Download PDF | Robin Hard_ H J Rose - The Routledge handbook of Greek mythology _ based on H.J. Rose's _Handbook of Greek mythology_-Routledge (2004).
774 Pages
PREFACE
Although this is essentially a new book in its present form, I originally embarked on it with the intention of producing a revised version of H.J. Rose’s classic Handbook of Greek Mythology, and the final product remains indebted to that work in many respects, incorporating some material from it and following its general plan in parts, especially in the chapters on divine mythology. Herbert Jennings Rose (1883-1961), who was professor of Greek at St Andrews from 1927 to 1953, wrote extensively on ancient religion and mythology, publishing an edition of Hyginus’ mythological manual in 1928, and was also an accomplished translator who introduced works of notable continental scholars such as M.P. Nilsson and R. Pettazzoni to an Englishspeaking audience.
He remarks in the preface to his mythological handbook that he felt impelled to write it because, as a teacher of Classics, he had often felt handicapped by the lack of book of moderate length containing an accurate account of Greek mythology in accordance with the results of modern research; and the resulting volume, which was first published in 1928, certainly fulfilled a need among students and others who were interested in the subject. It has continued to be of service, moreover, in more recent times, even though many books of a related kind have been published since it first appeared, including various dictionaries of classical mythology and the two-volume surveys of Robert Graves (which has proved very popular in spite of its eccentricities) and Carl Kerényi (the second volume of which, The Heroes of the Greeks, was translated into English by Rose himself).
After it had remained in print for seventy years, however, its present publishers thought it desirable that it should be revised to take account of advances in knowledge and the changing needs of its readership. The book has inevitably come to seem oldfashioned or even unreliable in certain respects. To take only one example, advances in archaeology and other disciplines and the decipherment of Linear B (a Mycenaean script) have affected our understanding of the origins and earliest history of some of the major gods (see e.g. p. 170). As a guide to the canon of Greek myth, the book also had one notable shortcoming from the beginning, namely that the coverage of heroic myth is disproportionately brief, especially when it is considered that Greek myth as recorded in classical literature consists predominately of heroic legend (for surprisingly few stories are recorded about the actions of the gods among themselves).
I therefore undertook to prepare a revised edition by extending the coverage of this area of myth fairly considerably, with the addition of new chapters, and by altering or augmenting the text to a more limited extent elsewhere to take account of changing knowledge and requirements. The outcome turned out to be thoroughly unsatisfactory, too much of a dog’s dinner to be at all palatable. If the original book had been blander, such an approach might have proved practicable; but it is in fact too personal, too idiosyncratic, to be amenable to discreet emendation and augmentation. It was necessary that a few gentle alterations should suffice or else that the book should be substantially rewritten; and having already progressed some way along the latter path, I decided to follow it to the end. Although the final work owes more of a debt to Rose’s handbook than may be apparent at first sight, and I value that continuity, it is substantially longer and so different in much of its approach and content that it cannot be regarded as a replacement or substitute. I hope, indeed, that Rose’s book may be kept in print for a while yet and perhaps even attain its centenary.
« The names of deities and heroes and heroines from Greek myth are given in their original Greek form, except in a very few cases where it would seem absurdly pedantic to do so. Please see the introduction to the index for remarks on the pronunciation of Greek names and on the relationship between Greek and Latinized forms of those names. In the case of geographical names and the names of mythical and historical peoples, Anglicized and Latinized forms have been used much more frequently when it was considered that such forms would be used in normal conversation (e.g. Boeotia rather than Boiotia). Since ancient Greek authors are almost always referred to under the Anglicized or Latinized form of their name in conversation and in non-technical literature and library-indexes, it seemed preferable to use such forms to accord with normal usage and avoid any danger of confusion.
-«- When Greek tales from Roman sources are summarized in the text, the mythical figures who appear in them will naturally be referred to under their proper Greek names rather than their Latin names as in the Latin sources. It should be remembered in this connection that the Romans liked to identify Greek gods with equivalent deities from the Roman and Italian tradition, and would refer to Greek gods under their Latin names when narrating myths from the Greek tradition. In the works of Roman authors such as Ovid and Hyginus, the main Greek deities will thus appear as follows:
Aphrodite as Venus
Ares as Mars
Artemis as Diana
Athena as Minerva
Demeter as Ceres
Dionysos often as Liber (if not as Dionysus or Bacchus) Hephaistos as Volcanus (Anglicized to Vulcan) Hermes as Mercurius (Anglicized to Mercury) Hestia as Vesta
Kronos as Saturnus (Anglicized to Saturn) Poseidon as Neptunus (Anglicized to Neptune) Zeus as Iuppiter (Anglicized to Jupiter)
The name of Persephone was corrupted to Proserpina in Latin, that of Herakles to Hercules, and that of Leto to Latona. Other names were translated, e.g. Eros to Cupido or Amor, Pluto to Dis (see p. 108), Helios to Sol.
-«- I have made my own translations when citing passages from Greek literature; these are intended above all to be clear and literal, and do not pretend to offer an adequate impression of the literary qualities of the original.
-e- When indicating the time of origin of Greek writings and legends, and so on, it is often convenient or indeed necessary to refer to broad eras of Greek history rather than to specific centuries or dates. The Archaic period can be regarded as having extended from 800 or 750 BC to 480, i.e. from the end of the dark ages to the time of the Persian Wars; the Classical period from 480 to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC (or more loosely as extending over the fifth and fourth centuries, which was generally speaking the period of the greatest cultural achievements of the Greeks); the Hedlenistic period from the death of Alexander to the end of the first century BC; and the Roman period from the first century AD onward (or more precisely from 31 BC, when Augustus defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium).
«e+ The names of mythical characters are marked in capitals at the beginning of the main discussion of their mythology; bold type is used to indicate that a succession of mythical characters belong to a common group under discussion, for instance as children of the same parents (as on p. 519) or as participants in a joint enterprise (as on p. 317).
SOURCES FOR GREEK MYTH
he myths of the ancient Greeks, like the myths of most other cultures, were
forever in a state of flux, undergoing constant change as they were passed on by word of mouth and retold in different ways by authors of successive ages. A handbook such as this must aim in the first place to provide a systematic account of the canon of early Greek myth, as initially established in archaic and classical poetic literature, especially early epic and tragedy, and then summarized and systematized in prose by the early mythographers. A good impression of the nature of the resulting vulgate or standard tradition, as conceived by mythographers of the Hellenistic or early Roman period, can be gained from the only general mythological handbook to survive from Greek antiquity, the Library of Apollodorus. The main myths and legends were organized into a pseudo-historical pattern to provide a remarkably coherent history of the universe and divine order and of the Greek world in the heroic era (which was conventionally thought to have ended in the period following the Trojan War); and this history was underpinned by rigorous systems of divine and heroic genealogy, which were essential if consistent chronologies were to be developed. The individual myths within this broad framework could be recorded in a variety of forms; even within the earlier literature, between the time, say, of Homer and that of Euripides, they could undergo a multitude of variations, and later developments could also leave their mark. Although powerful versions might tend to establish themselves in the general imagination at the expense of others, as in the case, for instance, of Aeschylus’ account of the murder of Agamemnon (see p. 509), it is almost always misleading to talk as if there could be a standard version of a myth that was set in stone from some early time. Quite apart from merely narrating myths and placing them in their proper context within the wider body of divine or heroic myth, a handbook must therefore also attempt to trace the history of the more important myths, examining how they evolved over time and came to be narrated in differing ways by different authors in different genres. Since people who have an interest in Greek myth will not necessarily have any very extensive knowledge of ancient literature, and since some authors and writings that are important for myth are not widely familiar outside specialist circles, it was thought that it might thus be helpful to preface this handbook with a brief survey of the main literary sources for Greek myth. The relevant authors are listed separately in alphabetical order rather than discussed together in their historical setting to make it easier for readers to seek further information on authors or works of literature that are mentioned in the main text.
Cross-references to other authors are marked by an asterisk preceding the name of the author. For reasons indicated in the preface, ancient Greek authors are referred to under the Anglicized form of their name (which is often of Latin origin) even though figures from myth are referred to under the proper Greek form of their name. The authors who are named in the list were Greek (or at least wrote in Greek) unless otherwise stated. The history of Greece after the dark ages is conventionally divided into four main eras, the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman; please see the preface for the significance of these terms.
ACUSILAUS of Argos (probably writing at the end of the sixth century BC), early mythographer who wrote about the legendary history of his native Argolid (see p- 230) and other regions, providing prose accounts of many legends from the epic tradition. Less is recorded about his writings than about those of his most important successors, *Pherecydes and *Hellanicus.
AELIAN (Claudius Aelianus, c. AD 172-235), prose author whose Historical Miscellany and anthology of animal stories contain some material of mythological interest. Translations of both are available in the Loeb series.
AESCHYLUS (525-456 BC), the earliest of the three great Athenian tragic poets whose works are not entirely lost. Of the eighty or ninety plays of Aeschylus, six of undoubted authenticity have survived. The three plays of the Oresteia trilogy, which portray a cycle of revenge within the Pelopid ruling family at Mycenae, are works of extraordinary profundity and resonance that can be ranked with the Homeric epics as the most imposing monuments of ancient literature. The first play in the trilogy, the Agamemnon, shows how the Mycenaean king of that name was murdered by his wife Klytaimnestra (Clytemnestra) after he arrived back from the Trojan War; and the next play, the Libation-bearers (Choephoroi), shows how Agamemnon’s son Orestes, who was sent abroad before the murder and grew up in exile, returned to Mycenae to avenge his father’s death by killing Klytaimnestra and her lover Aigisthos. The final play in the trilogy, the Exmenides, shows how Orestes was then persecuted by the Erinyes (Furies), even though Apollo had sanctioned the killings, until he was acquitted of matricide at Athens at a trial superintended by Athena (see p. 511). The other surviving plays are stiffer and less immediately engaging. The Seven against Thebes, the last play in a Theban trilogy, tells how seven champions from Argos confronted seven Theban defenders at the seven gates of Thebes during the first of the two Theban Wars (see p. 321); and the Suppliants, which was the last play in a trilogy devoted to the myth of the Danaids, tells how the fifty Danaids approached the Argives as suppliants after fleeing from Egypt to avoid marrying their cousins, the fifty sons of Aigyptos. There is very little direct action in either play; indeed, more than half of the latter is composed of choral lyrics. The Persians is one of the rare tragedies that dealt with historical subjects, in this case the defeat of Xerxes during the Persian Wars. As regards the Prometheus Bound, the seventh play attributed to Aeschylus, there is disagreement on whether it is a genuine work of Aeschylus or was written at a slightly later period by another author (or at least heavily revised from a play by Aeschylus). It is remarkable in any case for its unusual portrayal of Zeus, who is presented as a newly established tyrant who exercises his power by the naked use of force. He has Prometheus nailed to a rock to punish him for having opposed his will by championing the interests of mortals; but Prometheus came to be released in a later play in the trilogy, and some sort of reconciliation must therefore have been achieved between Zeus and himself (see pp. 95-6).
ALCAEUS of Mytilene (born in the second half of the seventh century BC), an early lyric poet who was a contemporary and compatriot of Sappho.
ALCMAN (seventh century BC), early author of choral lyric who lived in Sparta.
ANTONINUS LIBERALIS (probably second century AD), mythographer, author of a surviving anthology of transformation myths, the Collection of Metamorphoses, which provides prose summaries of forty-nine stories of the kind. Most of the narratives are based on lost poetic accounts by two Hellenistic authors, *Nicander, who composed a poem in five books on mythical transformations, and a certain Boio or Boios (probably a pseudonym), who wrote a long poem called the Ornithogonia that contained rather artificial tales in which groups of people were turned into birds. There is an English translation by F. Celoria (London, 1992) and a French translation in the Budé series.
APOLLODORUS is the name traditionally ascribed to the author of the Bibliotheke or Library, the only comprehensive mythological handbook to have survived from classical antiquity. Although once regarded as a work of Apollodorus of Athens, a learned scholar of the second century BC who wrote about mythology and religion among other subjects, it is in fact a relatively late compilation of unpretentious character, probably written in the first or second century AD. The final sections of the book (dealing mainly with the Pelopids and the Trojan War) are preserved only in two prose epitomes discovered in the late nineteenth century; but the narrative is so concise throughout that most readers are unlikely to notice any change. The Library is in effect a mythical history of Greece, organized on a genealogical basis in accordance with the pattern established in the Hesiodic Catalogue (see under Hesiod) and followed by early prose mythographers such as *Pherecydes — the authority most frequently cited — and *Hellanicus; and since it is largely based on good early sources and very little has survived from the works of the early mythographers, it is extremely useful as a summary guide to the early vulgate tradition. Even if it may seem rather elementary in parts, it provides the best surviving accounts of many stories (hence the extensive use that has been made of it by compilers of mythological dictionaries and handbooks), and the stories are all placed in their proper context and accompanied by full genealogies. Translations are available in the Loeb series (in two volumes with useful references to other ancient sources) and Oxford World Classics.
APOLLONIUS of Rhodes (third century BC), a learned Hellenistic poet, author of the Argonautica, an epic in four books that recounts the story of Jason’s quest for the golden fleece and his travels with the Argonauts. Since nothing has survived of early Argonautic epic, this is our main source for the legend along with the accompanying *scholia, which provide all manner of information on earlier versions of the story and local legends associated with the voyage and other relevant matters. From an artistic point of view, the poem is more impressive for its depiction of the changing feelings of Medeia and the love that develops between her and Jason than for its portrayals of heroic action. We also possess an incomplete Argonautica in Latin by a poet of the first century AD, Valerius Flaccus, and a curious late poem in Greek, the Orphic Argonautica, which is largely dependent on Apollonius (although it also borrows from other sources and offers a divergent account of the return journey of the Argonauts). A French translation of the latter poem may be found in the Budé series. The Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar provides the fullest earlier account of the story of the Argonauts.
ARATUS (c. 315-240 BC), Hellenistic didactic poet, author of an extremely popular astronomical poem, the Phaenomena, which describes the constellations and their risings and settings on the basis of information provided by the great astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus (active in the first half of the fourth century BC). Although Aratus lays no great emphasis on astral mythology, recounting or referring to such myths on only twelve occasions, his poem did much to encourage popular interest in the constellations and their myths. The standard collection of constellation myths was compiled somewhat later by *Eratosthenes in a prose treatise. The scholia to the Phaenomena have more to say about the matter, as do the Latin adaptations of the poem by Germanicus Caesar (15 BC-AD I9) and Avienus (fourth century AD).
ARISTOPHANES (born mid-fifth century BC), Athenian comic playwright, author of eleven surviving plays. Although not based directly on traditional myths as is usually the case with early tragedy, these are sometimes of value for what they reveal about particular myths or popular attitudes to myth and religion. The Frogs, in which Dionysos and his slave Xanthias make a visit to the land of the dead, may be singled out for what it reveals about the mythology and popular lore of the Underworld in the classical period.
ARISTOTLE (Aristoteles, 384-322 BC), philosopher with an encyclopaedic range of interest. His writings occasionally touch on mythological matters, and a spurious work in the Aristotelian corpus, On Marvellous Things Heard, records some curious mythological traditions relating to foreign parts. The remains of the pseudoAristotelian Pep/os are of some interest for what they report about the fates of various warriors who fought at Troy.
ATHENAEUS (writing in about AD 200), author of the Sophists’ Banquet (DeipnoSophistai), an eccentric compilation in fifteen books that records more than anyone could possibly want to know about banquets and convivialities. Since Athenaeus draws on a wide range of sources and is never reluctant to provide a quotation, much of value that would otherwise have been lost, some of it relating to myth, is preserved among the dross. There is a translation with a full index in the Loeb series.
BACCHYLIDES (died mid-fifth century BC), lyric poet, a nephew of Simonides and contemporary of Pindar. Substantial remains of his epinician odes (choral odes written in honour of victors at the games) and six of his dithyrambs have been recovered from papyri discovered in the nineteenth century. The former poems are constructed in a similar manner to those of *Pindar, with a mythical narrative at their heart; and although Bacchylides lacks the dash and genius of his greater contemporary, he has distinctive gifts of his own as a storyteller. A good impression of this may be gained from the fifth of his epinician odes, which describes how Herakles met and conversed with the shade of Meleagros when he descended to the Underworld to fetch Kerberos, and was moved to tears by his account of his premature death. Another well-preserved ode describes how the daughters of Proitos, king of Tiryns, once offended Artemis and were stricken with madness until the goddess was appeased. The dithyrambs also contain attractive mythical narratives, describing for instance how Theseus proved to Minos that he was a son of Poseidon (see pp. 345-6) or first arrived in his ancestral homeland of Athens.
BION of Smyrna (late second century BC), a pastoral poet who is best known as the probable author of the Lament for Adonis.
CALLIMACHUS (c. 305-240 BC), Hellenistic poet and scholar who compiled the classified catalogue of the books in the library at Alexandria. His six Hymns, which are full of interesting mythological lore, have survived complete because some editor in late antiquity included them in a collection of hymns along with the Homeric Hymns and other poems of a comparable nature. Although modelled on the *Homeric Hymns, they are altogether different in character, as would be expected, as highly sophisticated poems that are learnedly playful and often gently ironic in tone. The third hymn, addressed to Artemis, is particularly charming. The fifth tells how Teiresias came to be struck blind after seeing Athena naked (see p- 330), while the sixth describes how the Thessalian hero Erysichthon was punished with insatiable hunger after felling some trees in a grove of Demeter (see p. 133). Even if these poems may seem rather dry on first acquaintance, they can be very beguiling when one comes to appreciate their author’s distinctive humour and tone of voice. The rest of his poetry is preserved in fragments alone, many recovered from
papytri.
CICERO (106-43 BC), Roman politician, orator and prose writer, who sometimes refers to Greek legends and mythical matters in his religious and philosophical treatises.
COLLUTHUS (probably fifth century AD), author of the Rape of Helen, a mercifully short epic poem in 394 lines; translated in the Loeb series.
CONON (probably writing at the end of the first century BC or beginning of the next), mythographer, author a collection of fifty legends of varied nature in which foundation legends are especially prominent. It is preserved in an epitome prepared by the Byzantine scholar Photius (and a French translation is thus available in the Budé edition of Photius’ Library).
DIODORUS SICULUS (i.e. of Sicily, first century BC), Greek Sicilian historian, author of a universal history in fourteen books. In contrast to historians of a more critical turn of mind, Diodorus did not exclude the period of legend from his survey, and the earlier books are thus of considerable value to the mythologist. As is understandable in a work with historical pretensions, he tended to favour rationalistic accounts from the Hellenistic period, but some of the material that he included as a consequence is of great interest in its own right, notably a report on *Euhemerus and extracts from two works of Dionysius Scytobrachion (‘the Leather-armed’, in reference to his prolific output) that offered novelistic versions of the myths of the Argonauts and the Amazons. The fourth book, however, which deals with the mythical history of the heartland of Greece, seems to have been largely based on a mythological handbook and includes more conventional material from the earlier vulgate. The biography of Herakles is worthy of special note since it provides a valuable supplement to that in *Apollodorus’ handbook. There is an excellent translation in Loeb series.
DIONYSIUS of Halicarnassus (first century BC), Greek literary critic and historian. He lived at Rome for over twenty years, where he compiled the Roman Antiquities (Romaiké Archaiologiké), a long and indeed tiresomely prolix history of Rome from the earliest times up until the Punic Wars. The first book, which deals with the prehistory of the area and the origins and founding of the city, has much to say about Greek legend in so far as it relates to Rome and Italy.
EPIC CYCLE, and early epic in general (apart from the works of *Homer and *Hesiod). (i) The epic cycle was a collection of early epic poems that were ordered into a cycle to provide a chronological account of major episodes from Greek myth. Although there may well have been different collections that varied in their content, the poems that are described as cyclic in the surviving records are an obscure poem called the Titanomachia, which dealt with the earliest history of the world and the gods (presumably covering some of the same ground as the Theogony), and two series of heroic epics, a shorter series dealing with the family of Oedipus and the Theban Wars and a longer series dealing with the Trojan War and its origins and aftermath. (ii) Although very little is known about the Titanomachia and the Theban epics, we are better informed about the poems of the Trojan cycle, partly because more fragments and testimonies have been preserved, and partly because we possess short summaries of their contents that were compiled in the Roman period by a certain *Proclus. The first of the Trojan epics, the Cypria, explained the origins of the war and offered an account of its progress up until the period covered in the Iliad. The significance of its title is wholly uncertain. The Azthiopis picks up the story again where the I/iad leaves off, describing how the Amazon Penthesileia and the Ethiopian prince Memnon arrived to fight as allies of the Trojans (see pp- 446ff). It also described the death of Achilles, who was shot by Apollo and Paris as he was advancing toward the city after killing Memnon. The contents of the next two epics, the Little Iliad (Ilias Mikra) and the Sack of Troy UIliupersis), seem to have overlapped to some extent. The former epic described the suicide of Aias (Ajax) and the events that immediately preceded the fall of Troy, and apparently went on to describe the sack itself, which was of course the subject of the latter poem. The Returns (Nostoi) provided a supplement to the Odyssey by describing the return journeys of the main Greek heroes other than Odysseus (see pp. 482ff), and the final epic in the series, a relatively late poem called the Telegonia, provided an eccentric account of the later life of Odysseus after his wanderings (see pp. 500-1). Proclus’ summaries and fragments from the poems are translated in the Hesiod volume in the Loeb series. (iii) Although we know the names of many other archaic epic poems and epic poets, little or nothing is recorded about most of them. Various poets wrote epics about Herakles, for instance, including a Spartan called Cinaethon and a Rhodian called Peisander and, at a relatively late period, Herodotus’ uncle Panyassis of Halicarnassus. Similar poems were written about Theseus, and the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts must also have been a popular subject; the *scholia to Apollonius tell us a certain amount about how the latter story was recounted in an early epic called the Naupactia. The legends of the Greek regions would also have been recounted in early epic; a poem called the Phoronis offered an account of the earliest history of the Argolid (see p. 227) and a Corinthian epic poet called Eumelus offered a distinctive account of the earliest history of his own land (see pp. 431-2). Since epic poems, oral and written, would have been the main literary medium for mythical narrative in the archaic period, it is salutary to remember how very little we know about these early epics. For a helpful guide to this area of Greek literature, with translations of relevant passages, see G.L. Huxley, Greek Epic Poetry; Eumelos to Panyassis (London, 1966).
ERATOSTHENES (c. 285-194 BC), versatile Alexandrian scholar who compiled the standard collection of constellation myths, the Catasterisms (Katasterismoi). The short book of that title that has been transmitted to us under his name is an epitome that was prepared by some later author; further information about the contents of the original work can be found in the Astronomy of *Hyginus and the scholia to *Aratus’ Phaenomena and to Germanicus’ Latin adaptation of that poem. A translation of the epitome and the relevant section of Hyginus’ Astronomy can be found in Theony Condos, Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans (Grand Rapids, 1997).
EUHEMERUS of Messenia (writing in about 300 BC), author of the Sacred Scriptures, a book that explained the origin of the gods in rationalistic terms by suggesting that they had been great rulers and conquerors of the past who had come to be accorded divine honours. Although the original work is lost, much is known about it from what is recorded by *Diodorus (6.1, easily accessible in the Loeb translation) and Lactantius.
EURIPIDES (c. 485-406 Bc), Athenian tragic poet, a slightly younger contemporary of Sophocles. Since two collections of his plays have survived, one an anthology put together in the Roman period and the other a section of an alphabetical edition of his complete works, we possess nineteen of his tragedies, far more than for Aeschylus and Sophocles. Seven relate to the Trojan War and its aftermath. The Iphigeneia at Aulis tells how that daughter of Agamemnon was brought to sacrifice to enable the Greek fleet to sail to Troy (see p. 447), while the Iphigeneia in Tauris tells how she was recovered from the distant land of the Taurians by her brother Orestes some years after the war (see pp. 512ff). The Rhesus (which may be wrongly ascribed to Euripides) dramatizes a tale from the I/iad, telling how the Thracian prince of that name was killed in his sleep by Odysseus and Diomedes after he arrived at Troy to fight as an ally of the Trojans. The Trojan Women (Troades) and the Hecuba (Hekabe) are poignant tragedies that portray the fate of leading women of Troy after the fall of the city. The He/en is a curious tragicomedy based on an unconventional version of Helen’s legend in which a phantom of her accompanied Paris to Troy while she herself remained in Egypt during the years of the war (see p- 445). Hektor’s widow Andromache was said to have become the concubine of Achilles’ son Neoptolemos in Epirus after the war; Euripides’ Andromache presents her as falling victim to the jealousy of Neoptolemos’ childless wife Hermione, who plots unsuccessfully to kill her along with her young son (see p. 515). Three other tragedies of Euripides are devoted to Theban myth. The Bacchae, a very late work and perhaps the finest of the surviving plays, shows how Pentheus, king of Thebes, was visited with a gruesome punishment when he tried to outlaw the unbridled rites of Dionysos (see p. 173). The Phoenician Women is a very long play (apparently with a post-Euripidean ending) that deals with the quarrel between the sons of Oedipus and the resulting Theban War, while the Swppliants tells how the mothers of the Argive chieftains who were killed in the conflict sought the help of Theseus after the Thebans forbade the burial of the Argive dead. The plots of two tragedies that are devoted to stories from Athenian myth, the Hippolytus and the Ion, are summarized below on pp. 358-9 and 407-8. Three other plays deal with Herakles and his children. The A/kestis tells how Herakles saved Alkestis from death after she volunteered to die in place of her husband Admetos, while the Madness of Herakles tells how the hero rescued his family from a usurper at Thebes but then proceeded to slaughter his children in a fit of madness inspired by Hera. Soon after the death of Herakles, Eurystheus, king of Mycenae, tried to save himself from any future threat from the family by eliminating the hero’s children; in the Children of Herakles (Herakleidai), Euripides shows how they appealed to the Athenians as suppliants and defeated and killed Eurystheus with their help. In the Orestes, the Mycenaean prince of that name narrowly escapes death after being brought to trial by the citizens of Argos for killing his mother Klytaimnestra and her lover Aigisthos; and the Medea (Medeia) shows how the Colchian heroine of that name exacted revenge on her husband Jason after he told her that he was planning to abandon her to marry a Corinthian princess (see p. 398). And finally, the Cyclops is the only complete satyrplay to survive from antiquity; it offers a comical version of the Homeric story of Odysseus and Polyphemos, in which Seilenos and his Satyrs are presented as having been taken prisoner by the ogre just before the arrival of Odysseus.
EUSTATHIUS (twelfth century AD), Byzantine scholar and churchman, author of long surviving commentaries on the I/iad and the Odyssey. These are of value in so far as they preserve material from the ancient scholarly tradition that would otherwise have been lost.
HELLANICUS of Lesbos (active in the second half of the fifth century BC), mythographer and author of writings on ethnography and chronology. More is recorded about his works than those of any other early mythographer apart from *Pherecydes. He compiled useful histories of various legendary families such as the Deukalionids and Atlantids, and left his mark on the subsequent tradition by refining and synchronizing the heroic genealogies. He was apparently an inelegant writer, however, whose narratives were less appealing than those of Pherecydes. Through his Asthis, a local history of Attica (which is mentioned by Thucydides, 1.97, though not with any great enthusiasm), he helped to inaugurate the distinctive genre of Atthidography (see p. 363).
HERODOTUS (fifth century BC), author of a long historical work in nine books, the Histories (Historiai, i.e. Investigations’), which provides an account of the conflict between Greece and Persia and its historical background. It is a very wide-ranging study that sets out to explain the growth of Persian power in relation to the histories of other lands outside Greece and developments within the Greek world itself. It is of great value as a source for legend and for matters relating to legend, all the more so since the author is always willing to digress and can never resist a good story.
HESIOD (c. 700 BC), Boeotian epic and didactic poet. (i) Two surviving poems, the Theogony and the Works and Days, can be regarded as genuine works of Hesiod (even if it is not universally agreed that they can be ascribed to the same poet). One further poem, the Shie/d, which was certainly not of his authorship, has been transmitted to us under his name, and a number of other poems are ascribed to him in ancient sources. Very little is known of most of these other poems, but one of them, the Catalogue of Women, which was again of post-Hesiodic origin, was a mythological poem of considerable importance that can be partially reconstructed from many surviving fragments and testimonies. (ii) The Theogony (Theogonia, i.e. birth or generation of the gods) provides a comprehensive genealogical history of the origins of the gods, explaining how the universe and the main gods and goddesses came into being, and how the present divine order came to be established under the third ruler of the universe, Zeus. Since this was not only a very ancient account of these matters but came to be accepted as the standard account, the poem is a mythological document of the first importance, and we will take it as our main guide in Chapter 2 and much of Chapter 3. It also describes how Zeus quelled a revolt by the fearsome monster Typhon. The end of the poem was altered when the Catalogue of Women was appended to it, but although it is accepted that part of the concluding section of the present text is post-Hesiodic, scholars have disagreed as to where exactly the genuine work of Hesiod breaks off. The most distinguished modern editor of the poem, M.L. West, has argued that the end comes at line 900, while others would place it later at line 929 or 962. (iii) As a poem that is mostly about farming and favourable and unfavourable days of the month, the Works and Days is less relevant to our subject, except in the two sections of the poem that narrate the story of the first woman Pandora (42-105) and the myth of the five races (106—201, see pp. 69-70). (iv) The only other complete poem to be preserved under Hesiod’s name is the Shield (Aspis), a short work in 480 lines that describes how Herakles defeated the Thessalian villain Kyknos and his divine father Ares in two successive fights (see p. 282). The poem is known as the Shie/d because more than a third of it is devoted to a description of the images on Herakles’ shield, in a passage that was evidently modelled on Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles in the I/iad. It is prefaced with an ehoie (see below) from the Catalogue relating to Alkmene and was presumably written after that poem in the sixth century Bc. A translation can be found in the Hesiod volume in the Loeb series; since the author was too incompetent to be able to organize his material properly or bring his subject to life, the poem cannot be said to be anything more than a historical curiosity. (v) Most of the other poems that were ascribed to Hesiod are little more than names to us. They include an astronomical poem known as the Astronomia and a book of moral precepts known as the Maxims of Cheiron, and mythological poems such as the Melampodia, which recounted the legends of Melampous and other seers (providing for instance an account of the contest in divination between Mopsos and Kalchas, see p. 488), and the Aigimios, which is named after a Dorian associate of Herakles but apparently recounted a variety of legends including that of Io. (v) The genealogical epic known as the Catalogue of Women — or simply the Catalogue — is the only pseudo-Hesiodic poem (apart of course from the Shield) of which we possess substantial remains. Well after the lifetime of Hesiod, probably in the early sixth century BC, some unknown author decided to write a continuation to the Theogony so as to provide a genealogical history of the main heroic families also. As was noted above, the end of the Theogony was altered quite radically to prepare for the transition to this new subject-matter, as can be appreciated from the present state of the text. Since the origin of each of the main heroic lines was traced to a mating between a god and a mortal woman, the new poem (or relevant portion of the combined poem) came to be known as the Catalogue of Women; it was also called the Ehoiai because the story of each of these women was introduced with the formulaic phrase @ Aoié, ‘or like she who ...’. From its semi-divine beginning, each heroic line would have been followed down to the period of the Trojan War or thereabouts, and the principal legends associated with the members of the line would have been narrated, usually quite briefly, as the successive heroes and heroines were introduced. It was a work of the first importance, comparable in its own way to the Theogony, because it established the panhellenic system of heroic genealogy that was adopted and refined by the early prose mythographers (such as *Pherecydes and *Hellanicus) and can still be recognized, though with many variations from the later tradition, in the mythological handbook of *Apollodorus. In tracing the histories of such families as the Inachids, Deukalionids and Atlantids in the second part of the present handbook, we will be following the lines that were laid down by the Cataloguepoet. Although no manuscripts of the poem have survived, a fair number of quotations and testimonies can be found in the works of ancient authors, and many additional fragments, some quite extensive, have been recovered from papyri. As a consequence, a surprising amount has come to be known about the structure of the poem, and parts of it can be reconstructed in some detail; for a full discussion, see M.L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985). Many of the individual fragments are translated in the Hesiod volume in the Loeb series, but they lose much of their meaning when taken out of context. There is an Italian parallel translation of the standard edition of Merkelbach and West (from Fragmenta Hesiodea, Oxford, 1967) in the Hesiod volume in the French Pléiade series; it may be hoped that someone will publish a similar translation in English one day.
HOMER (probably late eighth century BC). (i) The I/iad and the Odyssey, the national epics of the Greeks, were traditionally ascribed to a poet called Homer (Homeros), on whom we have no trustworthy information. There is disagreement on whether the two poems can be ascribed to the same author (and indeed on whether each of them was basically the work of a single author, although scholars have been less inclined to attempt to trace different sections to different origins since greater understanding has been gained of the process of creation in oral poetry). There is good reason to suppose that they were composed in Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor. They certainly contain some later interpolations, even if these cannot always be recognized with any assurance. (ii) In contrast to the usual pattern in epic, in which a succession of episodes would be described in simple chronological order and the traditional history of the war or adventure or whatever provided the principle of unity, the entire narrative of the I/iad is ordered around a single incident in the tenth year of the Trojan War — the anger and withdrawal of Achilles — and the time-span is comparatively restricted. The main action is concentrated in a period of only four days and nights, and the span of the whole story does not extend beyond fifty-one days; but the poem is artfully constructed so as to make it seem that it epitomizes the entire trajectory of the war. The articulating theme of the poem, as announced in the first line, is the wrath of Achilles, the mightiest of the Greek warriors, who withdraws from the fighting in anger at being deprived of his captive maiden Briseis by the Greek commander Agamemnon, giving the Trojans an opportunity to advance out of their city and place the Greek army under severe threat; but after his closest friend Patroklos is killed, he returns to the battlefield to seek vengeance and drives the Trojans back, killing many of them including their greatest warrior, Hektor. A full summary of the plot may be found on pp. 462ff. (iii) The poem makes many allusions to the preceding history of the war and to its conclusion and aftermath, and also refers to events from the earlier lives of the participants and to stories from other cycles of legend and from divine mythology. The loquacious Nestor likes to reminisce about his youthful adventures in the western Peloponnese, and Phoinix recounts the story of the Aetolian hero Meleagros while trying to persuade Achilles to return to the fight (see p. 417); but full narratives of stories that have no direct connection with the war are naturally infrequent. The long muster-list in the second book (the so-called ‘catalogue of ships’, 2.493-759) preserves a large amount of very ancient information about the geography of Greece in the legendary era and the heroic families that were supposed to have ruled in it. A useful summary of the mythical history of Troy is provided by Aineias in the twentieth book (208-40). The poem also has much to say about the lives and characters of the gods. It records two versions, for instance, of myth in which the young Hephaistos was said to have been hurled down from Olympos (see p. 165). (iv) The hero of the Odyssey, Odysseus, was a cunning and resourceful warrior who came from the island of Ithaca off the west coast of Greece. The epic describes how he wandered through distant seas for ten long years after being driven far off course while sailing home from Troy, and exacted vengeance on his return against a crowd of local noblemen who had been revelling in his palace during his absence, squandering his property and courting his wife. See pp. 492ff for a summary of his adventures. The epic falls into three main parts. The first four books (the so-called Telemachia) tell how Telemachos, the young son of Odysseus, visited Nestor at Pylos and Menelaos at Sparta to seek news of his missing father; the next eight books (5-12) describe the adventures of Odysseus in foreign seas, partly as narrated by Odysseus himself at a banquet in his last port of call (9-12); and the last twelve books tell how he arrived home in Ithaca, exacted vengeance against the suitors after due preparation, and was reunited with his faithful wife Penelope. In books 3 and 4, the poem reveals a fair amount about the events that immediately followed the sack of Troy, and about how other heroes, including Agamemnon, fared during their return voyages and after arriving home (see pp. 482ff).
HOMERIC HYMNS, a collection of thirty-three poems in epic metre addressed to various greater and lesser deities. Although widely ascribed to Homer in ancient times, they are in fact of varied authorship and were composed at widely differing times, ranging from the seventh or eighth century BC to the fifth century or even later. While many are no more than brief preludes (prooimia) that would be chanted by rhapsodes before epic recitations, a few are substantial narrative poems of considerable charm that describe important episodes in the lives of the gods. The Hymn to Demeter (no. 2) tells how the corn-goddess Demeter searched for her daughter Persephone after she was abducted by Hades, and finally forced Zeus to take action on her behalf by causing the earth to remain barren and so depriving the gods of their sacrifices (see pp. 126ff). The poem explains the origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries and alludes to various aspects of Eleusinian cult, and was presumably composed in the area of Eleusis, perhaps in the late seventh century BC. The Hymn to Apollo (3), which may well have been put together from two originally separate poems, describes how Leto came to give birth to her divine twins Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos, and goes on to explain how Apollo came to establish his oracle and shrine at Delphi (see pp. 144 and 188). The Hymn to Hermes (4), which is broadly humorous in tone, describes how the infant Hermes set off to rustle the cattle of Hermes on the day of his birth, but reached an accommodation with Apollo soon afterwards and was assigned his main functions as a god (see pp. 161ff). The longer of the two hymns addressed to Aphrodite, the fifth, describes how the goddess seduced Anchises, a member of the Trojan royal family, on Mount Ida in the Troad and conceived Aineias to him (see pp. 200—1ff). The much shorter Hymn to Dionysos (7) describes how some pirates tried to abduct the god in his youth, provoking him to transform them into dolphins after first working some miracles as a manifestation of his power (see p. 177). The short Hymn to Pan (19) is also of some interest for its description of the nature and birth of the goat-footed god. Translations are available in the Hesiod volume in the Loeb series and elsewhere; they make delightful reading even in a plain prose translation.
HYGINUS (Gaius Julius Hyginus), a learned freedman of Augustus who became the librarian of the Palatine Library, the putative author of two works of mythological interest, the Fabulae (i.e. Mythical Tales, also known as the Genealogiae), a handbook of mythology, and the Astronomia, a popular treatise on astronomy. Both books were compiled from Greek sources. Since their author was a scholar of limited competence who could make elementary mistakes in translating from the Greek, it is generally agreed that these cannot be genuine works of Hyginus, and they were probably written after his time in the second century AD. The 220 chapters of the Fabulae consist either of brief mythological narratives or of catalogues (e.g. of mothers who killed their sons, persons who were suckled by animals, inventors and their inventions). Although the sources of the narratives are rarely indicated, the book seems to draw most heavily on tragic sources. The second book of the Astronomia contains the fullest surviving collection of constellation myths, derived mainly from *Eratosthenes. English translations of the Fabulae and this ‘poetic astronomy’ may be found in Hyginus, The Myths, ed. and trans. M. Grant (Lawrence, Kansas, 1960), and there are good French translations, with useful notes, in the Budé series.
LUCIAN (Loukianos, second century AD), orator and prose-writer of Syrian birth who quite often touches on mythological matters in his copious works. In some of his satirical dialogues, most notably the Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Sea-gods, he makes fun of the traditional portrayal of the gods and traditional themes from myth, while other works, such as the Charon and the Dialogues of the Dead, are of interest in relation to traditional ideas about the afterlife and Underworld.
LYCOPHRON (born c. 320 BC), Hellenistic poet, author of a mythological puzzlepoem, the Alexandra, in which the Trojan seer Kassandra delivers riddling prophecies about the fall of Troy and the subsequent fates of those who took part in the war. Although not exactly pleasurable reading, it is of great value as a source of mythological information if read in conjunction with the extensive ancient *scholia and the Byzantine commentary of John Tzetzes. Particular attention is devoted to the Italian West. Primarily on account of a seemingly anachronistic reference to Roman power (1227ff), some scholars have argued that the poem must have been written somewhat later by another author in the second century BC.
MIMNERMUS (second half of the sixth century BC), elegiac poet. The fragments of one of his poems, the Nano, contain interesting mythical allusions to Jason’s quest and to Helios’ nightly journey to the place of his rising (see pp. 43-4).
MOSCHUS of Syracuse (second century BC), bucolic poet, author of an attractive
epyllion or miniature epic, the Evropa, which tells how Zeus assumed the form of a bull to abduct the heroine of that name from Phoenicia to Crete.
MUSAEUS (probably late fifth century AD), author of an attractive miniature epic that tells the tragic story of Hero and Leandros, two lovers who lived on opposite banks of the Hellespont (see p. 577); a translation may be found in the Loeb series (in the same volume as the fragments of Callimachus).
NICANDER of Colophon (second century BC), Hellenistic poet. Two of his didactic poems, the Theriaka and Alexipharmaka (which dealt with poisonous animals and antidotes to poisons respectively), have survived intact, but he was of greater importance from a mythological point of view for his lost Heteroioumena (i.e. Metamorphoses), a collection of transformation myths. *Ovid drew on the poem when writing his Metamorphoses, and *Antoninus Liberalis provides summaries of some of the stories recounted in it.
NONNUS (probably fifth century AD), of Panopolis in Egypt, author of the Dionysiaca, an interminable epic in forty-eight books that deals with Dionysos and his expedition to India; translated in the Loeb series.
OVID (Publius Ovidius Naso, 70-19 BC), Roman poet who had an extensive knowledge of Greek myth and Alexandrian poetry. His most ambitious poem, the Metamorphoses, is a collection of transformation legends in fifteen books. The poem begins with the origin of the universe and ends with the apotheosis of Romulus, and the intervening stories are skilfully woven together with regular alterations in tone to ensure that it forms a unified epic-style poem. Except in the last two books, which are devoted to Roman and Italian matters, the stories are drawn almost exclusively from Greek legend. Some were quite ancient while others originated in the more recent literature, for transformations were a popular theme among Hellenistic poets such as *Nicander. Most of the fictional letters in Ovid’s Heroides are addressed from heroines of Greek legend to their lovers or husbands, and the poet also refers to Greek myths elsewhere in his poems.
PALAEPHATUS (probably fourth century BC), author of the Incredible Tales (Peri Apiston), a mythographical work that provides rationalistic (if highly implausible) explanations for the origins of seemingly impossible tales from heroic legend, for instance those that involve monsters. The author, who may have written under a pseudonym, was apparently an associate of Aristotle who was active in the latter part of the fourth century BC; if that is the case, the book provides the earliest evidence for a number of important legends. A translation and commentary is available, by J. Stern (Wauconda, Illinois, 1996). A similar work of later origin has been transmitted to us under the name of Heraclitus. In contrast to *Euhemerus and his followers, such authors did not attempt to rationalize divine myths.
PARTHENIUS of Nicaea (first century BC), late Hellenistic poet and mythographer, author of Su/fferings in Love (Evotika Pathemata), a collection of prose summaries of thirty-six love-stories, mostly obscure and of relatively late origin. In relation to early myth, many are of interest for the way in which standard motifs from earlier myth are recycled in them. Translations are available in the Loeb series and in J.-L.
Lightfoot’s recent edition of the works of Parthenius (Oxford, 1999, with illuminating discussions and commentary).
PAUSANIAS (second century AD), author of a Description of Greece in ten books, covering the entire Peloponnese and much of Central Greece. Pausanias visited all the main towns and other sites of interest in these areas to investigate their traditions and topography, monuments and antiquities, and cults and local mythology. The resulting work is a source of the very highest value for the mythologist. It records local traditions about the ancient history of the cities and lands that he passed through, and many legends that were attached to local monuments and landmarks; and although it has to be remembered that he collected this local material at a relatively late period, he also preserves a large amount of information that relates unquestionably to the early mythical tradition, both in references to early literature (for he was widely read and was willing to extend his reading to seek answers to specific questions) and in descriptions of early works of art such as the mural paintings of Polygnotos (fifth century BC) or the chest of Kypselos (sixth century). For mythological purposes at least, the edition in the Loeb series is to be preferred to the Penguin translation, which omits some heroic genealogies without any immediate warning and translates some Greek names into English in a haphazard and confusing manner.
PHERECYDES of Athens (probably active in the first half of the fifth century BC), eatly mythographer, a prolific writer who compiled comprehensive accounts of the legendary history of Greece, drawing most of his material from early epic and organizing it on a genealogical basis in accordance with the procedure developed in the Hesiodic Catalogue (see under Hesiod). These works of Pherecydes, which were known as the Historiai or Genealogiai, were published by the Alexandrian scholars in an edition in ten books, and were very widely consulted by scholars and poets as a standard source for narratives from early legend. As we know from a few surviving passages, the stories were recounted with pleasing simplicity in a naive paratactic style. Although no manuscripts of Pherecydes’ writings have been transmitted to us, we know a fair amount about their contents, largely because the scholiasts refer to them with notable frequency. *Apollodorus cites Pherecydes by name thirteen times in his little manual, more than any other authority, and uses him as his main source in some sections of the book (for instance in his account of the life of Perseus).
PINDAR (c. 518-438 BC), author of choral lyric, perhaps the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece. In addition to numerous fragments, four complete books of his poetry have survived, consisting of odes that he wrote in honour of victors at the four main athletic festivals, the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian Games. These epinician odes (i.e. ‘odes of victory’) are of greater value as sources of myth than might be supposed, for the poet rarely devotes many lines to the victory or victor but soon passes on to a mythical narrative after a short prelude, and devotes much of the poem to the myth before returning to praise the victor and his prowess or good fortune at the end. His victory is most effectively ennobled by being presented against this mythical background. The myth could be introduced on a variety of pretexts, typically in connection with the family history of the victor or with the traditions of his homeland or the place of his victory. Although the narratives may be quite long, they are rarely developed in a straightforward chronological manner as in epic poetry, for the poet tends to concentrate on particular aspects of the story that are relevant to his ‘argument’, and to start in the middle of the story and range backwards and forwards in time. Pindar recounts or refers to a great many myths in his poems, and provides the first surviving mention or proper account of many a story. Three full and relatively straightforward narratives may be singled out by way of example. In his Seventh Olympian Ode, Pindar explains how the Sungod Helios came to win the island of Rhodes as his special domain (see p. 43); in his Ninth Pythian Ode, he tells how Apollo abducted the nymph Kyrene to North Africa as his mistress after seeing her wrestling with a lion in her native Thessaly (see p. 152); and in his Sixth Olympian Ode, he describes the birth, exposure and rescue of the seer Iamos (see p. 548). The oldest detailed account of the very ancient myth of the Argonauts may be found in the Fourth Pythian Ode.
PLATO (c. 429-347 BC), Athenian philosopher and author of philosophical dialogues. Although his writings cannot be said to be of any great value as a source for myth (except perhaps in relation to the mythology of the Underworld and afterlife), they are full of mythological allusions and contain distinctive philosophical myths of Plato’s own invention.
PLINY the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, AD 23/4-79), Roman writer, author of a Natural History in thirty-seven books, an encyclopaedia of the natural world that records a vast amount of miscellaneous information.
PLUTARCH (mid-first century AD until after 120), author of biographies and of essays and dialogues on moral, religious and other subjects. He quite often touches on mythological matters in the latter works (which are known collectively as the Moralia). The apocryphal myths in the pseudo-Plutarchean Greek and Roman Parallel Stories and On Rivers should not be taken too seriously. A very useful life of Theseus may be found among Plutarch’s biographies, but his life of Herakles is lost (which would be more regrettable if we did not possess full accounts of that hero’s life by Diodorus and Apollodorus).
PROCLUS, the author of some surviving summaries of the Trojan epics in the *epic cycle. It is not known whether the Proclus in question was the Neoplatonic philosopher of that name (fifth century AD) or a grammarian of the second century AD.
QUINTUS of Smyrna (probably fourth century AD), author of a late epic poem in fourteen books, the Posthomerica, which was written to provide a synoptic account of the final stages and conclusion of the Trojan War after the poems of the *epic cycle had ceased to be read (or at least fallen from favour). It describes all that took place after the period covered in the I/iad, ending with the sack of Troy and the perilous return voyage of the conquering army. Although Quintus would have drawn much of his material from fairly late sources, he was deliberately conservative in his choice of sources, taking care to avoid novelistic or revisionist accounts. A translation is available in the Loeb series; although there are some attractive passages, the poem as a whole is long-winded and artificial and does not often come to life.
SAPPHO of Lesbos (born late seventh century BC), author of lyric poetry, mainly of an intimate character.
SCHOLIA, ancient explanatory notes preserved in the margins of ancient writings. Since myth so often provided the subject-matter for Greek poetry and drama, many of these are inevitably devoted to mythological matters, narrating myths to account for allusions in the text in question, explaining specific points that arise from narratives in the text, citing parallels and variants from other sources (often from literature that is lost to us), and so on. Most of what we know of early mythographers such as *Pherecydes and *Hellanicus is derived from scholia. The scholia to the Homeric epics and to Pindar, Euripides, Apollonius and Lycophron are particularly valuable as sources of mythological information. Latin scholia can also be useful to the student of Greek mythology, notably the scholia to the poems of Vergil and the Theban epic of Statius.
SENECA (c. 40 BC-AD 65), Roman politician, philosopher and writer, author of nine melodramatic tragedies that were based on stories from Greek legend and modelled on plays of the Attic tragedians, especially Euripides, namely the Hercules Furens, Hercules on Oeta, Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Troades and Phoenissae.
SERVIUS (fourth century AD), Roman scholar who is best remembered as the author of a commentary on the poems of *Vergil. The longer version of his commentary (known as Servius auctus or Servius Danielis) incorporates material from other authors. These and other ancient notes on Vergil’s works contain valuable reports on Greek legend, preserving some stories that are recorded in no other source.
SIMONIDES (c. 556-468 BC), lyric poet. Far less of his poetry survives than is the case with his nephew Bacchylides and great successor Pindar, and little of what does survive has anything to do with myth. This is a shame because he seems to have had gifts of his own as a narrative poet who was capable of writing with great simplicity and pathos. These qualities are shown to the full in a wonderful little poem (543 PMG) in which Danae sings a sad lament to her sleeping baby Perseus as they are drifting through rough seas in a little chest (see p. 239). We have to rely in the main on scholiasts’ reports for an idea of how Simonides recounted other myths.
SOPHOCLES (c. 496—406 Bc), Athenian tragic poet, a contemporary of Euripides. The most widely familiar of his seven surviving plays are those that portray the sad fate of Oedipus and his daughter Antigone. In Oedipus the King (Oidipous Tyrannos), Sophocles shows how it finally came to be revealed that Oedipus had unknowingly killed his father and married his mother; and the Oedipus at Colonus, a very late work, portrays the last hours of the blind and exiled king of Thebes, describing how he died in mysterious circumstances at Colonus (Kolonos) in Attica after arriving there with Antigone as his guide. Antigone herself is the heroine of the Antigone, which tells how she provoked her own death by attending to the burial of her brother Polyneikes in contravention of a decree of Kreon, king of Thebes. Two of the other plays of Sophocles are set in the final period of the Trojan War, namely the Ajax (or Aias in Greek), which tells how the mighty warrior of that name came to commit suicide after being defeated in a contest for the arms of the dead Achilles (see p. 470), and the Philoktetes, which tells how the great archer of that name was finally recovered from the island of Lemnos after being marooned there by his comrades (see pp. 449-50). The Women of Trachis (Trachiniai) deals with the events that led up to the death of Herakles, while the Elektra portrays the predicament of Elektra, daughter of Agamemnon, at Mycenae after the murder of her father. The action of the latter play is set at the time when Elektra’s brother Orestes returns to avenge the murder. Substantial remains of one of Sophocles’ satyrplays, the Trackers (Ichneutai), have been recovered from papyri; it tells how Seilenos and his crew of cowardly Satyrs tracked down the infant Hermes after his theft of Apollo’s cattle.
STATIUS (Publius Papinius Statius, c. 45-96 AD), Roman poet, author of the Thebais, a Theban epic in twelve books that tells the story of the conflict between the two sons of Oedipus. He also embarked on an epic account of the life of Achilles, the Achilleis, of which only two books were completed.
STEPHANUS of Byzantium (c. sixth century AD), author of a large geographical lexicon, the Ethnica, which contained information on mythological and historical matters. Although we possess very little of the original text, its contents are partially preserved in a surviving epitome.
STESICHORUS (first half of the sixth century BC), Greek Sicilian lyric poet. Although classed as an author of choral lyric, Stesichorus wrote long narrative poems that seem to have had more in common with epic than with conventional lyric poetry. Among the many mythical subjects that are known to have been treated by him are the hunt for the Calydonian boar, Herakles’ theft of the cattle of Geryon (probably providing the basis for Apollodorus’ account of that episode, see p. 264), Eriphyle’s betrayal of her husband, the sack of Troy, and the revenge of Orestes; but although his poems apparently exerted a considerable influence on the development of the mythical tradition, almost nothing is preserved of them. Stesichorus himself became a subject of legend, as we will see (p. 583), for he was said to have written a poem of recantation to win back his eyesight after he had been blinded by Helen for insulting her in one of his poems.
STRABO (c. 64 BC-AD 19), historian and geographer, author of a surviving
geographical treatise in seventeen books. The bulk of the work is a descriptive regional geography of the known world, compiled chiefly from secondary sources.
Since Strabo is primarily interested in the world as a habitation for man and a setting for human activities and history, he quite often has occasion to refer to mythological matters in relation to the traditions and historical background of the areas that he surveys. His respect for Homer’s authority encouraged him to include antiquarian material. A translation with a good index can be found in the Loeb series.
THEOCRITUS (active in the first half of the third century BC), a Hellenistic poet who is best remembered as the founder of the ancient genre of bucolic or pastoral poetry, although he was actually more versatile than this might suggest. His poems (apart from the epigrams) are traditionally known as Idy//s, but it should not be inferred from this that all are idyllic in the modern sense since the term could originally be applied to poems that contained a wide range of subject-matter; one of the finest of Theocritus’ idylls is a thus a portrayal of city-life in which two chattering women set off from home to attend a festival of Adonis, while others are mythical narratives in miniature epic form. Idy// 13, the Hy/as, tells how Herakles’ favourite of that name was snatched away by amorous spring-nymphs; Idy// 24, the Herakliskos (Little Herakles), tells how the infant Herakles strangled two snakes that were sent against him by Hera; Idy// 22, the Hymn to the Dioskouroi, tells how Polydeukes confronted the brutal Amykos in a lethal boxing-match (see p. 386), and then offers a rather unusual account of the conflict between the Dioskouroi and the sons of Leukippos (see p. 529). From among the spurious poems in the Theocritean corpus, Idyll 25, Herakles the Lion-killer, is worthy of mention, and others too, genuine and spurious, are of mythological interest; Idy// 6, for instance, is a pastoral poem in which two shepherds sing of the love of Polyphemos and Galateia. We possess poems by two of Theocritus’ successors, *Moschus and *Bion, and there is an anonymous poem of related type, the Megara, in which the wife and mother of Herakles talk to one another of their sorrows. The poems of Theocritus are translated along with those of his successors in the volume in the Loeb series entitled The Greek Bucolic Poets, and other translations can be found elsewhere.
THEOGNIS (sixth century BC), elegiac poet of aristocratic temper; almost 1,400 lines of verse, evidently of varied origin, are preserved under his name, but only a handful are of mythological interest.
THUCYDIDES (died c. 400 BC), author of a history of the Peloponnesian War which is the most impressive exercise in historical analysis to have been attempted by any ancient author. The work starts with a short account of the earlier history of Greece extending back into the period of legend (chapters 2-19 of the first book, known as the archaiologia).
TRYPHIODORUS (probably fifth century AD), author of the Capture of Troy, a short epic in 691 lines; translated in the Loeb series.
VALERIUS FLACCUS (writing in the latter part of the first century BC), Roman poet, author of an incomplete Argonautic epic, the Argonautica.
VATICAN MYTHOGRAPHERS, the name ascribed to the authors of three medieval collections of mythical tales that are preserved in a manuscript in the Vatican Library; the narratives are drawn from Latin scholia and late Latin sources. French translations are available or in the course of preparation.
VERGIL (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 BC), Roman poet, author of the Eclogues, a book of pastoral poems, the Georgics, a poem about farming and bee-keeping, and the Aeneid, an epic poem in twelve books that describes how the Trojan prince Aeneas (Aineias in Greek) wandered to Italy after the fall of Troy and established himself in Latium to become the ancestor of the founder of Rome (see pp. 588ff). Vergil often refers to persons or stories from Greek legend, or borrows from Greek legend or adapts it to suit his own purposes; and the surviving commentaries on his works by *Servius and other scholars often refer to such matters as a consequence, and can be a valuable source for the mythologist.
XENOPHON (c. 430-354 BC), historian and author of prose treatises, mainly on practical subjects; he rarely has occasion to refer to matters of mythological concern.
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