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Greek Mythography in the Roman World by ALAN CAMERON

Article · January 2006

DOI: 10.2307/41587341

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Review
Reviewed Work(s): Greek Mythography in the Roman World by ALAN CAMERON
Review by: PHILLIP V. STANLEY
Source: Vergilius (1959-), Vol. 52 (2006), pp. 235-240
Published by: The Vergilian Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41587341
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Vergilius (1959-)

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 Book Reviews 235

no longer surprises. But it does g

of his fathers, with no hint of t
the laborious leisure, acribeia,
Virgil's peculiar trope meant to
tradition?
In fine, gratitude to this editio
fine tuning remains required of
such a philological fête. The tran
putting us on the qui vive to m
sometimes even the actual goods
an astonishing, learned (someti
absorbed) young chef.

JOHN B. VAN SICKLE

BROOKLYN COLLEGE AND THE GRADUATE
SCHOOL, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

Bibliography
Politian. Les Silves de Ange Politien. Trans, and ed. by Pierre Galand.
Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1987: facsimile of the first editions, trans,
into French, copious essays on structure of argument.
Van Sickle, John B. The Design of Virgil's Bucolics. London:
Duckworth, 2004a [Second Edition],
- . "Virgil, Bucolics 1.1-2 & Interpretive Tradition: A Latin (Roman)
Program for a Greek Genre." Classical Philology 99 (2004b) 336-53.
- . "Virgil vs Cicero, Lucretius, Theocritus, Callimachus, Plato, &
Homer: Two Programmatic Plots in the First Bucolic ." Vergilius 46
(2000)21-58.

CAMERON, ALAN, Greek Mythography in the Roman World. Oxford

University Press. 2004. Pp. xvi + 346. ISBN 0195171217.

Cameron, in this examination of mythographers in the ancient world,

with particular emphasis on the Roman Imperial Period, raises three
major questions which he attempts to answer. First, what is the nature of
mythographical writings? This question also includes attempts to identify
the various mythographical works circulating in the ancient world, who
wrote them, and when were they written. Second, why were these works

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236

written and how were they used? This question is extended to include a
discussion of who used these texts. Third, how much did the Roman
poets, such as Vergil, utilize and rely on these works? To deal with these
topics, he divides his study into eleven chapters, with the last being a
well-needed statement of conclusions arrived at in the main body of the
text.

The first question, relating to the nature of mythographers in the

ancient world, is discussed in the preface and first seven chapters,
although he does also consider the two other questions in these chapters.
Cameron begins our journey through the labyrinth of mythographers
with a discussion of one particular text, the Narrationes , which he argues
was originally a mythographical text which helped to explain the mythic
allusions in Ovid's Metamorphoses . He dubs the author of this text the
Narrator and argues that he wrote prior to 200 A.D.; a much earlier date
than most other scholars in this area would suggest (pp. 10-23).
However, Cameron does seem to have several valid reasons for such a
conclusion, and I am tempted to agree with him. Later, he points out that
not only do we have such mythographers for Ovid but also for Vergil; in
fact, his entire eighth chapter is devoted to a discussion of Mythographus
Vergilianus (pp. 184-216).
Having introduced us to our first mythographer, Cameron begins to
define what identifies these writers. He notes that mythographers are not
interested in the way in which a particular poet tells the myth or the style
of the poem but rather their concern is to tell the story and to cite earlier
sources for their information. On occasion such citations are extensive.
Cameron doubts that these later mythographers actually consulted all of
these texts; this conclusion, in part, is based on the fact that the existence
of books in the ancient world was very limited and no one library or
person could have possessed such an extensive collection. Rather, he
suggests that the later author consulted at least one earlier mythographer
and reproduced that earlier author's list of citations, adding, most likely,
the last author consulted. In support of this conclusion he considers the
works of several extant mythographers. When discussing the writings of
Hyginus, a Roman mythographer, Cameron concludes:

Despite many learned references to Greek sources, De

astronomia is not an original work based on firsthand learning. Most
of its mythological material is simply translated from Ps-
Eratosthenes's Catasterisms ..., from which it borrows almost all of

Vergilius 52 (2006)

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 Book Reviews 237

its erudition, (p. 33)

A little further in the text

Hyginus' Fabulae , which he bel
of Greek mythographic traditi
Cameron cites several paralle
Eratosthenes and the Narrator
mythographers "conducting firs
necessary, the work had already
Cameron then turns from t
models. He argues that such w
alphabetic order, of brief summ
used in a particular literary
occasional explanatory note or n
and (3) finally, a list of sourc
wanted authors and titles" to va
last element of the model was e
such writers. At this juncture
problem of the authenticity of

'We have seen how regularly the mythographers and

paradoxographers cite authors - so regularly that Ps-Plutarch and
Ptolemy the Quail invented them to give their fictions some color of
authenticity" (p. 89).

Cameron devotes the sixth chapter to a discussion of these bogus

citations in Ps. -Plutarch and Ptolemy the Quail. However, in the previous
chapter Cameron launched into an in-depth discussion of the use and
abuse of citations and arrives at two conclusions. "First, what appear to
be general source references in the mythographers must always be
treated with caution." Second, the fact that these citations are not limited
to just a few authors suggests that the surviving works may have derived
their information from earlier mythographers rather than from
commentaries, (p. 114)
Early in the text Cameron provides a list of eighteen "out-and-out
mythographers" together with an additional list of eleven other works
with "a good deal of mythological material"(pp. 27-32). It is essential to
keep this list in mind and marked so that the reader can refer back to it
throughout Cameron's discussion of the various uses of particularly

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238

Greek mythographers by later writers and poets and his discussion of the
various authors. I would have preferred to have this list as one of the
appendices so as to provide easier access to it.
Cameron turns to his second major topic: Why were these
mythological works written and who used them? He had already been
broaching this topic in the earlier chapters and had actually given three
major reasons why such works were useful to the ancient reader. First,
most people in the ancient world did not know the mythic tradition and
the educated needed to learn the stories. As Cameron states:

"Mythology became a part of the literary culture, in effect a status

marker. It had to be learned, and this is where the mythographers and
compilers of mythographic companions came in. Not scholarly
commentaries... but a well-defined separate category of
nonphilological aides to reading and appreciating the
classics"(p.218).

For Cameron this seems to have been their primary function, as an

aid to understanding the mythological references in a specific text or
literary works in general. The educated could consult one or more of the
mythographers for enlightenment on a particular story or allusion. From
here Cameron goes into a lengthy discussion of the importance of myths
and why it was necessary to learn them, discussing "mythology and
culture," "mythological kinship," "popular mythology" and "mythology
and tourism" (pp. 220-237).
Second, mythographers were used for the education of students,
much as we have our students read a general text on mythology to learn
the ancient tales. Cameron approaches this aspect of the function of
mythographers already in Chapter 5 when he concludes: "the truth is...
many of these books may well have been written for or at any rate
regularly used in the schoolroom" (p. 1 16). In this chapter he devotes an
entire subsection on the examination of the use of these authors in the
ancient classroom and why they were needed. He refers specifically to
two ancient authors, Quintilian and Juvenal, who considered the use of
such mythical material in education. Quintilian in his work on the
Education of the Orator argues that the Grammaticus, who is responsible
for the primary level of a student's education, should explain the
stories/myths to their students, but they should not overload their
explanation with superfluous details and citations; to do so, Quintilian

Vergilius 52 (2006)

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 Book Reviews 239

believes, is an example of "tire

(Quint. 1.8.18-21 Loeb translatio
the parents for the use of exte
demand that their children learn all of the relevant authorities on a
particular myth (Juv. Sat. 7.231-6). To illustrate how these citations were
used by the Grammaticus , Cameron mentions several texts, mostly
papyri from Egypt, used for exercises on understanding the myths in the
Iliad . These texts have the teacher quizzing the student on various details
like, "Who was the father of Hector?" To which the student responds
"Priam" (pp. 117-8). Furthermore, students "were expected to name the
literary sources for the genealogies of the heroes of myth." Such lists of
sources were a characteristic feature of the mythographers. We have
several Egyptian papyri which are lists of mythological figures copied in
alphabetical order by students just learning their myths (pp. 246-7).
Finally, Cameron concludes: "it is hardly an exaggeration to say that by
the Roman age mythology was in danger of becoming a department of
grammar and rhetoric" (p. 247).
Cameron devotes Chapter 10 (pp. 252-303) to a discussion of his
third major question: how much did the Roman poets, such as Vergil,
utilize and rely on mythographers for their allusions to the myths in their
poems? In many ways this is actually the focal topic of his book, and
much groundwork had been laid by Cameron for this particular chapter,
which he begins with the following: "Mythological allusions and
comparisons are a very conspicuous feature of Roman poetry" (p. 253).
The problem is to determine what sources these poets did use. Cameron
notes that Oliver Lyne suggests two possible sources: mythological
handbooks and mythological paintings such as are found decorating the
walls of the houses at Pompeii.45 Cameron argues that while it is possible
that some allusions may have been inspired by paintings, ancient
painters, like the poets, did not tell the stories of the myths. From here he
begins an analysis of various Latin poets to discover what their source or
sources may have been. The first poet he deals with is Vergil; he notes
that "most critics have been reluctant to believe that so cultivated and
learned a poet had recourse to such elementary manuals <as those written
by mythographers>" (p. 255). Of course, scholars have long been
familiar with the strong similarities between Vergil's Aeneid 2 and Ps.-
Apollodorus, Epit. 5.14-22. Did Vergil, however, borrow from Ps.-

45 R. O. A. M. Lyne, The Latin Love Poets (Oxford 1980) 82.

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 240

Apollodorus or did they each have a common source? Scholars have

already suggested that Vergil needed to select carefully from a mass of
differing traditions to come up with the correct narrative which would be
in the first person and "would allow Aeneas to avoid the reproach of
cowardice in deserting his city in its hour of need" (p. 255). Cameron
believes that it would be reasonable to assume that Vergil read as much
of the Epic Cycle that he could acquire, but still there are vast amounts of
other sources on the subject. As Cameron points out, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus cites more than 30 sources for his Roman history for the
period prior to Romulus. Cameron argues that Vergil would most likely
have begun his research by consulting the most comprehensive work he
could find on the subject. Cameron concludes that Vergil may well have
relied on the earlier work by the mythographer Peisandros, whom Ps.-
Apollodorus cites as one of his sources; however, "it is absurd to suppose
that Vergil followed any mythographer word for word" (p. 260).
Cameron next turns to an in-depth examination of the writings of Ovid,
to try to identify the sources that he may have used.
The book concludes with series of six appendices ranging in topics
covering some specific mythographers, like the Narrator and Hyginus, to
dealing with marginal citations in several works.
Cameron's study of mythographers has a lot to recommend it for the
specialist in the field of mythology; however, I personally would not
recommend this study to the novice in the area of mythic studies, i.e., the
person who has not already had some experience working with many of
the works discussed by Cameron. It is easy to become lost in his maze of
mythographers, often with the feeling that the reader, unlike Theseus,
does not have a cord to lead him out.

SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY PHILLIP V. STANLEY

COLETTE DE CALL AT AÝ -V AN DER MERSCH, Virgile , Miracle d

l'histoire . Leuven / Paris: Peeters, 2005. Pp. 142. ISBN 9042917105 /
2677239055.

This cabalesque reverie on the Vergilian oeuvre is not likely to be

widely reviewed in academic journals. For one thing, it soars far beyond
the competence and criteria of philological assessors, a breed whose long
record of failure as interpreters of Vergil the author repeatedly
emphasizes. The philological critic, frappé du stupeur , to borrow

Vergilius 52 (2006)

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