Antoninus Liberalis

Antoninus' only surviving work is the Metamorphoses (Metamorphṓseōn Synagogḗ, collection of transformations), a collection of forty-one very briefly summarised tales about mythical metamorphoses, written in prose, not verse. The literary genre of myths of transformations of men, women, heroes, and nymphs into plants and animals, springs, rocks and mountains, and stars were widespread and popular in the classical world. This work has more polished parallels in the better-known Metamorphoses of Ovid and in the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius. Like them, its sources, where they can be traced, are Hellenistic works, such as Nicander's Heteroeumena and the Ornithogonia ascribed to Boios. The work survives in a single manuscript of the late 9th century, now in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg. The manuscript, a collection of several works on geography, mythography, and other topics, was brought from Constantinople to Basel by John of Ragusa about 1437; it was bequeathed to the Dominican monastery at Basel after John's death in 1443, and to the University of Basel after the dissolution of the monastery in 1529. In 1553 the printer Hieronymus Froeben sold it to Otto Henry, Elector Palatine. In 1623, with the rest of the Palatine Library, it was sent to Rome as a gift to Pope Gregory IX, and in 1797, along with 500 other Vatican manuscripts, it was taken to Paris under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino. In 1816, it was restored to Heidelberg under the terms of the Congress of Vienna. The text of the Metamorphoses was first printed in Basel in 1568 by Guilielmus Xylander. Because three leaves have since disappeared from the manuscript, Xylander's edition is the only authority for the text of these passages. Many of the transformations in this compilation are found nowhere else, and some may simply be inventions of Antoninus. The manner of the narrative is a laconic and conversational prose: "this completely inartistic text," as Sarah Myers called it, offers the briefest summaries of lost metamorphoses by more ambitious writers, such as Nicander and Boios. Francis Celoria, who translated the work into English, regards the text as perfectly acceptable koine Greek, though with numerous hapax legomena; it is "grimly simple" and mostly devoid of grammatical particles which would convey humor or a narratorial persona.

• Illustration — The table of contents of the Metamorphoses in the Palatine manuscript (Pal. graec. 398, fol. 189v), late 9th century • Ctesylla (turns into a dove) • The Meleagrids (turned into guineafowls) • Hierax (turns into a hawk) • Cragaleus (turned into stone) • Aegypius (turned into a vulture) • Periphas (turned into an eagle) • Anthus (turned into a bird) • Lamia or Sybaris • Emathides (turned into birds) • Minyades • Aëdon or Nightingale • Cycnus or Swan • Aspalis • Munichus • Meropis • Oenoe (changed into a crane) • Leucippus • Eeropus or Bee-eater • The Thieves • Clinis • Polyphonte • Cerambus • Battus • Ascalabus • Metioche and Menippe • Hylas • Iphigeneia • Typhon • Galinthias (turned into weasel or cat) • Byblis (turns into a nymph) • The Messapians • Dryope • Alcmene • Smyrna • The Herdsmen • Pandareus • The Dorians • Wolf (turned into stone by Psamathe) • Arceophon (his lover turns into stone) • Britomartis • The Teumessian fox (fox turns into stone)

Antoninus Liberalis is recorded as writer, grammarian and mythographer.