Heraclitus the Paradoxographer: Peri Apiston, On Unbelieveable Tales

The text of Heraclitus the Paradoxographer (so LSJ, although "Mythographer" would be better), which is here translated with Introduction and Commentary, survives to the present in a single 13th-century manuscript. Of the author nothing is known, although he appears to belong to the late 1st or 2nd century A.D. The text includes 39 items in which familiar myths are briefly told and then interpreted through rationalism, euhemerism, allegory, or etymology. Among extant mythographical collections this text is of particular interest precisely because it exemplifies in brief compass such a range of ancient strategies for the interpretation of myth.