BIBLIOTHECA MYTHOLOGICA
This digital library complements the volume Images of the Pagan Gods: Papers of a Conference in Memory of Jean Seznec. It provides free electronic facsimiles of the main sources used by Seznec, as well as by the contributors to the memorial volume, to retrace the survival of the Ancient gods in the West.
The first section encompasses the principal mythological handbooks and compendia that preserved and transmitted knowledge of the Ancient gods from late-Antiquity to the 16th century. The other sections are pre-existing digital collections augmented by some volumes digitised for the occasion. They provide samples of some of the disciplines and fields of activities that secured the afterlife of Graeco-Roman mythology in the West: astrology and astronomy, festivals, pictorial symbols, illustrated editions of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the visual arts in general.
The section on astronomy and astrology includes the main arabic sources through which the planetary gods migrated before returning to the medieval Latin world from the 11th centry onwards. The section on festivals holds more than 100 festival books - to which should be added the important online collections of the British Library and Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. These texts record entries, weddings, pageants, funerals which almost invariably included mythological figures as decorations, symbolic images or even as actors. The section on pictorial symbols has been augmented by two key texts for Renaissance philosophical elaborations on symbolism and mythology: Horapollo's De Hieroglyphicis and Pierio Valeriano's Hieroglyphica.
The Metamorphoses of Ovid stand out not only as the largest antique collection of mythological stories but also as one of the most published and illustrated books of the Early Modern era. The section of illustrations to Ovid include the images of over 28 editions of the Metamorphoses, many collected by Warburg in preparation of an exhibition held in 1927. The collection includes electronic facsimiles of milestone editions such as Rusconi's Metamorphoseos vulgare (Venice 1522), Antonio Tempesta's influential graphic rendering (ed Antwerp 1606) as well as lesser known seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions. The last section on the visual arts includes two research collections of texts and links to texts. The first regroups the principal art and architectural treatises of the sixteenth-century, the second is a digital library of some of the most important printed witnesses of the rediscovery of Classical art.
Table of contents of the volume:
Images of the Pagan Gods: Papers of a Conference in Memory of Jean Seznec.
Follow this link for a free copy of J. Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (from the Internet Archive)
MYTHOGRAPHERS
Auctores mythographi Latini … curante Augustino van Staveren,... Amsterdam 1742 (200 mb)
Use the bookmark tab, in the pdf, to access individual authors and works:
Hyginus, Poetica astronomica, Fabularum Liber
Fulgentius, Mythologiae, De Allegoria Librorum Virgilii
Lactantius, Argumenta Metamorphoseon Ovidii
Albricus, De imaginibus deorum
Albricus, Allegoriae poeticae : seu de veritate expositione poeticarum fabularum libri quatuor Alberico londonensi authore nusquam antea impressi, Paris 1520.
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k527561 (from Gallica)
Boccaccio, Genealogia Deorum, Basel 1532. (120 mb)
Italian version: Geneaologia de gli Dei (From Bivio)
Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, De Deis Gentium..., Basel 1560. (130 mb)
Vincenzo Cartari, Le vere e nove imagini de gli dei delli antichi di Vicenzo Cartari Reggiano..., Padova 1615, [1st ed Venice 1556]. (139 mb)
Natale Conti, Mythologiae…, Padua 1616 [1st ed. Venice 1556]. (200 mb)
French version at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k578853 (from Gallica) Web resources and Library collections
History of Western Astrology - Bibliography
Bibliotheca Astrologica Latina
Complete list of digitised texts
Web resources and Library collections
FESTIVALS
Web resources and Library collections
Horapollo, De Hieroglyphicis, Basel 1518 [1st ed. Venice 1505]. (17 mb)
Pierio Valeriano, Hieroglyphica, Basel 1575 [1st ed. Basel 1556]. (250 mb)
French version (from Gallica): http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5541549k
Achille Bocchi, Symbolicarum quaestionum, de universo genere, quas serio ludebat, libri quinque, Bologna 1574 [1st ed Bologna 1555]. (49 mb)
Cristoforo Giarda, Bibliothecae Alexandrinae icones symbolicae elogiis illvstratae. Pars prior, Milan 1628. (60 mb)
Web resources and Library collections
ILLUSTRATIONS TO OVID'S METAMORPHOSES
Digitised illustrated editions of the Metamorphoses from the Warburg Institute Library
Iconos, a site dedicated to the iconography of Ovid's Metamorphoses
THE VISUAL ARTS
Sources of the History of Art
Web resources and Library collections
Survival of Ancient Art
Web resources and Library collections