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In the context of Greek and Roman mythology, suppose I'm interested in finding whether two prominent mythical personages (deities, heroes or other figures) are related or not by some written narrative, reference to narrative or iconic representation, painted or sculptural.

Has some systematic indexing work of this kind been done, making it easy to find whether such relations exist or not, in all the available written and pictorial corpus of classical antiquity?

EDIT: That is, a binary index of relations where interaction is not limited to possible genealogical linkages between the characters involved.

exp8j
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  • I've seen lots, but the thing is, the myths and legends are not internally consistent. – Mary Oct 25 '20 at 17:18
  • @Mary They don't need to be internally consistent. Variations are acceptable. Thoroughness of the indexing is what matters. – exp8j Oct 26 '20 at 07:48
  • After the comment made by @Adinkra below, to make things clearer, in the text of the question I have changed "index" to "binary index" and "relationships" to "interactions". – exp8j Jan 15 '21 at 18:36
  • Amended my Answer accordingly – Adinkra Jan 15 '21 at 19:10

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As far as I'm aware, almost certainly not. There is no such index dedicated especially and specifically to whether any two (or more) characters from the mythology interact with each other (or with one another) or not.

I would say that the best one could do in approaching something approximate to this would be an encyclopaedia, in the use of which sometimes it's easier and other times more laborious to search out whether two characters ever interact in the mythology or not.

Particularly in order to answer certain StackExchange Mythology Questions I have to had to employ the use of such a resource, generally going by a combination of:

There's an "Enhanced by Google" Search function one can use inside the GML and Theoi websites to perform a scan limited to only those sites while inside them. It's definitely not as sophisticated as calling up a couple of names and finding a Yes or No response regarding their possible interaction. Sometimes you'd have to skim through a few dozen Search Results to determine the answer to your query.

Often enough the interaction in question might be something along the lines of "These two gods had altars next to each other in the agora of that other city over there," and that's it.

If one of the characters in question is significant enough, s\he will often have her/his own dedicated Page on Wikipedia, on the GML or on Theoi. I often default to Theoi, where I would then simply perform a Find-in-Page Search of that particular webpage to look for occurrences of the other personage's name regarding whom I'm wondering whether s\he interacted with the first personage in view here.

The chances are that if you don't find the interaction on Theoi then it doesn't occur in ancient sources, whether literary or artistic. There is, however, a lot of material in the corpus of what we refer to as Greco-Roman mythology, and I doubt that any one of the aforementioned resources, in isolation, suffices to cover absolutely every possible source, some of which can be pretty obscure.

Adinkra
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  • Although genealogical lineages were not what I had in mind when asking this question, they are obviously an important kind of relation, so thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions. What interests me lies more in the direction of narratives and actions of the personages involved, as e.g. the question whether there is a narrative where, for example, Ares and Hestia take part. But, as you say, asking for this kind of indexing is probably too much. – exp8j Jan 15 '21 at 16:13
  • I think I see what you're getting at. So is your question more along the lines of whether there's an index in which there's a sort of binary (yes vs. no) answer, at a glance, as to whether any 2 characters [says Ares & Hestia] interact in a narrative? – Adinkra Jan 15 '21 at 17:35
  • Yes, a binary index at least, and if possible ternary etc. – exp8j Jan 15 '21 at 18:03
  • To make it clearer, in the text of the question I have changed "index" to "binary index" and "relationships" to "interactions". – exp8j Jan 15 '21 at 18:32
  • Alright. I've updated my Answer per your Question Edit. – Adinkra Jan 15 '21 at 19:11
  • I think that with the digital tools currently available, the task may not be as difficult as it seems. The inital step would be to get the entire written classical corpus in some kind of text format that can be searched through with appropriate utilities. So is it possible to get to that? My initial searches in freely available material are a bit disappointing.. e.g. Proclus is missing from Perseus. I wonder whether the TLG full-corpus subscription is the only solution, at least for the Greek texts. – exp8j Jan 15 '21 at 19:46
  • Well, that's your 1st problem right there: unfortunately (for those of us who are really into searching out the really obscure stuff) the 1st step to which you make reference seems to be a long way off yet. Indeed, a great deal of the ancient sources have been translated into English (relatively important if, like me, you don't really read Ancient Greek or Latin) and digitised, and collected onto one platform or another, but there are perhaps hundreds of sources which are yet to be translated. – Adinkra Jan 15 '21 at 21:19
  • & some of the digitised material, from what I can tell, exists solely in the form of photographed facsimiles of old manuscripts, which, even if you do read older Greek or Latin, are therefore not digitally word-searchable (notwithstanding the issues one might have with the lack of a standardised keyboard equivalent of the older forms of Greek script, e.g.). – Adinkra Jan 15 '21 at 21:19
  • For me, 1 of the glaring omissions in terms of ways to look at the ancient sources is that a tonne of the different Scholia have never been translated, nor even collected into a single location online; and in some cases they preserve otherwise lost myths and legends. Having said all of that, if someone did indeed come up with what you're talking about, I would sure love it! – Adinkra Jan 15 '21 at 21:20