The Library of Greek Mythology

Square bracketsare used to indicate (1) additions to the original text, and (2) passages where the surviving manuscripts may misrepresent the original text.

1. Additions. Short gaps in the surviving text are usually filled by the insertion of an invented phrase (if the content of the missing passage can be inferred from the context, or from another source) or of a brief passage from another source which can be reasonably assumed to be related to, or dependent on, the original text of the Library. For the most part, the added passages correspond to those in Wagner’s and Frazer’s texts. Again, significant additions are explained in the notes.

Very occasionally, I have added a phrase for the sake of clarity. For minor additions—where it has been indicated, for instance, that a particular place is a mountain, or that a child is a son or daughter, although this is not stated explicitly in the original text—square brackets have not been used.

2. Dubious passages. These are of two main kinds. Something in the content of a passage may give reason to suspect that the text has been corrupted in the course of transmission and no longer corresponds with the original; or occasionally, for reasons of style or content, we may suspect that a passage is a later interpolation (typically a marginal note which has found its way into the main text). Significant instances are discussed in the notes.

NB. Some interpolations which interrupt the narrative (and also a dubious passage from the Epitome) have been segregated to the Appendix. A dagger(†) in the text indicates where each was inserted. Each of the passages is discussed in the accompanying comments; although not part of the original text, four of them contain interesting material.

Etymologies. The ancient mythographers liked to explain the names of mythical figures, or of places involved in mythical tales, by etymologies which were sometimes valid, but often fanciful or even absurd. Because these depend on allusions or wordplay in the original Greek which ca

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editions and Translations of theLibrary

There have been three English translations:

J. G. Frazer, Apollodorus, The Library, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library, London, 1921. (The extensive notes give full references to the ancient sources, and contain a mass of disordered information, mythographical and ethnographical; thirteen appendices on specific themes and episodes, citing parallels from the folklore of other cultures.)

K. Aldrich, Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, Lawrence, Kan., 1975. (With accompanying notes; the translation is more modern in idiom than Frazer’s.)

M. Simpson, Gods and Heroes of the Greeks: The Library of Apollodorus, Amherst, Mass., 1976. (The translation is not always reliable.)

A recent French translation should also be mentioned:

J.-C. Carrière and B. Massonie, La Bibliothèque d’Apollodore, Paris, 1991. (Excellent translation; the copious notes concentrate primarily on textual and linguistic matters, but many mythological points are also discussed; relevant passages from the scholia are often cited in translation.)

The best edition of the Greek text is:

R. Wagner (ed.), Apollodori Bibliotheca {Mythographi Graeci, vol. 1), Leipsig, 1926 (2nd edn. with supplementary apparatus).

On the text, two subsequent articles should also be consulted, along with Carrière’s notes:

A. Diller, ‘The Text History of the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus’, TAPA66 (1935), 296–313.

M. Papathomopoulos, ‘Pour une nouvelle édition de la Bibliothèque d’Apollodore’, Ellenica, 26 (1973), 18–40.

Secondary Literature

The scholarly literature on the Libraryis very scanty. The only full commentary was written in the eighteenth century:

J. G. Heyne, Apollodori Atheniensis Bibliothecae libri tres et fragmenta, 2 vols., Göttingen, 1803, 2nd edn. (Text, with accompanying notes in Latin; a landmark in the scholarly study of myth, and still of more than historical interest.)

As it happens, the most comprehensive modern study is in English:

M. Van der Valk, ‘On Apollodori Bibliotheca’, REG71 (1958), 100–68. (Primarily on the sources of the Library, arguing in particular that the author often referred directly to his main early sources, rather than relying on a Hellenistic handbook; much of the argument is technical, and citations in Greek are not translated.)

Otherwise the following should be mentioned:

C. Jourdain-A

C. Robert, De Apollodori Bibliotheca, Inaugural diss., University of Berlin, 1873. (The work that first established that the Librarywas not written in the second century BC by Apollodorus of Athens. Robert argued that it should be dated to the second century AD.)

C. Ruiz Montero, ‘La Morfologia de la “Biblioteca” de Apolodoro’, Faventia, 8 (1986), 29–40. (Not seen.)

E. Schwartz, ‘Apollodoros’, RE1, 2875–86.

Other Ancient Mythographical Works

Two have been translated into English:

Hyginus, The Myths, trans, and ed. M. Grant, Lawrence, Kan. 1960. (A chaotic and often unreliable Latin compendium, probably dating from the second century AD; this volume also includes a translation of the Poetic Astronomy, the largest surviving collection of constellation myths, which forms Book II of Hyginus’ Astronomy.)

AntoninusLiberalis, Metamorphoses, trans. F. Celoria, London, 1992. (An anthology of transformation myths dating from circasecond century AD; the stories are of Hellenistic origin for the most part.)

There are also French translations of Antoninus Liberalis and Hyginus’ Astronomyin the Budé series.

The summaries by Proclus of the early epics in the Trojan cycle are translated in Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns in the Loeb series.

Book IV of the universal history by Diodorus of Sicily is a mythical history of Greece; for a translation, see Diodorus Siculus, vols. 2 and 3, in the Loeb series. (It is less complete than the Libraryof Apollodorus, and the stories are often rationalized; the biography of Heracles is especially interesting.)

Mythological dictionaries and compendia

The excellent dictionary by Pierre Grimal is available in two different editions, as the Dictionary of Classical Mythology(Oxford, 1986, com plete edn., with references to ancient sources), or the Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology(Harmondsworth, 1991, a convenient abridged edn.). William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols. (London, 1844) is still of value for the mythological entries by Leonhard Schmitz, which are long, generally reliable, and give full references. Robert Graves’ compendium, The Greek Myths, 2vols. (Harmondsworth, 1955) is comprehensive and attractively written (but the interpretative notes are of value only as a guide to the author’s personal mythology); and Karl Kerenyi in The Gods of the Greeks(London, 1951) and The Heroes of the Greeks(London, 1974) has also retold many of the old stories in his own way. H. J. Rose’s Handbook of Greek Mythology(London, 1928) has not aged well, but it is useful on divine mythology in particular.