Several decades has passed since the 60s and there's still haven't been new translations, reprint, or even separate commentary of Ps-Hyginus' work. Even Theoi on the author page said, "yeah i have grabbed stuff from other books", and Topostext was like "we just ripped it from Theoi".
I think people are uncritically harsh on Hyginus for supposedly contradicting the myths (Hephaestus time travelling anyone?), but the dude literally recorded where he got his info from - “some said this while others said…” Also his Fabulae is an encyclopedia, your earliest Wikipedia! Check it out if you are curious as to how many myths where the heroes killed his father or how many got turned into a dog.
So I’m going to highlight some myths from his work (Fabulae and Astronomica), some obscure and others that are likely familiar to most people.
Popular:
Apollo tricking Artemis to kill Orion (Astr. 2.34.4)
Hermes stealing Aphrodite's sandals in exchange to have sex with her (Astr. 2.16.4)
Poseidon had his dolphins seek Amphitrite's hand in marriage (Astr. 2.17.1) [contrast to Oppian's version where he took her by force]
Hera breastfeeding the infant Heracles or Hermes and creating the milky way (Astr. 2.43.1)[this myths were attested in other writers, but this one is where the variants are recognizable]
Hera hiding Zeus from their father at Crete (Fab. 139)
Hephaestus gifting Harmonia as vengeance for her parent's affair, cursing her descendants (Fab. 148)
Poseidon persuading Hephaestus to ask Athena's hand in marriage (Fab. 166)[a slight popular change nowadays is having Poseidon tricked him into thinking Athena was into him]
Obscure
Heracles was put in Omphale’ servitude by Hermes as punishments for stealing Apollo’s sacred object after Apollo refused to purified his crimes (Fab. 32)
Hephaestus, Dionysus, Silenus, and the satyrs rode on donkeys and use their braying to chase off the giants in the war (Astr. 2.23.4)
Ares' star stalking Aphrodite (Venus)'s out of passion (Astr. 2.42.3)
Alternative version where the Milky Way was created from Rhea’s breast milk (Astr. 2.43.1)
Medea visited her brother’s grave after being exiled from Athen, and helped the locals with their snake problems by putting them where he’s buried (Fab. 26)
Hera instigating the Titanomachy upon Zeus in retaliation for his affair with Io and siring a king named Epaphus (Fab. 150)
Pan helped the gods against Typhon and was rewarded (Fab. 196)
HEYYYY PARTY PEOPLE after a few months of building file-by-file and sharing it around personally, i'm happy to finally show you guys my google drive of greco-roman / filipino mythological and related texts!
before anyone asks, yes! it even includes obscure sources – from psuedo-apollodorus' library and philostratus' heroica, to hyginus' fabulae and psuedo-ovid's decastich arguments of the aeneid (virgil's aeneid itself too, or course). the entirety of greek drama? i've got you covered (with some latin theatre as well)! we all know homer's iliad and odyssey, they have their own folders with plenty of translations to choose from. dante's divine comedy is also there, because it is.
feedback is welcome and encouraged; can't find a text, or a translation of it? feel free to hit me up so i can look for it! have a text or translation you wanna share? hit me up so i can throw it into a library as well! libraries are a collaborative effort, please enjoy it to your heart's content. ❣️
While researching Odysseus' family on his father's side, I had the blessing (and curse) of learning about Cephalus. This exploration had some ironic and tragic similarities between Odysseus and Cephalus. Both were taken advantage of by goddesses and held captive by them. Also, they share a Suicidal connection to the sea: Odysseus contemplated suicide on Calypso’s island, while Cephalus took his own life by drowning.
Correct me if I’m wrong abt smth
There seems to be plenty of parallelism with Cephalus who seems to be the beginning of the line of Odysseus or at least the founder of his kingdom and Odysseus himself. For starters we also have a tragic tale between Cephalus and his wife Procris (although their story is massively different than what we see between Odysseus and Penelope) in which Cephalus and Procris swear to each other to be loyal and according to sources like Hyginus we even hear a similar recognition game process such as between Odysseus and Penelope
Yes we see Cephalus being loved by the goddess Eos (Dawn) and him rejecting her and Eos kidnapped him and carried him over to Syria and even she tries to break his bond with Procris (see for example Calypso comparing herself to Penelope to manipulate Odysseus into seeing her as the better option). The iconography between Odysseus and Cephalus is very similar too. See for example this red-figure kylix that belongs to the painter Douris:
Eos appears to grab Cephalus bu the arm, pulling him out of his way. Cephalus is dressed in chlamys almost identical to the one Odysseus has in his, let's say depiction in the underworld and he wears a Petassos hat, significant part of people traveling or working outside. He is even holding two spears which was also a description Odysseus has more often whatnot (see for example when he is ready to fight Skylla in the Odyssey). I actually love this image at how scared and surprised Cephalus seems while Eos seems literally ready to pull him up at the sky.
As for the suicide thematic it seems that Strabo connects the location of Leucas or Leucatas as a "leap tradition" place for those who suffered of love. He seems to place Cephalus as the first person to start this "tradition" when he throws himself off the end of Leucatas rock where he had also built the temple to Apollo to clease himself from accidentally killing his wife so yes it seems that the connection between Cephalus and killing himself out of love exists
Ironically Odysseus even if he considered suicide out of desperation many times over in the Odyssey, he never did it for real even if he had chances of doing it.
Perhaps you have heard of Adonis, lover to Aphrodite and Persephone, the most beautiful man in the Classical Antiquity. What you may not have know is that Adonis is the fruit of a incestuous relationship between Myrrha (also called Smyrna in some texts) and her father Cinyras (other times names Theias).
The most well known version of the myth comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, published in 8 AD, but the myth is older than that, and other variants of it survive to this day. For the Metamorphoses, I'll be using Brookes More's translation from 1922, with the revisions from 1978.
Metamorphoses, by Ovid
The poem about Myrrha can be found in Book X, starting in line 298, under the title Myrrha Transformed to a Tree. It consists of Orpheus telling an audience of the origin of the myrrh tree.
Myrrha had her pick among suitors, but who she really wanted was her father, Cinyras, King of Cyprus. She knows that her desire is wrong, although she also knows that it's not technicaly a crime:
"Ah, may the sacred rights of parents keep this vile desire from me, defend me from a crime so great—If it indeed is crime. I am not sure it is— I have not heard that any god or written law condemns the union of a parent and his child."
And complains she wasn't born in a land where mothers and son, as well as fathers and daughters, can get together:
"But it is said there are some tribes today, in which the mother marries her own son; the daughter takes her father; and by this, the love kind Nature gives them is increased into a double bond. Ah wretched me! Why was it not my fortune to be born in that love-blessed land?"
Cinryas comes to asks Myrrha which of the suitors she wants to marry and she cries in her father's arms, saying that she wants a husband like him, to which he replies that she's a loving daughter. That night, knowing she would have to a pick a husband soon, Myrrha decides that, since she can't wed her father, it's better to hang herself.
As she prepares to do so, a maid enters and room and stops her. The maid asks what's upsetting Myrrha, and, at first, she refuses to answer. Eventually, Myrrha confesses her love for Cinryas and the maid promises to help.
Luckly for Myrrha, her mother is away celebrating the festival of Ceres (Demeter), so Cinryas is drunk and alone. The maid tells him that a beautiful girl is interested in being his mistress and, furthermore, she's Myrrha's age. Cinryas gets interested and tells the maid to bring in the girl. Even thought she felt great guilt, that night Myrrha goes to her father's bedroom.
Officially, it's said that Cinryas doesn't recognizes Myrrha, but I call that bullshit. He must have wanted his daughter in some level, as I believe he had accepted this girl only because she was Myrrha's age. And he then he goes on to call the 'unknown girl' "daughter"? As if he's roleplaying her being Myrrha.
He chanced to call her “daughter,” as a name best suited to her age; and she in turn, endearing, called him “father”, so no names might be omitted to complete their guilt.
She returns to Cinryas room many nights, and they always have sex in the dark, until one day Cinryas decides to light the room and see the face of his new mistress. In shock, he learns that it's Myrrha he has been sleeping with. This reminds me of Eros and Psyche, when Psyche hides a candle so she can see her husband and then tragedy ensues.
Upon seeing Myrrha, Cinryas gets his sword and tries to kill her, but she runs. For nine months she wanders the land while pregnant, until she's too tired and begs the gods to help her. They anwser by transforming her into a myrrh tree.
The baby she conceived with her father is birthed from her tree form with the help of the goddess of childbirth and grows to become a beautiful man, handsome enough to win the love of Venus (Aphrodite), which is a poem of it's own.
"That son of sister and grandfather, who was lately hidden in his parent tree, just lately born, a lovely baby-boy is now a youth, now man more beautiful than during growth."
So this thing about incest-babies being always 'deformed' and 'retarded' is a modern invention. These ancient stories have the offspring of incestuous unions as being beautiful enough to marry a King or a Goddess and strong and wise enough to become a leader themselves.
Fabulae, by Hyginus
Another ancient collection of tales, the Fabulae by Hyginus, written circa 1 AD (before Metamorphoses) gives a similar account to the previous one in the Chapter 58:
Smyrna was the daughter of Cinyras, King of the Assyrians, and Cenchreis. Her mother Cenchreis boasted proudly that her daughter excelled Venus in beauty. Venus, to punish the mother, sent forbidden love to Smyrna so that she loved her own father. The nurse prevented her from hanging herself, and without knowledge of her father, helped her lie with him. She conceived, and goaded by shame, in order not to reveal her fault, hid in the woods. Venus later pitied her, and changed her into a kind of tree from which myrrh flows; Adonis, born from it, exacted punishment for his mother's sake from Venus.
Chapter 242 of the same book says that Cinyras killed himself once he discovered he laid with his daughter.
Bibliotheca, by Apollodorus
Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, written around 1st century AD, is a collection of Greek poems and stories, and it was attributed to Apollodorus, until they realized it hadn't been him to write it and so it became Pseudo-Apollodorus. But anyway, I bring up this texts because it offers three possible origins for Adonis in Book III, chapter XIV. Two of them are not relevant for us, but the third one is. Using Panyasis as his source, Pseudo-Apollodorus, says that Adonis was the son of Thias, King of Assyria, and his daughter, Smyrna.
In consequence of the wrath of Aphrodite, for she did not honor the goddess, this Smyrna conceived a passion for her father, and with the complicity of her nurse she shared her father's bed without his knowledge for twelve nights. But when he was aware of it, he drew his sword and pursued her, and being overtaken she prayed to the gods that she might be invisible; so the gods in compassion turned her into the tree which they call smyrna (myrrh).
Metamorphoses, by Antoninus Liberalis
Written between 2nd and 3rd century AD, its the most recent among these selected texts. This account is very similar to the others, with the major difference being that Thias never tries to kill Smyrna. Here, their affair lasts months and when he shines the light on her, she gives birth in shock of being found out. She's then transformed into a tree by Zeus and Thias kills himself.
