Introducing Canopos

Written by Greta Hawes

Greek and Roman writers had a lot to say about their myths. And yet little ancient mythography is easily accessible online in good translations.

Canopos is a modest initiative to change that by collecting and creating translations of these texts. It will serve as an open repository for peer-reviewed translations and commentaries, with most (where possible) available for reuse with attribution under CC-BY licences.

The first text translated specifically for Canopos typifies the aims of the project: the text reveals a fascinating snapshot of a Greek author thinking about the myths of his culture, and it appears here in a highly readable translation created by a team primarily comprising students.

Palaiphatos’ On Unbelievable Stories is the earliest work of mythography to have survived (relatively) intact. Palaiphatos was probably writing in Athens in the 340s or 330s; he was described by later writers as a student of Aristotle. He was well-known to early Christian and Byzantine commentators, and - to judge by the manuscripts and early printed editions - remained relatively popular. His work is quite simple in scope and repetitive in its language; it was actually used to teach ancient Greek until the mid-19th century. There was a flurry of interest in him in the late 19th century in Germany and Italy, which quickly died away. He was ‘rediscovered’ again in recent decades as part of the burgeoning study of ancient mythography.

The translation (you can read it here) was produced by a group of current and former students from the Centre for Classical Studies at the Australian National University over the course of about 6 months.

Palaiphatos’ basic idea is that the fabulous elements of myth are not proof that the biological norms of the past were different from the present. Rather, what has happened is that these stories have become misunderstood with time. Here’s how he describes it in his prologue:

Poets and storytellers perverted some of what took place and made it more unbelievable and astonishing to astound their audiences.

But I know that such things are not possible, at least not in the way they are told. I have come to understand that if something did not actually happen, it would not be spoken about.

After this ‘methodological’ prologue (which quite honestly raises a lot more questions than it answers) he romps through 46 myths, providing perfectly ‘rational’ explanations as he goes. He is, for example, the original source for the idea that stories of the Centaurs came about when people saw others riding horses —

they [the people who had discovered how to ride horses] would come down onto the plain at night and hide, then burn and pillage by day before returning to the mountains. When they rode away in this manner, those watching from a distance saw them only from behind: they looked like horses but without a horse’s head; the rest was like a human, but without the legs. (1)

Quite apart from his inventiveness with explanations is his insistence that what is possible can be categorically separated from what is not. Why could there not in fact have been a Minotaur? Well —

To start with, it is impossible for an animal of one kind to mate with one of another unless the womb and genitals are compatible. For it is not possible for a dog and an ape to mate with one another and produce offspring, nor a wolf and a hyena, nor an antelope and a deer (for the fact is that they are of different species). More to the point, I do not think that a bull had sex with a wooden cow: for all four-footed animals smell the genitals of an animal before mating and mount it afterwards. Nor would a woman be able to withstand being mounted by a bull, nor could she have carried a horned embryo. (2)

So many of Palaiphatos’ solutions to myth turn on misunderstood statements that the work functions also as a kind of practical exploration of the ambiguities of language. A good example appears in relation to the story of the golden apples of the Hesperides. Rather than imagining strange women in a land far to the west with a tree that born golden fruit guarded by a serpent, he declares that —

Hesperos was a Milesian man who dwelt in Caria and had two daughters, who were called Hesperides [‘daughters of Hesperos’]. He had excellent, profitable sheep, of the breed which one still finds in Miletos. For this reason, they were named ‘golden’, for gold is a most fine thing and these sheep were likewise most fine. People referred to them as mela - an old-fashioned word for sheep that also happened to mean ‘apples’. Heracles saw them grazing by the sea, herded them onto his ship, and took them home. He also killed their shepherd, who was called  Draco [‘Serpent’]. Hesperos was no longer alive, but his daughters were still living. Accordingly, people would say, ‘We saw the golden mela which Heracles took from the Hesperides, after he killed their guardian, Draco.’ From this, the myth arose.

The point — as so often, is that what people said in describing the events at the time was an accurate account of a quite mundane occurrence. Only with time did the words take on a fabulous cast. With Palaiphatos’ help, the reader can again understand such phrases with their ‘original’ meaning.