Greek mythography in the Roman world / Alan Cameron.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cameron, Alan, 1938-2017

Series:

American classical studies ; no. 48.

American classical studies ; v. 48

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rome--Civilization--Greek influences.

Rome.

Latin literature--Greek influences.

Latin literature.

Latin literature--History and criticism.

Mythology, Greek--Historiography.

Mythology, Greek.

Mythology, Greek, in literature.

Civilization--Greek influences.

Rome (Empire).

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004.

System Details:

Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212

Summary:

By the Roman age the traditional stories of Greek myth had long since ceased to reflect popular culture. Mythology had become instead a central element in elite culture. If one did not know the stories one would not understand most of the allusions in the poets and orators, classics and contemporaries alike; nor would one be able to identify the scenes represented on the mosaic floors and wall paintings in your cultivated friends' houses, or on the silverware on their tables at dinner. Mythology was no longer imbibed in the nursery; nor could it be simply picked up from the often oblique allusions in the classics. It had to be learned in school, as illustrated by the extraordinary amount of elementary mythological information in the many surviving ancient commentaries on the classics, notably Servius, who offers a mythical story for almost every person, place, and even plant Vergil mentions. Commentators used the classics as pegs on which to hang stories they thought their students should know. A surprisingly large number of mythographic treatises survive from the early empire, and many papyrus fragments from lost works prove that they were in common use.; In addition, author Alan Cameron identifies a hitherto unrecognized type of aid to the reading of Greek and Latin classical and classicizing texts-what might be called mythographic companions to learned poets such as Aratus, Callimachus, Vergil, and Ovid, complete with source references. Much of this book is devoted to an analysis of the importance evidently attached to citing classical sources for mythical stories, the clearest proof that they were now a part of learned culture. So central were these source references that the more unscrupulous faked them, sometimes on the grand scale.

Contents:

An anonymous ancient commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses?

The Greek sources of Hyginus and narrator

Mythological summaries and companions

Narrator and his Greek predecessors

Historiae and source references

Bogus citations

Myth in the margins

Mythographus vergilianus

Myth and society

The Roman poets

Conclusion

App. 1. Lactantius placidus

App. 2. Three versions of Hyginus

App. 3. The text of the Narrationes

App. 4. Marginal source citations in Parthenius and Antoninus liberalis

App. 5. Source citations in the Origo Gentis Romanae

App. 6. Anonymus florentinus.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCOhost, viewed July 17, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Cameron, Alan, 1938-2017. Greek mythography in the Roman world.

ISBN:

9780198038214

0198038216

1423720652

9781423720652

0195171217

9780195171211

1280427825

9781280427824

9786610427826

6610427828

0190291095

9780190291099

1602564787

9781602564787

OCLC:

61342533

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license