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Palaephatus
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Palaephatus (Greek: ?a?a?fat??) was the original author of a rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales , which survives in a (probably corrupt) Byzantine edition.
This work consists of an introduction and 52 brief sections on various Greek myths. The first 45 have a common format: a brief statement of a wonder tale from Greek mythology, usually followed by a claim of disbelief ("This is absurd" or "This is not likely" or "The true version is..."), and then a sequence of every-day occurrences which gave rise to the wonder-story through misunderstanding.
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Palaephatus (Greek: ?a?a?fat??) was the original author of a rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales , which survives in a (probably corrupt) Byzantine edition.
This work consists of an introduction and 52 brief sections on various Greek myths. The first 45 have a common format: a brief statement of a wonder tale from Greek mythology, usually followed by a claim of disbelief ("This is absurd" or "This is not likely" or "The true version is..."), and then a sequence of every-day occurrences which gave rise to the wonder-story through misunderstanding. The last seven are equally brief retellings of myth, without any rationalizing explanation.
Palaephatus' date and name are uncertain; many scholars have concluded that Palaephatus is a pseudonym; the evidence, such as it is, is all of it consistent with the late fourth century BC.
On Incredible Things
Palaephatus' introduction sets his approach between those who believe everything that is said to them and those more subtle minds who believe that none [of Greek mythology] ever happened. He sets up two premises: that every story derives from some past event, and a principle of uniformity, that "anything which existed in the past now exists and will exist hereafter"; this he derives from the philosophers Melissus and Lamiscus of Samos. So there must be some probable series of events behind all myth; but the "poets and early historians" made them into wonderful tales to amaze their audience. Palaephatus then claims to base what follows on personal research, going to many places and asking older people what happened.
A typical, if short, example of Palaephatus' method and tone is his handling of Callisto:
- "The story about Callisto is that while she was out hunting she turned into a bear. What I maintain is that she too during a hunt found her way into a grove of trees where a bear happened to be and was devoured. Her hunting companions saw her going into the grove, but not coming out; they said that the girl turned into a bear." (§14, tr. Stern)
As usual in Palaephatus, the miracle is told baldly and without context, and the action of the gods is not mentioned; in the traditional story, Artemis transforms Callisto, because she was an unfaithful priestess. Palaephatus rarely mentions the gods, and when he discusses Actaeon, his statement of disbelief is: "Artemis can do whatever she wants, yet it is not true that a man became a deer or a deer a man" (§6, tr. Stern); his principle of uniformity applies to human beings. Jacob Stern distinguishes this from the more wide-ranging rationalism of Euhemerus: Palaephatus retains Callisto and Actaeon as historic human beings; rationalism extended to the gods can make them deified human beings or personifications of natural forces or of the passions, but does not leave them gods.
Palaephatus uses four principal devices for explaining the wonders of myth, and a number of minor devices:
- The monster or animal was actually a man or thing bearing that name: Cadmus didn't fight a dragon, but a King of Thebes named Draco, who had some ivory tusks; his followers scattered abroad with the tusks, and raised armed men against Thebes (§4). Scylla was a pirate ship with an image (presumably of a dog) on her prow, which attacked Ulysses and inflicted casualties (§20). Hercules attacked a fort named Hydra, with the assistance of a Carian named Carcinus (which means "Crab", §38).
- Other double meanings: Melon in Greek means both "sheep" and "apple"; so the real story was that Hercules raided a flock of sheep of especially fine, "golden", quality from the daughters of one Hesperus of Miletus; but the poets prefer the golden apples of the Hesperides (§18). Geryon and Cerberus didn't have three heads, they came from Tricarenia, a city, whose name means "three-headed" and which Palaephatus has invented for the purpose. ($24, 39) Similarly, Bellerophon killed, not the monstrous Chimaera, but the lion and the serpent who lived by a fiery chasm on Mount Chimaera in Lycia (by burning down the surrounding forest). Mt. Chimaera is called that by other authors, and may not be Palaephatus' invention. (§28)
- Metaphorical expressions which became widespread, and which the poets then took literally: Actaeon wasn't eaten by his dogs; he spent so much on them that "His dogs are devouring Actaeon" became proverbial (§6). A statue of Niobe was put up over her children's grave; passersby began to speak of "the stone Niobe". (§8) Amphion and Zethus would only play if their hearers would work on the walls of Thebes; only in that sense were the walls "built by a lyre", and the addition that the stones moved themselves is fiction. (§41)
- When things were first invented, people saw them as even more wonderful than they were: The Centaurs were not half-man, half-horse; they were the first to learn to ride. (§ 1) Lynceus could see underground, because he was the first miner, and invented the miner's lamp. (§9) Daedalus was the first to make statues with their feet apart, so men said his statues "walked". (§21) And Medea didn't boil old men to make them young; she invented hair-dye and the sauna. Poor feeble Pelias just died in the steam-bath. (§ 43)
The author's identity and the Suda entries
Palaephatus is a very rare name, and many scholars have concluded that it is a pseudonym; as an adjective in epic poetry, it meant of ancient fame; it could also mean speaker of old tales. If Palaephatus wrote (as is perhaps most likely) in Athens in the fourth century BC, rationalizing Greek mythology could be dangerous; Anaxagoras had been sent into exile in the previous century for no more.
The only accounts of the life of any Palaephatus are four entries in the Suda (pi , , , ), a Byzantine biographical dictionary, compiled about 1000 AD:
"Palaephatus of Athens"
Palaephatus of Athens, an epic poet, to whom a mythical origin was assigned. According to some he was a son of Actaeus and Boeo, according to others of locles and Metaneira, and according to a third statement of Hermes. The time at which he lived is uncertain, but he appears to have been usually placed after Phemonoe, though some writers assigned him even an earlier date. He is represented by Christodorus (Anth. Graec., i. p. 27, ed. Tauchnitz) as an old bard crowned with laurel. The Suda has preserved the titles of the following poems of Palaephatus:
- (The Making of the World, 5000 lines)
- (The Births of Apollo and Artemis, 3000 lines)
- (Speeches and sayings of Aphrodite and Eros, 5000 lines)
- (Contest of Athena and Poseidon, 1000 lines)
- (Leto's Lock)
"Palaephatus of Paros"
Palaephatus of Paros, or Priene, lived in the time of Artaxerxes. Suidas attributes to him the five books of Incredible Things [also five books of On Troy], but adds that many persons assigned this work to Palaephatus of Athens.
"Palaephatus of Abydos"
Palaephatus of Abydos, an historian who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and is stated to have been loved (pa?d???) by the philosopher Aristotle, for which the Suda quotes the authority of Philo, Peri paradoxou historias, and of Theodorus of Ilium, Troica, Book 2. Suidas gives the titles of the following works of Palaephatus: Cypriaca, Deliaca, Attica, Arabica.
(Smith explains that some writers believe that this Palaephatus of Abydos wrote the fragment on Assyrian history, which is preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea, and which is quoted by him as the work of Abydenus; but Abydenus is that author's name, not the adjective meaning "from Abydos".)
"Palaephatus the Egyptian"
Palaephatus, an Egyptian or Athenian, and a grammarian, as he is described by Suidas, who assigns to him the following works:
- (Egyptian Theology)
- (On Myths, one book)
- (Solutions of problems with Myths)
- (Introductions to Simonides)
- (On Troy), which some however attributed to the Athenian (No. 1), and others to the Parian (No. 2).
- He also wrote a history of himself.
One author behind these traditions
Of these, the first Palaephatus is, like Phemonoe, entirely legendary; modern scholars regard the other three as different literary traditions relating to the author of On Incredible Things. The Troica did once exist, and was cited in antiquity for geographical information on the people of the Trojan War, the Troad itself, and the surrounding area of Asia Minor; ancient authors cited the work's seventh and ninth books, so it must have been fairly long.
If the Artaxerxes mentioned by the Suda is Artaxerxes III Ochus, these data are all compatible with a student of Aristotle about 340 BC, who came from the area around the Hellespont to Athens, and is called the Egyptian, sometimes, because he wrote on Egypt. The only internal evidence in the surviving book are citations of the two philosophers in the introduction and two literary references; if Melissus is Melissus of Samos, he lived in the previous century, and one possible Lamiscus is a Pythagorean contemporary of Plato. The literary references are one citation of Hesiod and the presentation of Alcestis, which is quite similar to Euripides' Alcestis.
Transmission of the text
There are a dozen manuscripts of the present text, differing in length and in order, dating from the thirteenth through sixteenth century. How much of it derives from Palaephatus himself is open to question, although there is general agreement that the seven chapters of straight unrationalized mythology at the end are not. Festa, who edited the text in 1902, believed that Palaephatian texts became a genre, and our present text is a congeries of texts in that genre, most not by Palaephatus himself; Jacob Stern believes that this is a selection from all five books of the original.
Modern editions
Palaephatus' book was first printed by Aldus Manutius in his 1505 edition of Aesop. It became popular as a school-text because of its simple but Attic Greek, and because the Renaissance approved its approach to classical mythology; it was edited by six more editors before the nineteenth century because of its popularity. Although Aldus did not include a Latin translation, later editors included one; many reprinted Cornelius Tollius' Latin version, included with his Greek text (Amsterdam, 1649).
Recent editions include:
- J.H.M. Ernesti, Paläphatus, Von unglaublichen Begebenheiten, griechisch: mit erklärendem Wörterbuche nach den Kapiteln des Paläphatus : sowohl zum Schulgebrauche als zum Selbstunterricht, Leipzig, 1816
- A. Westermann, in , Braunschweig, 1843, pp. -312.
- N. Festa, (Mythographi Graeci, vol. 3, fasc. 2), Leipzig: Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1902.
- J. Stern, Palaephatus: On Unbelievable Tales. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1996 (photoreprint of Festa's Greek text and textual notes, with a translation into English and extensive critical notes)
See also
Heraclitus the paradoxographer
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