impossible to say, but none the less it seems appropriate and suggestive, even if the mixed metaphor at the beginning is not altogether fortunate. Time is pictured as a serpent, and the succession of ages as the serpent’s coils which the learning embodied in the book will enable its readers to ‘draw on’ (as though drawing water from a well). For rather than search through a whole library of ancient poems, they have merely to look within this ‘Library’ to discover all that they could wish to know about the myths and legends of early Greece. And there is some truth in this, even if we would be happy to have the same opportunity as its author to consult all these early poetic sources in the original, and there is a certain philistinism in the suggestion that a work of these dimensions could enclose ‘the world’.

The attribution of the work to Apollodorus of Athens, a distinguished scholar (or ‘grammarian’) who worked at Alexandria in the second century BC, is more problematic. Although Apollodorus had wide interests and also wrote on literary, historical, geographical, and other matters, he appears to have been most highly regarded in antiquity for a treatise on Greek religion entitled On the Gods, which would have contained extensive discussion of divine mythology. Thus the Library, which is largely devoted to heroic mythology, could be seen as a complementary work; and if the attribution were correct, we would possess a book by one of the most learned authors of the greatest age of Greek scholarship. The reference to ‘the scholar (grammarian) Apollodorus’ in Photius’ review shows that he too considered this Apollodorus to be the author, and the attribution was accepted by modern scholars until quite recently, although it was increasingly recognized that it raises serious problems. Not until 1873, when the publication of a thesis on the Libraryby Carl Robert forced a reconsideration of the matter, were these problems fully confronted.

There is one very definite indication that the Librarycould not have been written during the lifetime of Apollodorus of Athens: it contains a reference to the Chroniclesof Castor of Rhodes (p. 59). This was a study in comparative chronology which is said to have contained tables which extended to 61 BC; and the date of its author is confirmed by a report that he married the daughter of Deiotarus, an eastern king who was defended by Cicero in 45 BC. Unless the reference to Castor was added to the text at a later period (and there is no reason to suppose that it was) the Librarymust have been written a century or more after the death of Apollodorus of Athens.

In view of the difficulty raised by this citation, we must ask whether the Libraryis in any case a book which we could reasonably accept as the work of a scholar of Apollodorus’ stature and period. In truth, it is not at all what we would expect from a learned Alexandrian scholar. Rather than an original synthesis achieved through the author’s own research and reflection (as was surely the case with Apollodorus’ treatise on the gods), we have an elementary handbook which the author compiled by consulting and epitomizing standard sources. And the author made no attempt to interpret the myths and explain their meaning in rationalistic terms, as was characteristic of Hellenistic mythographers. In relation to the gods, for instance, many writers of this period would explain that they represented forces of nature, or that they had originally been human beings who later had divine status attributed to them. Although it is explicitly attested that Apollodorus of Athens adopted such an approach, there is not a trace of it in the Library;nor was the author disconcerted by the fabulous element in many heroic myths (unlike Diodorus, who often provides rationalized versions, following Hellenistic sources). He simply accepts the myths as enjoyable stories which formed an important part of the Greek heritage, a characteristic attitude in later times. Furthermore, there are features in the author’s use of language which suggest that the book was written at a later period than the second century BC. In short, there is every indication that the attribution to Apollodorus of Athens can be confidently rejected.

Apollodorus was a fairly common name, and it is conceivable that the Librarywas compiled by an author of that name who was later confused with the famous scholar of an earlier period; but it is more likely that our book is sailing under a flag of convenience. Perhaps, as Robert suggested, the author was too timid to launch the work under his own name, or perhaps later copyists found it to their advantage to pass it off as the work of a distinguished scholar. In any case, we know nothing about the author. Accordingly, the author is sometimes referred to as the pseudo-Apollodorus, particularly in the continental literature; but it is more convenient to use the traditional name, with due reservation.

Accepting that the traditional attribution reveals nothing about the author, can we infer anything about his time of birth, or his origins, or perhaps even his character from the book itself? It must be stated from the outset that a compilation of this kind is of its very nature unlikely to reveal much about its author, and in the present instance some features which might be of help in that regard are lacking. There is no dedication, and there are no incidental allusions to things that the author has seen or experienced. Nor does he make any reference to recent or contemporary events; indeed, the only historical event mentioned by him is the Phocian War (p. 163), which took place in the fourth century BC. It is possible, however, to draw some conclusions about when the Librarymay have been written, and perhaps about the origins of its author.

The reference to Castor (the latest author to be cited) shows that the Librarycould not have been written before the first half of the first century BC. To establish a later limit with equal certainty, it would be necessary to find a reference to the Libraryin another work which could be dated to a sufficiently early period. In practice, however, this approach is unproductive. Although, as was remarked above, the Libraryis cited quite frequently in the scholia and elsewhere, all the relevant sources are either hard to date or were certainly written at a much later period. We must therefore rely on internal criteria. Let us consider first the author’s use of language, which might be expected to provide the most definite indications.

Although the author’s Greek is generally unexceptional, there are features in his vocabulary and idiom which are more characteristic of later Greek. He occasionally uses words in senses which are not attested before the early Christian era, and sometimes the verb forms and minor points of grammar and expression are suggestive of later usage (even if they are not entirely unparalleled in the works of earlier authors). On these stylistic grounds, it is commonly agreed that the Librarywould be best dated to the first or second century AD (although some would place it somewhat earlier or later); and the author’s general attitude and approach is consistent with such a dating. It has been remarked that in contrast to many Hellenistic writers, he is uncritical in his approach to myth. This is not because he accepts all the stories as being literally true, but because his approach is that of an antiquarian, so the question of truth or falsity is no longer relevant. This antiquarian approach, accompanied by a taste for the archaic and picturesque, and the desire to take stock of aspects of the Greek heritage, were characteristic of authors writing under the early empire. One has only to think of Plutarch or Pausanias. In preparing this summa of Greek myth, the present author was writing on a lesser scale in a work that belonged to an inferior genre; but the literature of epitomes and popular handbooks was itself characteristic of the age, and in its way, witnessed to the same tendencies.

To pass from the question of chronology to that of the author’s origins, we must consider whether he shows any special interest in (or disregard for) particular areas of the Mediterranean world. Here a measure of caution is required; in a handbook devoted to the main early myths, there will inevitably be an emphasis on stories associated with the heartland of Greece and the Aegean. None the less, many readers have felt that the author is curiously neglectful of myths relating to Italy and the west; and some have detected a bias to the east. Apollodorus’ account of the life history of Heracles is broadly similar to that in the historical compilation by Diodorus of Sicily. Yet his coverage of Heracles’ adventures in Italy when returning with the cattle of Geryoneus (pp. 80–1) is very scanty when compared with the full account in Diodorus; and he makes no allusion to the tradition that Heracles was supposed to have visited the site of Rome. Indeed, he never mentions Rome or the Romans, and disregards the aspects of Greek mythology which were of most concern to them. Thus he tells how Aeneas escaped from the sack of Troy carrying his father on his back, but we would never gather from the Librarythat there were traditions connecting him with Latium and the origins of Rome. Although a similar attitude can be detected in other authors at that time and the matter raises questions of wider interest, with regard to the specific question of the author’s origins we can surely conclude that it is most unlikely that he came from Italy or the west. Some have tried to draw more positive conclusions, but it is doubtful whether there is sufficient evidence to support them. Robert suggested that the author was an Athenian (like the Hellenistic Apollodorus); but the coverage of Athenian mythology, although quite extensive, is not disproportionate in terms of the place that Athenian myth occupied in the general tradition, and it can hardly be accepted that references to topographical features like the ‘sea’ of Erechtheus (p. 130) are explicable only on grounds of local knowledge. Again, it could be argued that Apollodorus shows a special interest in the east, and it is quite possible that he lived there, but we cannot say more than that.

There is no suggestion in Photius’ review that he regarded the Libraryas an introductory work for schoolchildren or the uneducated, and the citations in the scholia show that in late antiquity at least it was used by scholars as a reference work. We have no corresponding evidence of how it was viewed in earlier times, or whether it was widely used. It may be suspected, however, that readers of much education would have preferred more solid fare, and scholars at that period would surely have found little use for an elementary work of this kind when they could refer to more scholarly and comprehensive handbooks by the Hellenistic mythographers.

A modern reader leafing through the Libraryis likely to gain conflicting impressions about its general level and the kind of audience that the author would have had in mind when writing it. Unlike many of the mythographical works which survive from antiquity, this is not a specialist study, and the author is happy to recount the most familiar stories; and most of them are summarized quite briefly. If the Libraryis used merely as a mythological dictionary and consulted for the stories associated with the main heroes, the reader may feel that it is very elementary, containing little that any moderately educated ancient reader would not have known already. Thus the story of Perseus is summarized in three pages, that of Oedipus in about a page, and the plot of Sophocles’ Antigonein two sentences. Many have concluded that the Librarywas written as a primer for schoolchildren, or perhaps for semi-Hellenized adults in the eastern reaches of the Roman empire; such a view has been held by scholars whose opinion is worthy of respect (and some have advanced specific arguments in its favour, suggesting, for instance, that certain stories have been bowdlerized for a youthful audience).

On the other hand, if the Libraryis read consecutively, the reader may feel that it is not as elementary as all that. Within its brief confines it contains a remarkable quantity of information, and much that a reader with a fairly comprehensive knowledge of Greek mythology would not expect to hold in mind. Perhaps the work was intended not as a primer, but as an epitome of mythical history for a general if unsophisticated readership. As we have already observed, there was an extensive literature of this kind in the Roman period, and the part that popular handbooks and epitomes played in transmitting many aspects of Hellenic culture to a broad public should not be underestimated. For their knowledge of philosophy, for instance, many Greeks of that period would have relied on handbooks summarizing the opinions of the different schools on each of the standard questions. Works of such a kind may have been aimed at a relatively uncultivated audience, but they were not written specifically for use in schools.

Taken as a whole, the Libraryamounts to far more than an anthology of mythical tales. For it offers a full account of each of the main cycles of myth, and thence a complete history of mythical Greece, organized on a genealogical basis, family by family; all the main stories are there, each situated in its proper place in the overall structure. From this perspective it could well be argued that the author wanted to provide the general public with a summa of Greek myth in epitome form; and that in a modest way, his aim was encyclopaedic. In a recent French edition of the Library, J.-C. Carrière has advanced some interesting arguments in favour of this view. Although this is ultimately a matter of judgement, and a full consideration of the question would require the examination of a number of different issues, I would like to consider a single aspect of the work which seems to favour such a view.

Even a casual reader of the Librarywill be struck by the profusion of names. The narrative may often be brief and bare, but the author was immensely thorough in recording the names of all the figures associated with the heroic families and the main episodes in heroic mythology. Most of these names appear in various catalogues, or in the genealogies which punctuate the histories of the great families of heroic mythology; let us first consider the catalogues, which serve less of a practical function than the genealogies.

In such a short work, the author devotes a surprising amount of space to these catalogues, which sometimes take up more than a page. Instead of merely reporting that the fifty daughters of Danaos married the fifty sons of Aigyptos and, with one exception, murdered them on their wedding night, Apollodorus lists all the brides and their husbands, and tells us who their mothers were (pp. 61–2). Only two of the Danaids are of any significance thereafter. Similarly, the fifty sons of Lycaon, who met a premature death, are listed by name, and all the suitors of Penelope (although there is no such list in the Odyssey, Apollodorus’ main source at this point), and the many children of Heracles by the fifty daughters of Thespios and other women. In certain cases such catalogues could be of practical interest even to those first approaching the study of Greek mythology, as with the catalogue of the Argonauts (pp. 49–50), or the catalogue of ships (pp. 148–9), which gives the names of the Greek leaders at Troy, and their origins and the relative strength of their contingents. But generally this is gratuitous information. Such catalogues were nevertheless valued in the Greek tradition, as in many other mythical traditions, as a matter of record, and it is understandable that our author should have wished to include the more important catalogues when summarizing the tradition. It may be doubted, however, that any author would wish to burden a digest for schoolchildren with catalogues listing over six hundred and fifty names (excluding patronymics).

The genealogies are equally comprehensive. The histories of the heroic families are interspersed with genealogies which list the full succession in each family, even if no significant stories are associated with the figures in a particular generation, and usually catalogue all the known children of each marriage, even if most are not mentioned again (and may be otherwise unknown). In this way, complete family trees are built up for each ruling line, partly as a matter of record (and here completeness can be seen as a virtue in itself, even if many of the names which appear are no more than names), and partly because these genealogies provide the main principle of organization in mythical history. In many mythical traditions, the myths tend to tell of events that happened ‘once upon a time’, in an indefinite past. This is rarely the case in Greek mythology, and heroic mythology in particular was ordered into a fairly coherent pseudo-history. This history was necessarily organized on a genealogical basis, because the succession of generations in the families ruling in each centre provided the only possible chronological measure. Only when plausible family trees had been constructed was it possible to locate each figure or mythical episode at its appropriate position in time, and thus construct a history in which these could be viewed in due relation. Considering the multiplicity of the independent centres in Greece, and the mass of mutually inconsistent myths and legends which would have been transmitted in the oral tradition within these various centres, the economy of the pan-Hellenic genealogical system recorded in the Libraryis impressive. There are only six main families, and each family tree is sufficiently detailed to allow each figure or story to be assigned to its definite place. To gain a full understanding of this body of myth as a coherent history, it is necessary to master this system. The genealogies in the Librarygive its readers the resources to do so. In this respect, it cannot be said that the book merely records matter that a well-educated person would have known; for the genealogies are by no means simple, and would not easily be committed to memory.

To draw a tentative conclusion from these brief reflections, there are aspects of the work which suggest that the common (but by no means universal) view that the Librarywas written for use in schools is open to serious question. It could well have been written as a summary handbook for a more general audience (although schoolmasters may also have found it useful), and the author’s concern for completeness and inclusion of full genealogies ensures that it has genuine virtues both as a summary of the tradition and a reference work. The shortcomings of the work derive from its extreme brevity rather than any essential flaw in the compiler’s approach to his task.

The material in the Libraryis drawn from a wide variety of sources, whether original poetic sources, from early epic to the learned compositions of the early Hellenistic poets, or mythographical compilations which offered prose summaries of mythical tales. Since the author’s main purpose was to provide an account of the most important early myths, we might expect that he would have been interested primarily in earlier sources, in particular early epic and the works of the fifth-century chroniclers, who were amongst the earliest prose writers. If we consider which sources are cited most frequently by name, we find some confirmation of this. Of poets, Hesiod is named most often (eleven times) and then Homer (five times), and of prose writers, two less familiar figures, Pherecydes (thirteen times) and Acousilaos (ten times), who wrote on mythical history in the fifth century BC. This provides only an approximate measure because Apollodorus sometimes cites authorities for specific traditions or variants, but rarely indicates the main source that he was following in each stage in the work. The emphasis on early historical and epic sources is nevertheless significant.