Apollodorus of Athens

End of chapter 2 Chapter 3 and a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too, so look to yourselves.' tis either plato or plutarch or seneca or xenophon or epictetus or theophrastus or lucian or some one perhaps of later date either cardan or budaeus or petrarch or stella or possibly it may be some divine or father of the church st austin or st cyprian or barnard who affirms that it is an irresistible and natural passion to weep for the loss of our friends or children And Seneca, I am positive, tells us somewhere that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel.

And accordingly we find that David wept for his son Absalom, Adrian for his Antinous, Niobe for her children, and that Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for Socrates before his death.

My father managed his affliction otherwise.

and indeed differently from most men either ancient or modern, for he neither wept it away as the Hebrews and the Romans, or slept it off as the Laplanders, or hanged it as the English, or drowned it as the Germans, nor did he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or lily-balero it.

And Seneca, I am positive, tells us somewhere that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel.

And accordingly we find that David wept for his son Absalom, Adrian for his Antinous, Niobe for her children, and that Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for Socrates before his death.

My father managed his affliction otherwise, and indeed differently from most men either ancient or modern, for he neither wept it away as the Hebrews and the Romans, or slept it off as the Laplanders, or hanged it as the English, or drowned it as the Germans, nor did he curse it or damn it or excommunicate it, or rhyme it or lilibalero it.

He got rid of it, however.

The Latin tragedies are bad copies of the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides.

The Latin comedies are free translations from Demophilus, Menander, and Apollodorus.

The Latin philosophy was borrowed, without alteration, from the portico and the academy.

and the great Latin orators constantly proposed to themselves as patterns the speeches of Demosthenes and Lysias.

What does recur is his music.

Diodorus Siculus and the mythographer conventionally called Apollodorus describe Orpheus as a singer and lyre player, whose performance could affect animals, trees, and stones.

In mythic terms, nature does not merely hear him, it responds.

This is not evidence for a historical performer with supernatural powers.

Virgil's account keeps the danger in force until they reach the upper world and daylight.

Ovid's wording places the limit at the point of leaving the valleys below.

Apollodorus gives a stricter formulation.

Orpheus must not turn until he reaches his own house.

And this goes all the way back to Homer's Iliad, when Athena used his helm to avoid Ares seeing her help his opponent Diomedes when they fought during the Trojan War.

Then there's Apollodorus, who describes Hermes wearing the helm during the Gigantomachy, And who could forget that Perseus used it to sneak up on Medusa? It has been pointed out to me that Hades doesn't personally loan out the helm in any of these stories.

For example, Athena was the one who gave it to Perseus, but it was still Hades' helm.

I would imagine he gets the final say.

Now, feel free to jump in at any time, but I'll keep running through this list.

You have the first or second century A.D. Apollodorus.

He composed a prose summary of the myth.

And so not a poem.

And that can be confusing because Apollodorus is almost the same name as Apollonius, who wrote the first Argonautica.

Now, if we go to the Theodorus Siculus version of the story in the first century B.C., he attempted to strip all the fantastic elements out of the tale and re-engineer the whole story as some kind of rational history.

And the Roman poet Valerius Flaccus wrote a version in the first century A.D., so a couple hundred years later, but he died without finishing it.

They're just referred to by others.

Then so much have I heard.

And I have heard Apollodorus carried—

No more of that.

He did so.

It's one of the most human moments in the epic.

In Greek myths, he's one of the stars of the Iliad, which is sort of the prequel to the Odyssey, as well as the Odyssey, and is referenced in Pindar, Euripides, and Apollodorus.

In modern pop culture, adaptations of the Iliad, Troy in the movie, Percy Jackson, Hades, Fate slash Stay, or Stay Night, Marvel Comics, and Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles.

Aeolus is the keeper of the winds.