Heraclitus the Mythographer, On Unbelievable Stories

This chapter reviews the evidence for the date, authorship, and context of Heraclitus’s Peri Apiston (On Unbelievable Stories; De Incredibilibus). Little can be said with certainty, but we are probably dealing with a 1st- or 2nd-century AD text, the only work by this Heraclitus to survive. The text is a valuable document for hermeneutic practices in Greek culture in the imperial period in that it shows both points of continuity with notable forerunners and distinctive innovations. The chapter discusses the relationship between this text and the earlier one of Palaephatus. It examines the narrative structure of the Peri Apiston text and the evidence this provides for an ancient readership. It describes the various hermeneutic approaches apparent in the text—rationalization, allegory, Euhemerism, and etymology—and observes that they are not explicitly differentiated from one another.