
Contents
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1. The Bibliothēkē 1. The Bibliothēkē
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2. Myths Incorporated in a Universal History 2. Myths Incorporated in a Universal History
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3. Methods of Depicting the Myths 3. Methods of Depicting the Myths
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4. Mythography, Not Merely Writing Myths 4. Mythography, Not Merely Writing Myths
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Further Reading Further Reading
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References References
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12 Diodorus Siculus, Library
Get accessIris 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 utopian idea in antiquity and is currently working on Plutarch’s biographies of mythical figures.
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Published:20 October 2022
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Abstract
Diodorus Siculus wrote a universal history, a well-known genre, into which he introduced new criteria. Emphasizing especially its chronological and geographical scope, he resolved that a universal history should begin with the ancient mythologies and end in the author’s own day, covering the entire inhabited world. This chapter inspects Diodorus’s Bibliothēkē and his use of sources, underlining the recent change of tune in Diodorus scholarship, according to which he not only employed additional sources, but also incorporated his own thoughts, inspired by current events. This study also demonstrates that, as befits a universal history, Diodorus’s mythography is also “universal,” embracing the myths of various peoples. Diodorus did not tell the myths as he found them in his sources but produced them in a historicized version—that is, one that is a mixture of facts and fiction—as his descriptions of the journeys of gods and heroes illustrate. Diodorus’s methods of depicting the myths are examined and we infer that his preferred approach to interpreting the myths is rationalization, particularly Euhemerism, and that he rarely uses allegoresis. The chapter concludes by arguing that, attempting to make the mythical figures as historical as possible, Diodorus portrays them as mortals who became immortal because of their deeds, which are modeled on those of historical figures, notably, Alexander and Caesar.
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