Mythography in the Latin West

Abstract In the Middle Ages in western Europe mythography was intended to set out in clear narrative terms and explain the body of myth that might only be alluded to in the corpus of Classical Latin literature that was still read throughout this period. It might have had the further intention of refuting the error of pagan belief about the gods and rendering myth innocuous by subjecting its unseemly tales to interpretation, especially through allegory. Much of the substance and method of medieval mythography was based on the seminal work of Fulgentius and Isidore of Seville, who wrote at the close of the classical epoch and the opening of the Middle Ages. The work of mythography was done in larger encyclopedias, histories, and commentaries, but there were also specialist treatises, most notably, the books of the three Vatican Mythographers and Conrad of Mure’s Fabularius. Heroic myths were also recounted, as well as thoroughly adapted and modified, in the popular literature of the period, perhaps most prominently in Benoît de Sainte Maure’s French poem Le Roman de Troie and its Latin prose translation by Guido delle Colonne.