The Vatican Mythographers

The Vatican Mythographers offers the first complete English translation of three medieval manuscripts discovered in the Vatican library and published in the nineteenth century. The so-called Vatican Mythographers compiled, analyzed, interpreted, and transmitted a vast collection of myths for use by students, poets, and artists. In terms consonant with Christian purposes, they elucidated the fabulous narratives of Ovid, Virgil, Statius, and other poets of antiquity. Above all, they...
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The Vatican Mythographers offers the first complete English translation of three medieval manuscripts discovered in the Vatican library and published in the nineteenth century. The so-called Vatican Mythographers compiled, analyzed, interpreted, and transmitted a vast collection of myths for use by students, poets, and artists. In terms consonant with Christian purposes, they elucidated the fabulous narratives of Ovid, Virgil, Statius, and other poets of antiquity. Above all, they provided moral allegories. Thus we learn that Bacchus is a naked youth who rides a tiger because drunkenness is never mature, denudes us of possessions, and begets ferocity; or that Ulysses, husband of Penelope, passed by the monstrous Scylla unharmed because a wise man bound to chastity overcomes lust.
The translation is prefaced by an introduction that discusses the purposes of the Vatican Mythographers, the influences on them, and their place in medieval and Renaissance mythography. The book also entertains with a
host of stories whose undying appeal captivates, charms, inspires, instructs, and sometimes horrifies us.