An Ambiguous Literary Genre: The Origins of Early Greek Mythography
By Ilaria Andolfi
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the origins of early Greek mythography, exemplarily represented by Hecataeus of Miletus and Acusilaus of Argos. The paucity of verbatim quotations and a total lack of information about the publication of their prose works and their audience makes it difficult to frame them within a specific literary genre. Despite that, a better understanding of their cultural milieu could help us approach their literary production in a new way. What arises from this investigation is how unprofitable it is to rely upon a rigid distinction among the production of early prose writers who clearly share a common goal and, to some extent, a similar communicative strategy.
Published by Mnemosyne, Vol. 70, pp. 183-201, (2017).