Asclepiades of Tragilus ( el, Ἀσκληπιάδης) was an ancient Greek

literary critic Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

and

mythographer Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

of the 4th century BC, and a student of the Athenian orator

Isocrates Isocrates (; grc, Ἰσοκράτης ; 436–338 BC) was an ancient Greek rhetorician, one of the ten Attic orators. Among the most influential Greek rhetoricians of his time, Isocrates made many contributions to rhetoric and education throu ...

. His works do not survive, but he is known to have written the ''Tragodoumena'' (Τραγῳδούμενα, "The Subjects of Tragedy"), in which he discussed the treatment of myths in

Greek tragedy Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy. Greek tragedy is widely believed t ...

. The ''Tragodoumena'' is sometimes considered the first systematic mythography. Asclepiades summarized the plots of myths as dramatized in tragedy, and provided details and variants. He is one of the authors (= ''

FGrHist ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker'', commonly abbreviated ''FGrHist'' or ''FGrH'' (''Fragments of the Greek Historians''), is a collection by Felix Jacoby of the works of those ancient Greek historians whose works have been lost, but of w ...

'' 12) whose fragments were collected in

Felix Jacoby Felix Jacoby (; 19 March 1876 – 10 November 1959) was a German classicist and philologist. He is best known among classicists for his highly important work ''Fragmente der griechischen Historiker'', a collection of text fragments of ancient Gr ...

's ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker''. He is cited twice in the work traditionally known as the ''Library'' of Apollodorus. A gloss on

Vergil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

's phrase ''Idaeis cyparissis'' ("cypresses of

Ida Ida or IDA may refer to: Astronomy * Ida Facula, a mountain on Amalthea, a moon of Jupiter *243 Ida, an asteroid *International Docking Adapter, a docking adapter for the International Space Station Computing *Intel Dynamic Acceleration, a techn ...

") mentions that Asclepiades preserved a Celtic version of the myth of

Cyparissus In Greek mythology, Cyparissus or Kyparissos (Ancient Greek: Κυπάρισσος, "cypress") was a boy beloved by Apollo or in some versions by other deities. In the best-known version of the story, the favorite companion of Cyparissus was a tam ...

, in which a female Cyparissa is the daughter of a Celtic king named Boreas.Timothy P. Bridgman, ''Hyperboreans: Myth and History in Celtic-Hellenic Contacts'' (Routledge, 2005), p. 51.

References

Ancient literary critics Ancient Greek mythographers 4th-century BC Greek people {{ancientGreece-bio-stub