234 APOLLODORUS. APOLLODORUS.
p. 257, ed. Heeren) has preserved two fragments of it. This Stoic must be distinguished from the Academic philosopher Apollodorus who is spoken of by Cicero (De Nat. Deor. i. 34), but he is perhaps the same as the one who is mentioned by Tertullian (De Anima, 15) along with Chrysippus.
13. An Epicurean, was according to Diogenes Laërtius (x. 13) surnamed κηποτύραννος, from his exercising a kind of tyranny or supremacy in the garden or school of Epicurus. He was the teacher of Zeno of Sidon, who became his successor as the head of the school of Epicurus, about b. c. 84. He is said to have written upwards of 400 books (βιϐλία, Diog. Laërt. x. 25), but only one of them is mentioned by its title, viz. a Life of Epicurus. (Diog. Laërt. x. 2.) This as well as his other works have completely perished.
14. An epigrammatic poet, who lived in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, and is commonly believed to have been a native of Smyrna. The Greek Anthology contains upwards of thirty epigrams which bear his name, and which are distinguished for their beautiful simplicity of style as well as of sentiment. Reiske was inclined to consider this poet as the same man as Apollonides of Nicaea, and moreover to suppose that the poems in the Anthologia were the productions of two different persons of the name of Apollodorus, the one of whom lived in the reign of Augustus, and the other in that of Hadrian. But there is no ground for this hypothesis. (Jacobs, ad Anthol. Graec. xiii. p.854,&c.)
14. Of Erythrae, a Greek writer, who spoke of the Erythraean Sibyl as his fellow-citizen. (Varro, Fragm. p. 216, ed. Bip. ; Schol. ad Plat. Phaedr. p. 343 ; Lactant. De Fals. Relig. i. 6.)
16. Of Gela in Sicily, was, according to Suidas and Eudocia (p. 61), a contemporary of Menander, and accordingly lived between the years b. c. 340 and 290. Suidas and Eudocia attribute to him seven comedies, of which they give the titles. But while Suidas (s. v. Ἀπολλόδωρος) ascribes them to Apollodorus of Gela, he assigns one of these same comedies in another passage (s. v. σπουδάζω) to the Carystian. Other writers too frequently confound the two comic poets. (Meineke, Hist. Crit. Comic. Graec. p. 459, &c.)
17. A Greek grammarian of Athens, was a son of Asclepiades, and a pupil of the grammarian Aristarchus, of Panaetius, and Diogenes the Babylonian. He flourished about the year b. c. 140, a few years after the fall of Corinth. Further particulars are not mentioned about him. We know that one of his historical works (the χρονικά) came down to the year b. c. 143, and that it was dedicated to Attalus II., surnamed Philadelphus, who died in b. c. 138; but how long Apollodorus lived after the year b. c. 143 is unknown. Apollodorus wrote a great number of works, and on a variety of subjects, which were much used in antiquity, but all of them have perished with the exception of one, and even this one has not come down to us complete. This work bears the title Βιϐλιθήκη ; it consists of three books, and is by far the best among the extant works of the kind. It contains a well-arranged account of the numerous mythuses of the mythology and the heroic age of Greece. The materials are derived from the poets, especially the cyclic poets, the logographers, and the historians. It begins with the origin of the gods, and goes down to the time of Theseus, when the work suddenly breaks off. The part which is wanting at the end contained the stories of the families of Pelops and Atreus, and probably the whole of the Trojan cycle also. The first portion of the work (i. 1—7) contains the ancient theogonic and cosmogonic mythuses, which are followed by the Hellenic mythuses, and the latter are arranged according to the different tribes of the Greek nation. (Phot. Cod. 186.) The ancients valued this work very highly, as it formed a running mythological commentary to the Greek poets ; to us it is of still greater value, as most of the works from which Apollodorus derived his information, as well as several other works which were akin to that of Apollodorus, are now lost. Apollodorus relates his mythical stories in a plain and unadorned style, and gives only that which he found in his sources, without interpolating or perverting the genuine forms of the legends by attempts to explain their meaning. This extreme simplicity of the Bibliotheca, more like a mere catalogue of events, than a history, has led some modern critics to consider the work in its present form either as an abridgement of some greater work of Apollodorus, or as made up out of several of his works.[1] But this opinion is a mere hypothesis without any evidence. The first edition of the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, in which the text is in a very bad condition, was edited by Benedictus Aegius of Spoleto, at Rome, 1555, 8vo. A somewhat better edition is that of Heidelberg, 1599, 8vo. (Ap. Commelin.) After the editions of Tan. Faber (Salmur. 1661, 8vo.), and Th. Gale in his Script. Hist. poet. (Paris, 1675, 8vo.), there followed the critical edition of Ch. G. Heyne, Göttingen, 1782 and 83, 4 vols. 12mo., of which a second and improved edition appeared in 1803, 2 vols. 8vo. The best among the subsequent editions is that of Clavier, Paris, 1805, 2 vols. 8vo., with a commentary and a French translation. The Bibliotheca is also printed in C. and Th. Müller, Fragment. Hist. Graec., Paris, 1841, and in A. Westermann's Mythiographi, sive Scriptores Poeticae Histor. Graeci, 1843, 8vo.
Among the other works ascribed to Apollodoras which are lost, but of which a considerable number of fragments are still extant, which are contained in Heyne's edition of the Bibliotheca and in C. and Th. Müller's Fragm. Hist. Graec., the following must be noticed here : 1. Περὶ τῶν Ἀθήνησιν ἑταίρων, i. e. on the Athenian Courtezans. (Athen. xiii. pp. 567, 583, xiv. pp. 586, 591 Heyne, vol. iii. p. 1163, &c.; Müller, p. 467, &c.) 2. Ἀντιγραφὴ πρὸς τὴν Ἀριστοκλέους ὲπιστμήν. (Athen. xiv. p. 636; Heyne, p. 1172, &c.) 3. Γῆς περίοδος, κωμικῷ μέτρῳ, that is, a Universal Geography in iambic verses, such as was afterwards written by Scymnus of Chios and by Dionysius. (Strabo, xiv. p. 656 ; Steph. Byz. passim; Heyne, p. 1126, &c. ; Müller, p. 449, &c.) 4. Περὶ Ἐτιχάρμου, either a commentary or a dissertation on the plays of the comic poet Epicharmus, which consisted of ten books. (Pophyr. Vit. Plotin. 4; Heyne, p. 1142, &c.; Müller, p. 462.) 5. Ἐτυμολογίαι, or Etymologies, a work which is frequently referred to, though not always under this title, but sometimes apparently under that of the head of a particular article. (Heyne, p. 1144 &c.; Müller, p. 462, &c.) 6. Περὶ Θεῶν, in twenty-four books. This work contained the
- ↑ This work is now no longer thought to be by Apollodorus and the author is therefore refered to as Pseudo-Apollodorus.
