Pseudo-Apollodorus
b. c. 1st–2nd century AD
The Bibliotheca (Library) attributed to Apollodorus is the most systematic surviving handbook of Greek mythology. Its author was traditionally identified with Apollodorus of Athens, a scholar of the second century BC, but the work almost certainly dates to the first or second century AD. The true author is unknown; scholars call him Pseudo-Apollodorus, but his work is invaluable regardless of his name.
The Library attempts nothing less than a complete compendium of Greek myth, from the creation of the world through the Trojan War and its aftermath. It is organised by mythological genealogy: the gods, then the great heroic families — the descendants of Deucalion, Inachus, Agenor, Pelasgus, and so on. The Epitome, which survives in abridged form, covers the Trojan cycle and the returns of the heroes.
The Library is not literature in any artistic sense. It is a reference work, written in plain, efficient prose. But for modern scholars it is indispensable: it preserves the outlines of myths known to the ancients but lost to us in their original literary treatments, and it allows us to see how the Greeks themselves organised their mythological inheritance.