Myth, Mythography, and Historiography

This volume gathers Robert L. Fowler’s key texts on Greek mythology, mythography, and historiography – work that has reshaped views of mythography as a vital strand of Greco-Roman literary and intellectual history and sharpened our reading of Herodotus’ revolutionary Histories. The collection is rounded out by two brand-new, previously unpublished essays by the author.

This volume collects Robert L. Fowler’s major papers on Greek myth, mythography, and historiography published since 1996, the date of the foundational article ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, together with two new chapters specially written for this publication. Alongside his edition and commentary of the earliest texts (Early Greek Mythography, Oxford 2000-2013), his work has promoted a re-evaluation of mythography as an important part of Greco-Roman intellectual history, and enhanced our understanding of Herodotus’ revolutionary Histories.

Preface
Groundwork
1.Herodotus and his Contemporaries
Myth, History, Mythistory
2.Mythos and Logos
3.Myth, History, Mythistory
4.Greek Mythography
Ethnicity
5.Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod's Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes
6.The nostoi and Archaic Greek Ethnicity
7.Foreigners in Early Greek Mythography
Style, Methods, Contexts
8.Early Historiē and Literacy
9.Herodotus and Athens
10.Herodotus and his Prose Predecessors
11.How to Tell a Myth: Genealogy, Mythology, Mythography
12.Hecataeus, Pherecydes, Hellanicus: Three Approaches to Mythography
13.Imaginary Itineraries in the Beyond
14.Herodotus and the Pleasure of the Text
Religion
15.Thoughts on Myth and Religion in Early Greek Historiography
16.Gods in Early Greek Historiography
Postclassical Continuations
17.Apollodorus and the Art of the Variant
18.Myth(ography), History and the Peripatos
Looking Back, and Forward
19.Myth and Mythography: Last Thoughts, and a Response to Criticism

Born 1954; 1977 MA, University of Toronto; 1980 DPhil (Literae Humaniores), Oxford; Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek, University of Bristol (Emeritus since 2017); Fellow of the British Academy.

• By (author) Robert L. Fowler