This collection of essays brings innovative perspectives to the study of
ancient mythography, that is, the writings of the Greeks and Romans about
their own mythical traditions. It treats a range of sources from the
beginnings of myth criticism in the 5th century BCE to the end of
antiquity in the 5th century CE, highlighting mythography's centrality to
ancient views of myth and moving beyond seeing mythographic texts as
valuable primarily for the preservation of details about traditional
stories. Important individual mythographers are treated (e.g.,
Ps.-Apollodorus and Hyginus), but throughout there is an emphasis on the
connections of mythography with more literary genres, such as epic, and
more prestigious prose genres, such as historiography and geography. This
makes the volume of interest for those who work on myth in Greek and Roman
society, but also for anyone working on ancient intellectual history more
broadly, including those who study rhetoric, education, literary
composition, art and ancient scholarly traditions.