Clytaemnestra daughter of Tyndareus and Leda daughter of Thestius: Agamemnon son of Atreus.
Helen, the daughter of Jupiter and Leda: Deiphobus son of Priam.
Agave: Lycotherses in Illyria, so that she could give his kingdom to her father, Cadmus.
Deianira daughter of Oenes: Hercules, the son of Jupiter and Alcmena, at Nessus’ prompting.
Iliona daughter of Priam: Polymnestor, the king of the Thracians.
Semiramis: King Ninus in Babylonia. (Fab. 240)
All of these systematic works and lists could be organized around such narrative themes, but also around geography, the particular deities or heroes involved, or any other connection. Star myths (catasterisms) had long been a popular choice and continued to be so in our period, when several collections were circulating in both Greek and Latin. One Greek example survives in epitomized form, the Catasterisms of Ps.-Eratosthenes (the relationship to the original Hellenistic manual of Eratosthenes is a complex one), which presents mythical and astronomical information in a relatively compact guide to the sky (see Pàmias i Massana and Zucker 2013 for texts, French translations, and up-to-date discussion of the Greek materials connected to Eratosthenes, especially lvi–lxi for mythographical connections). The first third of the account of Orion, for instance, runs:
Hesiod says that he was the son of Euryale, daughter of Minos, and Poseidon, and that the ability was granted to him to walk on the waves as if on land. He came to Chios and got drunk and raped Merope, daughter of Oenopion. When Oenopion found out and could not bear the violation, he blinded him and ejected him from the land. He wandered to Lemnos as a beggar and became associated with Hephaestus, who out of pity gave him his own servant Cedalion to guide him on the road. Orion put him on his shoulders and carried him while he indicated the way to go (32).
This sort of summary is essentially indistinguishable from other systematic mythography; only the connection to astronomy and the addition of “astrothetic” information at the end of each entry mark the difference (in this case the entry has appended: “Orion has three faint stars on his head, one bright one on each shoulder . . .”).
There were, of course, many choices about a theme or subject that could be made in organizing a mythographical work. To take another example, a miscellaneous collection of summaries (historiai) of about 250 myths was circulating during our period, first as an independent work (the so-called Mythographus Homericus) and then cannibalized and worked as needed into early commentaries and scholia (for overview and discussion, see Montanari 1995 and Van Rossum-Steenbeek 1998, 85–118). The common connection between the different entries was that they were the myths mentioned but usually not elaborated upon in Homeric epic.
Systematic mythography, then, was primarily concerned with presenting information, either the barest of facts or stories summarized at greater or lesser length. The principle of organization varied. As we have seen, it could be thematic, geographic, genealogical, and so forth. And, finally, the manner and scope of presentation ranged from the long continuous narrative of Pseudo-Apollodorus to long but discontinuous historiai to dictionaries with reasonably full entries to the simplest of lists. Despite the differences, however, the activity of all of these mythographical writers remains at heart the same, the attempt to inform and bring order to the chaos of myth. The texts that survive in manuscripts and on papyri, as well as the citations and quotations of lost mythographers in scholia and commentaries, show us the meager remnants of what must have once been a massive amount of material in wide circulation throughout the Mediterranean world during the Second Sophistic.
Of a very different sort are the works of interpretive mythography that were produced and circulated in the period. These almost never retell the myths in any substantial detail or present traditional information for its own sake. Rather, their primary focus is always the interpretation of myth, particularly through rationalistic, euhemeristic and allegorical explanations, an activity which is certainly earlier in origin, and for which we have a surviving early mythographical exemplum in the Peri Apiston of Palaephatus (a rationalizer, probably late fourth century BCE), but which seems to have gained new life and a new popularity in the imperial period. Cornutus (mid-first century CE) and the slightly later Heraclitus the Allegorist and Heraclitus the Paradoxographer (both perhaps from the late first or second century CE)4 can serve as our representative texts here.
Cornutus’s Stoic handbook, Theologiae graecae compendium, is miscellaneous in its scope, that is to say, no common thematic thread runs through the topics discussed aside from the fact that it is all mythical (for overview and text, see Ramelli 2003 and also Most 1989). What unifies the treatment is the insistent presence of etymological and allegorical interpretation and a clear ethical orientation (Boys-Stones 2007). This is typical of Stoic allegory, and Cornutus makes no claim to originality—he is merely packaging the material for, as he makes clear, an audience of beginners (the addressee of his preface is a paidion), concentrating on physical and moral notions, such as:
Athena is said to have been born from Zeus’ head, perhaps because the ancients understood that the governing part of our soul is there (just as others later on believed too), or perhaps because the head is the highest portion of the human body, just as in the cosmos the highest portion is aether, where its governing part and the very substance of thought are located. (20)
and
Eros is a child because lovers’ judgment is imperfect and easily deceived, and he is winged because either he makes them have flighty thoughts or because he is always flying suddenly into their thinking like a bird, and he is armed with a bow because those who are captured by him experience something identical to a physical blow from the sight of beautiful people although they are not near or touching them, only viewing them from a distance. (47)
Heraclitus the Allegorist (see the introduction and translation of Russell and Konstan 2005) uses similar techniques in his Homeric Problems, but as the title indicates, this is not a miscellaneous collection at all but a treatise designed to defend the myths in Homer against the ancient charge that they were morally corrupt. Heraclitus again and again shows that the externals of the stories hide worthwhile ideas that can be unlocked by those who know the proper techniques. Despite a similarity of method to Cornutus (he gives a very similar account, for instance, of the allegorical function of Athena quoted above), his is a more ambitious work and likely addressed to more advanced audiences—and clearly those who were interested in Homer and in the debates about his value and place in the literary canon. Since the work is arranged in the order of the Homeric poems, it could presumably also have been read alongside them, although the work stands on its own because Heraclitus frequently cites the relevant verses. Philosophically more eclectic than Cornutus, Heraclitus shows a greater interest in exploring the value and nature of allegory in general and so is of interest for examining ancient literary criticism and composition theory.
The other Heraclitus, probably writing in the first or second century CE, is labeled a “paradoxographer,” but since the wonders he treats are all mythical, this is something of a misnomer. He is really a rationalizing mythographer who also indulges an interest in allegory as he treats a miscellaneous set of myths, mostly likely for an audience of students—more indication that writers of the period were being trained to think mythographically (Stern 2003; Hawes 2013, 99–102 for detailed connections to rhetorical exercises). The text as we have it is almost certainly a very abbreviated epitome, and so the interpretations here are more abrupt. His rationalizations are thus sometimes a bit unclear, but his method is the standard one known since Palaephatus and is mostly a form of banalization. Thus:
About Perseus it is told that Hermes gave him winged sandals, for Hermes invented training for running and Perseus was famous for that. At any rate, those who saw him, amazed at his speed, said that he had put wings on his feet; in the same way we regularly say, “he flew,” about those who run quickly.
; What is important to note is that these three authors, taken together, show a range of interests, organizational principles, styles, and audiences, even as they are engaged in what is fundamentally the same activity. Their survival and the survival of contemporary texts of a similar nature (the Pseudo-Plutarchan Life of Homer, for instance) show how widespread the phenomenon was and how deep the interest among readers.
29.2 THE CONTEXTS
We seem prima facie to be a long way from the heart of the Second Sophistic when dealing with mythographical texts. Mythography and its division into systematic and interpretive approaches, its organization along several main lines (universal, thematic, geographic, author-centered, etc.), and the primary research that mined archaic and classical poets, early historians, and local legends are all products of earlier times. What is distinctive about our period, however, is the rapid and wide diffusion and multiplication of mythographical sources and information. The long, scholarly mythographical works of the Hellenistic age were epitomized into more digestible sources, worked through for the raw materials to construct lists, catalogs, and digests, and broken apart into small historiai and factoids to be incorporated into commentaries and marginal scholia.
Such a process did not occur because myth had lost its importance after the Hellenistic period, but because myth’s role in imperial paideia at all levels was so great that it was natural for it to become available in more compact and easily digestible forms. The second-century BCE scholar Apollodorus of Athens had written influential works of mythography based on substantial research, including a detailed treatment of divine myth, On the Gods, in twenty-four books and a commentary on the Iliadic catalog of ships that filled another twelve books. Contrast his imperial descendant, Pseudo-Apollodorus, who sought to contain essentially the whole of the major mythic tradition in only a few books. It is not that later mythographers are worse mythographers or lazier ones; they were fulfilling a different function, no longer writing just for each other as scholars, as the earlier ones had, but for much wider audiences. In doing so, they were producing easily accessible information to satisfy the imperial fascination with the distant past and particularly with mythical stories. The ancient myths were remote, but knowledge of them paradoxically became not only a highly desirable mark of the educated elite but a way to connect to and refashion Hellenic (and Roman) identity.
There has been no large-scale attempt to synthesize the overall role of mythography during the period in question (but see Cameron 2004, 217–249 and compare the insightful discussion of Delattre 2013), so we can merely sketch here some of the ways in which it was integrated with education, oratory, and literary writing. Myths could entertain, provide moral exempla both positive and negative, connect Greeks to their origins, and help to explain the contours of the present, and so it was of obvious interest in any case. But from the initial stages of grammatical education, which often began with the memorization and writing of lists of mythological names, all the way through to the end of rhetorical training, myth was incorporated to a greater degree than is often realized, and mythography was present at every stage (Gibson 2013; cf. Hawes 2013, 99–102). As students moved past memorizing, consuming, and interpreting mythological material, they began using it actively in crafting narratives and orations. They not only would have benefited from the organizational work of mythography, they would also have been to a large degree practicing it—that is, selecting and organizing it (by choosing suitable narratives) and narrating it, but also using it as the starting point for interpretation, either implicitly through comparison or explicitly.
We must imagine, then, a world in which all of our authors were far more familiar with mythography than modern scholars are and felt themselves part of a mythographical web. It is not that mythography replaced other sources of mythological knowledge (though in some cases, it did—the epic cycle, for instance, was not being widely read in the Second Sophistic), but it complemented them and helped to form a view of the material. The usual reaction to mythological material in the literature of the Second Sophistic is to imagine literary antecedents, but we must allow that not every mythological allusion is actually an allusion to a text of impeccable archaic or classical pedigree. When Achilles Tatius, for instance, in his novel Leucippe and Cleitophon has Clinias urge his boyfriend to reject an arranged marriage, he employs myth in the attempt:
“If you were an uncultured layman, you would be unfamiliar with the tragic actions of women, but as it is, you could recount for the rest of us how many stories women have filled the stage with. Eriphyle’s necklace. Philomela’s meal. Stheneboea’s slander. Aerope’s theft. Procne’s murder. When Agamemnon longs for Chryseis’s beauty, he causes a plague for the Greeks. When Achilles longs for Briseis’s beauty, he brings grief for himself. When Candaules has a beautiful wife, the wife murders Candaules. The torch-fire of Helen’s wedding kindled another fire to burn Troy. The marriage of chaste Penelope—how many suitors did that kill? Phaedra killed Hippolytus because she loved him, but Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon because she didn’t. O women, capable of every cruelty! When they love, they kill. When they don’t love, they kill. Agamemnon was bound to be murdered! Handsome Agamemnon, whose beauty was heavenly, ‘in his eyes and head like unto thunder-loving Zeus.’ And, O Zeus, his wife cut that head off!” (1.8.4–7)
The most natural assumption is that mythographical lists and catalogs lie behind this, not that Achilles Tatius had to rummage through his memories of Attic tragedy at length to piece together a list ab novo. In making this point it is perhaps helpful to think of it from the other way round: did Achilles Tatius really have to read Sophocles’s Tereus to reference “Philomela’s meal” and “Procne’s murder,” and would his audience have needed firsthand knowledge of that play to understand the references? More likely, any knowledge would have come from a mythographical summary (hypothesis) of the play, collections of which were in wide circulation. In fact, we have found just such a hypothesis for a Tereus on papyrus (POxy. 3013, second or third century CE).
He need not even have had specific recourse to a summary of the play for such an offhanded reference, especially in the context of a list of this sort. He had probably copied out or memorized such a short catalog when he was nine years old, and if that had no doubt faded by the time he wrote, the imprint was still there and lists were easy to find. Compare Hyginus’s Fab. 240, “Wives who killed their husbands,” which was mentioned above, for something of the type. But even the larger and more detailed retelling of the story of Procne and Philomela (Ach. Tat. 5.5) need not depend on anything more than a good mythographical historia. We do not have to look far for other suspiciously mythographical concatenations. Not long after Clinias’ catalog, we get the famous debate over male-centered and female-centered love (2.35–38). Achilles Tatius has his novel’s characters use myths once more to make a point. Cleitophon, advocating for love of women, at one point argues:
“And yet,” I replied, “the beauty of women seems more heavenly insofar as it does not decay quickly. Agelessness is next to godliness. What changes through decay in imitation of mortal nature is not heavenly but common. Fine, Zeus fell for a Phrygian boy [i.e., Ganymede]. He brought the Phrygian boy up to the heavens. But the beauty of women brought Zeus himself down from heaven! For a woman Zeus once mooed; for a woman he once played a Satyr; and he turned himself into gold for another woman. Fine, Ganymede can pour the wine, but Hebe gets to drink it with the gods, so the woman has the boy as her servant. I also feel bad for him when I think about his abduction. This bird—this carnivorous bird—dives down at him, and once he’s snatched up, he’s as defenseless as a man ruled by a tyrant. The spectacle is absolutely degrading, a young man hanging from talons. Semele, by contrast, was brought up to the heavens not by a carnivorous bird but by fire. Don’t be surprised that someone goes up to heaven via fire. That’s how Heracles got there. And if you’re going to laugh at Danae’s ark, you’d better not forget Perseus. You know the only gift good enough for A
lcmena? Zeus stole three whole days for her.”
There can be no doubt that Achilles Tatius was thoroughly familiar with a wide range of mythical narratives in their original poetic contexts, but “Zeus . . . once mooed . . . played a Satyr . . . turned himself into gold” looks more like the product of a mythographical impulse (and perhaps a handy mythographical guide that contained just such a list). For comparison’s sake, PMil. Vogl. 3.126, a papyrus of the late second or early third century CE, preserves a list of Zeus’s affairs with mortal women, and Hyginus also had one (Fab. 226, though we have only the title, “Mortal Women Who Slept with Jupiter,” not the list).
What we ought to pay attention to is the world that Achilles Tatius draws, one of young, international (two of the men in the debate are Hellenized Tyrians, the other a Greek from Egypt or a Hellenized Egyptian) elite males displaying erudition, debating each other about contemporary issues with the use of mythical exempla, and distinguishing themselves from uncultured laymen. This is a friendly and informal fictional debate, but it reveals much that is not in its broad outlines fiction. At least some members of the audience of the novel were real-life cultural counterparts to its characters, as can be clearly seen from an offhand remark that Cleitophon makes to the reader in 3.15.6 when he is paralyzed by the sight of what he believes to be his lover’s murder: “Perhaps the myth of Niobe was not false but she too, suffering something similar at the destruction of her children, gave the appearance from her motionlessness of having become stone.” The explanation of mythical paralysis as lack of motion from amazement or shock would have been familiar to anyone with even a cursory exposure to interpretive mythography (cf. Palaephatus 31, Conon 40, Heraclitus Paradoxographus 1) and the comparison is not unique in the period (cf. the opening of Lucian’s Imagines). Moreover, we have a surviving if different rationalizing account of the very figure of Niobe (in Palaephatus 8). Examples such as this show us that Achilles Tatius, his narrating characters and at least some of his readers were fluent in the discourse of mythography.
The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic Page 75