8vo. 2 volumes in 1: LVI,468;400,(112 indices) p. Modern cloth. 21 cm (Ref: Hoffmann 1,199/200; Dibdin 1,272/72: 'universally admired'; Moss 1,64; Brunet 1,345: 'Édition la plus estimée') (Condition: Paper yellowing. Some slight foxing) (Note: Heyne thoroughly revised and corrected his first edition and commentary, which was published in 1782-1783. 'Heyne for the first time managed to purge the text from the many errors that had been brought in by Aegius. (...) But his most important contribution is certainly his copious and still useful exegetical commentary'. (M. Huys, '125 years of scholarship of Apollodorus the Mythographer', in 'L'Antiquité Classique', 66 (1997), 1997, p. 321) The 'Library', a late antique work on Greek mythology, is nowadays attributed to one 'Pseudo-Apollodorus'. In his dissertation of 1873 the German classical scholar Carl Robert proved that this work cannot be identified or derived from any work of the Alexandrian scholar Apollodorus Atheniensis, who was born ca. 180 B.C. in Athens. Already the Dutch 17th century classical scholar Isaac Vossius had uttered the possibility of its inauthenticity. Carl Robert showed that the character of the 'Library' was totally alien from the spirit of Alexandrian scholarship. He describes the work as destined for use in school, and dates it to the first half of the 2nd century A.D. By critics of Robert it was objected that the schortcomings of the work were characteristic of the activity of an epitomator. Eduard Schwarz stated in an article in the RE (1894) that it was not a schoolbook, but that it was a manual aiming at the general instruction of an educated public. The Dutch scholar Marchinus van der Valk attemped in an article in REG 7 (1958), p. 100-168, a detailed investigation into the sources of the 'Library'. 'Among these sources he mainly focusses on the Argonautika of Apollonios of Rhodos, which Apollodorus would have consulted directly, Pherekydes (...) and Hellanikos.' According to Van der Valk the explicit references to many sources point to a direct dependency, and their uniform character is an indication of the deliberate concept of one author rather than of a second-rate production depending exclusively on mythological manuals. Further, Van der Valk derives from the artificial decency forced upon several legendary treatments, that the work was primarily destined for use at school, and dates it to the first century A.D. on the basis of the idiom'. § The worth of this unpretending manual lies in the preservation of older material, and it remains a valuable source for our knowledge on previous mythography and Hellenistic scholarship, and archaic poetry. Its usefulness for didactic purposes was already recognized in antiquity, and explains its popularity ever since the 'editio princeps' of 1555, published by the humanist Benedetto Egio of Spoleto, or in Latin Benedictus Aegius Spoletinus, who also added a Latin translation and some notes. All manuscripts of the 'Library' go back to one incomplete manuscript, which was copied for Cardinal Bessarion in the 15th century. Aegius boasts that he restored the mutilated text in its original splendor. But, 'alas by his hypercritical activity many 'Verschlimbesserungen' have intruded into the text'. (Source: M. Huys, '125 years of scholarship of Apollodorus the Mythographer', in 'L'Antiquité Classique', 66 (1997), 1997, p. 319-351)