Text and Editions

Text and Reception

The text that survives today is probably not an exact transcript of what Palaephatus originally wrote. What survives is, in all likelihood, an epitome—that is, a condensed version of an earlier work. Festa (1902) suggests that the epitome was compiled sometime in the 12th century. In its transmitted form, On Unbelievable Tales consists of a prologue, which is probably the original, forty-five epitomized chapters, and seven spurious chapters added to the main text at a later date. These Byzantine epitomes were often used as school or reference texts. Although they greatly reduce the content of their originals, they frequently preserve a good deal of the original diction, style, and argumentative shape. The result is a brief, sharp, and highly usable text, often written in clear Atticizing Greek and well suited to classroom use.

Palaephatus’s On Unbelievable Tales was recommended reading as early as the first century CE (Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata 96.4–14), and became a well-known text in the Byzantine period as a school text for learning Ancient Greek. More than thirty manuscripts of Περὶ ἀπίστων survive between the twelfth or thirteenth century, and it is cited frequently by authors like Malalas, Eustathius, Tzetzes, and others. The first printing by Aldus Manutius in 1505 reached wide circulation in western Europe, again, as a tool for teaching Ancient Greek. Within the first thirty years of its print life, it was Latinized four times, and rendered into Italian by 1545, French by 1558, and Dutch by 1661; seven further editions of the Greek followed between Tollius’s 1649 edition and Fischer’s 1761 edition, the last holding the field, through its successive reprintings, as the standard schoolbook of the long eighteenth century.

From a pedagogical perspective, one of the most useful features of Palaephatus’s text is its structure discussed earlier. The only major exceptions to this pattern are the pseudo-Palaephatean chapters, which are included here but differ from the core chapters in style, grammar, and argumentative consistency. Apart from the prologue, which is somewhat dense, and these later spurious additions, the text is generally direct and repetitive in the best sense. After reading only a handful of chapters, students begin to recognize the recurring grammatical constructions, anticipate the structure of the argument, and move through Greek prose with increasing speed and confidence. Depending on the level of the students, the text can be used to teach basic prose syntax, Atticizing style, mythological vocabulary, narrative structure, etymological argument, or ancient theories of fiction and belief.

Edition and Edits

The manuscript tradition of Palaephatus’s text has recently been reviewed by Eugenio Villa (2025). We print the Teubner text of Festa (1902), with the following changes:

References

Festa, N., ed. 1902. Palaephati Пερὶ ἀπίστων. Mythographi Graeci, vol. 3, fasc. 2. Leipzig: Teubner.

Villa, Eugenio. 2025. La tradizione manoscritta del ›De incredibilibus‹ di Palefato. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.