Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN LITERATURE AND ART 695
MYTHOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS AND THE STARS
We have seen how the mythological figures survived in astronomy and astrology,
and they were frequently depicted in astronomical and astrological manuscripts.
The ninth-century manuscripts of Aratus (in Cicero's Latin translation)
show Perseus still in recognizable classical form, with cap, sword, winged sandals,
and Gorgon's head, and ancient classical forms still appear in a few manuscripts
as late as the eleventh century.
Two other traditions, however, combined to change the classical gods beyond
recognition, the one Western and the other Eastern. In the West, the artist
would plot the position of a constellation and then link up the individual stars
in the form of the mythological figure whose name the constellation bore. Since
the artists were more interested in the pictorial qualities of the subject, the illustrations
were usually astronomically inaccurate. In the East, however, the approach
was scientifically more accurate, since the Arabs used Ptolemy's astronomical
work, which (by a corruption of the word megiste in the Greek title) they
called Almagest. The Arab artists therefore plotted the constellations accurately,
while the mythological figures took on new forms. Hercules appeared as an
Arab, with scimitar, turban, and Oriental trousers; Perseus carried, in place of
the Gorgon's head, a bearded demon's head, which gave its name Algol (Arabic
for "demon") to one of the stars in the constellation of Perseus. (See the sky-map
illustrated on p. 697.)
Some of these changes went back to Babylonian religion. In the Arab manuscripts
Mercury is a scribe and Jupiter a judge, just as in Babylonian mythology
the god Nebo had been a scribe and Marduk a judge. Even in the West, in
thirteenth-century Italian sculpture, Mercury appears as a scribe or teacher,
Jupiter as a monk or bishop, and other classical gods take on similar guises.
MYTHOLOGICAL HANDBOOKS AND THEIR ICONOGRAPHY
We have already mentioned the importance of handbooks in the survival of classical
mythology. In the later Middle Ages handbooks appeared giving detailed
instructions for the appearance of the gods, for it was important in astrology
and magic to have an accurate image of the divinity whose favor was needed.
One Arab handbook appeared in a Latin translation in the West after the tenth
century with the title Picatrix, and contained, besides magic rituals and prayers,
fifty detailed descriptions of gods. Some, like Saturn with "a crow's head and
the feet of a camel," were changed into Oriental monsters; but in some, for example,
Jupiter, who "sits on a throne and he is made of gold and ivory," the
classical form remains.
An important iconography in this period was the Liber Ymaginum Deorum
of "Albricus" (perhaps Alexander Neckham, who died in 1217), which was certainly
used by Petrarch in his description of the Olympian gods (Africa 3.
140-262), from which we give a short extract (140-146):