Crouching Cow, Killing Dragon. Agenorid Myth in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, III, 1-56: A Philological Commentary.

The mythographic handbook called Bibliotheca (falsely ascribed to Apollodorus of Athens) is unique in its genre because of its comprehensive aim and state of preservation. As a result it is an invaluable source on myths from the Theogony to the Returns of the Greeks from Troy.This dissertation aims to unlock the Bibliotheca as a mythographic text in its own right. A key aspect of this objective is to counteract the way that the handbook has regularly been disregarded and misjudged as a repository of 'standard versions' of myths or as a primary witness to the archaic stories. Such a reductive view at once underestimates and romanticizes the merits of the Bibliotheca.Combined, the persistent misconceptions about the representative character of the Bibliotheca's myths, about Ps.-Apollodorus' personal merits as an author/compiler and about his source use have divided the scholarship on the mythographic handbook and are liable to mislead someone not versed in the debate. The present study aims to contribute in a positive way to this divided field of research and hopefully lays some of these questions to rest. To this end an illustrative section of bk. III of the Bibliotheca has been selected (i.e. the Agenorids in III.1-56) and has been made the object of a philological commentary. This close approach of the text is a serious lacuna and a prerequisite for further research into the Bibliotheca. Part one offers a synthesis on the basis of the most important lines of research explored in the commentary. The first chapters provide an overview of the state of the research on Ps.-Apollodorus' date and name (chapter A) and on the purpose, intended readership and actual audience of the Bibliotheca (chapter B). Subsequently, chapter C presents progress in the description of the indirect traces and the manuscript tradition of the Bibliotheca. Chapter D acts as a hinge between the textual history and the following chapters by taking a closer look at the book division of the Bibliotheca.The second half of part one deals with various aspects of the composition and organization of the Bibliotheca. Chapter E addresses the genealogical arrangement of the Bibliotheca and book III in particular. Formulaic phrases are the focus of chapter F: they indicate the narrator's intervention to guide the reader and to structure the account. Finally, the question of the realization of the handbook is also one of its sources. Therefore, chapter G presents a general picture of Ps.-Apollodorus' method and potential sources to supplement the individual findings of the commentary.status: publishe