BMCR 2009.04.69: Smith on Mulryan, Natale Conti's Mythologiae. 2 Volumes. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 316

John Mulryan, Steven Brown (trans.), Natale Conti's Mythologiae. 2
Volumes. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 316.  Tempe:
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), 2006.  Pp.
xlvi, 978.  ISBN 978-0-86698-361-7.  $110.00.

Reviewed by R. Scott Smith, University of New Hampshire ([email protected])
Word count:  2219 words
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Table of Contents
(http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip074/2006034007.html)

This attractive two-volume edition is the first complete English
translation of Natale Conti's Mythologiae, the most popular work on
classical mythology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An
immense amount of labor went into this project; Renaissance (and to a
lesser extent classical) scholars will benefit greatly from this
carefully produced book. The editors, John Mulryan and Stephen Brown
(hereafter M/B), have provided a readable and accurate translation of
the Latin text, a lengthy and useful introduction to the author and
work, helpful annotations, a thorough bibliographical survey of
twenty-one of the twenty-five Latin editions (the first since the
nineteenth century, pp. 937-958), and useful indices of ancient authors
and titles and of mythological personages. Although scholars of the
Renaissance will doubtlessly find this book more immediately pertinent
to their work, classical scholars with an interest in the reception of
ancient myth would do well to note the appearance of this volume. Those
who work on ancient mythography, however, have even greater reason to
engage with Conti's compendium as he is the sole source for otherwise
unattested fragments of Greek mythography (treated specifically at the
end of this review).

The introduction (xi-xlvi) covers the life and work of Conti
(1520-1582?) with particular attention to his magnum opus, the
Mythologiae (pp. xxv-xliii). Despite the great popularity and influence
of this work, Conti himself is a rather shadowy figure about whom we
know little beyond the scant autobiographical references in his
writings. From what we can gather, he was born in Milan, where his
family had taken up after fleeing Rome, and later during the Milanese
War migrated to Venice as a young boy, where he found patrons of
considerable influence, both religious and political. In addition to
the Mythologiae, Conti was the author of numerous other works (pp.
xvii-xxv), most of which focused on antiquity; these include
translations of rhetorical treatises (e.g., Aphthonius' Progymnasmata),
of Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae, and of Ps.-Plutarch's De fluviis. He
also wrote his own Greek and Latin elegies, a neat composition entitled
Myrmicomyamachiae libri quattuor ("The Battle of Ants and Flies in Four
Books"), and elegiac or hexameter poems on time (De quattuor anni
temporibus and De horis liber unus), among much else. His other major
work, the Universae historiae sui temporis, chronicles the years
1545-1581.

Reproduced in twenty-five Latin editions (and six editions in a French
translation), the Mythologiae eclipsed all other competing myth books,
such as popular ones by Boccaccio, Giraldi, and Cartari, and exerted
tremendous influence on Renaissance poets and intellectuals. M/B give a
short survey of its influence (xxxvi-xliii) which only touches upon its
popularity. Why was Conti's myth book so successful? One reason surely
is that it is both comprehensive and yet accessible to its readership.
It was carefully organized (divided into ten books, each with its own
overarching theme), subdivided into chapter headings, and indexed for
ease of use. M/B call Conti's Mythologiae a mythography, which they
define differently than what classical scholars have come to expect
from the term. It is specifically (p. xxv) "a work which concentrates
on the symbolic quality of the myths in that it is a compilation as
well as an interpretation of myths." This is the prevailing definition
of those who work on medieval and Renaissance mythography. As Jane
Chance, author of an extensive two-volume study covering A.D. 433-1350,
Medieval Mythography (1994, 2000), puts it (I.2) "mythology is a
unified system of myth, whereas mythography is an explanation and
rationalization of one or more myths, often in didactic form." M/B
rightfully tie Conti's allegorizing approach to Fulgentius' Mitologiae,
whose influence on subsequent mythographical texts was indeed great,
though their claim that Fulgentius' work was "the first full-blown
mythography that treats the myths in a systematic way and explores
their physical and moral meanings" overlooks the earlier full
allegorizing treatments of, among others, Cornutus, Heraclitus and
Sallustius. M/B's treatment of earlier mythography is rather cursory
and reliant on outdated scholarship: why, for instance, are we sent to
the editions of Commelinus (1596) and van Staveren (1742) for Hyginus?
And why are the Vatican Mythographers said to "resemble" Fulgentius
when the first VM has precious little that can be called allegory (p.
xxvii)? One also wishes that more was said of the medieval
mythographers that go before Conti--there is no mention of Chance's
work mentioned above--that tie the Renaissance mythographers to their
ancient predecessors. This is all the more regrettable because M/B
rightfully view Conti as part of a long continuum of mythographical
writing from antiquity through the middle ages to the Renaissance.

Conti's Mythologiae is remarkable for its combination of intense
attention to classical sources (even those that are suspicious; see
below) and allegorizing interpretations of those myths. Conti is not
content with a bald summary of any individual myth or figure before
interpreting it; he labors over and scrutinizes the multiple sources
and variants from antiquity. The discussion of Cerberus (3.5 = pp.
170-173), for example, employs Hesiod, Vergil, Horace, Tibullus,
Sophocles, Cicero, Isaacius (= Tzetzes), Apollodorus, Pausanias,
Hecataeus (apud Pausanias), Strabo, Lucretius, and Plutarch before
moving into allegorical interpretations. A sample of these
interpretations, which include both ethical and physical allegory: 1)
Cerberus scares deathly souls because "Nature struggles against the
death she cannot calmly accept;" 2) the many heads refer "the secret
energy buried in the earth that eats up the bodies interred there;" 3)
the name Cerberus means "tomb," for kreas means "flesh" and boro "I
devour" (an etymology found at Isidore 11.3.33 and twice in Servius ad
Aen. 6.395 and 8.297, the latter two not identified by M/B); 4)
Hercules stole Cerberus "because excellence breaks the power of the
tomb, loosens the grip of death, and fends off the ruin of time, all
though the immortal power of its name;" 5) Cerberus represents "greed
and the desire for wealth."

For Conti, like many of his time, ancient myth was nothing more than
encrypted philosophy, a (ch. 1.1 = p. 1) "secret mythological disguise
for disseminating these truths." The ancients hid truths beneath the
guise of stories to prevent (p. 2) "ordinary men from gaining access to
such remarkable subjects," who, Conti tells us, needed the fear of
religion to keep them virtuous. He chooses to treat only those myths
that contain some wisdom and does not (p. 3) "bother with
interpretations about men changed into trees or bodies devoid of sense
or of reason, unless they have demonstrable worth." The importance of
Christianity in mythography of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is
well known and needs no elaboration here. Conti's work is similarly
concerned with uncovering the Christian elements hidden beneath the
veneer of ancient stories. The tenth and final book is an executive
summary, as it were, of all the rationalizing and allegorical
interpretations found in the first nine books. Jupiter, we learn, was
the first (p. 888) "to prove that everything was governed by Divine
Providence;" the underworld judges were invented (p. 897) "to emphasize
that God keeps an eye on everything we do." These allegorical
interpretations--not all originate with Conti himself--were nonetheless
influential because they were found in Conti's work. Chapman, Bacon,
and Spencer, to mention only a few (English) writers (p. xli), owe many
of their allegories to Conti.

Translating the Mythologiae, at almost one thousand pages, was a
monumental undertaking that required great effort. Despite the relative
ease of the Latin, there is much learning in Conti's achievement that
can lead one astray, and constant vigilance to the text and Conti's
sources (when able to be identified) is necessary. I spot-checked about
twenty pages of the translation, randomly choosing 1.2 (On Jupiter) and
3.5 (On Cerberus) and checking the text in a few other places where the
translation itself raised questions. The translation, I am happy to
report, is quite reliable; only on rare occasions do M/B slip.[[1]] In
terms of style, they successfully achieve their aim to produce (p.
xlvi) "a translation that is eminently readable, but also one which
maintains the dignity and verbal facility of the original." For many
ancient citations the translators wisely use the readily available
translations of the Loeb Classical Library. Typographical errors are
rare. One of the more vexing problems--especially for classicists
interested in Conti's use of ancient sources--is that it is often
impossible to separate references provided by the editors from those
given by Conti himself because both kinds are simply put in parentheses
with nothing to distinguish one group from another.

Classical scholars will, of course, be most interested in Conti's use
of Greek and Latin sources. There are over 3000 explicit references to
specific texts; many more Conti uses but does not cite. While the
majority of the explicit citations are verifiably accurate, a fair
number are either inaccurate or, if we are less charitable, falsified.
In book 2, for example, though most are accurate, M/B identify eleven
erroneous references to ancient texts. Although Conti's work was viewed
at the time as an authority on classical myth, Joseph Justus Scaliger
called him a homo futilissimus (p. xv), and Conti has been continually
attacked since the nineteenth century for not living up to the
standards of modern scholarship. M/B rightly note that it is unfair to
demand of someone in the sixteenth century to conform to our scholarly
standards. And anyone who has read Alan Cameron's book Mythography in
the Roman World would immediately recognize an affinity between Conti's
method of source citation and that found in ancient mythographical
works: references are sometimes accurate, mostly derivative, and
occasionally falsified to gain an air of authority.

But Conti's reliability, or lack thereof, is of great concern to
classical scholars because he is the only authority for (among others)
a fragment of Babrius (fr. 141 Luzzatto/La Penna), five fragments of
Callimachus (collected at fr. 818 Pfeiffer), one of Hesiod (fr. 122
Merkelbach-West), and one of Acusilaus (see Fowler, Early Greek
Mythography 2000: 28 [not noted by M/B]). Classical scholars are right
to reject these fragments as spurious. As Fowler states (2000: xxxiii),
"there is not the slightest reason to trust him. It is simply
incredible that so many unique details should be preserved by him alone
at such a date (1567)."

Let us briefly consider the set of five fragments of Callimachus for
which Conti is the sole authority. All of these come, according to
Conti, from a work which we will call for now On Islands. A look at the
attributions will show that Conti is inconsistent in his citations.
Here is an overview:

2.1, p. 73 (Pithecusae), attributed to Callimachus' On Islands.

2.1, p. 80 (Oenone/Aegina), attributed to Callimachus's On Islands.

2.3, p. 112 (Samos), attributed to Callimachus's On Islands, on City
States, and their Names "and it is repeated by the scholiast on
Apollonius of Rhodes" [this latter statement is true].

7.5, p. 614 (Diomedea), attributed to Agatharcides (falsely, it seems)
in On Europe and Callimachus in On Islands, Cities, and their Names
[but it is found at Tz. Schol. in Lyc. 592; other authorities are
frequently cited instead of this set of scholia].

8.24, p. 794 (Cadmus story) "the story is told in Musaeus' Titanography
and Callimachus's work On Inhabited Islands".

8.24, p. 794 (foundation of Boeotia) "our sources are Nicander's book
On Europe, Callimachus's On Inhabited Islands and Cities and their
Names, and Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 3."

One quickly notices how thorny this issue is. Leaving aside the
differences in the name, we see that three times Callimachus' work is
paired with another work (not unlike what we see in ancient
mythographical texts). Twice (2.3, 7.5) another text can be verified as
accurate. In two places a work On Europe is paired with Callimachus' On
Islands but attributed to two different authors. A further point (not
noted by M/B) is that only the reference at 2.3 (Samos) is found in the
original 1567 edition (in a shorter form as well);[[2]] the other four
accounts (counting the two Thebes references together) are additions to
the second edition of 1581. Something is clearly amiss here. But
whether this source is a deliberate fabrication to add authority, a
mistake on Conti's part (perhaps owed to his working from memory), or
reliance on another erroneous work cannot (yet) be determined.

One of the great benefits of M/B's work is that they have gone to great
lengths to identify the accuracy of Conti's classical sources, and for
this Classical and Renaissance scholars will be thankful. But the
identification of these errors is only the first step. M/B do not make
an attempt--and no one can blame them as the book is big and
complicated enough already--to root out Conti's more immediate sources
or account for Conti's mistakes. One will have to wait for Fowler's
champion (2000: xxxiii n. 10), someone "chalcenteric enough...to dig
them all out and expose their sources." Conti's work is worth--and
needs--further study, and one can only hope that M/B's work prompts
others to do spadework into the archaeology of Conti's text, messy
though that work will be.

All in all this is a very fine book. All libraries and Renaissance
scholars should own a copy. Classical scholars who work on myth and
mythography may wish to invest in a personal copy. It is not overly
expensive and it makes for interesting reading -- and long enough to
consume many sleepless nights.

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Notes:


1.   Some of the more egregious infelicities: p. 16 "...it is improper
for anyone to come up with a way to teach the crowd about the parent of
the universe" does not accurately render nefas esse dicebat [Plato] ubi
huiusce universitatis parentem inveneris in vulgus proferre. P. 66
"This Jupiter also was Saturn's son (for the doings of almost all of
the other gods can be traced back to Saturn)..." entirely misses the
point of Saturni filius fuit, ad quem omnia prope aliorum facinora
referuntur; the antecedent of quem is Jupiter (son of Saturn) and
aliorum refers to the other Jupiters. The language is virtually
repeated a few paragraphs later (translated there correctly). On p. 67
a Curetibus ob metum Saturno surreptus does not exactly mean "whom the
Curetes abducted because they were afraid of what Saturn might do," but
"...secretly stole away from Saturn." On p. 80 "Sithinides" is not a
name of a nymph but a general kind of nymph worshipped in Megara (only
at Pausanias 1.40, which must be Conti's ultimate source, not
identified by M/B); read "one of the Sithnidian Nymphs." One hopes that
it was the simple omission of a comma and not a misunderstanding of the
Latin that presents us with an unusual lineage (p. 67): "Aeacus...was
supposed to be the son of Aegina, who was in turn the daughter of
Asopus and Jupiter" (this slip is repeated in the index). P. 123 for
"Vulcan...was Jupiter's son" read "Vulcan was Juno's son." On p. 171
"Later commentators called him Cerberus and described him as having
many heads" does not capture the rationalizing nuance of tot illi
belluae [sic] capita iniunxerunt or the sea-origins (beluae) of
Cerberus in this account. On p. 172 the Latin quod significat serpentem
is simply a translation of Echidna ("snake"). The translators'
rendering "and the Echidna a very cold one, really a serpent" is all
but nonsensical.

2.   The 1567 edition only mentions that Samos was the original name
which was later called Parthenia because Juno was raised there as a
young woman (virgo); the 1581 edition tells us that "Samos was once
called Melanetheus, then Anthemusa, then Samos and finally Parthenia,
because Juno..." These four names for the island are only found at the
end (ad 2.872) of a series of notes in the scholia vetera to Apollonius
Rhodius 2.865-72; at the beginning of this series (under a note on the
river Imbrasos ad 2.864) a fragment of Callimachus is cited without
attribution to a specific work. Surely this is the ultimate source for
the error.