ABSTRACT
Clement, an Athenian and a Christian, records Philostephanus’s story in Protrepticus or The Exhortation to the Greeks. There is also a reference to a Pygmalion in Hyginus’s Fabulae. Various other aspects of the Pygmalion story take on special significance when it is placed within the context of the stories in the Metamorphoses. In the Middle Ages, the Pygmalion story is incorporated into two distinct mythographic conventions: the theological convention and the classical convention. There is some disagreement amongst scholars over the significance of the Pygmalion story in the Roman de la Rose. Sixteenth-century Europe saw a great increase in the number of vernacular prose and verse translations of the Metamorphoses. The eighteenth century saw a further increase in short references to Pygmalion, though there is only one British poem dealing solely with the subject of Pygmalion. .
