Genealogia Deorum Gentilium
Genealogia deorum gentilium, known in English as On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles, is a mythography or encyclopedic compilation of the tangled family relationships of the classical pantheons of Ancient Greece and Rome, written in Latin prose from 1360 onwards by the Italian author and poet Giovanni Boccaccio.
[2] The full range of genealogies of the classical Gods are described in the fifteen books, drawing on the standard earlier works, especially the Liber imaginum deorum, a 12th-century treatise by the otherwise unknown Albricus (possibly Alexander Neckam), and the older so-called Vatican Mythographies.
These themselves drew on the late antique Christian Fulgentius, and writers of the actual period of classical paganism, especially Ovid and Statius.
No subsequent mythographer followed his method of organizing material, yet Boccaccio's Genealogia retained its prestige and was to remain the most important mythological manual until the late sixteenth century.
"[1] The next attempt at an equally comprehensive compilation on the subject of mythological genealogy would not come until 1548, when Giglio Gregorio Giraldi published his De deis gentium.
The Genealogia was unkindly described by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall as "a work, in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he ostentatiously sprinkled with Greek characters and passages, to excite the wonder and applause of his more ignorant readers" and "a work which, though now forgotten, has run through thirteen or fourteen editions",[3] although in fact there is evidence that Coleridge and Wordsworth read it together.
[4] Boccaccio was responsible for spreading the story, which he credited to Theodontius, that Demogorgon was the ancestor of all the heathen gods — based on a misspelled scholion to Statius, which had intended to claim ancestry for Plato's Demiurge.
Jupiter I has 13 children: Minerva I, Sol I, Apis, Diana I, Mercury I Tritopatreus, Ebuleus, Dionysus I, the last three called the Ariarches were the children of this first Jupiter and his own daughter Proserpina I, his child with Ceres I. Proserpina I was married to her brother Liber Pater and had Mercury II, who had Cupid I with his aunt Diana I.
Danaus sired 50 daughters called the Danaids which included Amymone, Debona who bore Electra to Atlas and Hypermnestra.
Aegyptus had 50 sons who were killed by their wives the Danaids, Lynceus was spared and with Hypermnestra sired Abas King of Argos, who was the father of Acrisius, Proetus and Iasius.
Proetus sired Merena, whilst Iasius fathered Atalanta, Amphion who bore Chloris wife of Neleus and Talaus.
Typhon whom despite having many monstrous progeny with Echidna, such as Cerberus and the Hydra has only two, some obscure Cypriot figure named Aeos the founder of Paphos and the Chimera.
Atlas sired the Hyades and Hyas on Aethra and the Pleiades on Pleione alongside Calypso and Cyllene mother of Mercury I. Prometheus was not only the father of Deucalion and Isis, but also the creator of Pandora who had Pyrrha with Epimetheus.
Extra detail is put into Boreas and his sons Calais and Zetes and daughter Harpalyce wife of Phineus, alongside Zephyrus.
Pallas is here conflated with the giant of the same name and father of Minerva II who killed him by flaying when he tried to rape her.
This book ends with the Gigantes and a detailed account mentioning the Gigantomachia, Nephilim which included Nimrod and Goliath, and a giant's skeleton recently discovered in Drepani which fell to pieces when it was touched.
With Antiope he was the father of Amphion and Zethus and their children The Niobids, Itylus and Thyius respectively, they also had a brother named Calathus.
