ABSTRACT

Apollodorus of Athens (c. 150 BC), one of the most knowledgeable authorities on Greek mythology in the Hellenistic period, searched the remotest corners of Greek literature for significant myths that would highlight the characteristics of individual gods and heroes. One day he came across an obscure epic poem called Meropis, which described in vivid detail how Athena killed and flayed the monstrous giant Asteros on the island of Kos and put on his impenetrable skin as a protective cloak. His curiosity aroused by the ‘peculiar mythical content’ (to idioma (es historias), he took copious notes which he eventually incorporated in his monumental survey of Greek religious beliefs entitled On the Gods. A century later the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus excerpted Apollo­ dorus’ work, or an existing compilation of it, and included a reference to the Meropis and to Athena’s primitive dress in his scathing attack on Greek mythology and on the anthropomorphic conception of divinity that underlies it. Athena’s Koan adventure does not surface again in the literature of later periods, even though the mythological material gathered by the Epicureans was widely used by the Christian apologists for equally polemical purposes.1