The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

  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.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  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.

  Timothy Gantz’s Early Greek Myth (Baltimore, 1993) is an invaluable guide to the literary and artistic evidence on the early mythological tradition. T. H. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece: A Handbook (London, 1991) offers a useful introduction to the treatment of myth in the visual arts. M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985), explains the origins and nature of the genealogical scheme for heroic mythology which was adopted and developed by the early mythographer-historians, and thence by the author of the Library.

  Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths? (Chicago, 1988), examines the complex and inconsistent attitudes of the Hellenistic and later Greeks to their traditional myths, and M. Detienne, The Creation of Mythology (Chicago, 1986), the development of our modern conception of mythology. On modern approaches to the interpretation of Greek myth since the eighteenth century, see Grafs discussion, and also the illuminating survey by J.-P. Vernant in Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (Brighton, 1966). And finally, two volumes of essays may be mentioned which show some of the ways in which scholars of the present day approach the interpretation of myth: J. N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 1987) and L. Edmunds, Approaches to Greek Myth (Baltimore, 1990).

  THE LIBRARY OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY

  CONTENTS

  THE original text of the Library contains no formal subdivisions or chapter headings; at most, the author occasionally indicates that he has concluded his account of one family and is passing on to the next. This can make a modern edition difficult to use, even where it is prefaced with an analytical summary, and a reader first approaching the work is likely to feel, quite mistakenly, that it is formless or even chaotic. To overcome these problems, and to make the work’s implicit structure immediately intelligible, I have divided the book into titled chapters and subsections, as summarized in the following table. In the text, these headings, which form no part of the original text, are italicized.

  The basic pattern should be apparent at a glance. Greek mythical history begins with the Theogony, accounting for the origin of the world and the divine order within it, and culminates with the Trojan War and its aftermath; and everything that happens in between forms part of the history—or can be related to the history—of the great families of heroic mythology. Considering the richness of the mythological tradition and the multiplicity of independent centres within the Greek world, there are remarkably few main families, only six here (or seven, depending on whether the Pelasgids in Arcadia are considered to be independent from the Inachids). A thorough grasp of their history is evidently the key to an understanding not only of the present work, but of the whole pattern of Greek mythology. Genealogical tables have therefore been added after the Contents (together with some brief remarks on the heroic families and their geographical setting). The roman figures (IA, IB, etc.) in the Contents refer to these tables, indicating which part of the text is covered by each table.

  BOOK I

  1. Theogony

  Ouranos, Ge, and the birth of the Titans

  The revolt of the Titans and rule of Cronos

  The birth of Zeus and his war against Cronos and the Titans

  Descendants of the Titans

  Descendants of Pontos and Ge

  Various children of Zeus and Hera; children of the Muses

  The births of Hephaistos and Athene

  Artemis and Apollo

  The children of Poseidon; Demeter and Persephone

  The revolt of the Giants

  The revolt of Typhon

  2. The Deucalionids

  Prometheus and early man

  Deucalion, Pyrrha, and the great flood

  The immediate descendants of Deucalion

  [IA]

  Ceux and Alcyone; the Aloads; Endymion

  Early Aetolian genealogies; Evenos and Marpessa

  Oineus, Meleager, and the hunt for the Calydonian boar

  The later history of Oineus, and the birth and exile of Tydeus

  [IB]

  Athamas, Ino, and the origin of the golden fleece

  Sisyphos, Salmoneus, and other sons of Aiolos

  Pelias and Neleus

  The earlier history of Bias and Melampous

  Admetos and Alcestis

  [IC]

  3. Jason and the Argonauts

  Pelias orders Jason to fetch the golden fleece

  Catalogue of the Argonauts

  The women of Lemnos; in the land of the Doliones

  The loss of Hylas and abandonment of Heracles

  Polydeuces and Amycos; Phineus and the Harpies; the Clashing Rocks

  Jason, Medea, and the seizure of the fleece

  The murder of Apsyrtos and journey to Circe

  To the land of the Phaeacians

  Anaphe; Talos in Crete

  The return to Iolcos and murder of Pelias

  The later history of Medea

  BOOK II

  4. Early Argive mythology (the Inachids, Belid line)

  The early descendants of Inachos

  The wanderings of Io, and division of the Inachid line

  [IIA]

  Aigyptos, Danaos, and the Danaids

  Proitos and Acrisios divide the Argolid

  Bias, Melampous, and the daughters of Proitos

  Excursus: the story of Bellerophon

  Danae and the birth of Perseus

  Perseus fetches the Gorgon’s head

  Perseus and Andromeda

  The later history of Perseus

  The immediate descendants of Perseus

  The exile of Amphitryon

  [IIB]

  5. Heracles, and the Heraclids

  Amphitryon in Thebes, and the war against the Teleboans

  The birth and early life of Heracles

  Heracles and the Minyans; his first marriage, and madness

  First labour: the Nemean lion

  Second labour: the Lernaean hydra

  Third labour: the Cerynitian hind

  Fourth labour: the Erymanthian boar

  Fifth labour: the cattle of Augeias

  Sixth labour: the Stymphalian birds

  Seventh labour: the Cretan bull

  Eighth labour: the mares of Diomedes

  Ninth labour: the belt of Hippolyte

  Tenth labour: the cattle of Geryon

  Eleventh labour: the apples of the Hesperides

  Twelfth labour: the capture of Cerberos

  The murder of Iphitos and Heracles’ enslavement to Omphale

  The first sack of Troy

  Campaigns in the Peloponnese

  Marriage to Deianeira; Heracles in northern Greece

  The sack of Oichalia; the death and apotheosis of Heracles

  The children of Heracles

  The return of the Heraclids

  BOOK III

  6. Cretan and Theban mythology (the Inachids, Agenorid line)

  The abduction of Europa to Crete, and dispersal of the sons of Agenor

  Minos and his brothers

  Minos, Pasiphae, and the origin of the Minotaur

  Catreus and Althaimenes

  Polyidos and the revival of Glaucos

  [IID]

  Cadmos and the foundation of Thebes

  Semele and Dionysos; the death of Actaion

  Successors and usurpers at Thebes

  Amphion, Niobe, and their children

  Laios and Oedipus

  [IID]

  7. The Theban Wars

  Eteocles and the exile of Polyneices to Argos

  Prelude in Argos: Amphiaraos and Eriphyle

  The advance against Thebes and stationing of the champions

  Excursus: the earlier history of Teiresias

  The Theban victory and its aftermath

  The Epigoni and the Second Theban War

  The later history of Alcmaion

  [IID]

  8. Arcadian mythology (the Pelasgids)

  Lycaon and his sons

/>   Callisto and the birth of Areas; early Arcadian genealogies

  Atalante

  9. Laconian and Trojan mythology (the Atlantids)

  The Pleiades

  The birth and early exploits of Hermes

  Early Lacedaimonian genealogies; the story of Asclepios

  Tyndareus, Leda, and their children

  Helen and her suitors

  The fate of the Dioscuri

  [IIIA]

  Early Trojan mythology

  Priam, Hecuba, and their children

  [IIIB]

  10. The Asopids

  Aiacos in Aegina

  The exile of Peleus and Telamon

  Peleus in Phthia, Calydon, and Iolcos

  The marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and early life of Achilles

  [IV]

  11. The kings of Athens

  Cecrops and his descendants; the story of Adonis

  Three early kings: Cranaos, Amphictyon, and Erichthonios

  Pandion I and his children; Icarios and Erigone; Tereus, Procne, and Philomele

  Procris and Cephalos; Oreithuia and her children

  Eumolpos, and the war with Eleusis; the exile of Pandion II

  Aigeus and the conception of Theseus

  The war with Minos and the origin of the tribute to the Minotaur

  The labours of Theseus, and his arrival at Athens

  Epitome

  Theseus, Ariadne, and the killing of the Minotaur

  Excursus: Daidalos and Icaros, and the death of Minos

  Theseus and the Amazons; Phaedra and Hippolytos

  Theseus and Peirithoos

  [V]

  12. The Pelopids

  Tantalos

  Pelops and Hippodameia

  Atreus and Thyestes

  Agamemnon and Menelaos

  [VI]

  13. The Trojan War

  The judgement of Paris and abduction of Helen

  Agamemnon assembles the Greek army

  The attack on Mysia; the Greeks assemble for a second time

  The Greeks call in at Tenedos