Mythology and Fables Explained by History

P R E F A C E.

...that they had for the marvelous, even in Histories that were better known and more recent; how would they have respected the truth when it came to these distant times, in which it was not easy to prove them wrong?

Let us shed further light on this answer. The Greeks were instructed by the peoples of the Orient, and particularly by the Egyptians, regarding the History of the Gods who had lived during the period of time that Varro Marcus Terentius Varro, a Roman scholar, who categorized history into the unknown, the fabulous, and the historical. called the unknown times. Cadmus The legendary Phoenician prince who founded Thebes and is credited with bringing the alphabet to Greece. taught them the use of Letters, and enabled them to write the History of their Heroes themselves—that is to say, the history of the fabulous times. The Works that contained this history apparently still existed in the time of Hesiod and Homer The primary epic poets of ancient Greece, traditionally dated to the 8th century BC., who derived the substance of their Poems from them, or at least drew it from a tradition that was still quite recent. I am convinced that these Poems caused the loss of most other older Works; for it has happened more than once that a good book has caused people to forget, and finally caused the disappearance of those which preceded it.

But as Homer and Hesiod had not employed all the traditions that were received in their time, the other Poets who came after them made use of what remained; and this is why we find such different accounts in Sophocles, in Euripides Two of the three great Athenian tragedians whose plays often featured varying versions of myths., and in the other Tragic writers. As for the Authors who later collected the History of these ancient events in Prose, such as Apollodorus An Athenian scholar whose "Library" is a primary source for Greek myths., Diodorus Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian known for his monumental universal history, the "Bibliotheca historica.", and several others, they drew what they recount either from this same tradition, or from the Works that still existed in their time, and which had themselves been composed based on others even more ancient.