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DOI:10.1525/CA.2008.27.1.59.
Systematic Genealogies in Apollodorus’
Bibliotheca and the Exclusion of
Rome from Greek Myth
Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca is often used, though little studied. Like any author, however,
Apollodorus has his own aims. As scholars have noticed, he does not include any discussion of
Rome and rarely mentions Italy, an absence they link to tendencies of the Second Sophistic,
during which period he was writing. I refine this view by exploring the nature of Apollodorus’
project as a whole, showing that he creates a system of genealogies that connects Greece
with other places and peoples of the ancient world, specifically the Near East. The nature of
the Bibliotheca allows us to see these myths as a closed system, in which these genealogical
connections depend upon the perceived importance of these peoples; e.g. the Persians have more
connections with the Greeks than the Molossians do. It is from this system that Apollodorus
excludes Rome, thereby denying the Romans any genealogical connections with the Greeks and
thus marking them as being of little importance. The consciousness of Apollodorus’ decisions
is clear from the many opportunities he had to include Rome and the fact that his sources
contained myths about Rome or Italy. The Bibliotheca is a tendentious account of Greek myth
with its own goals, and our knowledge of Apollodorus’ aims must condition any use of this text.
Because we know so little about it, Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca often seems to
take on a timeless, canonical quality, as if it were something not to be questioned,
and scholars often use it accordingly. The text’s most famous student, Sir James
Frazer, exemplifies this attitude: “[Apollodorus’] book possesses documentary
value as an accurate record of what the Greeks in general believed about the
origin and early history of the world and of their race.”1 While few scholars today
I express here my thanks to Jay Reed, Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Derek Collins and Adam Kemezis.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Mark Griffith, not only for his editorial acumen, but also for finding
two anonymous readers who could contribute so much on the subject of Apollodorus; to them, too, I
give my thanks. All mistakes are, of course, my own.
1. Frazer 1921: xvii. For bibliography on the Bibliotheca, see Huys 1997, Huys and
Colomo 2004, and Huys’ valuable website http://perswww.kuleuven.ac.be/~u0013314/apollodorus
/index.htm.
Volume 27/No. 1/April 200860
would so readily accept such an assessment without question, this type of view
still underlies perceptions of the work’s purpose.2 Alan Cameron, for instance,
in a welcome new study of mythography, asserts that “no one would wish to
deny that [the Bibliotheca] is a well-organized, clear exposition of all the main
mythical sagas, deservedly still in use as a basic textbook.”3 While Cameron’s
position is a far cry from Frazer’s, it still privileges Apollodorus and bestows
on this text an authority dependent upon its perceived completeness. That the
Bibliotheca is useful is beyond question; that it is a complete account of Greek
myth is not.
Despite the seeming dogmatism of his statement, Frazer also noted that
Apollodorus curiously omits the Romans and the West more generally in his
collection.4 About fifty years later, Ewen Bowie remarked on Frazer’s observation
and situated Apollodorus’ choice within the context of Greek responses to Rome
during the Second Sophistic:
Apollodorus’s attitude is not puzzling. It supports rather than conflicts
with a second-century date. Like many other cultured Greeks of his time
the writer liked to forget from time to time the ubiquitous dominance of
Rome, and where better to exercise that amnesia than in a work devoted
to the safely antique and established Greek myths?5
Despite his recognition that Apollodorus’ exclusion of Rome fits within the
cultural milieu of the Bibliotheca, Bowie too falls prey to the same notions
of canonicity by referring to “the safely antique and established Greek myths.”
Conceived of in this way, Apollodorus is indulging an escapist fantasy, treating
a subject that would require him to stay away from Rome. But the issue is
not so simple and my intent here is to show that the omission of the Romans
is not a given (as Bowie seems to suggest) but a conscious decision on the
part of the Bibliotheca’s author and only a part of his systematic approach to
writing myth, which involves the creation of a series of genealogies connecting
Greeks with their Mediterranean neighbors, with more important peoples meriting
more connections.6 This collection of myths is a tendentious account, and an
2. Cf. Jacob 1994: 419: “Mais ce role privilegie de temoin de la tradition mythographique a
pour contrepartie d’appeler une lecture ponctuelle et documentaire, la Bibliotheque d’Apollodore
n’etant plus aujourd’hui qu’une machine a multiplier les notes en bas de pages.”
3. Cameron 2004: 103. Carriere and Massonie 1991: 16, who offer one of the best treatments
of the Bibliotheca, fall into a similar trap.
4. Frazer 1921: xii-xiii.
5. Bowie 1970: 23–24. Cf. Veyne 1999 who argues that many of the trends of the Second
Sophistic are actually much older, and so not specific to this period. Like Bowie, however, he does
see a nostalgia for independence in authors like Apollodorus (534–35). For a more nuanced view
of Greek identity in this period, see Jones 2004.
6. On the unified nature of the Bibliotheca, see Jacob 1994: 420–21 and Scarpi 1999: 2–3,
15–16, Drager 2005: 844–53 (esp. 847–48), and Smith and Trzaskoma 2007: xxxiii-xxxv. Cf.
Kylintirea 2002 (non vidi).
: Systematic Genealogies in Apollodorus 61
awareness of Apollodorus’ system of myths and its accompanying goals must
inform our use of it.7
In order to examine Apollodorus’ goals, it is necessary first to address three
things: how the Bibliotheca differs from other mythographic works; its relation
to earlier literature and its sources; and its date. While other Greek mythographers
writing in the Roman period, like Parthenius or Antoninus Liberalis, also include
very little Italian or Roman material (though even they offer much more than
Apollodorus), there is no attempt by such authors to create a narrative account
of Greek myth from creation to the death of Odysseus, as in the Bibliotheca.
Parthenius and Antoninus both offer thematic collections, whereas Apollodorus
focuses on genealogies and thus casts his net more widely, so we should have
different expectations of these different types of work.8 While Apollodorus does
not explicitly exclude Rome—he does not make anti-Roman statements, nor does
he provide any statement of purpose—this exclusion is evident from his creation
of a system of genealogies that connects Greece to much of the Mediterranean
world, but not to Rome.9 This system is what makes Apollodorus unique among
extant mythographers and also what allows us so readily to see what is missing.10
But talking about a work like the Bibliotheca in terms of purpose and intent
may strike some as misguided at best, and absurd at worst, both because of its
simple manner and its possible dependence on earlier works.11 Until recently, most
scholarly interest in the Bibliotheca stemmed from a desire to learn more about
earlier works of Greek literature, especially the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
and the lost writings of Apollodorus of Athens, especially his On the Gods; both
of these works are often named as the main source of the Bibliotheca. For various
7. It is here that my approach differs from others who have focused on more literary aspects of
the Bibliotheca, most notably Carriere and Massonie 1991, Jacob 1994, and Scarpi 1999.
8. Cf. Cameron 2004: x-xi: “The Bibliotheca is the only comprehensive mythographic
work of its age. Most other mythographers of the Hellenistic and Roman period either have a
specialized purpose of one sort or another (genealogical lists, love stories, stories of metamorphosis
or catasterism); or else they provide mythographic companions to specific texts.” The closest in
terms of general coverage is the Latin Fabulae of Hyginus, though in its present form that work
serves more as a chrestomathy and is not organized as a narrative.
9. I qualify this claim by referring to the epigram that Photius (Bibl. cod. 186.142b) preserves
for a text that must be Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca. Van der Valk 1958: 167–68 and Carriere and
Massonie 1991: 163 n. 2 accept it as genuine, though few editors ever include it, and then only as
a separate section. The epigram suggests completion and the use of the text as a reference, obviating
the need to consult individual texts directly. On this epigram, see now Cameron 1995: 397–99 and
2004: 160–61.
10. On the way genealogical organization marks the Bibliotheca as different from other extant
works of mythography, see Jacob 1994: 421, who also notes that this choice of organization allows
Apollodorus great control over his material and its presentation. Cf. Scarpi 1999: 15–16.
11. On Apollodorus’ sources, see Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 234–40, Kylintirea 2002, Cameron
2004: 93–104, and Drager 2005: 854–86, who separates his discussion into “scheinbaren” and
“wirklichen” sources of the Bibliotheca. For a useful table of his source citations, see Scarpi 1996
(2000): 687–88. Smith and Trzaskoma 2007: xxxvi-vii neatly present the range of possibilities
for Apollodorus’ relation to his sources. I will return to the issue of Apollodorus’ sources when
discussing his exclusion of Italy and Rome.
Volume 27/No. 1/April 200862
reasons, however, it is unlikely that the Bibliotheca has such a simple relationship
with any one text: it bears little resemblance to the fragments of Apollodorus
of Athens and is not as closely related to the Hesiodic Catalogue as some argue
(largely to aid their reconstructions of this fragmentary work).12 Perhaps the
most obvious difference between the two works is the matrilineal focus of the
Catalogue and the decidedly patrilineal bent of the Bibliotheca. Thus, even in
the scant fragments of the Catalogue, we have references to women who do not
appear in the Bibliotheca.13 As will become clear, Apollodorus has relatively little
interest in women.
For the present argument, however, a full knowledge of the relationship of
the Bibliotheca to earlier works is not essential. My assumption is that unless
we hypothesize a work that covered all the material the Bibliotheca covers,
Apollodorus undertook a not inconsiderable amount of collection, compression,
and organization of the material available to him. (Further support for this
argument will come in the section on Rome and Apollodorus’ possible sources for
those sections, below.) As Brunt notes: “‘Fragments’ and even epitomes reflect
the interests of the authors who cite or summarize lost works as much as or more
than the characteristics of the works concerned.”14 What matters is the text as
it presents itself and the questions it raises: why this collection of these myths,
organized in this way, at this time?15 Whether the Bibliotheca is an epitome of
some lost or now fragmentary work or not, pursuing these questions can provide
us with information about this work as the product of a creative intelligence.16
12. On the Bibliotheca and Apollodorus of Athens, see Robert 1873: 9–34. Schwartz 1960:
127–34, 314–28 argues against using the Bibliotheca to restore the Catalogue; West 1985: 32–35,
44–46 argues that they are close enough that the Bibliotheca can help restore the basic outline
and sections of the Catalogue; Drager 1997: 43–66, 91–105 agrees; cf. Drager 2005: 864. On the
Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, see now the papers in Hunter 2005, almost all of which, following
West, operate under the assumption that Apollodorus followed the basic outline of the Catalogue.
A welcome exception is Fletcher 2005: 299–303, who questions the circular logic of using the
Bibliotheca to restore the Catalogue. Cameron 2004: 103 rightly observes that Apollodorus must
have been following multiple sources.
13. The most obvious omission from the Bibliotheca is Mestra, daughter of Erysichthon, the
subject of one of the longest extant fragments of the Catalogue (fr. 43 M.-W.). If Apollodorus
was using the Catalogue, then, he clearly adapted the material to fit his patrilineal focus, and also
excluded other myths. On patterns in the Catalogue of Women, see Osborne 2005, who focuses on the
role of women in the poem, outlining a general “plot” that stresses the physical beauty and fertility of
the women involved. This focus on women is remarkably different from the male-driven “plot” of
the Bibliotheca.
14. Brunt 1980: 494. His remarks throughout on the degree to which epitomes can vary from
their “source” are salutary. Cf. Erskine 2001: 30, who makes the point that citations are never neutral.
15. Cf. Smith and Trzaskoma 2007: xvi: “We have much to learn by looking at the mythog-
raphers’ explicit and implicit criteria of inclusion, what they find most important when summarizing,
how they attempt to reconcile variants or relate two different myths, and their place in transmitting
myth in the wider culture.” They also note that the degree of organization in the Bibliotheca suggests
that Apollodorus brought a clear idea of what he was doing to whatever he found in his sources
(xxxv). Cf. Drager 2005: 887.
16. It is also necessary to move past the old view that the Bibliotheca was simply a school
text (Robert 1873: 35; Wagner 1926: xxxiii; van der Valk 1958 esp. 102). Cameron 2004: 170
: Systematic Genealogies in Apollodorus 63
It may seem to some that we are foundering on the rocks with the phrase
“at this time,” since we cannot say for sure when Apollodorus was writing.17 Our
only solid piece of evidence is the reference to the Chronica of Castor (2.1.3[5]),18
almost certainly Castor of Rhodes, a contemporary of Cicero’s.19 Save for this
reference, Apollodorus generally cites earlier authors (see below), so this one
name bears a great deal of weight as the only terminus post quem. Otherwise,
we must rely on Apollodorus’ Greek, which seems to belong to the second or third
century CE.20 So, while we cannot date the work exactly, we know enough to place
it within a general period, roughly that of the Second Sophistic. We need not rely
on such an artificial term, however, or think too much about periodization, since
it is the general characteristics of this time that are significant here: the Roman
Empire had solid control over the Mediterranean world, and there was a certain
(though perhaps overstated) revival of Greek culture. Broadly speaking, this is
the milieu in which Apollodorus was writing, and it is within this context that
we must try to place the Bibliotheca and its system of genealogies.
GREEK GENEALOGIZING AND THE BIBLIOTHECA’S SYSTEM
Genealogy is a powerful tool in the Bibliotheca as elsewhere, because ge-
nealogies offer a picture of perceived connections between peoples and places
and times; they are, in short, a reflection of a perceived reality: “Genealogies put
things in their place.”21 In their temporal aspect, they are also aetiological, serving
to explain how the world reached its present state.22 In this capacity, genealogies
play an important role in justifying the present, for they offer a type of logic. On
the level of the individual, as exemplified by heroes’ genealogical recitations in
offers a more nuanced view on such a work’s purpose, observing that students would need the
same mythological information that any ancient reader would. In his words, “The teacher/student
hypothesis is not so much mistaken as overly restrictive.” Cf. van Rossum-Steenbeek 1998: 164–69.
17. On arguments concerning the dating and authorship of the Bibliotheca, see the overview
in Carriere and Massonie 1991: 7–12. Cf. Drager 2005: 839–40. I continue to use the name
“Apollodorus” for the sake of convenience, and do not place as much stock in the supposed anonymity
of this author as others do (cf. Scarpi 1999: 5, 16).
18. For references to the Bibliotheca, I give first the three numbers as used in Frazer’s Loeb
edition, and then the numbers used in Wagner’s Teubner. Scarpi 1996 (2000) conveniently uses both
numbers in his edition.
19. For Castor’s dates, see Jacoby’s commentary (FGrH 250). Cameron 2004: 103 rightly
observes that a reference like that to Castor could come from Apollodorus’ own reading. Even such
a brief reference helps remind us that there is an author behind the Bibliotheca. Some, however,
have athetized this reference; cf. Drager 2005: 838.
20. Carriere and Massonie 1991: 10–11 (see esp. n. 11) is the best recent treatment and includes
a useful overview of the scholarship in the note. I am content to use their range of dates: 180–230.
21. West 1985: 8. Cf. Asquith 2005: 276–77. This type of thinking underlies the approach of
Fowler 1998 and, in many ways, Jones 1999 and Hall 2002.
22. Cf. Saıd 1998: 7: “Mais les genealogies mythiques servirent aussi a expliquer la genese
du monde, preparant ainsi la naissance de la philosophie et des sciences. Elles permirent enfin de
fondre dans une tradition unique les legendes des differentes cites, de creer a partir de mythes epars
une mythologie unifiee et de jeter les bases d’une organisation temporelle qui relie le ‘temps des
dieux’ au ‘temps des hommes’ et preparerent ainsi l’apparition de l’histoire.”
Volume 27/No. 1/April 200864
the Iliad or by Pindar’s epinician odes, ancestors of quality assure descendants of
quality, securing the status of the latter; on a collective level, genealogies play
an important political role, providing justification for the current state of affairs,
as with fifth-century Athenian claims to Salamis on the basis of Ajax’s connection
with Athens in the Iliad.23
The functions of genealogy and its use as organizing principle reflect both
on a society’s use of myth as well as on the specific aims of individual accounts,
a point West stresses in relation to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, which
includes numerous genealogies (though not nearly as many as the Bibliotheca,
to judge from the extant fragments). And West could just as easily be talking
about the Bibliotheca when he says of the Catalogue that:
It did not consist merely of a congeries of traditional data about remote
periods which the poet happened to have acquired. It consisted of tradi-
tional material shaped, adjusted, combined, augmented, recomposed by
him in accordance with his own conceptions. It reflected the view-point of
his own time and place. This is one important reason why different poets
and logographers frequently gave divergent accounts. . . . Each had his
own perspective and was supplied with different material by his cultural
environment.24
There are numerous correspondences between almost all extant Greek mythical
genealogical accounts, despite the temporal distance between, say, “Hesiod” and
Apollodorus, but each account has unique elements or is—just as importantly—
a unique collection of otherwise attested elements, and thus reflects on the
particulars surrounding each composition. This difference between accounts is
what requires us to talk about a specific Homeric or Hesiodic or Apollodoran
view of Greek myth as opposed to “Greek myth” as some unified whole. Thus,
Apollodorus’ account is useful on two levels: the general and the specific, or the
broader Greek level and his individual view which reflects on his own times and
the circumstances under which he was writing.
The Bibliotheca is a synthesis of Greek mythic material gleaned from the
earliest sources available to Apollodorus, directly or indirectly, linked together by
an extended series of systematic genealogies. It is a work of individual scholarship
for Greeks written by a Greek living under the Roman Empire, who expresses his
worldview through a genealogical mapping of the world around him, a conceptual
map with mainland Greece at the center.25 The Bibliotheca is “a Greek book for
23. For the latter example, see West 1985: 10. More generally, see Jones 1999, who traces
the political importance of kinship—often established though such genealogies—from the Archaic
period to late antiquity.
24. West 1985: 11.
25. For a brief discussion of such Greek genealogies as Hellenocentric, see Hall 1996: 339. For
genealogy as a conceptual map, see Fowler 1998: 1 and Erskine 2001: 133. The landmark work
on the Greek use of genealogy to integrate foreigners is Bickerman 1952.
: Systematic Genealogies in Apollodorus 65
Greeks about Greeks and others—and it makes Greek sense of the others.”26 Only
through understanding the system that Apollodorus creates can we appreciate the
effect of his exclusion of Rome.
Before examining this system of myth, however, we must address two con-
cepts underlying the Bibliotheca: historical “reality” and Greek identity. Apol-
lodorus’ picture of the world is theoretically of a specific time, from its creation
to the death of Odysseus (and these specific end points are one part of Apol-
lodorus’ choices), but like all works of myth, the Bibliotheca is synchronic and
thus reflects no actual historical reality. Who, for example, are “the Egyptians” in
the Bibliotheca? This synchronism similarly complicates a discussion of Apol-
lodorus’ geography, as it is impossible to tell to what he refers when he uses
any given geographical term. Is “Cilicia,” for instance, to be identified with the
contemporary Roman province of that name, or does it signify an earlier concept
of that region preserved in myth? There is no way to be sure, and to a degree it
must always be both. Accordingly, it is worth stressing that Apollodorus’ mapping
of the world is conceptual, and that his particular perception of the world reflects
on his own temporal context regardless of when these myths originated; the world
had changed a great deal between Hesiod and Apollodorus, and the myths reflect
these changes. This synchronic view thus combines with Apollodorus’ system
of genealogies to create an idealized mythological world suitable for his time.
A related issue is the notion of Greek identity, generally and as relevant to the
Bibliotheca specifically. Recently this issue has been the focus of much attention,
and scholars tend to trace the development of what some now call “Hellenicity,”
the growing sense of Greekness in the Archaic period.27 The situation with
Apollodorus is different, however, because the text is so late (i.e., after the
development that scholars generally examine) and his account is synchronic.
There is no sense in the Bibliotheca of a development of Greek identity; rather, a
concept of Greekness already underlies the entire project of the Bibliotheca, and it
manifests itself both explicitly and implicitly. Apollodorus uses the terms �Ελλ�ςand �Ελληνες, but they appear most frequently in the context of his narration
of the Trojan war, in which it is necessary to refer to a large group of people
from various parts of mainland Greece. For the most part, however, the idea of
Greekness in the Bibliotheca is implicit, and such an idea of readily apparent
Greekness is necessary for Apollodorus to be able to position peoples as either
close to or distant from this identity.28
A basic factor in establishing Apollodorus’ focus is that he writes in Greek
and thereby places the work within a specifically Greek context. While language
26. As Redfield 1985: 102 says of Herodotus’ Histories.
27. Hall 2002 is the most recent and thorough attempt at tracing this development.
28. Too often scholars (including Hall 2002) who rely on Apollodorus for early Greek myths
overlook or at least do not address the difference of conception of Greekness in the Bibliotheca.
Apollodorus’ systematic approach means we should use his accounts very cautiously when trying
to hypothesize (much) earlier social developments.
Volume 27/No. 1/April 200866
of composition alone does not determine Apollodorus’ aim, the geographical
positioning of the Bibliotheca is also Greek, focusing primarily on mainland
Greek poleis like Athens, Argos, and Thebes. These places form the center for
Apollodorus’ discussion, which radiates outward from these areas but always
returns to them.29 It is this combination of Greek locations and Greek figures
(especially gods) that reveals the concept of Greekness underlying the Bibliotheca.
Additionally, Apollodorus’ citation of Greek authors adds to the impression of
a shared cultural heritage, and thus an idea of what it is to be Greek.30
It is with this notion of Greekness that Apollodorus strives to adapt and
incorporate some of the foreign peoples of the ancient Mediterranean. What
emerges from an examination of the Bibliotheca as a whole is a series of variations
on a theme that underlies this adaptation of foreign cultures: Greeks leave Greece,
establish connections with foreigners, then they or their descendants return to
occupy (often prominent) positions in Greece.31 As the following discussion will
show, there are numerous variations on this pattern, but the end result is clear:
foreign peoples become part of the Greek world and—to varying degrees—Greek
themselves through genealogical connections.32 This pattern is more systematic
in the Bibliotheca than in any other extant work and makes it possible for us to
talk about Apollodorus’ specific construction.
Apollodorus’ system places the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean and Near
East on a conceptual map that reflects not geography but perceived closeness of
relation; these genealogical relations reveal the relative perceived importance of
these foreign peoples. An examination of this process of genealogizing—and
the variations of this fundamental pattern—reveals that some peoples, such as
the Egyptians and Persians, have multiple connections with Greek figures, while
other peoples occupy a more marginal position and have only one—if any—such
genealogical relation. Notably absent from this matrix are the Romans and the
peoples of the western Mediterranean in general. This exclusion is particularly
relevant because of the time in which Apollodorus was writing, when the Roman
Empire controlled all of the Mediterranean world, including Greece, and numerous
myths had long since circulated connecting this area to its eastern neighbors.
Mythology by nature reflects the present, and while it is not always aetiological in
29. There is a tendency to connect Apollodorus with Asia Minor, as Carriere and Massonie
1991: 8–9 and 157 do, because of a perceived interest in areas to the east. As will become clear,
this focus on the east need not have anything to do with Apollodorus’ origins and, at any rate, pales in
comparison with his focus on central Greece.
30. Jacob 1994: 422–23, 427.
31. Olivi 1998: 170 recognizes aspects of this pattern in her discussion of the transmission of
Argive royal power in the Bibliotheca. Dougherty 1993 is also especially important for a discussion
of mythological patterns involving Greeks leaving Greece, though her focus is specifically on
colonization narratives. Jacob 1994: 422 overestimates the difficulties that a reader might have in
following the extended genealogies in the Bibliotheca.
32. For an overview of this type of Greek myth, see Bickerman 1952 and Georges 1994: 2–9.
Gruen 2006 provides a good introduction to these issues.
: Systematic Genealogies in Apollodorus 67
the strictest sense of the word, the repetition of traditional tales is premised upon
their continued value for the society in which they are being reenacted.33 The
exclusion of the Romans thus reflects a certain view of the present, which I will
explore below. The oddity of Italy’s almost complete absence from Apollodorus’
conceptual map will be all the more clear when contrasted with the inclusion of
other countries and the numerous connections they have with Greece.
Apollodorus’ genealogical system, as it pertains to foreigners, depends on
patterns of connection all based on movement of three kinds: centrifugal, cen-
tripetal, or circular.34 The center in this case is of course Greece, from which
all of these movements originate. These types are not mutually exclusive, be-
cause they also have a temporal aspect, being either terminal or temporary. Thus,
a centrifugal movement might be temporary, in that the Greek figure spends a
limited amount of time in a foreign place where s/he establishes a genealogical
connection with a foreign people, before moving on to another place (Heracles
exemplifies this type of movement). A terminal centrifugal movement would be
one in which the Greek person does not leave the new home, whether by choice or
by dying before he or she can leave (as with Io in Egypt).
While a movement may be terminal and centrifugal in the context of one
generation, it can be circular over the span of two or more generations. Thus,
larger, multi-generational patterns are comprised of simpler, single-generation
patterns, and it is this bigger picture that is important here because the Bibliotheca
is unique in following through multiple generations of various stemmata, thereby
giving us a long view. Because the single-generation patterns are the building
blocks for more complex connections, however, it is necessary to begin with them.
Since these patterns depend on a Greek encountering a foreign person, either
one or both persons has to travel, at least initially; in later generations, a person
of Greek descent can meet a foreigner because he or she is already in a foreign
land. Because many of Apollodorus’ genealogies involve colonization, recent
scholarship on colonization narratives can help illuminate the tendencies of the
Bibliotheca. In her work on such narratives, Carol Dougherty explores the reasons
why Greeks leave their homes, and the basic pattern she outlines is murder (or
other “civic crisis”)—Delphic consultation—foundation of a colony—resolution
33. A good recent formulation of this view is Wiseman 2004: 10–11: “To forestall tedious
terminological argument, let us define a myth as a story that matters to a community, one that is
told and retold because it has a significance for one generation after another. Such a story may be
(in our terms) historical, pseudo-historical or totally fictitious, but if it matters enough to be retold, it
can count as a myth.” This view is not contradicted by the argument made by some scholars (e.g.
Cameron 2004: xii) that myth by this point had become something that an educated person was
supposed to know; in leaving out these myths about Rome, Apollodorus is still making a statement
about what matters, and what is worth knowing.
34. Ruiz Montero 1986 discusses narrative patterns in the Bibliotheca within a Proppian
framework, though the examination is more about Greek myth in general than about Apollodorus
in particular. I introduce these terms here not to construct a strict classification, but rather to be
as descriptive as possible when discussing these basic elements.
Volume 27/No. 1/April 200868
of crisis.35 While some of the accounts in Apollodorus follow this exact pattern
(though Dougherty’s use of the Bibliotheca as a source raises its own issues), with
a greater focus on the connections between Greeks and foreigners, there is not
always such a clear progression, and murder is less often the reason why people
leave one location to go to another.
Another feature common to the Bibliotheca and the colonization narratives is
that the foreign persons involved are more often female than male. As mentioned
above, the Bibliotheca is markedly patrilineal in its focus, differing in this way
from the Catalogue of Women, with which it is often linked. The role that the
union of Greek male with foreign woman plays in colonization narratives is also
relevant here: “within the rhetoric of Greek colonial discourse, marriage with
a local woman or nymph signals control of the land and all its occupants.”36
Conversely, when the Greek who goes abroad is a woman in the Bibliotheca, she
usually has a child by a god or demigod as opposed to a foreign resident, often
before going to the foreign place; Auge, for instance, bears Telephus to Heracles
before she goes to Mysia (3.9.1 [103]). The gods play a related role in these
patterns, for they appear frequently, often at the head of family trees—and they
are Greek gods who have affairs with Greek women. While Greek heroes—like
Heracles, Jason, and Perseus—have affairs with foreign women, the only mortal
women to sleep with gods are Greek women (i.e. born in Greece or of Greek
descent; see below). The union of god and mortal woman is one that belongs
generally to the center, whereas nymphs and other female divinities often (but not
always) occupy the periphery, where they mingle with mortal men. Thus, these
patterns reflect perceptions of gender as well as cultural egotism.
Perhaps the major difference between the two models of Greek-foreigner
interaction is that the colonial pattern is always centrifugal and terminal, for
Dougherty’s examination reveals that colonizers cannot return to the metropolis
even if they so choose.37 In the Bibliotheca, however, heroes like Heracles and
Jason return to Greece after being abroad, and second- (or later) generation people
also return, as the Danaids and Europa do. The role of children generally is more
important for the continuous genealogical narratives of the Bibliotheca than in
the colonization myths, so there is an inherent focus on multiple generations and
multiple movements in the former.
These multi-generational variants on the basic pattern take several forms. In a
particularly simple one, there is a union between Greek and foreigner that produces
children about whom Apollodorus says nothing more, as with Bellerophon’s as-
35. Dougherty 1993: 15–27 and Dougherty 1998. Like Dougherty, I am looking at these patterns
not as an accurate reflection of what “really” happened, but rather as evidence for the way some
Greeks—and Apollodorus in particular—may have viewed what had happened. On such myths, cf.
Erskine 2001: 131–35.
36. Dougherty 1993: 69; she also notes that imperialism can be presented as erotic conquest
(75). For a similar discussion of modern colonial discourse, see Pratt 1992.
37. Dougherty 1993: 36.
: Systematic Genealogies in Apollodorus 69
sumption of rule in Lycia. Bellerophon leaves Greece and settles in Lycia, marry-
ing the princess Philonoe and inheriting the kingdom when King Iobates dies (2.3.2
[33]). Apollodorus includes no reference to any children, and Bellerophon appears
to do nothing of note after this.38 His movement is centrifugal and terminal, for he
ends up in Lycia and does not appear to leave. All that matters for Apollodorus
is that Bellerophon becomes the ruler of Lycia after marrying the princess.
By contrast, Apollodorus connects the Greeks and Lydians through Heracles,
who does not stay to rule, but leaves behind a son ostensibly to do so:
Lydian ancestor Acheles or Acheletes (fr. 17 K), as is Herodotus’ alternative, Alcaeus (1.7.2.).”
This formulation, however, does not take into account the fact that Herodotus’ Alcaeus is not an
ancestor of Croesus.
45. There may of course be some historical basis for this pattern, as Herodotus shows Greeks
like Demaratus in advisory positions among the Persians. That this pattern is not completely “real”
even in Herodotus, however, is clear from the story of Solon’s meeting with Croesus, which is
historically inaccurate.
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Children were born to him by Andromeda: Perses, before they went to
Greece, whom Perseus left with Cepheus (it is said that the kings of the
Persians descend from Perses).
As with Croesus, the Persian kings only become important later in Greek history
(i.e. long after the Heroic Age), so the same chronological collapse is at work
here; these two genealogies demonstrate how myth is synchronic, picking up on
key points from various times in history and merging them into one.
Like Heracles, Perseus returns to Greece, leaving behind a new, mixed
line, and as with the relation between Croesus and Heracles, Apollodorus offers
no details on how the Persian kings are descended from Perses. This lack of
detail accords with Apollodorus’ aim in focusing on a specific time period, but
the collapse of time is also necessary because otherwise the actual connection
between Heracles and Croesus would be very distant, extending through numerous
generations. Even the briefest possible sketch of such a lengthy family tree could
do nothing but emphasize the distance between these two figures. Apollodorus
cuts out the middle of the line to juxtapose the beginning and end, thereby giving
an impression of closeness.
Occasionally a linguistic component reinforces these genealogical connec-
tions. In the case of Perses, the similarity of the words Περσε$ς and Π�ρσαιsuggests a link, and the name Π�ρσης acts as an intermediary. This etymology
thus provides proof for the genealogy. According to this formulation, the Per-
sians’ name for themselves is “actually” a Greek word, as it derives from the
name of a famous Greek hero. This type of translation (in this case, of Persian
into Greek) reflects on the cultural specificity of myth, which creates a way of
understanding the world as revolving around the self. Persian dominance in the
Near East is thus mitigated and perhaps explained through its dependence on
Greece. A connection with Greece is a requirement for doing anything important
as well as an endorsement of these accomplishments.
This same type of linguistic reasoning appears also in more complex forms
of this general genealogical pattern, as in that involving Medea. Like Andromeda,
Medea comes to Greece as the bride of a Greek husband who had gone abroad,
but she has multiple relationships with Greeks. After she kills the children she
has with Jason, she flees to Athens, where she bears a son, Medus, to Aegeus,
king of Athens (1.9.28 [147]). She and her son are later exiled because of her
plot against Theseus; she returns to Colchis, but Medus does not: