Apollodoriana

Jordi Pàmias, Jordi Pàmias

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110544305
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria antica e classica

A growing interest in myth over the last decades has brought to the fore the main mythographical manual that has came down to us from Antiquity: Apollodorus' Bibliotheca. A number of recent editions shows this trend, like the commented translations of Carrière & Massonie (1991) and Scarpi & Ciani (1996), the translations of Guidorizzi (1995), Brodersen (2004), Dräger (2005) and Smith & Trzaskoma (2007) or the critical text by Papathomopoulos (2010). The publication of the first two volumes (2010 and 2012) of Cuartero's massive critical and commented bilingual edition for the Fundació Bernat Metge series seemed the occasion to address this text from innovative scholarly perspectives. The origins of the present volume lay in a colloquium held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2013. Despite its crucial interest for the scientific study of ancient myth, no conference devoted to this engaging text was held prior to that one. And, to this date, no monographic volume on Apollodorus' mythology exists either. To cover a broader scope of analysis, three further papers have been commissioned to other specialists. This collection of essays is meant to be a homage to Francesc J. Cuartero.

Jordi Pàmias

1Preface: Apollodorus: Cutting through Mythography

Jordi Pàmias, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The origins of this volume lay in the colloquium ‘Apollodoriana. Antics mites, noves cruïlles’ held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona on the 25th and 26th of April 2013.1 A growing interest in myth over the last decades has brought to the fore the main mythographical handbook that has came down to us from Antiquity: Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca (Library). A number of recent editions shows this trend, like (among others) the commented translation of Carrière & Massonie (1991), the translated and commented edition of Scarpi & Ciani (1996), the bilingual editions of Brodersen (2004) and Dräger (2005), the translations of Guidorizzi (1995) and Smith & Trzaskoma (2007) or the critical text by Papathomopoulos (2010).2 The last ambitious editorial undertaking is the Catalan edition of Apollodorus. Based on a fresh examination of the manuscripts and provided with a massive apparatus of notes, a four-volume bilingual edition of the Bibliotheca for the Fundació Bernat Metge collection is being currently completed by Francesc J. Cuartero.3 The publication of the first two volumes (2010 and 2012) seemed a suitable occasion to come to grips with this particular text and to address it from a scholarly perspective. Indeed, scientific study of Greek myth as a narrative has intensely focused on this comprehensive compilation of ancient myths written in the Roman period. No conference devoted to this engaging text, however, was held prior to that one. And, to this date, no monographic volume on Apollodorus’ mythology exists either. To cover a broader scope of analysis, three further papers were commissioned to scholars dealing with mythographical texts from diverse perspectives (Kenens, Pagès and Villagra). The present collection of essays is meant to be a homage to Paco Cuartero.4

In the burgeoning scholarly field of Greek mythology, a leading trend is now mythography.5 As the recent studies of Robert Fowler have positively shown (2000 and 2013), mythography is an activity that cannot be longer confined within the narrow chronological frame of Hellenistic and Imperial periods. Writing down myths proves to be an intense activity in Archaic and Classical poleis. Yet, a turning point in the history of Greek mythography is to be located in Hellenistic Alexandria. In the wake of the institutional research conducted in the library of the Museum, the reception of Greek mythology arrived at a conscious conversion into literature. Later on, if the Greek mythological patrimony can become a literary corpus, a mythographical manual would eventually aspire to be the compendium of, and substitute for, an entire mythological library: in fact, Apollodorus’ Library (Bibliotheca).6

This manual has served as the primary model for many modern collections of Greek myths and as a source for the study of ancient mythology. Thanks to its totalizing character, with its endless accumulation of mythical characters and references to now missing sources, the Bibliotheca invites consultation on particular matters. As Delattre proves in his chapter, already in Antiquity the Bibliotheca encouraged a particular reading: namely, one that aims for the reader to acquire information – and it does not necessarily entail a continuous act of reading.

This approach, however, shall not obscure its coherent character and internal logic. In its genealogical arrangement by broad mythical families, the Bibliotheca echoes the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, often considered its main structural source.7 But far from paraphrasing the genealogical poem, the author combines different and disparate sources in a single text.8 Myth, which has been losing its social and political efficacy, no longer serves the propaganda of the Greek cities or of the aristocratic families who asserted their mythical ancestors. In a moment in which knowledge of mythology has been converted into a crucial element in the definition and identity of the Greco-Roman elites, a function of the Bibliotheca is to put an artificial memory at the disposal of the reading public of Greek.9

However, outlining and describing the target audience for this particular manual is not an easy undertaking, as the contributions by Edmunds and Fowler show. Different levels of readership may be envisaged. On the one hand, one cannot hardly disagree with Cuartero, when he labels the Bibliotheca as a “discurs vulgaritzador”.10 Indeed, it can be seen as a work of popularization that provides the mainstream reading public with basic information about the Greek myths. An excellent example of this standpoint is Bernabé’s contribution on the Orphic mythology in the Bibliotheca. Apollodorus compiles a number of traditions into a unitary tale “a sort of ‘least common multiple’ of the features contained in the oldest sources”.

On the other hand, the unique details and variants found in the Bibliotheca, as well as the great number of authors and the frequency of their citation, show that the author wanted to reach an elite readership having “aspirations to sophistication” (Fowler).11 Some of these unusual, nay eccentric, traditions compiled by Apollodorus are described and analysed in Cuartero’s paper. In any case, Apollodorus’ inventiveness in combining elements into consistent stories, as astutely shown by Edmunds, encourages disagreement with Frazer, who called Apollodorus “a commonplace man, who relates without one touch of imagination or one spark enthusiasm the long series of fables and legends which inspired the immortal productions of Greek poetry and the splendid creations of Greek art”.12 Santoni’s paper provides evidence, too, for the sophisticated way in which the author deploys the narrative elements. Inclusion of catasterismic myths in the Bibliotheca suggests that the result is not “to be considered the simple result of a mechanical process of aggregation of information, but could reveal instead a certain level of elaboration and selection of data in the composition of the work”.

Unsurprisingly, a concern that can be recognized in a number of the individual contributions gathered in this volume is the implied readership of the Bibliotheca. Indeed, in the modern study of myth, a common trend is reception. And in this case reception starts with the intended audience of the manual. The active participation of readers in the construction of significance has serious consequences for the understanding of ancient texts. If the reader contributes to the construction of meaning, interpretation will emanate not solely from the original meaning but also from new readers in new contexts.13 Scholarly responses to ancient texts are to be taken as particular forms of reception. Accordingly, the present collection includes two chapters on modern Apollodorean scholarship. On the one hand, Kenens addresses Apollodorus’ edition by Thomas Gale and its intermediary role in the contemporary scholarly landscape between tradition and innovation. On the other hand, as Fornaro emphasises, Apollodorus plays a major role in the origins of modern mythology as science as envisaged by Heyne.14

In contrast with interest in reception, the focus seems to move slightly away from the critical scrutiny of sources, which has long been a crucial topic in Apollodorean scholarship.15 The Quellenforschung, as it was put into practice by 19th and 20th cent. classical scholars after the genealogical model of textual criticism, has been henceforth abandoned.16 Individual contributions dealing with the relationship of the Bibliotheca with previous or contemporary texts (Torres, Villagra, Pagès) address the issue from others points of view. What now matters is not only to identify the sources used by Apollodorus, but rather to untangle the particular ways in which the author of the handbook makes use of the amount of data available to him and how he combines the disparate mythographical traditions. Catchwords as ‘hypotext’ or ‘intertextuality’ are brought to the fore. The methodological difficulties of correlating a unitary text (Apollodorus) to a reconstructed work like the Mythographus Homeric...