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Palaephatus (Greek: Παλαίφατος) was the original author of a rationalizing text on Greek mythology, the work of paradoxography ''On Incredible Tales'' ( ''Peri apiston (historion)''; (ラテン語:Incredibilia)), which survives in a (probably corrupt) Byzantine edition. This work consists of an introduction and 52 brief sections on various Greek myths. The first 45 have a common format: a brief statement of a wonder tale from Greek mythology, usually followed by a claim of disbelief ("This is absurd" or "This is not likely" or "The true version is..."), and then a sequence of every-day occurrences which gave rise to the wonder-story through misunderstanding. The last seven are equally brief retellings of myth, without any rationalizing explanation. Palaephatus' date and name are uncertain; many scholars have concluded that Palaephatus is a pseudonym; the evidence, such as it is, is all of it consistent with the late fourth century BC. ==''On Incredible Things''== Palaephatus' introduction sets his approach between those who believe everything that is said to them and those more subtle minds who believe that none (Greek mythology ) ever happened. He sets up two premises: that every story derives from some past event, and a principle of uniformity, that "anything which existed in the past now exists and will exist hereafter"; this he derives from the philosophers Melissus and Lamiscus of Samos. So there must be some probable series of events behind all myth; but the "poets and early historians" made them into wonderful tales to amaze their audience. Palaephatus then claims to base what follows on personal research, going to many places and asking older people what happened. A typical, if short,〔This is six lines of Greek prose; the longest is about eighty, and the median is about twenty〕 example of Palaephatus' method and tone is his handling of Callisto: :"The story about Callisto is that while she was out hunting she turned into a bear. What I maintain is that she too during a hunt found her way into a grove of trees where a bear happened to be and was devoured. Her hunting companions saw her going into the grove, but not coming out; they said that the girl turned into a bear." (§14, tr. Stern) As usual in Palaephatus, the miracle is told baldly and without context, and the action of the gods is not mentioned; in the traditional story, Artemis transforms Callisto, because she was an unfaithful priestess. Palaephatus rarely mentions the gods,〔Stern has a list of eight mentions, but most are insignificant (that, for example, Io was a priestess of Hera)〕 and when he discusses Actaeon, his statement of disbelief is: "Artemis can do whatever she wants, yet it is not true that a man became a deer or a deer a man" (§6, tr. Stern); his principle of uniformity applies to human beings. Jacob Stern distinguishes this from the more wide-ranging rationalism of Euhemerus: Palaephatus retains Callisto and Actaeon as historic human beings; rationalism extended to the gods can make them deified human beings or personifications of natural forces or of the passions, but does not leave them gods.〔Jacob Stern, "Heraclitus the Paradoxographer: Περὶ Ἀπίστων, 'On Unbelievable Tales'" ''Transactions of the American Philological Association 133.1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 51-97.〕 Palaephatus uses four principal devices for explaining the wonders of myth, and a number of minor devices: *The monster or animal was actually a man or thing bearing that name: Cadmus didn't fight a dragon, but a King of Thebes named Draco, who had some ivory tusks; his followers scattered abroad with the tusks, and raised armed men against Thebes (§4). Scylla was a pirate ship with an image (presumably of a dog) on her prow, which attacked Ulysses and inflicted casualties (§20). Hercules attacked a fort named Hydra. When Lernos learned about Hercules he called for reinforcements and troops were sent from Caria. Among these troops was a warrior by the name of Carcinos (). *Other double meanings: ''Mēlon'' in Greek means both "sheep" and "apple"; so the real story was that Hercules raided a flock of sheep of especially fine, "golden", quality from the daughters of one Hesperus of Miletus; but the poets prefer the golden apples of the Hesperides (§18). Geryon and Cerberus didn't have three heads, they came from Tricarenia, a city, whose name means "three-headed" and which Palaephatus has invented for the purpose. ($24, 39) Similarly, Bellerophon killed, not the monstrous Chimaera, but the lion and the serpent who lived by a fiery chasm on Mount Chimaera in Lycia (by burning down the surrounding forest). Mt. Chimaera is called that by other authors, and is not Palaephatus' invention. (§28) *Metaphorical expressions which became widespread, and which the poets then took literally: Actaeon wasn't eaten by his dogs; he spent so much on them that "His dogs are devouring Actaeon" became proverbial (§6). A statue of Niobe was put up over her children's grave; passersby began to speak of "the stone Niobe". (§8) Amphion and Zethus would only play if their hearers would work on the walls of Thebes; only in that sense were the walls "built by a lyre", and the addition that the stones moved themselves is fiction. (§41) *When things were first invented, people saw them as even more wonderful than they were: The Centaurs were not half-man, half-horse; they were the first to learn to ride. (§ 1) Lynceus could see underground, because he was the first miner, and invented the miner's lamp. (§9) Daedalus was the first to make statues with their feet apart, so men said his statues "walked". (§21) And Medea didn't boil old men to make them young; she invented hair-dye and the sauna. Poor feeble Pelias just died in the steam-bath. (§ 43) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Palaephatus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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