Sources of Classical Literature: Briefly presenting over 1000 works

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0- Introduction

Every book ever written has a story behind it, and this one certainly isn’t an exception to that rule. Many years ago I started researching Greek and Latin Mythology through its original sources; as time went on, I accidentally found myself re-reading some of them, only to reach a point where I’d say Wait a minute, I’ve already read this! In order to prevent myself from repeatedly studying the same sources, five years ago I decided to start compiling a small list of the primary sources I had been reading, along with some quick and personal notes about each of them[1]. This, I had hoped, would not only facilitate my personal research, but also make it possible for me to focus on newer and more diverse sources, always hoping to find entirely new myths or new versions of previous ones.

Now, if that original plan worked, it also led me to a significant problem – as a famous philosopher once said, knowledge that isn’t put into writing ends up getting lost sooner or later. No matter how much I studied, it is undeniable that, eventually, my personal knowledge will be lost. For that reason, to keep it all for myself would, at the end of the day, be a terribly narcissistic and self-centred thing to do. Yes, it tends to be an unfortunate trend in Classics, with some people preferring to keep all their knowledge for themselves instead of sharing it, as if they were afraid others would steal it away or take away their jobs, but... realistically, knowledge is meant to be shared. That idea of the long-bearded sage, closed in his marble tower and uttering his best phrases for himself alone, although poetically beautiful, is also based on a terribly absurd illusion of immortality.

When, many years ago, I started my initial search, that was not the goal I intended, in any way. Back then – as today – I felt that knowledge was only as important as the usage that people make out of it. To keep it all for myself, perhaps inside a little secret box at home, would harshly transgress that ideal. Perhaps it was a chimeric one, perhaps nowadays people only care about knowledge as long as it gives them a lot of money or fame, but, again, that wasn’t what I was looking for – I simply wanted to learn more and more, and to be able to share what I had previously learned.

Then, one day, I was online and accidentally came across a young woman living in Canada who claimed to love the Trojan Cycle and who, day after day, appeared to research it as much as I did, or perhaps even much more. That led me to a problematic internal concern – no matter how much I had learned in the past, I still had to be there to tell people things along the lines of Oh, you’re researching X? Did you already checked this or that obscure book? People frequently hadn’t heard about any of those works, a few were even happy and thanked me for my suggestions, but at the end of those days I still felt I wasn’t sharing as much as I could.

That’s why I decided to compile and publish this little book. While looking for more obscure classical myths and exploring their intertextualities, I ended up reading an enormous number of books from Classical Antiquity, along with ones impacted by it. I’d love to read Cicero’s Hortensius, a work which Saint Augustine highly praised, or even Varro’s Human and Divine Antiquities, but I was only able to have those unusual wishes because, at one point in time, I had heard about those now-lost works... while many other people, no matter how much they want to learn, may not have ever heard about any of them. If they don’t know some particular works exist they can’t look for them, nor can they read them at all.

That’s what this book is all about. In the pages that follow you’ll be able to read quick references to many of the works – both primary and secondary sources – which I studied in the past, some of them complemented with my own brief and personal comments on their content. My hope is that by sharing this extensive listing I may get other people to know about those works and, in the long run, maybe even read some of them by themselves. Hopefully, they too will profit from the knowledge these works contain!

As my previous words may indicate I always focused essentially on mythological works, but I was also interested in gnostic stories, magical rituals and processes, late stories from medieval times, and in the many ways in which philosophical commentaries and treatises may improve, even on our own day and age, our lives. At the same time, I didn’t care all that much about comedies, tragedies and historical works, and for that reason you’ll find fewer of those in the next chapters.

This is nowhere near a complete listing of all the works produced in the Antiquity and which reached our day and age, but it is essentially complete in all the main (and several obscure) mythological works, along with many unusual ones that few people seem to know about. I honestly hope you appreciate it, and hopefully this attempt to share knowledge of primary sources, along with many other miscellaneous works which are significant to their study, will be as profitable to you as it once was for myself.

Miguel Carvalho Abrantes

1- Anonymous Authors and Miscellanea

This very first section contains the works of anonymous or unknown authors, along with others which, for one reason or another, I preferred not to assign any authorship to.

✓  Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena

The two stories of women who converted to Christianity. They are essentially short and self-contained Christian romances.

✓  Adapa

A tale from Sumer, about a wise fisherman who breaks the wings of a wind, and the lengths he has to go through to avoid a bigger retribution from his action. Likely the most intriguing element of this text is the fact that the main character accidentally, and yet justifiably, rejects the gift of immortality.

✓  Aetna  *[2]

A small Latin poem on the volcano Etna, with a few mythological references. Some attribute it to Virgil.

✓  Agrapha (i.e. the lost sayings of Jesus)

Although the sayings of Jesus are known to us essentially from the four gospels preserved in the Bible, some additional sources from the Antiquity also present additional phrases attributed to him. The most famous is certainly the Gospel According to Thomas, found in the Nag Hammadi corpus, but there are also several modern compilations in which you can gather more information about other phrases attributed to Jesus in miscellaneous sources from the first centuries of our era.

✓  Argonautica Orphica

There are several different works reporting the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts, the most famous one certainly being Apollonius of Rhodes’. This one appears to be at least partially based on it, but it presents the whole adventure through the eyes of Orpheus, one of the travellers who accompanied Jason. Some episodes were adapted or amplified to exacerbate his role in the story; the magical ritual, exclusive to this version, with which the hero makes the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece fall asleep, is perhaps the most prominent and interesting aspect of this work.

✓  The Bible

The Bible is, evidently, the collective name given to the literary corpus accepted by the Christians. Many and many pages could be written about it in here, but the essential idea is... if you believe in something, shouldn’t you know what it is all about? Of course it is not an easy book to read, it’s not something you’ll be able to do it in just a week, but for cultural and religious reasons (evidently, if you believe in God and Jesus) it’s certainly a work that deserves to be read across time.

✓  Book of Mormon *

Like the Koran (see below), the authorship of this work can be considered as problematic, although it is usually attributed to Joseph Smith. From a non-religious standpoint it can still be an intriguing read, if you consider it as expanding upon the Christian biblical canon for its own purposes.

✓  Book of the 24 Philosophers

In this short work the opinions of several (nameless) philosophers on what constitutes a divine entity are succinctly presented. Although it is possible to identify at least some of them, the original work does not contain that identification.

✓  Book of the Secret Supper

Also known as The Questions of John, among other names, this Cathar scripture has John ask Jesus several questions during the Last Supper. They reveal some dualistic beliefs, with Satan and God taking opposing sides, and the first one being presented as if he was the evil deity of the Old Testament.

✓  Cantigas de Santa Maria

Most of the songs presented here are either in praise of the Virgin Mary or featuring some of the miracles she (supposedly) performed. However, some of them do feature information related to the Antiquity, like stories related to Julian the Apostate, among others. They’re not exactly historical, but it is still interesting to see how those events are reimagined in order to include some kind of connection to the ascended mother of Jesus.

✓  Ciris *

A poem once attributed to Virgil, regarding the myth of Scylla. Although the author presents the monstrous one too, he makes it clear that his poem is about Nisus’ daughter, who is later turned into a bird for the role she played in her own father’s death.

✓  Code of Hammurabi *

One of the oldest law codes still extant in our day and age. Usually, its entries go around the lines of If X happens, then do Y. It is particularly interesting for us to see what kind of legal boundaries were being set back then.

✓  Coena Cypriani

This work in prose, which I once translated to English, presents a fictional marriage that is attended by many biblical figures. Then, some kind of situation unfolds and we are told how each of the guests reacted to it. What is specially important is that those actions repeatedly offer some kind of connection to the biblical text, e.g. when picking some clothes Jesus selects some alike of a dove, in an almost evident reference to the Holy Ghost, and at one point Cain kills himself (as opposed to killing someone else, like his brother). It’s a short, and yet unpredictable funny, work, if you manage to understand all the intertextualities it contains.

✓  Contest of Homer and Hesiod

Beginning with a very short biography of the two authors and ending with the reports of their supposed deaths, this is essentially a poetic contest between them, displaying the poetry of Homer as one of war and that of Hesiod as focusing more on times of peace. The winner is likely not who you’d expect.

✓  Culex

Once attributed to Virgil, this is an intriguing poem about a gnat which is accidentally killed when saving a shepherd’s life. The spirit of the gnat comes back and reports everything he saw in the afterlife.

✓  Cupido Amans

A small poem about Cupid himself falling in love.

✓  Dead Sea Scrolls *

Contains lots of now-lost information on works related to Judaism. To me, most of them don’t seem to be as interesting as the (Christian) ones from the Nag Hammadi Library, but they do preserve information on some sects[3] of that religion as they existed before the first centuries of our era.

✓  The Death of Gilgamesh

This work from Sumer is available only in a fragmentary form, but over its multiple versions it does retain three particularly interesting elements – some deeply poetic phrases concerning the true meaning of life and death, an