Mythography

The Questionable Lives of the Mythographers:

Palaephatus - perhaps late 4^th century BCE in Athens, pupil of Aristotle

Apollodorus - perhaps 1^st or 2^nd century CE, possibly in Athens but not 1^st century BCE Apollodorus of Athens

Hyginus - perhaps 2^nd century CE, probably not Hyginus the freedman of Augustus Caesar and teacher of Ovid

Fulgentius - perhaps late 5^th century CE in North Africa, possibly in Carthage; perhaps Fulgentius the Bishop of Ruspe (467-532 CE)

Critiques of Method:

Plato, Phaedrus 229c ff

Phaedrus: Socrates, do you believe that story to be true?

Socrates: I should be quite in the fashion if I disbelieved it, as the men of science do. I might proceed to give a scientific account of how the maiden, while at play with Pharmacia, was blown by a gust of Boreas down from the rocks hard by, and having thus met her death was said to have been seized by Boreas, though it may have happened on the Areopagus, according to another version of the occurrence. For my part, Phaedrus, I regard such theories as no doubt attractive, but as the invention of clever, industrious people who are not exactly to be envied, for the simple reason that they must then go on and tell us the real truth about the appearance of centaurs and the Chimera, not to mention a whole host of such creatures, Gorgons and Pegasuses and countless other remarkable monsters of legend flocking in on them. If our skeptic, with his somewhat crude science, means to reduce every one of them to the standard of probability, he'll need a deal of time for it. I myself have certainly no time for the business, and I'll tell you why, my friend. I can't as yet 'know myself,' as the inscription at Delphi enjoins, and so long as that ignorance remains it seems to me ridiculous to inquire into extraneous matters. Consequently I don't bother about such things, but accept the current beliefs about them, and direct my inquiries, as I have just said, rather to myself, to discover whether I really am a more complex creature and more puffed up with pride than Typhon, or a simpler, gentler being whom heaven has blessed with a quiet, un-Typhonic nature.

Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory

I now turn to minor points concerning which enthusiasts for etymology give themselves an infinity of trouble, restoring to their true form words which have bcome slightly altered. The methods which they employ are varied and manifold; they shorten them or lengthen them, add, remove, or interchange letters or syllables as the case may be. As a result, perverseness of judgement leads to the most hideous absurdities. (1.7.32)

Such absurdities occur chiefly in connection with fabulous stories and are sometimes carried to ludicrous or even scandalous extremes; for in such cases the more unscrupulous commentator has such full scope for invention that he can tell lies to his heart's content about whole books and authors without fear of detection; for what never existed can obviously never be found, whereas if the subject is familiar the careful investigator will often detect the fraud. (1.8.21)

None of the five Latin works ascribed to Fulgentius the mythographer has, to my knowledge, ever been previously translated into English, or any other modern language. They are, indeed, frequently described as either untranslatable or not worth translating. At worst, the Latin is appalling - decadent, involved, littered with wasteful connectives and rhetorical extravagances, pompous, inflated, pretentious, prolix, infested with Asianic exaggeration. The colors of rhetoric turn psychedelic; enormous sentences confront lucidity like barbed-wire entanglements. And, as the style is without grace, so are the purposes and methods muddleheaded and dubious, and the displays of learning secondhand and suspect. Yet, for all the drawbacks, which belong as much to his age as to Fulgentius himself, these are works which through the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance were highly popular, much admired, and widely imitated.

(from the translator's Preface to Fulgentius)