The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics) (5 page)

If the author had modest aims, he can be said to have fulfilled them in a satisfactory manner. Of its kind, and allowing for its brevity, the
Library
is a work of surprisingly high quality. It is founded for the most part on good authorities of early date, and reports them with a high degree of accuracy. Naturally we would prefer to have the works of Pherecydes and Acousilaos (and the early epics too), but we should be grateful to fortune that at least we have this little summary of the mythical history of Greece as it would have been depicted in the works of the earliest mythographers. If only because so much else has been lost, it is indispensable to anyone who has more than a passing interest in Greek mythology.

A
LL
surviving manuscripts of the
Library
are descended from a single original, a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Unfortunately this breaks off before the end of the work, during the section on Theseus (p. 138), which meant that, until quite recently, the valuable account of the Trojan cycle was entirely lost. But the situation was improved at the end of the last century by the discovery of two epitomes, or abridgements, of the
Library
, which provide a very serviceable summary of the end of the work. They were found quite independently, in the Vatican Library (the Vatican epitome) and the monastery of Saint Sabbas in Jerusalem (the Sabbaitic epitome), in 1885 and 1887 respectively.

The standard modern text, that of Richard Wagner in the Teubner series (1926 edn.), has been used for the present translation, although alternative readings have sometimes been preferred, and account has been taken of the more recent literature mentioned in the Select Bibliography. The Greek text in Frazer’s edition in the Loeb series is largely based on that of Wagner.

The two epitomes are not identical either in content or, where they cover the same episodes, in expression, and Wagner prints both texts, using parallel columns where necessary; but in a translation, Frazer’s procedure of combining the two to provide a single continuous narrative is clearly preferable. In practice this raises few problems, except occasionally when both epitomes tell the same story but express it in a slightly different way. Only at a very few points have I felt it necessary to question Frazer’s judgement on the selection of material (and it was considered desirable in any case that the translation should correspond as far as possible to Frazer’s Greek text).

This is a utilitarian work which offers no promise of literary delight. The prose of Apollodorus is plain and colourless, and so simple in expression that a translator has little latitude. Without misrepresenting the original, it is hard to prevent a translation
from reading like a story-book for young children; but I have tried to bring out the possible advantages of a plain style, and hope that the reader will find the mythical narrative brisk and clear, and if ingenuous, at least agreeably so.

I have benefited from a long familiarity with the translation by Sir James Frazer. Despite the archaisms and a tendency to euphemism on sexual matters, it is a work of quality. I have also consulted the elegant and precise French translation by Carriere and Massonie.

According to the traditional arrangement, the work is divided into three books followed by the Epitome. Each of these is further divided into numbered chapters (here indicated in the margin) and subsections (indicated within the text); and correspondingly, three figures (or two for passages from the Epitome) are cited in references in the scholarly literature (e.g. 2, 4, 6, or Epitome 7, 18). The paragraph numbering found in some editions has been omitted to avoid confusion; I have added italicized headings to make the work easier to consult.

Greek names
. These present a real problem because the Latinized forms are not only more familiar, but in many cases have become part of our language and culture. Nevertheless, in a comprehensive work of this kind, containing so many genealogies, it is surely preferable that the original Greek forms should be used. If the Greek names can look strange and unattractive in an English text, this is largely because of the
ks
(e.g. Kanake, Kirke, Lakonia); but there seems to be no particular disadvantage in using a
c
(properly a hard
c)
for Greek kappa, and I have followed that course in the present translation. For very familiar figures, however, like Oedipus and Achilles, the traditional forms have been preserved (except in some cases where the Latin form differs markedly from the original); and for place names, modern or Latinized forms have been used much more frequently. Some guidance on pronunciation and possible sources of confusion is offered at the beginning of the Index. The Greek forms differ most frequently from the Latin in the use of
-os
instead of
-us
at the end of masculine names, and of
ai
and
oi
instead of
ae
and
oe
(thus Aigimios and Proitos rather than Aegimius and Proetus).

Square brackets
are 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 cannot be reproduced in a translation, the presence of such wordplay is indicated in the text by the appropriate use of
italics
(see, for instance, p. 88) and explained afterwards in the Notes.

Editions and Translations of the
Library

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’,
TAPA
66 (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
Library
is 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’,
REG
71 (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-Annequin,
Héraclès aux portes du soir
, Paris, 1989. (Contains some suggestive observations on Apollodorus, and his treatment of the Heracles myths in particular.)

C. Robert,
De Apollodori Bibliotheca
, Inaugural diss., University of Berlin, 1873. (The work that first established that the
Library
was 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’,
RE
1, 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.)

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

There are also French translations of Antoninus Liberalis and Hyginus’
Astronomy
in 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
Library
of 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, 2
vols. (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.

Other Books on Greek Myth

The literature is vast, and only a few suggestions can be offered here. For those first approaching the subject (and others too), Fritz Graf,
Greek Mythology: An Introduction
(Baltimore, 1993), can be recommended unreservedly, as a concise but remarkably complete survey, examining the varieties of Greek myth and also changing attitudes to the myths and their interpretation in ancient and modern times, with helpful bibliographies. To this, three other works may be added which, in their different ways, convey an idea of the distinctive nature of Greek myth: K. Dowden,
The Uses of Greek Mythology
(London, 1992), a lively introductory work; G. S. Kirk,
The Nature of Greek Myths
(Harmondsworth, 1974), and above all, R. C. A. Buxton,
Imaginary Greece: Contexts of Mythology
(Cambridge, 1994), a very rich and suggestive study.