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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f
GREEK AND
ROM A N
M Y T HO G R A P H Y
The Oxford Handbook of
GREEK AND
ROMAN
MYTHOGRAPHY
R. SCOTT SMITH
and
STEPHEN M. TRZASKOMA
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

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You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smith, R. Scott, 1971- editor. | Trzaskoma, Stephen, editor.
Title: The Oxford handbook of Greek and Roman mythography /
[edited by] R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022000719 (print) | LCCN 2022000720 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190648312 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197642511 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Mythology, Classical.
Classification: LCC BL723 .O94 2022 (print) | LCC BL723 (ebook) |
DDC 292.1/3—dc23/eng20220521
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000719
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000720
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190648312.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Lakeside Book Company, United States of America
In memory of Ellie and Ezio.
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
List of Contributors xiii
Introduction 1
R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma
PA RT I M Y T HO G R A P H Y F ROM A RC HA IC
G R E E C E TO T H E E M P I R E
1. The Mythographical Impulse in Early Greek Poetry 13
Pura Nieto Hernández
2. The Origins of Mythography as a Genre 29
Jordi Pàmias
3. Hellenistic Mythography 61
4. Imperial Mythography 78
Charles Delattre
5. Mythography in Latin 97
R. Scott Smith
PA RT I I M Y T HO G R A P H E R S
6. Mythography in Alexandrian Verse 117
Evina Sistakou
7. Antihomerica: Dares and Dictys 134
Ken Dowden
8. Antoninus Liberalis, Collection of Metamorphoses 142
Charles Delattre
viii Contents
9. Apollodorus the Mythographer, Bibliotheca 151

Stephen M. Trzaskoma
10. Conon, Narratives 163
Manuel Sanz Morales
11. Cornutus, Survey of the Traditions of Greek Theology 170
Ilaria L.E. Ramelli
12. Diodorus Siculus, Library 178
Iris Sulimani
13. Heraclitus the Mythographer, On Unbelievable Stories 186
Greta Hawes
14. Heraclitus the Allegorist, Homeric Problems 192
David Konstan
15. Hyginus, Fabulae 199
K. F. B. Fletcher
16. The Mythographus Homericus 211
Joan Pagès
17. Other Mythography on Papyrus 226
Annette Harder
18. Greek Mythography and Scholia 239
Nereida Villagra
19. Ovid and Mythography 261
Joseph Farrell
20. Palaephatus, Unbelievable Tales 274
Hugo H. Koning
21. Parthenius, Erotika Pathemata 282
Christopher Francese
22. Pausanias, Description of Greece 290
William Hutton
23. Tragic Mythography 300
Chiara Meccariello
Contents ix
PA RT I I I I N T E R P R E TAT ION S A N D
I N T E R SE C T ION S
24. Rationalizing and Historicizing 317
Greta Hawes
25. Allegorizing and Philosophizing 331
Ilaria L.E. Ramelli
26. Etymologizing 349
Ezio Pellizer†
27. Catasterisms 365
Arnaud Zucker
28. Local Mythography 382
Daniel W. Berman
29. Mythography and Paradoxography 396
Irene Pajón Leyra
30. Mythography and Education 409
31. Mythography and Politics 428
Lee E. Patterson
32. Mythography and Geography 443
Maria Pretzler
33. Mythographer and Mythography: Indigenous Categories?
Greek Inquiries into the Heroic Past 458
Claude Calame
PA RT I V M Y T HO G R A P H Y A N D T H E
V I SUA L A RT S
34. Mythography and Greek Vase Painting 477
Kathryn Topper
35. Mythography and Roman Wall Painting 490
Eleanor Winsor Leach†
x Contents
36. Retelling Greek Myths on Roman Sarcophagi 508

Zahra Newby
PA RT V C H R I S T IA N M Y T HO G R A P H Y
37. Mythography and Christianity 529

Jennifer Nimmo Smith
38. Byzantine Mythography 547
Benjamin Garstad
39. Mythography in the Latin West 563
Benjamin Garstad
40. Mythography and the Reception of Classical Mythology in
the Renaissance, 1340–1600 579
Jon Solomon
Index 593
Acknowledgments
We have many people to thank, the most prominent of whom are our colleagues Piero
Garofalo (Italian, UNH) and Christopher Gregg (Art History, GMU), who gave us val-
uable guidance on several chapters. In addition, we are grateful to the John C. Rouman
Classical Lecture Series for several grants that supported the work in these pages, as
well as the Dion Janetos Fund for Hellenic Studies, which subsidized the building of our
index. We also wish to thank the Office of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the
Office of the Provost at the University of New Hampshire for their support, including
two sabbatical periods. The Undergraduate Research Team of the UNH Greek Myth Lab
contributed to this work in sundry but important ways. Finally, we are tremendously
grateful to our contributors who, despite past and current challenges, responded with
outstanding scholarship that will doubtlessly frame future work in this field.
List of Contributors
Daniel W. Berman is Professor of Greek and Roman Classics at Temple University.

His most recent book is Myth, Literature, and the Creation of the Topography of Thebes
(Cambridge University Press, 2015). His interests lie primarily in the areas of myth and
mythography, and specifically the representation of urban and built space in the Greek
and Roman mythic traditions.
Claude Calame is Director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
in Paris (Centre AnHiMA: Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques); he was
Professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Lausanne. He taught
also at the Universities of Urbino and Siena in Italy, and at Yale University in the US. In
English translation he has published many books on Greek history, literature, and myth,
including, Greek Mythology. Poetics, Pragmatics and Fiction (Cambridge University
Press 2009). His latest book in French is La tragédie chorale. Poésie grecque et rituel mu-
sical (Les Belles Lettres 2018).
Charles Delattre is Professor of Ancient Greek Language and Literature at the University
of Lille. His research focuses on ancient narrative practices involving the modern notion
of “mythology.” He devotes himself to the annotated edition of part of the mythographic
corpus and to a reflection on contemporary definitions of “myth” from a perspective of
literary theory and cultural anthropology.
Ken Dowden is Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Birmingham. He is
well known for his work on mythology (Death and the Maiden, Routledge 1989; Uses
of Greek Mythology, Routledge 1992; and, with Niall Livingstone, the Companion to
Greek Mythology, Blackwell 2011), as well as on religion, Homer and latterday authors
who contested Homer’s veracity. For Brill’s New Jacoby he has edited, translated and
commented on many fragmentary Greek “historians” (from Aristeas of Prokonnesos
and Diktys of Crete to Poseidonios and Dio Chrysostom), some of whom engaged in
wilful mythographic activity. His interest in the ancient novel has focused mostly on
Apuleius and Heliodoros, typically on their religio-philosophical aspects, a mythology
of its own.
Joseph Farrell is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where
he has taught since 1984. The focus of his work is ancient Latin poetry, including its re-
lationship to Greek poetry and to Greek and Roman literary scholarship, along with its
reception from later antiquity to the present. His most recent book is Juno’s Aeneid: A
Battle for Heroic Identity (Princeton University Press, 2021).
xiv list of contributors
K. F. B. Fletcher is Associate Professor of Classics at Louisiana State University. His re-

search focuses primarily on the Roman use of Greek mythology, especially in mythog-
raphy and Augustan poetry. In addition to articles and book chapters on a wide range of
Roman poets and mythographers, he is the author of Finding Italy: Travel, Nation, and
Colonization in Vergil’s Aeneid and coeditor of Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music.
Christopher Francese is Asbury J. Clarke Professor of Classical Studies at Dickinson
College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA. He is the author of Parthenius of Nicaea and
Roman Poetry (2001), Ancient Rome in So Many Words (2007), and, with R. Scott Smith,
Ancient Rome: An Anthology of Sources (2014). He is the project director of Dickinson
College Commentaries (dcc.dickinson.edu).
Benjamin Garstad is Professor of Classics at MacEwan University in Edmonton,
Alberta. His research concentrates on the literature of Late Antiquity, especially John
Malalas and the origins of the Byzantine chronicle tradition, the Alexander Romance,
and the integration of myth and history in Christian literature. He prepared an edi-
tion and translation of the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius and the Excerpta Latina
Barbari for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library and is the author of Bouttios and
Late Antique Antioch: Reconstructing a Lost Historian (forthcoming in the Dumbarton
Oaks Studies series)
Annette Harder is emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Groningen
(The Netherlands). She has published on Greek tragedy, Greek literary papyri, and in
particular on Hellenistic poetry. Since 1992 she has organized the biennial Groningen
Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry, and edits the series Hellenistica Groningana. Her main
publications are Euripides’ Kresphontes and Archelaos (Brill, 1985); Callimachus “Aetia”
(Oxford University Press, 2012). She has also published several mythographic papyri in
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri and written articles on the hypotheseis of Euripides.
Greta Hawes is Research Associate at the Center for Hellenic Studies. She is author of
Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2014), Pausanias in the World
of Greek Myth (Oxford University Press, 2021), editor of Myths on the Map (Oxford
University Press, 2017), and codirector of MANTO (Mapping Ancient Narratives,
Territories, Objects) and Canopos.
William Hutton is Professor of Classical Studies at William & Mary and the author of
numerous publications on Pausanias, including the book Describing Greece: Landscape
and Literature in the “Periegesis” of Pausanias (Cambridge University Press, 2005). He is
currently completing a new annotated translation of Pausanias’s Description of Greece.
Hugo H. Koning is a lecturer at Leiden University. His main interests are early epic, my-
thology, and reception. He is the author of Hesiod: The Other Poet; Ancient Reception of
a Cultural Icon (Brill, 2010). He is currently working (with Glenn Most) on an edition of
exegetical texts on the Theogony and has recently published (with Leopoldo Iribarren) a
volume on Hesiod and the pre-Socratics.
list of contributors xv
David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University. He is the author of books
on ancient comedy, the novel, friendship in the classical world, the emotions of the an-
cient Greeks, the classical conception of beauty and its influence, and Greek and Roman
ideas of love and affection. His most recent book is The Origin of Sin. He is a fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary fellow of the Australian
Academy of the Humanities.
Eleanor Winsor Leach† held the Ruth N. Halls Professorship in the Department of
Classical Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, until her death on February 16,
2018. She was an influential and wide-ranging scholar whose work treated Roman lit-
erary, social and cultural history through a variety of methodological and theoretical
lenses, most notably by integrating the study of art—particularly painting—architecture
and monumentality into her analyses. She authored four books and numerous articles
over her lengthy career.
Chiara Meccariello is Lecturer in Greek Literature at the University of Cambridge. After
obtaining a PhD in Classics from the University of Pisa, she held postdoctoral positions
at the universities of Vienna, Oxford, Göttingen, and Cassino. Her research interests in-
clude papyrology, ancient education, Greek tragedy and satyr drama, and ancient schol-
arly and interpretive work on myth-based poetry.
Zahra Newby is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick
(UK). Her research interests focus on the reception of Greek culture in the visual arts of
the Roman world. Her publications include Greek myths in Roman art and culture: im-
agery, values and identity in Italy, 50 BC-AD 250 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and
The Materiality of Mourning: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2019, co-edited
with R. E. Toulson).
Pura Nieto Hernández is Distinguished Senior Lecturer in Classics at Brown University
and Honorary Member of the Instituto de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas y
de Humanidades Digitales at the University of Salamanca. Her primary areas of re-
search are the intersection of poetics and mythology in Homer and the archaic and
Hellenistic poets, the history of the Greek language, and Philo of Alexandria. Among
her most recent publications are “Philo of Alexandria on Greek Heroes,” in Philo of
Alexandria and Greek Myth: Narratives, Allegories, and Arguments, edited by Francesca
Alesse and Ludovica De Luca (Brill, 2019), and “Mito y Poesía lírica,” in Claves para la
lectura del mito griego, edited by Marta González González and Lucía Romero Mariscal
(Dykinson, 2021).
Jennifer Nimmo Smith is an independent scholar with close links to the School of
History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. After a MA Hons in
Classics, she went on to Byzantine Studies in further degrees. Her PhD thesis on the
Pseudo-Nonnus Commentaries on Sermons 4,5,39 and 43 by Gregory of Nazianzus was
published in 1992, and she is currently working on an edition of the text of Gregory’s
Sermons 4 and 5.
xvi list of contributors
Joan Pagès is Lecturer in Greek Philology at the Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona. He

has published several articles and chapters of books on Greek mythography, myth, reli-
gion and Literature. In collaboration with Nereida Villagra he has recently published the
collective volume Myths on the Margins of Homer for Trends in Classics (De Gruyter).
He is currently preparing (with Nereida Villagra) an edition and commentary of the
Mythographus Homericus.
Irene Pajón Leyra (Madrid, 1977) is assistant professor of Greek at the University of
Seville. She has studied the Greek paradoxographic literature for her PhD, which is the
topic of her book Entre ciencia y maravilla: El género literario de la paradoxografía griega
(Zaragoza, 2011). Her fields of interest also include ancient Greek geography, history of
Greek zoology, and papyrology. She has been a researcher at the universities of Oxford
and Nice and at the Spanish High Council of Research.
Jordi Pàmias is professor at the Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona. His fields of in-
terest are Greek mythology, mythography and religion, and their scientific reception.
He is the editor of the reference text of Eratosthenes Catasterisms (Budé, 2013). His most
recent works include “The Reception of Greek Myth”, in L. Edmunds (ed.), Approaches
to Greek Myth, 2014; and “Greek Mythographic Tradition”, in R.D. Woodard (ed.),
Cambridge History of Mythology and Mythography (forthcoming at Cambridge
University Press).
Lee E. Patterson is Professor of History at Eastern Illinois University, where he teaches
courses in ancient Greece, Rome, Armenia, Persia, and other areas. He is the author of
Kinship Myth in Ancient Greece (University of Texas Press, 2010). Much of his current re-
search focuses on Roman-Armenian relations, on which he is currently writing a book
and has recent publications in Revue des Études Arméniennes and other venues.
Ezio Pellizer† held a chair in Greek literature at the University of Trieste from 1973
to 2010. He had wide ranging interests, including early archaic poetry, especially
Semonides, on whom he published an edition with Gennaro Tedeschi (Semonides:
Testimonia et fragmenta [Rome: Ateneo 1990]). He also published a number of articles
and books on myth and mythography, with which he was centrally concerned in his later
career. In 1990 he created and directed the Gruppo di Ricerca sul Mito e la Mitografia
(GRIMM) and devoted great efforts toward a digital project, DEMGOL (Dizionario
Etimologico della Mitologia On Line).
Maria Pretzler is Associate Professor in Ancient History at Swansea University (UK).
Her interests in myth and geography started with Pausanias, leading to further research
on travel writing and ancient geographers. She is author of Pausanias: Travel Writing
in Ancient Greece (Duckworth, 2007). When she is not busy following ancient writers
to the ends of the earth, she works on various aspects of Peloponnesian history, with a
focus on small communities.
Ilaria L.E. Ramelli FRHistS holds two MAs, a PhD, a Postdoc, and Habilitations
to Ordinarius. She has been Professor of Roman History, Senior Visiting Professor
list of contributors xvii
(Harvard; Boston U.; Columbia; Erfurt), Full Professor of Theology and Endowed Chair
(Angelicum), and Senior Fellow (Durham, twice; Princeton, 2017-; Sacred Heart U.;
Corpus Christi; Christ Church, Oxford). She is also Professor of Theology (Durham,
hon.; KUL) and Senior Fellow/Member (MWK; Bonn U.; Cambridge). Recent books
include Apokatastasis (Brill 2013), Social Justice (OUP 2016), Lovers of the Soul (Harvard
2021) and Patterns of Women’s Leadership (OUP 2021).
Manuel Sanz Morales is Professor of Ancient Greek at the Universidad de Extremadura
in Cáceres, Spain. He has published on Greek textual criticism, the transmission of clas-
sical texts, Greek mythography, Greek literature, and the classical tradition. His most
recent publications include Chariton of Aphrodisias’ “Callirhoe”: A Critical Edition
(Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020) and, co-authored with Manuel Baumbach, Chariton
von Aphrodisias “Kallirhoe”: Kommentar zu den Büchern 1- 4 (Universitätsverlag
Winter, 2021).
Evina Sistakou is Professor of Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki. She is the author of Reconstructing the Epic: Cross- Readings of the
Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry (Peeters 2008), The Aesthetics of Darkness: A Study
of Hellenistic Romanticism in Apollonius, Lycophron and Nicander (Peeters 2012) and
Tragic Failures: Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic (De Gruyter 2016). She
has published articles on Apollonius, Callimachus, Lycophron, Euphorion, Greek epi-
gram and Hellenistic aesthetics.
R. Scott Smith is Professor of Classics at the University of New Hampshire, where he
has taught since 2000. His major field of study is ancient myth and mythography, with
special focus on the intersection of mythography, space, and geography. He is cur-
rently co-director of a digital database and map of Greek myth, MANTO: https://
manto.unh.edu. In addition, he is interested in how mythography operates in scholia
and commentaries and is undertaking a student-supported project to translate
mythographical narratives in the Homeric scholia. He also produces the podcast, The
Greek Myth Files.
Jon Solomon holds the Robert D. Novak Chair of Western Civilization and Culture at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Publications include Ben-Hur: The
Original Blockbuster (2016), Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (2011, 2017), The
Ancient World in the Cinema (1978, 20012), Ptolemy’s Harmonics (1999), and six dozen
articles/anthology chapters in classical studies, including ancient Greek music, med-
icine, poetry, Roman cooking, and reception of Hollywood Ancients and classical
allusions in contemporary cinema
Iris Sulimani is Senior Lecturer at the Open University of Israel. She is the author of
Diodorus’ Mythistory and the Pagan Mission: Historiography and Culture-heroes in the
First Pentad of the “Bibliotheke” (2011) and has published other works on historiography,
mythography, and geography of the Hellenistic period. She is also interested in the
xviii list of contributors
utopian idea in antiquity and is currently working on Plutarch’s biographies of mythical

figures.
Kathryn Topper is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. Her
publications include The Imagery of the Athenian Symposium (Cambridge University
Press, 2012) and articles on a variety of issues in and related to Greek vase painting and
myth. Her current research focuses on the Thalamegos of Ptolemy IV Philopator and its
relationships to Dionysian cult and Egyptian religion
Stephen M. Trzaskoma is currently Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at California
State University Los Angeles. Formerly, he served as Professor of Classics and Director
of the Center for the Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. His two primary
research areas are Greek prose fiction and ancient mythography, and he has published
numerous studies in these areas, as well as translated key primary sources.
Nereida Villagra is Associate Professor at the Classics Department of the University of
Lisbon, and member of the research Centre for Classical Studies of the same University.
She obtained her PhD at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2012 and has
published papers or chapters on mythography, textual criticism and Greek literature.
She has just recently published a a co-edited volume (with Joan Pàges) Myths on the
Margins of Homer for Trends in Classics (De Gruyter) She is currently preparing a
commented edition of the Mythographus Homericus in collaboration with Joan Pagès.
Arnaud Zucker is Professor of Classics at University Côte d’Azur (France), CNRS,
Cepam. He received a Phd in Anthropology from the École Pratique des Hautes
Études and a Habilitation thesis in Classics from University Aix-Marseille. His key re-
search topics are ancient zoology, ancient astronomy, and mythography. He is coauthor
with J. Pàmias of Ératosthène de Cyrène. Catastérismes (Belles Lettres, 2013), coeditor
of Lire les mythes (Septentrion, 2016), and author of L’encyclopédie du ciel. Mythologie,
astronomie, astrologie (Laffont, 2016).
I n t rodu ction
1. Greek and Roman Mythography Today
In 1987 Albert Henrichs concluded an important article by noting that “[l]‌arge areas
of the history of Greek mythography are still unexplored, and several important
collections of myths lie ignored,” further admonishing us that “[m]odern interpreters
of Greek myths must constantly re-examine and strengthen the old foundations. If
not, they build castles in the air” (1987: 267). This handbook is a testament to how dif-
ferent matters are today with regard to Henrichs’s first assessment and how little they
have changed with regard to his second. In the retrospect provided by the passage of
some three decades, Henrichs’s article seems to straddle a line that divides an earlier
period, in which mythography—which for the moment we will define at a broad level
as ancient writing about myth or the recounting of myth in prose with no pretensions
to artistry—and the suriving mythographical works were seen as having interest only
as sources of mythical data and variants, and our current scholarly era, when new
approaches have advanced our understanding of the aims and motivations of the works
themselves. Although mythography is yet firmly fixed in the minds of some classical
scholars as a specialist’s marginal enterprise, not only have mythographical works be-
come the object of broader and more intense study, but the very nature of mythog-
raphy has been investigated more thoroughly, and the extant texts have come to be
seen both for their continuing value as sources for Greek myth and for the inherent
interest in their role in intellectual and cultural life down to the end of antiquity and
beyond. The various chapters in this handbook are intended to take stock of that prog-
ress by carefully examining the status of the scholarship on the subject, but also to cul-
tivate additional advances by making more accessible to nonspecialists the important
mythographical authors and works and the practical and theoretical questions that
2 R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma
surround them—and, where possible, pointing to outstanding complexities and new

avenues for research.
To get a sense of how the landscape has been altered, one need only do a quick
scan of the entries in the “References” sections of the individual chapters in this book
to see how much scholarship has appeared since the 1990s, especially in Catalan,
English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The texts of most of the stand-alone
mythographical collections have been re-edited (often multiple times, with produc-
tive results; for instance, for Ps.-Apollodorus we now have both Papathomopoulos
2010 and Cuartero 2010 and 2012), as have the fragmentary and dispersed texts, most
notably, Fowler’s edition of the remains of the earliest mythographers (2001), which is
now supplemented by his fine commentary (2013). New translations have made most
of the main mythographical sources much more accessible, and many are available in
more than one language; for example, for Heraclitus the Allegorist’s Homeric Problems
we now have both the Italian of Pontani (2005) and an English version in Russell and
Konstan (2005). The same period has seen the appearance of numerous articles, edited
volumes (for instance, Pàmias 2017, on Apollodorus), and full commentaries on indi-
vidual authors and texts (for example, Brown 2002, on Conon). There has also been
a welcome turn to addressing broader questions about the nature of mythography
and its methods. While it would be out of place to list all the recent contributions
on this subject, we may point further not only to seminal monographs like those of
Cameron (2004), Greek Mythography and the Roman World, and of Hawes (2014) on
rationalizing, but also to collected volumes that take mythography as their only or
main focus: Nagy (2013), Trzaskoma and Smith (2013), and Romano and Marincola
(2019). There is also now an international network of scholars and a journal de-
voted specifically to mythography (Polymnia, https://polymnia-revue.univ-lille.fr/.).
On the whole, we have both a clearer picture of the origins of mythography and its
survival beyond antiquity, as well as its characteristics and development in the
intervening eras.
Of course, much is still unknown or remains mysterious, and much is contested, but
it is undeniable that headway has been made and that new pathways are being blazed
by an international array of established and emerging researchers, many of whom have
authored chapters of this handbook. Most importantly, the questions we ask today about
mythography have moved beyond (but not abandoned) source criticism and transmis-
sion to querying the very nature of mythography and the place of the mythographical
impulse and its methodological elaborations and presentations in the intellectual, ar-
tistic and cultural life of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. This explains why this
handbook contains chapters not only on authors traditionally deemed mythographers
but also on ones that seek to connect mythographical thinking and activities with other
domains of knowledge and life, from the visual arts to politics. In the next section, we
discuss a broad intellectual rationale for the handbook and consider the boundaries of
what we can call “mythography.” In the third section, we then give a brief overview of the
volume’s organization and contents.
Introduction 3
2. The Nature(s) of Greek and

Roman Mythography
At the center of Part I of the handbook is an attempt to sketch an overview of mythog-

raphy across more than a millennium, from its initial impulses in oral poetry in the ar-
chaic period to the end of the western Roman empire. It will be immediately obvious
that there is no simple definition of what constitutes “mythography,” especially since
responses to what we call the mythical story world constantly evolved along with po-
litical, literary, and cultural changes, sometimes upheavals, over the longue durée. As
Bremmer (2013: 56) succinctly puts it, mythography is polymorphous, and its function
“clearly varied according to the time and place of its production.” Because of the many
approaches to the mythical story world, establishing absolutely clear boundaries for a
genre of mythography or defining a corpus of mythographers, even within a single era,
is destined to fail. Even for the period from which we have the richest set of complete
works that we call mythographical, the imperial period, we face a “complex ensemble of
writing practices, whose borders with other practices remain porous” (Delattre in this
volume, p. 0-0-0).
We might pose the problem in another way: Is our definition of mythography simply
a matter of convenience for modern scholars attempting to corral the wide-ranging
responses to what we call myth? This is precisely the approach Pellizer took in the
foundational article in which he defines mythography as the “activity of recording and
transmitting in writing the narrative and descriptive material . . . that we normally call
mythical” (1993: 283, with note 2). Although this runs the risk of making mythography,
like myth (Delattre 2010; Edmunds 2021: xv–xxix), a “trash can category” (catégorie
poubelle) or “dumping ground” (fourre-tout), such a generalizing view has one great ad-
vantage: it allows us to adopt our etic category and avoid confronting the details of the
debates over the contested concept of “myth” itself, specifically when (if ever) “myth”
became an emic category for the Greeks, a question of particular importance when we
are trying to think strictly about the earliest period, when Acusilaus and Pherecydes—
whom modern scholars often identify as the first mythographers—began transmitting
“mythical” material in prose. To some degree, this handbook follows Pellizer’s lead in
casting our net widely over the various products that seem to emerge from what we (the
editors) call “a mythographical mindset,” which we will explore more below.
And yet, though there is hardly space here to cover such a complicated and prob-
ably insoluble problem, the question of whether mythography could exist in the earliest
period is a pressing one—and an example of the productive disagreement and tension
one will find in these pages precisely because consensus is impossible. If we are to im-
agine mythography as a self-conscious category of intellectual activity, this requires
the pre-existence of an emic category of “myth.” In other words, for a writer to know
that he was producing mythography, even in the broadest sense, “myth” already had
to be a recognizable category for the Greeks themselves. Few would vigorously argue
against the notion that, after Thucydides, and certainly after Plato, myth had been de-
cisively distinguished from history and had taken on a meaning that approaches our
own conception of the word. Whether a category “myth”—and so “mythography”—can
be pushed back in time is precisely the subject of two chapters in this handbook that
come to different conclusions. Reviewing the activities of the earliest writers we regu-
larly call mythographers and reminding us that the term mythographos does not occur
before the 2nd century bce (unless the occurrence in Palaephatus is original) and that
mythographia is first found in Strabo, Calame in this volume (p. 464) concludes that
“it is not possible to speak of ‘mythography’ as a genre or even as a critical activity be-
fore the end of the 4th century bce.” Since those who were cataloging the stories of the
earliest periods had no conception of myth as separate from accounts of the past gener-
ally, their activity dealt with what we call the mythical story world but which they simply
saw as events of the past.
Whether one agrees with Calame’s position depends on whether one accepts myth
as an early and “autonomous form of thought (Denkform),” as Pàmias champions as
the triumph of modern scholarship on myth (p. 32). If this is correct, then even the
Homeric epics are an “early form of appropriation and reception of myth,” and myth
was something that could be abstracted and set down into writing. We take such sum-
mary accounts for granted, but it should be remembered that abstracting stories typi-
cally belonging to the realm of poetry and committing them to prose “was an act of great
intellectual imagination” (Fowler 2017: 18). Whether or not writers such as Pherecydes
would have labeled themselves mythographers or conceived of themselves as producing
what we call mythography, they “were already in possession of a category comparable
to myth, being understood as a type of account that belongs to a heritage from which
they were separated by a gap, and onto which they can cast an objective gaze” (Pàmias
p. 34). If myth as Denkform existed in the archaic period, then we should not be sur-
prised to find, already in the earliest poetic forms, “a good deal of explanation, com-
mentary and interpretation” of stories that resembles later mythographical forms (Nieto
Hernández p. 14). In other words, from the beginning, myth-making was self-reflective,
and stories were understood as an object of analysis, redefinition, and, potentially, re-
jection. After all, for Pindar to actively reject a theologically inadmissible myth about
Tantalus, Pelops, and the gods, that version of the myth not only had to be available and
known but capable of being rejected in favor of a more palatable one.
If myth is one element of the compound mythography, the other is, of course, writing.
Although the exact contours are hard to trace, the emergence of writing as a widespread
technology in the archaic period was a necessary precondition both for recording and
preserving stories and for serious collection, analysis, and comparison of them. In par-
ticular, as Pàmias demonstrates (pp. 38–42), the development of prose writing, removed
from the performative context, opened up the path to the construction of the “author”
as the locus of authority removed from the influence of the Muses. If the widespread use
of writing was a precondition for the earliest mythographical writing, the evolution of
a literary culture and a wider availability of books in the 4th century led to increasingly
Introduction 5
frequent critical activity around myth precisely because any piece of mythographical
writing in turn became, alongside the underlying literary texts, a source for the next my-
thographer down the line, something that becomes obvious from the way in which later
mythographers cite both poetic and prose mythographical writers as authorities, al-
though the question of the nature, purpose, and meaning of such citations is a contested
matter (see Cameron 2004: 88–123, esp. 93–94).
In considering the emergence of a literary culture that was establishing the material
and cultural conditions making it possible for mythography and other forms of schol-
arship to evolve, we should not underestimate the special role of tragedy, not only as
the object of study (for example, by Asclepiades of Tragilus, 4th c. bce), but also for
the way it was both influenced by and perpetuated mythographical conventions already
in place—a twin process that Meccariello in this volume describes as a “coevolution
of tragedy and mythography” (p. 300). Naturally, the Great Library of Alexandria and
other academic centers, such as Pergamon, provided extensive material resources for
mythographers, such as Lysimachus, and grammatici, such as Apollodorus of Athens
(see Smith and Trzaskoma, “Hellenistic Mythography,” in this volume) to conduct re-
search, and for poets to mine as they created innovative poetry, much of which reflects
what might be called a “mythographical mindset” (see Sistakou in this volume; we will
return to this concept).
It is not uncommon to see a teleological view of mythography, where the proto-
mythographical impulses (genealogical work, catalogs, narrative-as-history) gradually
coalesce into a genre or separate discipline at some point in the Hellenistic period. Such
a view, however, effaces the great variety of writing practices involving myth that we have
been pointing to. Leaving aside the difficulty of saying anything about the Hellenistic
period with certainty, from which there is but one extant text (Palaephatus, not unprob-
lematic: see Koning in this volume), we encounter an immense range of mythographical
products from the imperial period. We can point to the comprehensive Library of Ps.-
Apollodorus; the rather wild revisionist histories of Dares and Dictys; the thematic
collection of metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis; collections of narratives keyed
to Homer (the Mythographus Homericus); and the Stoic theological work of Cornutus
that allegorizes the gods. Even where form or technique overlap, there are also major
differences of approach, which becomes even more obvious as more comparanda are
added to the mix.
Given all of the above, it may seem unwise to propose a grand unifying theory that
can contain the variety of responses to the mythical world, but even so, we can see
critical responses to myth as they develop over time and through varying conditions.
Literature-based educational practices took shape in the 4th century bce, which is pre-
cisely the same time frame in which mythography as a generic activity became part of
Greek intellectual life. As we show in the chapter on education, an elite child’s education
was built on a successive series of steps involving myth: learning, organizing, narrating,
criticizing (rationalizing), defending (allegorical approaches), and finally creatively
using it to demonstrate one’s mental agility, interpretive skills, learning—or apparent
learning—in creating coherent arguments. From the very beginning students are asked
to start thinking “mythographically” by uniting like with like (for instance, who belongs
to the Trojan War), and then later are asked to narrate stories. In the final stages, the
advanced learner breaks them down to build them back up again. Although it is im-
possible to say whether mythographical practices led to the creation of such an educa-
tional structure, the practice of employing myth as a centerpiece of that system must
have come from somewhere. And although not all students were trained to become
mythographers, the net effect was that “the general intellectual atmosphere of the an-
cient world consisted of mythographical elements, and this formed an epistemological
cycle” (Smith and Trzaskoma in this volume on education, p. 410).
Elsewhere, we have proposed, for convenience, the distinction between what we
called “systematic” and “interpretive” mythography (Smith and Trzaskoma 2007: xiv–
xv), which provides another axis along which to array the surviving texts. Systematic
mythography is concerned with organizing and retelling the vast and chaotic mythical
story world, which often contained contested and contradictory accounts, gaps, and
other inconsistencies because of the various ways in which mythical traditions devel-
oped and proliferated among the Greeks. Interpretive mythography seeks to uncover
the origins, function, and hidden meanings (often with attention to etymologizing)
of the myths. This is a useful distinction, and those works that seem most purely
mythographical tend to fall strongly in one category or the other rather than to mix
modes, but ultimately both are part of the same intellectual enterprise, the taming of
myth’s complexities.
Such a focus not on the actual products of mythography, but on the mythographical
mentalité that led to them, may also lend more insight into the “mythographical”
expressions that are found in art, including the organization and composition of art
in wall painting in Roman houses to the potentially symbolic meanings of myth on
sarcophagi. Ultimately, artists may not be mythographers, as such, but their practices
intertwine and interact with mythography as they treat their common subject, and these
connections are of especial interest as we consider a broader cultural and intellectual
response to the mythical storyworld. Mythography was not merely a limited activity of
formal writing by a few; it was also an orientation woven into ancient life. In the pursuit
of apprehending this wide scope and the specifics of interaction, some contributors to
this handbook turn their attention to mythography’s connections to topics as diverse as
politics, geography, and Christianity.
3. A Brief Overview of the Contents
This book is divided into five parts, each with its own purpose and goals, and an overall
aim of providing a clear statement of where the field is today, to push beyond that po-
sition where possible, and to limn some possible avenues for future study. Part I,
“Mythography from Archaic Greece to the Empire” traces the key developments in myth
criticism and mythographical impulses from the earliest period in Greek poetry (Nieto
Introduction 7
Hernández) and prose (Pàmias) to the imperial period, from which the majority of our
extant mythographical works come. Of particular importance is the Hellenistic period,
which, as the authors (Smith and Trzaskoma) note, must have been crucial to the devel-
opment of various forms but must be approached with caution given that nearly all of
those works have been lost or survive only in fragmentary form. In an analysis of the vast
extant mythographical output in Greek from the imperial period, Delattre suggests that
we should approach the surviving works not as a closed category but as “open texts” (see
also Fletcher on Hyginus), while at the same time testing the validity of the divisions be-
tween Hellenistic and imperial and even Greek and Roman. Smith provides an overview
of the surviving mythographical texts in Latin and considers the rationale behind the
production of mythographical material in Latin when so much was available in Greek.
Part II, “Mythographers,” is meant to provide a complete overview of the authors and
texts that are the main sources of mythography—a sort of handbook within a handbook
that offers a survey of each in turn. One will of course find the systematic mythographers
whose works are extant, including Apollodorus’s comprehensive overview of the en-
tire Greek mythical system (Trzaskoma), the more narrowly focused collections of
Antoninus Liberalis (on metamorphoses: Delattre) and Parthenius (love stories gone
wrong: Francese), and the less clearly organized collection of narratives by Conon (Sanz
Morales) and Hyginus (Fletcher). But one will also find works that do not feature simple,
straightforward narratives but offer interpretations of those stories, such the allegor-
ical approaches in Cornutus (Ramelli) and Heraclitus’s Homeric Problems (Konstan),
or the rationalizing versions of Palaephatus (Koning) and Heraclitus the Mythographer
(Hawes), although the latter also blends in allegory as well. Finally, there are the ludic, re-
visionist histories of Dictys and Dares (Dowden), whose inventive rewriting of Homeric
myth hardly prevented them from becoming immensely popular in the Middle Ages
and Renaissance.
At the same time, we recognize that not all mythographical thinking emerged
in a self-contained prose works about myth. Indeed, the mythographical mindset
is clearly at work in the poetic production of Hellenistic poets, as Sistakou system-
atically demonstrates in her chapter on Alexandrian verse, which can be seen as a
pendant to Nieto Hernández’ earlier chapter on early Greek poetry and a harbinger for
Farrell’s overview of mythography in Ovid. Broadly speaking, the same “universalizing
macrostructures” that underpin Ovid’s comprehensive treatment of myth from the be-
ginning of time in the Metamorphoses can also be found earlier in the Library of History
of Diodorus of Sicily, whose early books form a sort of compendium of the mythical
story world. Even if they are drawing on earlier Hellenistic models, both Ovid and
Diodorus are, like most mythographers, actively shaping their presentation of the myth-
ical world (see especially, Sulimani on Diodorus). Another author who employs my-
thography, but in a larger matrix of topography and history, is Pausanias, whose view
of the Greek landscape is decidedly linked to the mythical past, even if he tends to offer
rationalized accounts of it (Hutton).
Rounding out this part is an overview of another important source of mythographical
narratives, the so- called Mythographus Homericus (hereafter MH), an otherwise
unknown author now seen as the source of a scattered but important group of narratives
in the D-scholia to the Iliad and Odyssey. Because this collection has analogs in
texts found on papyrus, the MH merits a separate essay (see Pagès), but similar
mythographical narratives and notes are found in the extensive scholiastic traditions of
other poets, not least Pindar, Euripides and Apollonius of Rhodes. As Villagra system-
atically demonstrates, a close reading of the scholia to each author often reveals subtle
differences in aims and content, perhaps reflecting the commentators’ perceived ideas
of what aspects of the mythical story world needed emphasizing. A review of mythog-
raphy in all its forms (exegetical, narrative, catalogic) would not be complete without a
survey of the variety and massive amount of mythography that has been found on papyri
(Harder)—the sheer volume of which is a strong indicator of how much mythography
has been lost to us. One important collection of stories that has emerged from papyri
is the so-called “Tales from Euripides,” alphabetically arranged summaries that doubt-
lessly served as a convenient source for mythographers, though as Meccariello suggests,
tragedy, especially the late plays of Euripides, was already taking part in mythographical
conventions.
The reciprocal relationship between mythography and tragedy naturally leads us to
Part III, “Interpretations and Intersections,” which treats both interpretive approaches
to myth and the ways in which mythography is naturally connected to or combined
with other intellectual pursuits. In the former category, because of the importance of
rationalizing and allegorizing approaches in the reception of myth in antiquity and be-
yond, there are two substantial chapters on the main developments and practitioners of
each method (Hawes on rationalizing, Ramelli on allegorizing). Among the interpretive
methods employed by Stoic allegorizers especially, but not limited to them, is the use of
etymologies to reclaim the symbolic or deeper meaning of the myth, but etymologies
were a frequent part of myth-building in other ways as well (Pellizer).
Since myth involves Greek heroes from the distant past, who move through a proto-
Greek landscape, mythography is often found as part of geographical exposition, as we
mentioned in regard to Pausanias. Pretzler’s overview of mythography in geograph-
ical writing also includes a close analysis of Strabo’s Geography, which, despite the
geographer’s early protests, includes a substantial amount of mythographical material.
Myth is, of course, also part of the Greeks’ conception of the past, and, again, Calame’s
analysis of the work of the earliest mythographers argues that what we call mythography
in the earliest period is inseparable from historiography. Also focusing on the early pe-
riod, Berman explores the blurred edges between local mythography and its Panhellenic
counterpart, teasing out how one might think of “local mythography” as different from
“local historiography,” as Jacoby defines a group of writers in FGrHist. Local appropri-
ation, especially of genealogical connections, through myth for political means is the
focus of Patterson’s chapter, which analyzes mythographical elements in charter myths
and treaties, with additional focus on the authorial intent of the practitioners. Part III
also contains explorations of how mythographical methods intersected with two other
important intellectual trends in the ancient world: first, the cluster of issues surrounding
Introduction 9
the myths about the disposition of constellations (Zucker on catasterisms); second, the
mythographical connections to be found in literature on wonders and rarities, a genre
that arose formally and distinctly from the rest of historiography in the Hellenistic pe-
riod (Pajón Leyra on paradoxography).
Part IV, “Mythography and the Visual Arts,” features the first sustained attempt to
view art— composition, organization, symbolism— from a mythographical point
of view. Although the word mythography evokes the idea of writing, our three
contributors take the view that representations of myth on vases, wall paintings, and
sarcophagi can be viewed as texts—ones that reflect a mythographical mindset, guided
by some of the same impulses that are found in literary or subliterary mythographical
writing. From this point of view, Topper analyzes the 6th-century bce François Vase
and pendant images featuring the abduction of Helen, all of which “share narrative and
rhetorical structures with texts that contributed to, or were appropriated into, the an-
cient mythographical tradition.” Likewise, Leach considers the compositional and or-
ganizational strategies of wall painting that parallel mythographical writing, with an
important look at Philostratus’s Imagines, which dramatizes the viewer’s engagement
with paintings and offers a series of interpretive strategies one must bring to viewing a
static image—reminding us that paideia was deeply steeped in mythographical training.
Finally, Newby analyzes images of myth on Roman sarcophagi of the high empire as
expressions of “interpretive” and “systematic” approaches of mythography (which
reflects the Cumont-Nock controversy over the symbolic aspects of sarcophagi from the
mid-20th century). In all, these essays provide a first look at the potential of viewing ar-
tistic products from a mythographical perspective.
Part V, “Christian Mythography,” focuses on mythography in the forms it took after
the rise of Christianity fundamentally shifted the role of myth in the wider culture. In a
sweeping essay Nimmo Smith provides a chronological survey of the Christian authors
that engaged with pagan myth, and in two separate chapters Garstad investigates the
roles of mythography, first in the Byzantine world, which continued to have access to
most of the Greek mythography from the previous periods, and again in the Latin West,
which continued to need mythography to explain and interpret the pagan myths but
which had lost direct access to Greek mythographical texts as bilingualism disappeared.
Picking up in the 14th century with Bersuire, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, Solomon traces
the further developments as Greek material were reintroduced to western Europe in the
Renaissance, culminating in the massive and influential mythographical compilations
such as those composed by Cartari and Conti in the 16th century.
Further Reading
For an annotated bibliography on general and specific aspects of mythography, we invite you
to consult our article on mythography in Oxford Bibliographies Online, which assembles
and organizes the most important works on mythography up to 2010 (Smith and Trzaskoma
2011). For individual authors and broader topics, the best way to start is to consult the Further
Reading sections at the end the chapters. These will point you to the fundamental scholarship
for each topic, organized in convenient fashion.
References
Bremmer, Jan N. 2013. “Local Mythography: The Pride of Halicarnassus.” In Writing
Myth: Mythography in the Ancient World, edited by Stephen M. Trzaskoma and R. Scott
Smith, 55–73. Leuven: Peeters.
Brown, Malcolm K. 2002. The Narratives of Konon: Text, Translation and Commentary of the
Diegeseis. Munich and Leipzig: Saur.
Cameron, Alan. 2004. Greek Mythography in the Roman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cuartero, Francesc J. 2010/ 2012. Pseudo-Apoŀlodor. Biblioteca. Vols. 1 and 2. Barcelona:
Bernat Metge.
Delattre, Charles. 2010. “Introduction.” In Mythe et fiction, edited by Danièle Auger and
Charles Delattre, 11–19. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Nanterre.
Edmunds, Lowell. 2021. Greek Myth. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Fowler, Robert L. 2000. Early Greek Mythography. Vol. 1: Text and Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Fowler, Robert L. 2013. Early Greek Mythography. Vol. 2: Commentary. Oxford: University Press.
Fowler, Robert L. 2017. “Greek Mythography.” In A Handbook to the Reception of Classical
Mythology, edited by Vanda Zajko and Helena Hoyle, 15–27. Chichester, UK: and Malden,
MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hawes, Greta. 2014. Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Henrichs, Albert. 1988. “Three Approaches to Greek Mythography.” In Interpretations of Greek
Mythology, 2nd ed., edited by Jan N. Bremmer, 242–277. London: Croom Helm.
Nagy, Joseph F., ed. 2013. Writing Down the Myths. Turnhout: Brepols.
Pàmias, Jordi, ed. 2017. Apollodoriana. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Papathomopoulos, Manolis, ed. 2010. Apollodori Bibliotheca post Richardum Wagnerum
recognita. Athens: Aletheia.
Pontani, Filippomaria. 2005. Eraclito: Questioni omeriche sulle allegorie di Omero in merito agli
dèi. Pisa, Italy: Edizioni ETS.
Romano, Allen J., and John Marincola, eds. 2019. Host or Parasite? Mythographers and Their
Contemporaries in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Russell, Donald A., and David Konstan. 2005. Heraclitus: Homeric Problems. Atlanta,
GA: Society of Biblical Literature.
Smith, R. Scott, and Stephen M. Trzaskoma. 2007. Apollodorus’ “Library” and Hyginus’
“Fabulae”: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Smith, R. Scott, and Stephen M. Trzaskoma. “Mythography.” Oxford Bibliographies Online,
last modified 2011. doi:10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0036.
Trzaskoma, Stephen M., and R. Scott Smith, eds. 2013. Writing Myth: Mythography in the
Ancient World. Leuven: Peeters.
Pa rt I
M Y T HO G R A P H Y
F ROM A RC HA IC
GREECE
TO T H E E M P I R E
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upon him, and his breath grew short while heavy beads of
perspiration stood out on his brow.
“Cleaned out!” he muttered. “Cleaned out, just as I was cleaned out
by Dan Market! Oh, what a fool I’ve been!” And tears of rage filled
his eyes, while he pounded his fist on the top of a barrel. Then he
leaped up and shook the fist in the air.
“But he shan’t get the best of me! I’ll make him square up if I have to
go to the police and tell everybody! He shan’t get the best of me!”
His hat had rolled to the floor, and putting it on he hurried to the
warehouse door, which was unlocked. Beyond was a dock extending
to the waterfront and close at hand was a road leading to the city,
four miles away. A cart was passing and he hailed the driver. By
signs and a few words of broken Spanish he let the cart driver know
he wanted to get to Ponce as soon as possible and the native made
room for him on the rough seat.
The drive in the early morning air did Hockley good, and by the time
the cart rattled along on the uneven pavements of the city the lank
youth felt somewhat like himself. At a public fountain he left the
native and got a drink. Possibly the native expected pay for his
service, but if so he was disappointed, and he drove on looking as if
such were his feeling.
Now that he felt a little better Hockley sat down in one of the city
parks to review the situation. It was all well enough to go after J.
Rutherford Brown and have him arrested, but what would Professor
Strong say to the whole proceedings?
“Hang the professor!” he exclaimed, and gave the park bench a
savage kick with his foot. “I’m going to have satisfaction. I’m going to
catch that fellow and make him give up my money and things if I die
for it!”
Leaving the park he espied an American, and from this man received
directions which speedily took him to the café where he had first met
J. Rutherford Brown. Going inside, he asked for the man.
“Haven’t seen him this morning,” replied the keeper of the resort.
“Do you know where he lives?” went on Hockley. “It’s a matter of
importance to him,” he went on, shrewdly.
“He has a room at the Snug Corner, I believe.”
“Where is that?”
“Three squares up the street, on the corner.”
Waiting to hear no more, Hockley strode out and up the street in the
direction indicated. It was now ten o’clock, and he had had no
breakfast, but just then he had no thought of eating.
Walking into the corridor of the hotel he glanced around. Only a few
people were present. Then he glanced into the smoking and reading
room.
His heart gave a bound. J. Rutherford Brown was there, smoking
contentedly. He had his feet cocked up on a table and was reading a
newspaper.
Going up to the man from Montana, Hockley tore the newspaper
from his grasp.
“You villain, you!” he cried, wrathfully. “You swindled me!”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BULLY IS HUMBLED
Many a man would have been startled by such a direct accusation,

but J. Rutherford Brown had been in a similar position before and
was not to be scared thus easily. He turned slowly, put his feet on the
floor and gazed coldly at Hockley.
“Young man, you are mistaken,” he said. “And if you dare to repeat
your words you will be sorry.”
“But I say—” went on the youth, and then the look in the eyes of the
man made him pause. It was a merciless, crafty face that peered into
his own and it made Hockley shiver in spite of himself.
“We had several fair and square games of cards,” went on the man
from Montana. “And you lost your money. Don’t be a calf to cry over
it. If you are in hard luck say so, and I’ll—well, I’ll lend you ten
dollars.”
As he concluded J. Rutherford Brown calmly took from his hip pocket
a big roll of bills—a large portion of them Hockley’s bills—and drew
forth one of the denomination mentioned.
“Do you want this?” he asked, extending the bill between the tips of
his fingers.
“Ye—yes,” stammered the youth, and took it. “But—but——”
“I don’t want to talk over the affair of yesterday,” interrupted the man.
“If you will remember, I lost something before the luck turned. If you
had quit the game then, I should not have squealed. Besides that, I
took you away, so that you would not get into trouble while you slept.
I spent ten dollars for carriage fare, but we will let that pass.”
Having thus delivered himself, J. Rutherford Brown hoisted his feet
to the table once more and resumed the reading of his newspaper.
Hockley looked at him in amazement not unmixed with
consternation. He had never before met such a fellow as this. He did
not know how to proceed, and walked away revolving the situation in
his mind.
The more he thought it over, the more Hockley became convinced
that he could do little or nothing. Of course, if it came to the pinch, J.
Rutherford Brown would deny everything, and as there were no
witnesses to what had occurred, legal proof would be hard to obtain.
“I’ve been a chump,” he muttered as he walked out of the hotel. “A
downright chump.”
As there seemed nothing else to do, he turned his footsteps in the
direction of the hotel at which the professor and the other boys were
stopping. His heart felt like lead in his bosom and he could not for
the life of him conjure up what to say. He knew that excuses would
be unavailing, that Professor Strong would insist upon making a rigid
investigation.
As he turned a corner leading to the hotel he came face to face with
Professor Strong, who was walking with another man, a native hired
to show the party the sights.
“Jacob Hockley,” cried the professor. “Where have you been? We
have been hunting everywhere for you.”
“It’s a long story, sir,” answered Hockley, meekly. “And if you please,
I’d like to get breakfast before I tell it.”
“So you have had nothing to eat? Then come to the hotel by all
means. But where have you been?”
“Out of town, a good many miles, I guess.”
“Out of town?”
“Yes, sir. And I’ve lost the most of my money,” went on the lank
youth, desperately.
“How did you lose that?” And now Professor Strong’s face grew
stern.
Hockley felt a certain quaking within him. It would never do to say
that he had been playing cards—worse, that he had been gambling.
Professor Strong had read the young travelers more than one lecture
on evils of this sort.
“I—I got in a crowd and somehow I either lost the money or it was
taken from me,” stammered the bully. “But please don’t tell the
others,” he went on. “They’ll only have the laugh on me.”
“Just give me the details,” said Professor Strong, briefly, and then
Hockley had to invent a long tale of how he had gone carriage riding
down to the seashore and how, while he was getting a lunch at a
restaurant, there had been a horse runaway and he had gone out to
see the excitement.
“There was more of a crowd than I thought,” he continued. “I was
shoved around by a policeman and a number of natives. I had been
counting my money and when the excitement began I rammed it in
my hip pocket. When I went back to the eating place the money was
gone.”
“And what made you remain away all night?”
“It was growing dark when the runaway happened and I thought I
could find the money this morning. But I didn’t find anything.”
“Humph! How about your watch and that ring you are in the habit of
wearing?”
Hockley felt a certain cold chill steal over him. In his haste to smooth
matters over he had forgotten about the watch and the ring.
“They—er—they got lost too,” he said, lamely, his face growing very
red.
“Quite likely,” was Professor Strong’s comment. “Come with me. We
will get to the bottom of this later on—after you have had something
to eat.”
Hockley was hungry, but eating breakfast came very hard to him that
morning. As soon as he had finished Professor Strong plied him with
questions, and at last he broke down and confessed all—how he had
received the money order from home and how he had started out to
have a little quiet fun, as he called it. And then, when the professor
insisted that he take him to the spot where the runaway had
occurred, he had to admit that there had been no runaway but that
he had fallen into the hands of a sharper, and that the sharper now
had all the money excepting ten dollars and the amount spent for the
dinner.
“I am sure he drugged me,” said Hockley, weakly. “He wouldn’t have
gotten the money from me if he hadn’t.”
“I will see the man,” returned Professor Strong, shortly, and insisted
that the youth show the way to where J. Rutherford Brown might be
found.
The man from Montana stood upon the hotel steps, just preparatory
to going on a hunt for another victim. He was smoking a black-
looking cigar. He felt particularly elated, for between Hockley and a
victim picked up two days before he had come into the possession of
over three hundred dollars. To be sure, this was no fortune,
especially to one supposed to own valuable gold mines in the West,
but to J. Rutherford Brown, who had often had less than a dollar in
his pockets, it was a considerable sum.
“Don’t think I’ll stay here much longer,” he mused, as he puffed away.
“That boy or that man from Philadelphia may turn up and make
trouble. Guess I’ll go back to San Juan.”
“There is the fellow!” cried Hockley, to Professor Strong. “The man
with the checked suit, who is smoking.”
The professor took a good look and then he smiled grimly to himself.
“I fancy we are in luck,” he said, briefly. “I know this fellow.”
“You do?” ejaculated Hockley. “Who is he?”
Professor Strong did not answer, but going up to the man from
Montana clapped him on the arm.
“So we meet again, Henry Umbler,” he said.
The man who had called himself J. Rutherford Brown gave a start
and his face changed color. Then he recovered and endeavored to
put on a bold front.
“You are mistaken, sir. My name is not Umbler,” he said.
“We won’t argue the point, Umbler. I want you to pay back to this
young man the money you took from him.”
“Don’t know him, sir. You are making a mistake.”
“Are you sure of this fellow?” questioned Professor Strong of
Hockley.
“Yes, sir,” was the prompt answer.
“Then, Umbler, you must give up the money, every cent of it. Please
to remember that you are in United States territory now—not in
Brazil, where you were when last we met. I fancy some stockholders
of the International Star Rubber Company would be glad to get their
hands on Henry Umbler, one of the promoters of that get-rich-quick
concern.”
“I tell you I am not Henry Umbler,” insisted the man from Montana.
“Very well then. We’ll go to police headquarters and settle this affair.”
“What do you want?”
“I want this young man’s money, his watch and his ring returned to
him.”
“What is he to you?”
“I brought him down here to see the sights,—and I am bound to see
that he is not swindled. Give him back his money and other things
and I will not prosecute you, but if you refuse, I’ll see to it that he not
only gets his money but that you go back to the West, where you
belong.”
At this plain talk the face of the swindler became a study. At last he
turned and faced Hockley.
“We had a fair game,” he growled. “You’re a baby to squeal, nothing
but a baby. But if you want the money you can have it.”
He brought a roll of bills out of his pocket, and began to count out a
sum equal to that the youth had possessed. With this, and the watch
and ring, in his hand he looked again at Professor Strong.
“If I give him this does that close the whole affair?” he asked.
“Yes, so far is I am concerned,” answered Amos Strong.
“Then here you are, baby,” went on the man from Montana, and
thrust the money and other things into Hockley’s willing hand. “Don’t
ever try to be a sport again. You’re only fit to be let loose in a
kindergarten.” And then he walked away, puffing at his black cigar
more furiously than ever.
“Who is he?” questioned Hockley, as he put the money away, after
counting it.
“He is a Western sharp,” replied the professor. “Years ago he was
mixed up in a stock company that proved to be little better than a
swindle. I had some shares in it but managed to get my money back.
I tried to help others in the company, but they wouldn’t listen to my
plan and went ahead on their own account and lost. I met Umbler in
Brazil once and tried to get more money out of him, for the other
stockholders, but he laughed at me, for at that time it would have
been a hard matter to have a man transported from Brazil to the
United States on such a charge as I could make.”
“I—I am much obliged for getting the money back, sir.”
“It was rare good luck, Jacob, nothing else, and now you have it
again I want you to turn it over to me.”
“But, sir——.”
“I will not argue the matter.” Professor Strong’s voice grew stern
once more. “You can either give the money to me, or pack your trunk
and go home. And if you get into any more such scrapes I shall notify
your father and send you home anyway. I want no more gambling
and no more ‘seeing the sights’ on your own account. You have got
to turn over a new leaf.”
For half an hour Amos Strong “laid down the law” to Hockley and at
the end of that time the bully felt very humble indeed. He did not
wish to be sent home, and he promised faithfully to do better in the
future; and there the affair was dropped.
CHAPTER XXIV
SOMETHING ABOUT EARTHQUAKES AND
VOLCANOES
For four days the boys traveled around Ponce with the professor,
taking in all the sights. They also took a trip on the railroad to
Guayanilla and Yauco, and likewise down to several small villages
along the seacoast. They were particularly interested in the
American government of the island, and spent several hours at the
various departments. Here the professor met two officials whom he
knew, and all were made to feel thoroughly at home.
In those trips Hockley had little to say, and the other boys noticed the
change in his manner.
“Something went wrong, that’s certain,” observed Darry. But what it
had been they could not imagine, for neither Hockley nor the
professor said anything, and they did not dare to make inquiries.
At the close of the fourth day a French steamer came into the Port of
Ponce, bound from Hayti to St. Pierre, Martinique. The steamer was
one upon which Amos Strong had sailed once before and he knew
Captain Danvier fairly well. He at once communicated this fact to the
boys.
“If we are to go down to Martinique we cannot do better than sail with
Captain Danvier,” he said. “His steamer, the Vendee, is a
comfortable craft, and we shall be certain of good food and pleasant
company.”
“Then let us sail by all means,” said Mark, who was anxious to get to
St. Pierre and see his father, and Frank said the same. Sam and
Darry were likewise willing, and so, for a wonder was Hockley. As a
matter of fact the tall youth had wished to get away from Ponce long
before, being fearful that the other boys might learn something about
J. Rutherford Brown, alias Henry Umbler, and of the loss of money
by gambling.
The matter of accommodations on board of the Vendee was easily
arranged with Captain Danvier, who was delighted to meet Professor
Strong again, and twenty-four hours later the party bid farewell to the
Port of Ponce and sailed for the island which was destined so soon
to become the center of one of the largest catastrophes known to
history.
“I guess we have quite a sail before us,” said Sam, after land had
become hidden in the distance.
“We have, Samuel,” answered the professor. “Roughly speaking, the
distance from Ponce to St. Pierre is a little over four hundred miles.
We shall sail directly to the south-east, and make no stops on the
way. The Vendee is not a fast steamer, but Captain Danvier
calculates to cover the distance in five days.”
“I have been looking up a map of the Leeward Islands,” put in Mark.
“What a lot of them there are and all in a row, like the tops of a
mountain range.”
“And that is just what they are, Mark, and the tops of a very high
range of mountains at that, only the water covers the larger part of
the range. Between some of these islands and to the east and west
the water is five and six thousand feet deep. If the sea was swept
away some of these peaks would be two miles high.”
“They must have had some terrible earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions to produce such mountains,” said Darry, who had joined
the group.
“They have had, Dartworth, and these eruptions have extended not
alone through the Leeward Islands, but through the whole of the
West Indies and also through Central and South America and parts
of Mexico.”
“Do you know, I have never read much about earthquakes and
volcanoes,” observed Mark. “But it seems to me it ought to prove
interesting reading.”
“It is interesting—more so than any novel you ever read.
Earthquakes alone have enlisted the attention of scientists for years,
and they have to-day the record of over seven thousand which
proved more or less disastrous.”
“Seven thousand!” cried Darry. “Then old Mother Earth isn’t as fixed
as I thought her!”
“No, Mother Earth is not fixed, but continually changing, both inside
and out. There are tremendous fires on the interior and these often
crack open the dirt and rock, letting in large quantities of sea-water.
Then comes an explosion, just as you may have at home if you
throw cold water into a red-hot kitchen range. The steam and gases
don’t know where to go, and consequently there is a volcanic
eruption, or else something breaks loose underground and an
earthquake follows. If this happens close to the sea, or under the
sea, there is a tidal wave, the water going down and up with the
movements of the ocean bed.”
“Do all earthquakes come from volcanic fires?” asked Sam.
“We cannot answer that, Samuel. Some earthquakes seem not to
have any connection with volcanoes, as for instance the earthquake
at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886. There was no fire there, and
but little gas, and what caused the quaking, with its tremendous
damage to property and human life, is a mystery.”
“What was the very worst earthquake known?” came from Frank.
“That at Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. It happened late in the year, and
before it occurred there were numerous small earthquakes and
volcanic outbursts throughout Europe. When the big earthquake
came there were three shocks in quick succession and the very
bottom of the harbor dropped out. After many ships were engulfed,
the bottom of the harbor came up again and there was a fierce
onrush of water. What was left standing of the city took fire, and fully
fifty thousand people lost their lives.”
“Isn’t Vesuvius the largest of all known volcanoes?” asked Darry.
“It is certainly the most destructive of volcanoes, having destroyed
Pompeii by covering it with a fine dust, until it was completely buried
from sight, and having covered Herculaneum with a shower of mud,
so that hardly a soul escaped from a territory miles in extent. But the
largest volcano in the world is probably Krakatua, situated between
the islands of Sumatra and Java, in the East Indies. This volcano
was first heard of in 1860, but its greatest outbreak occurred in 1883.
At first there was a tremendous column of vapor over the island,
which, fortunately, was uninhabited. This increased, and explosion
after explosion was heard, each growing louder than the others.
These explosions finally got so terrific that they were heard
thousands of miles away, and the inhabitants of Java, Sumatra, and
other islands in that vicinity were filled with terror. At last, late in
August, came one grand explosion in the morning, and about eight
square miles of dirt and rock were hurled into the air, to fall into the
hissing and boiling sea. The gas, dust, and noxious vapors traveled
for miles and obscured the sun like an eclipse, and the tidal waves
rose to a height of sixty to ninety feet, causing the loss of much
shipping and probably forty thousand lives. Had Krakatua been on
the mainland instead of on an island there would probably have been
such a catastrophe as is unknown to modern history.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t there,” put in Hockley, who had lounged up during
the talk, and felt that he must say something. “I’m willing enough to
stay where there are no earthquakes and volcanoes.”
“What about the volcanoes down here?” asked Mark. “You said
something about Mont Pelee, on the island of Martinique.”
“That is now supposed to be an extinct volcano. It was in eruption in
1813, 1817, 1823, 1839 and 1851. The eruption of 1839 was the
worst and this nearly destroyed Fort de France, the capital of the
island. The volcano is forty-two hundred feet in height and several
miles in circumference. The last time I stopped at St. Pierre there
was an excursion formed to visit the crater of the mountain, which
now forms a beautiful lake of unknown depth. We spent a day in
looking around and took dinner at a fine hotel at the foot of Pelee.”
“Are there any other volcanoes on the island?”
“There is Mount Carbet, near the center of the island, and Mount
Vauclin near the south-east extremity, but they are of small
importance.”
“We must visit all the volcanoes!” cried Frank. “I want to see what
they look like on the inside.”
“I thought there was a big volcano on the Hawaiian Islands,” put in
Hockley.
“There is, Jacob, Kilauea, which is nine miles in circumference, and
one of the largest in the world. But this has never shown the activity
of Vesuvius or of some others. There is also a volcano on the island
of St. Vincent, due south of Martinique, which is well worth visiting.”
“Oh, I don’t care to see them—at least, not if there is any danger of
their shooting off,” added the tall youth, hastily, and in such a manner
that the others could scarcely keep from laughing.
“We will try to avoid all eruptions,” replied the professor, smiling, for
even he did not dream of what was so close at hand.
The boys found Captain Danvier just as sociable as Amos Strong
had pictured him, and the worthy commander of the Vendee gave
them permission to roam over the steamer at will. He could speak
English fairly well and took a delight in explaining his nautical
instruments and other things to them.
“’Tis verra nice for you to do ze traveling around,” he said. “And wid
such a learned gentlemans as ze professair it is von double
pleasure. He is ze fine gentlemans, I know heem well.”
“And so do we know him,” answered Darry. “He’s O. K.”
“O. K. Vot you means by zat?”
“Oh, I mean he is just the cheese,” said Darry, bound to have his fun.
The French captain looked more bewildered than ever. “De cheese?
Ha, you mean de cheese to eat—de caise. But you no mean to eat
him, no.”
“No, I mean he is just the ticket.”
“De ticket, vot is dat? De carte, eh? How is de professair de carte?”
“I didn’t say the professor was a card—or a bill of fare either. I mean
he is just all right.”
“All right? Ha, I see—oui, oui! Surely he is all right, de professair is
nevair wrong. But while he is right how can he be de ticket and de
cheese, and de O. K.? Dat Englis as she is spoke by de American is
von verra funny language, yes!” And the French captain shrugged
his shoulders, while Darry and the other boys had to turn away to
keep from laughing in the good-hearted man’s face. But when Darry
and Mark tried to air the little French they knew before Captain
Danvier he laughed as heartily as they did.
CHAPTER XXV
A COLLISION AT SEA
On the second day on shipboard Professor Strong produced a map

of the Leeward Islands, and told the boys something more
concerning the island they were to visit.
“As you will see by the map,” he said, “Martinique is irregular in
shape. Roughly speaking it is forty miles long by from ten to fifteen
miles wide. The area is less than four hundred square miles, and a
good portion of this is rocky and unfit for cultivation.”
“I see Mont Pelee, in the north,” said Mark, studying the map.
“The principal cities are Fort de France, the capital, located on the
bay of the same name, and St. Pierre and Lamentin. These three
cities are, as you see, located on the western coast of the island. On
the eastern coast is François, a town which has quite a respectable
shipping. The total population of the island is about two hundred
thousand, mostly negroes, half-castes, and French.”
“What do they raise there?” came from Sam.
“Sugar mostly, although there is also some tobacco and also a few
cattle. On an island so narrow, the streams, of course, cannot be of
much importance. The place was discovered by Columbus in 1502
and was first settled by the French, and it is a French colony to-day. I
have been at both Fort de France and St. Pierre and found them
progressive in their way. Each contains from twenty-five to thirty
thousand inhabitants and boasts of a number of fine parks and
public buildings. Just outside of St. Pierre is a suburb in which the
wealthy French population have some beautiful residences. The
drive to this district is delightful.”
“And how far is Mont Pelee from the city?” asked Sam.
“The volcano is five miles north of St. Pierre. The country is very hilly,
but there are several routes by which the crater of the volcano can
be reached with ease. There are a few small rivers to cross but
these are all bridged. Just north of St. Pierre is a large sugar refinery.
The city itself lies right along the waterfront, with high hills directly
behind it.”
After this the talk became general and the professor told them of his
former visits to Martinique, and also to the islands of Guadeloupe,
Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenada, others of the group.
He told them there might be little or no hunting in store for them, but
a good deal of mountain climbing, and volcano exploring if they
desired it. And they said they did, all but Hockley, who, as usual
hung back for something else, he could not tell what.
For two days the weather remained fine and the time passed swiftly
enough, but on the morning of the third day the sky clouded up and
by noon it was raining in torrents. Then the wind came up and the
little steamer had all she could do to keep to her course.
The first effect of the storm was to drive everybody to the cabin.
Windows and doors were bolted and ports secured, and the
passengers kept their feet with difficulty as they moved around.
Eating at the table was almost impossible, and the professor had a
dish of peas upset in his lap, while Hockley nearly choked himself
with a cup of coffee which went up his nose and into his eyes. Mark
was also unfortunate. He was trying to eat a bit of steak but it slipped
from his plate to his knee and then the whole length of the dining
room floor. A waiter stepped on it and went headlong, bringing down
an armful of dishes with a mighty crash.
“Say! but this is a storm and no mistake!” gasped Mark, after the
laughing had subsided. “And such a nice piece of beefsteak, too.”
“We’re lucky if we don’t all go to the bottom!” sighed Hockley. And
then he made a rush from the room to his stateroom. He had been
taken seasick and was perfectly miserable from that time until the
storm cleared away.
Toward evening the rain let up a bit, and as it was very close and
stuffy in the cabin, the boys begged Professor Strong to let them go
on deck. He finally consented, but warned them to take good care
and not fall overboard.
“This is a treacherous sea,” he said. “The waves sometimes run very
high when least expected. Hold on tight, no matter where you
happen to be standing.”
“All right, we’ll be careful,” said Sam.
They went on deck and secured a position close by the wheelhouse,
where a number of life-lines had been stretched. Captain Danvier
was present and also warned them to be on guard.
“Ze waves run verra high,” he said. “You must hold on hard, oui,
verra hard.”
An hour went by, and the storm seemed on the point of subsiding
altogether. Feeling they could now walk around a little, the boys
moved from one end of the steamer to the other with caution. The
deck was still slippery and it was now dark.
Important events sometimes happen with alarming swiftness and
such proved to be the case in the present instance. It had looked as
if the storm was about at an end, but without warning there came
another blow, which sent the spray flying in all directions. The
lookouts were drenched and for the moment could see nothing. Then
as the spray cleared away for an instant, one of them gave a mad
yell in French:
“A ship! A ship dead ahead!”
The cry had hardly pierced the air when there came a tremendous
shock which shook the Vendee from stem to stern and caused the
steamer to list well over to port. Sam and Darry, who had started
back for the cabin, to change their wet jackets, were pitched
headlong and bumped into each other close to a post.
“Oh!” groaned Sam.
“Are you hurt, Beans?” questioned Darry, catching his chum by the
shoulder.
“A little. What was that struck us?”
“I don’t know.”
Another cry now came out of the darkness. But it was in French and
they could not understand it. Then some sailors rushed past them
with a large square of canvas and some ropes.
“We have been struck and they are going to cover the hole with
sailcloth,” explained another passenger, who could speak both
French and English. “What we struck nobody knows excepting that it
was some kind of vessel.”
With difficulty the two boys gained their feet and ran for the cabin. At
the doorway both halted and each gazed at the other in
consternation.
“Mark and Frank!” burst out Darry. “Where are they?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” responded Sam, in equal dismay. He raised
his voice: “Frank! Mark! Are you safe?” he called out.
No answer came back, and now Professor Strong rushed up, fully as
alarmed as anybody.
“Are you all right?” he questioned. “Where are Mark and Frank?”
“We don’t know, sir,” answered Sam.
“They were on deck with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pray heaven they haven’t gone overboard,” gasped Amos Strong,
and greatly agitated, he ran out into the darkness of the deck. Then
they heard him call back: “Remain in the cabin until I return.”
A dozen cries now resounded on every side, and bells were jangling
almost as wildly. The Vendee had been struck on the starboard side,
just aft of the bow, and the captain was ordering some of the cargo
to be shifted to the stern, that the bow might come up as far as
possible out of the water. In the meantime the ship’s carpenter had
got out the sailcloth and he and his men were lowering it over the
hole, to keep out the rush of water. Below, the pump had been
connected with the engine and this was already battling bravely to
free the hold of the briny element that threatened to send the gallant
steamer to the bottom.
In the midst of the excitement Hockley appeared. He saw that this
was no “fake” sinking, and his face was pale with terror as he clung
first to Sam and then to Darry.
“It’s awful!” he wailed. “What shall we do? Where are the life
preservers? Where is the professor? Why don’t he order out a boat
to save us? How far do you suppose we are from land? Oh, I know I
can’t swim in such a sea!” And he shook like a leaf.
“We are not going down yet, Jake,” answered Sam. “The professor is
looking for Mark and Frank. I’m afraid they’ve been washed
overboard.”
“There is a signal of distress!” interrupted Darry, pointing out through
the darkness. A rocket had flared through the air, and now another
followed. Then a strong Bengal light lit up the scene.
“I’m going out to look for Frank and Mark,” said Darry, recklessly, and
left the cabin. Sam came close behind him. Hockley did not wish to
go, but to remain alone seemed even worse and he also followed,
but more slowly.
The Vendee had been backed and was now coming up alongside of
the ship with which it had been in collision. The strong Bengal light
showed her to be a three masted schooner, piled high with lumber. A
good part of the lumber on the forward deck had been unshipped by
the collision and was floating in the angry sea.
“Do you see anything of Mark and Frank?” asked Sam, hoarsely, as
he and Darry slipped up beside the professor.
“Not a sign,” was the sad answer. “If they were washed overboard I
fear they were drowned.”
“Oh, don’t say that!” gasped Darry. “Drowned! It’s horrible!”
“Can’t they put out a small boat?” asked Sam.
“No small boat would live in such a sea as this, and besides with so
much loose lumber floating around it would be doubly dangerous to
try going out.”
“But what are we going to do?” demanded Hockley. “I—I don’t want
to drown just yet.”
“I don’t imagine this steamer is going down, Jacob. We received a
heavy blow, it is true, but she is built in a number of compartments.
My whole anxiety, is for Mark and Frank. If they went overboard they
must be lost.”
“Well, it was their business to take care of themselves,” grumbled the
tall youth, unfeelingly.
“And it is your business to look out for yourself,” retorted Darry. “But
don’t let us quarrel; this thing is far too serious,” he added.
The Bengal light had now burnt itself out and no more were lit for the
reason that the storm was again coming up and the crew of each
vessel had to bestow their entire attention to the question of saving
the craft from going down. This was comparatively an easy matter on
board of the Vendee and soon under officers were sent around to
assure the passengers that there was no immediate cause for alarm,
that the hole had been patched up temporarily, and that it would be
thoroughly repaired as soon as the wind abated.
Captain Danvier was extremely sorry to hear that two of the boys
were missing and at once did what he could toward finding them. But
in such a storm, which was again increasing, his first duty was to his
ship, and he said, as had Professor Strong, that to risk a small boat
in such a sea would be foolhardy.
“We must wait until daylight,” he said, in French. “I can do nothing
now.”
Slowly the night wore away. Nobody slept, and at the first streak of
dawn all went on deck. The storm had passed, but the sky was still
dark. The captain had thought best to lay to, thinking the lumber
schooner might need assistance. The other craft was not far away
and soon they came within hailing distance of each other. The
lumber boat flew the Dutch flag and proved to be bound from Saba
to Curaçao.
“I have lost a large quantity of lumber!” roared the Dutch skipper,
wrathfully. “I shall hold you responsible in law for it!”
“Have you seen anything of two boys?” questioned Captain Danvier.
“We have lost them.”
“No, I have seen no boys. Have you seen a man? We lost one of our
sailors in that smash.”
“No, we have seen nobody,” answered the French captain.
“It was your fault we had that smash,” the Dutch skipper continued.
“Remember, I shall hold you for it in law, the first chance I get!”
“Do as you please about that,” returned Captain Danvier, coolly. “You
are as much to blame as myself. But if you see anything of those
boys treat them well and you’ll lose nothing by it.”
“I’ll treat them well enough,” growled the Dutch skipper.
As the Dutchman could speak neither French nor English the
conversation had to be carried on in his native tongue and it was
hard for Captain Danvier to make himself understood. Only a few
words more passed, and then the two vessels separated, and the
lumber schooner proceeded on her way, with every sail set.
“It ees certainly verra sad,” said the French captain, to the professor
and the boys. “I vill do what I can for ze boys—but what is zare to do,
tell me zat?”
“I wish you would remain in this vicinity for a day or so,” answered
Professor Strong. “They may be floating around, and if so I hope to
pick them up.”
The captain agreed readily, and not one day but two were spent in
the vicinity. In the meantime the hole in the bow was repaired, so
that danger from that source became a thing of the past.
The loss of Mark and Frank made Sam, Darry and Professor Strong
feel much downcast and even Hockley went around looking very
sober.
“I never dreamed that such a dreadful thing would happen,” said
Darry, and there were tears in his eyes. “I declare, if they don’t turn
up I’m going right back home.”
“And I am with you,” answered Sam. “To go sight-seeing without
them would make me sick.”
“And think of their fathers being at St. Pierre ready to welcome
them,” went on Darry. “That makes it ten times worse.”
And Sam agreed that it did. The loss of their chums cast a gloom
over them impossible to dispel.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE LUMBER RAFT
Let us go back and find out what really did become of Mark and
Frank at the time the Vendee was struck in the darkness of the storm
by the Dutch lumber vessel.
As the French steamer listed to port the chums caught at the railing
before them. But this was wet and slippery and in an instant Frank
found himself over the side.
“Help!” he screamed, but the cry was drowned out in the roar of the
elements around him. Mark made a clutch at him, but he, too, was
carried overboard.
With clasped hands the two boys struck the water and went down
and down, they knew not whither. The accident had occurred so
quickly that both were completely bewildered, and it was purely by
instinct that each closed his mouth to keep out the briny element.
The waves leaped and foamed all around them, and Mark felt
something scrape his shoulder, he could not tell what, although long
after he concluded it must have been the side of the steamer.
Just what occurred during the five minutes that followed it would be
hard to describe. The boys clung to each other, bound to live or die
together. Even in that awful moment the thought of separating was
still more terrifying. Occasionally they saw a light, but soon these
were lost to view, and they found themselves in the blackness of the
night, alone.
“Frank, are you—you alive?” Such were the first words spoken
between the pair.
“Ye—yes,” came with a gasp. “Ho—how are we going to get back to
the—the steamer?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see the vessel anywhere, can you?”
As the waves carried them upward they gazed around eagerly. Not a
light was anywhere.
“The steamer has gone on—we are deserted!” cried Mark, and his
heart sank like a lump of lead in his bosom.
“Oh, don’t say that,” returned Frank. “Surely, they won’t leave us to
drown!”
A period of silence ensued. Then Frank felt something sheer up
alongside of him. He put out a hand and felt a stick of wood—one
washed overboard from the lumber craft.
“A log!” he cried. “Catch hold, Mark!”
Mark was willing enough and they caught hold of the log, to find that
it was fastened with a short chain to a number of other logs. Not
without difficulty they crawled to the top of the crude raft.
“Where did this come from?” queried Frank. “Do you suppose they
threw it overboard for us?”
“Perhaps, although I never saw such a life raft on the Vendee—if it is
a life raft. It looks more to me like some washed-away lumber.
Perhaps we struck another ship—in fact, I am almost sure we did. If
she was a lumber craft, this must be from her.”
Another spell of silence ensued, during which both strained their
eyes to see through the driving storm. Nothing but the waves met
their gaze, carrying them upward at one moment as if to the top of a
high hill, and then letting them sink and sink into a hollow until it
looked as if they should never rise again.
It was a time never to be forgotten, and each boy breathed a silent
prayer that he might be brought through this great peril in safety.
Thus the minutes slipped by, until suddenly Mark gave a cry.
“A light! A sky-rocket!”
He was right, from a great distance they saw the rocket from the
lumber vessel flare out through the storm. Then followed a
brightness lower down, but this Bengal light was not so distinct.
“Can it be the steamer in distress?” they asked each other.
“Looks as if something was on fire,” said Mark. He tried to stand up
on the lumber, Frank in the meantime holding him fast by the ankles.
But now the raft went into a hollow, and when it came up again the
light was gone.
Slowly the hours went by and the storm gradually subsided. The
boys found that the chain was fastened tightly around the lumber
and they clung to this and waited for daybreak. They did not mind
being wet to the skin, for the night was warm, but each was
thoroughly exhausted by his struggles.
At last came the light, low down in the east, and gradually the day
came over the rim of the sea—dull and heavy and bringing little of
cheer. Both stood up and gazed around eagerly.
Not a sail of any kind in sight.
It was a trying moment, and both had hard work to command their
feelings. Here they were, cast away on the broad bosom of the
Caribbean Sea, miles from land, and with no ship to pick them up.
“And nothing to eat or to drink,” said Frank. “Oh, Mark, what shall we
do?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Frank. All we can do is to remain on this pile
of lumber and trust to luck.”
“We’ll die of hunger and thirst. I’m thirsty already.”
“So am I, but we had better not think of that.”
As the day grew a little brighter they continued to watch for the ship.
Once Mark thought he saw a vessel far to the eastward, but he was
not sure. An hour after this Frank gave a cry.
“Another raft, and somebody is on it!”
Frank was right, close at hand another raft was floating, and on top
of this lay the figure of a man, either dead or asleep.
“Hullo there!” cried Mark. “Hullo! Ahoy!”
At first the figure on the raft did not stir, but as the lumber came
closer the man sat up and gazed around wildly.
On catching sight of the two boys he gave a faint cry in a language
that was strange to them.
“He must be a castaway like ourselves,” said Mark.
“See, he is motioning to us with a rope,” said Frank. “He is going to
throw us one end.”
The end of the rope was thrown not once, but three times before
they could catch it. Then they drew the other raft toward them and
lashed the two heaps of lumber together. Thus united, the piles
made a raft of considerable size.
The man who had thus strangely joined them was evidently a sailor
and he was suffering from an ugly wound on the shoulder. At first he
said but little, but at last they made out that his name was Sven
Orlaff and that he was a Norwegian.
“I be on da Dutch boat, Christiana,” he said, in broken English. “Da
boat strike da steamer an’ I got by da vater in. So you go, too?”
“Yes, we were on the steamer,” answered Mark. “Have you any idea
where the steamer or the Dutch boat is?”
At this question Sven Orlaff shook his head. “Lose da boat—so
dark,” he said. “My shouler much hurt—I sick, fall da vater in and
must swim to da lumber. No see da boat vonce more.”
“We’re in a tough situation,” put in Frank, and heaved a sigh. “Are we
anywhere near to land?”
At this Sven Orlaff shook his head again. “No land near dis blace,”
he said. “No much boats here.”
“No land and very few ships,” said Mark. “Frank, it is certainly a
dismal outlook.”
They saw that the Norwegian’s shoulder needed to be bound up and
went at the work without delay, tearing the sleeves from their shirts
for this purpose. He was thankful, and told them so in his own
peculiar way.
The work had scarcely been accomplished when something odd
happened. Frank had allowed an end of the rope to trail behind the
raft. Now the rope was seized by some kind of a fish who swallowed
the knot. Like a flash the Norwegian sailor pulled in the rope, landed
the fish and smashed its head with his heel.
“Make to eat,” he explained. “I hungry.”
“Why, of course,” cried Mark. “I’m hungry myself. I wonder if we can’t
catch more of them?”
For answer the sailor pulled a stout fishline from his pocket, and also
a knife. With the knife he cut off a portion of the fish’s tail for bait.
“Give it to me, I’ll do the fishing,” said Mark, for he did not want the
hurt man to use his wounded shoulder.
Luckily for them, fish were plentiful in that vicinity, and in a moment
he got a bite and landed another fish, weighing at least two pounds.
Then he tried again and again, and soon had a mess of a dozen.
“We shall not starve to death, that’s sure,” said Frank, who had fixed
a place between the lumber for the catch. “I wish, Mark, you could
catch something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Water.”
“Don’t mention it. I am dry enough without thinking about it.”
All were dry, and as the day wore on their thirst increased until they
could hardly endure it.
There was small danger of the lumber blazing up, with so much salt
water to extinguish a big fire, and so they cut slivers from some
boards and started a little fire on the top of several big timbers, using
a match from Mark’s water-tight safe for that purpose. Soon they had
a fairly good blaze going and over this they cooked their fish, or
rather, half cooked and half burnt it, for the operation proved far from
satisfactory. But even such a meal was better than if the fish had
been raw.
By the time they had eaten their fill it began to cloud up once more
and soon it was raining steadily. They lost no time in spreading their
garments to catch the water and soon each had as much as he
wished to drink. The rain lasted about two hours, then cleared away
quickly, and toward the middle of the afternoon the sun came out.
As the light kept growing Mark stood up and looked around them
once more. Then he gave a cry:
“A ship! A ship!”
CHAPTER XXVII
STONE DUST AND BOILING WATER
Mark’s cry aroused Frank and the Norwegian sailor, and both
looked eagerly in the direction pointed out.
“I see something,” said Frank, after a searching look. “But if it is a
ship or a small island I cannot tell.”
“Da ship!” cried Sven Orlaff. “Da ship sure!”
“Do you mean your ship?” queried Mark.
“I no can say ’bout dat. Look lak my ship, but no sure.”
For several minutes they watched the vessel in silence. Would it
come toward them?
“Let us raise a signal of distress,” said Frank. “Here, I’ll put my shirt
up on the end of a board.” And this was done without delay.
“We mak big smoke—dat be verra goot,” suggested Sven Orlaff, and
began to kindle a blaze where the former fire had been. Over this he
placed some wet bits of board which soon produced so much smoke
that it nearly choked them.
“They ought to see that,” said Frank.
“You must remember that this raft is much smaller than the ship,
Frank,” answered Mark, who was afraid of raising false hopes.
“When we go down into a hollow of the sea we are completely out of
their sight.”
An anxious quarter of an hour went by, during which the ship
seemed to come a little nearer.
“I believe she will come to us,” said Mark, at last.
Both of the boys looked anxiously at the Norwegian sailor, feeling
that he had more experience in such affairs than themselves.
Sven Orlaff shook his head sadly.
“Da ship go ’round—no will come here,” he said.
“It won’t!” gasped Mark and Frank in a breath.
And again the sailor shook his head. The lads gazed eagerly, with
eyes almost starting from their sockets. Sven Orlaff was right—the
distant object was slowly but surely fading from their vision.
The despair of the boys was now greater than ever, and for some
time neither could trust himself to speak.
“It looks as if we were doomed,” said Frank, at last, in a choking
voice.
Mark did not answer. There seemed really nothing to say.
The sun had come out strong and hot, and it was not long before all
began to feel thirsty once more. A little water remained in the hollow
between the lumber and this they drank up, fearful that it would
otherwise evaporate.
Night came on slowly and now they ate another portion of the fish. It
seemed unusually dry and they choked it down with an effort.
“It’s queer,” observed Frank. “This fish tastes to me as if it was
covered with fine dirt.”
“It must be our mouths,” replied Mark. “Mine feels full of grit, as if I
had been licking a piece of emery paper.”
They looked at Sven Orlaff, and found him rubbing his eyes. He
seemed to be trying to get something out of them.
“My eye, he got da dust in,” said the sailor. “I no lak dat. Where da
dust he come from annahow?” and he rubbed his eyes again.
“Why, the air is full of dust!” came from Frank, as he gazed upward.
“Who ever heard of such a thing, so far out at sea!”

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

9. Apollodorus the Mythographer, Bibliotheca  151

36. Retelling Greek Myths on Roman Sarcophagi  508

37. Mythography and Christianity  529

Daniel W. Berman is Professor of Greek and Roman Classics at Temple University.

K. F. B. Fletcher is Associate Professor of Classics at Louisiana State University. His re-

Joan Pagès is Lecturer in Greek Philology at the Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona. He

utopian idea in antiquity and is currently working on Plutarch’s biographies of mythical

R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma

1. Greek and Roman Mythography Today

surround them—​and, where possible, pointing to outstanding complexities and new

2. The Nature(s) of Greek and

At the center of Part I of the handbook is an attempt to sketch an overview of mythog-

3. A Brief Overview of the Contents

Many a man would have been startled by such a direct accusation,

On the second day on shipboard Professor Strong produced a map

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9. Apollodorus the Mythographer, Bibliotheca 151

36. Retelling Greek Myths on Roman Sarcophagi 508

37. Mythography and Christianity 529

surround them—and, where possible, pointing to outstanding complexities and new