The Bibliotheca in three books, provides a comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

 and heroic legend

Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

s, "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times," Aubrey Diller observed, whose "stultifying purpose" was neatly expressed in the epigram

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

 noted by Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople:

It has the following not ungraceful epigram: 'Draw your knowledge of the past from me and read the ancient tales of learned lore. Look neither at the page of Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

, nor of elegy, nor tragic muse, nor epic strain. Seek not the vaunted verse of the cycle; but look in me and you will find in me all that the world contains'.

The brief and plainly expressed accounts of myth in the Bibliotheca have led some commentators to suggest that even its complete sections are an epitome

Epitome

An epitome is a summary or miniature form; an instance that represents a larger reality, also used as a synonym for embodiment....

 of a lost work.

Pseudo-Apollodorus

A certain "Apollodorus" is indicated as author on some surviving manuscripts (Diller 1983). This Apollodorus has been mistakenly identified with Apollodorus of Athens

Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...

 (born c. 180 BC

180 BC

Year 180 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Luscus and Piso/Flaccus...

), a student of Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus of Samothrace was a grammarian noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the librarian of the library of Alexandria and seems to have succeeded his teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium in that role.He established the most historically important critical...

, mainly as it is known—from references in the minor scholia on Homer—that Apollodorus of Athens did leave a similar comprehensive repertory on mythology, in the form of a verse chronicle. The text that we possess, however, cites a Roman author: Castor the Annalist, a contemporary of Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

 in the 1st century BC. The mistaken attribution was made by scholars from Photius onwards. Since for chronological reasons Apollodorus of Athens could not have written the book, the Scriptor Bibliothecae ("the writer of the Bibliotheca") is conventionally called the "Pseudo-Apollodorus" by those wishing to be scrupulously correct. Traditional references simply instance "the Library and Epitome".

Manuscript tradition

The first mention of the work, ignored as a popularised handbook by Classical authors, is by Photius. The work was almost lost in the thirteenth century, surviving in one now-incomplete manuscript, which was copied for Cardinal Bessarion in the fifteenth century; from Bessarion's copy the other surviving manuscripts depend.

Unfortunately the Bibliotheca has come down to us incomplete. It is undivided in the manuscripts but conventionally divided in three books. Part of the third book, which breaks off abruptly in the story of Theseus, has been lost. The Patriarch Photius had the full work before him, as he mentions in his "account of books read" that it contained stories of the heroes of the Trojan War

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

 and the nostoi

Nostoi

The Nostoi , also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks, was a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse...

, missing in surviving manuscripts. Sir James George Frazer published an epitome of the book by conflating two manuscript summaries of the text, which included the lost part.

Printed editions

The first printed edition of "Apollodorus" was published in Rome in 1555, edited by Benedetto Egio (Benedictus Aegius) of Spoleto, who divided the text in three books, but made many unwarranted emendations in his very corrupted text. Hieronymus Commelinus published an improved text at Heidelberg, 1559. The first text based on comparative manuscripts was that of Christian Gottlob Heyne

Christian Gottlob Heyne

Christian Gottlob Heyne was a German classical scholar and archaeologist as well as long-time director of the Göttingen State and University Library.-Biography:He was born in Chemnitz, Electorate of Saxony...

, Göttingen, 1782-83.

External links

• Apollodori Bibliotheca, edition by B.G. Teubner, Lipsiae (Leipzig), 1854. Original greek text.
• Online Text: Apollodorus The Library translated by J. G. Frazer segmented english text with copious footnotes
• Apollodori Bibliotheca Electronica: searchable and annotated online bibliography: history of the text, printed editions,textual criticism, etc.
• Apollodorus the Mythographer
• Online Text: Apollodorus The Library translated by J. G. Frazer condensed text (4 pgs)
• Perseus Encyclopedia, "Apollodorus" (4)

Further reading

• Diller, Aubrey (1983). Studies in Greek Manuscript Tradition, (Amsterdam) pp. 199–216. Abstract. Originally as "The Text History of the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus", in Transactions of the American Philological Association 66 (1935), pp. 296–313.
• Hard, Robin (1999). The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford University Press).
• Smith, R.S. and S. Trzaskoma (2007). Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology (Hackett Publishing).