The Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, perhaps the best-known mythographic text, stands out for its comprehensive aim and state of preservation. The handbook has regularly been disregarded as a repository of 'standard' myths or as a primary witness to archaic stories, a reductive view at once underestimating and romanticizing the merits of the Bibliotheca. This monograph unlocks the Bibliotheca as a literary work in its own right by offering the first systematic commentary on an essential selection, the Cretan and Theban myths in Bibl. III.1-56, and by presenting an in-depth analysis of the text. In so doing, this volume closes a gap in current research, from which a philological commentary is entirely missing. The main part of the study focuses on various aspects of composition and organization by addressing structuring principles, narratorial interventions, and the author's method and sources. It lays to rest persistent misconceptions about the representative character of the Bibliotheca's myths, the author's merits, and his source use, all of which have divided the scholarship to this date. In addition, it provides an update on the author, date, purpose and readership, text history, and book division of the Bibliotheca.

Even though there is agreement on the existence of an Imperial commentary on Homer, going under the name Mythographus Homericus, a large-scale study of this work has been lacking. The objective of this collective volume is to fill this blank. The authors represent diverse opinions, a consequence of the complex nature of the textual tradition but also of the difficulty of defining the nature of this mythographic work itself. This volume offers a study of Mythographus Homericus from different perspectives: the place of the work in the history of scholarship, the state of the text, which has been transmitted by scholia and papyri, its readership, its place in mythography and in Homeric scholarship, its intertextual relationship to other mythographic works or scholiastic corpora and its contribution to the study of myth from a typological perspective.

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.

The field of mythography has grown substantially in the past thirty years, an acknowledgment of the importance of how ancient writers "wrote down the myths" as they systematized, organized and interpreted the vast and contested mythical storyworld. With the understanding that mythography remains a contested category, that its borders are not always clear, and that it shifted with changes in the socio-cultural and political landscapes, The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography offers a range of scholarly voices that attempt to establish how and to what extent ancient writers followed the "mythographical mindset" that prompted works ranging from Apollodorus' Library to the rationalizing and allegorical approaches of Cornutus and Palaephatus. Editors R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma provide the first comprehensive survey of mythography from the earliest attempts to organize and comment on myths in the archaic period (in poetry and prose) to late antiquity. The essays also provide an overview of those writers we call mythographers and other major sources of mythographic material (e.g., papyri and scholia), followed by a series of essays that seek to explore the ways in which mythographical impulses were interconnected with other intellectual activities (e.g., geography and history, catasteristic writings, politics). In addition, another section of essays presents the first sustained analysis between mythography and the visual arts, while a final section takes mythography from late antiquity up into the Renaissance. While also taking stock of recent advances and providing bibliographical guidance, this Handbook offers new approaches to texts that were once seen only as derivative sources of mythical data and presents innovative ideas for further research. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography is an essential resource for teachers, scholars, and students alike.

The origins of satyr drama, and particularly the reliability of the account in Aristotle, remains contested, and several of this volume’s contributions try to make sense of the early relationship of satyr drama to dithyramb and attempt to place satyr drama in the pre-Classical performance space and traditions. What is not contested is the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy as a required cap to the Attic trilogy. Here, however, how Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (to whom one complete play and the preponderance of the surviving fragments belong) envisioned the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy in plot, structure, setting, stage action and language is a complex subject tackled by several contributors. The playful satyr chorus and the drunken senility of Silenos have always suggested some links to comedy and later to Atellan farce and phlyax. Those links are best examined through language, passages in later Greek and Roman writers, and in art. The purpose of this volume is probe as many themes and connections of satyr drama with other literary genres, as well as other art forms, putting satyr drama on stage from the sixth century BC through the second century AD. The editors and contributors suggest solutions to some of the controversies, but the volume shows as much that the field of study is vibrant and deserves fuller attention.

As the most comprehensive and best preserved mythographic text, the Bibliotheca is an often consulted source on ancient myths. Yet, it is still missing a synoptic commentary. In this volume, an in-depth study of the composition and organization of t

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.

Polybius boldly declared that 'now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is no longer appropriate to use poets and writers of myth as witnesses of the unknown' (4.40.2). And yet, in reality, the significance of myth did not diminish as the borders of the known world expanded. Storytelling was always an inextricable part of how the ancient Greeks understood their environment; mythic maps existed alongside new, more concrete, methods of charting the contours of the earth. Specific landscape features acted as repositories of myth and spurred their retelling; myths, in turn, shaped and gave sense to natural and built environments, and were crucial to the conceptual resonances of places both unknown and known. This volume brings together contributions from leading scholars of Greek myth, literature, history, and archaeology to examine the myriad intricate ways in which ancient Greek myth interacted with the physical and conceptual landscapes of antiquity. The diverse range of approaches and topics highlights in particular the plurality and pervasiveness of such interactions. The collection as a whole sheds new light on the central importance of storytelling in Greek conceptions of space.

A new translation of an important text for Greek mythology used as a source book by classicists from antiquity to Robert Graves, The Library of Greek Mythology is a complete summary of early Greek myth, telling the story of each of the great families of heroic mythology, and the various adventures associated with the main heroes and heroines, from Jason and Perseus to Heracles and Helen of Troy. Using the ancient system of detailed histories of the great families, it contains invaluable genealogical diagrams for maximum clarity.

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