The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics) (2 page)

If the
Library
had 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 Library
for 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
Library
by Carl Robert forced a reconsideration of the matter, were these problems fully confronted.

There is one very definite indication that the
Library
could not have been written during the lifetime of Apollodorus of Athens: it contains a reference to the
Chronicles
of 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
Library
must 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
Library
is 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
Library
was 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
Library
may have been written, and perhaps about the origins of its author.

The reference to Castor (the latest author to be cited) shows
that the
Library
could 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
Library
in another work which could be dated to a sufficiently early period. In practice, however, this approach is unproductive. Although, as was remarked above, the
Library
is 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
Library
would 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
Library
that 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
Library
as 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
Library
is 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
Library
is 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’
Antigone
in two sentences. Many have concluded that the
Library
was 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
Library
is 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.