To pass from the question of chronology to that of the authors origins, we must consider whether he shows any special interest in (or disregard for) particular areas of the Mediterranean world. Here a measure of caution is required; in a handbook devoted to the main early myths, there will inevitably be an emphasis on stories associated with the heartland of Greece and the Aegean. None the less, many readers have felt that the author is curiously neglectful of myths relating to Italy and the west; and some have detected a bias to the east. Apollodorus account of the life history of Heracles is broadly similar to that in the historical compilation by Diodorus of Sicily. Yet his coverage of Heracles adventures in Italy when returning with the cattle of Geryoneus (pp. 801) is very scanty when compared with the full account in Diodorus; and he makes no allusion to the tradition that Heracles was supposed to have visited the site of Rome. Indeed, he never mentions Rome or the Romans, and disregards the aspects of Greek mythology which were of most concern to them. Thus he tells how Aeneas escaped from the sack of Troy carrying his father on his back, but we would never gather from the Library that there were traditions connecting him with Latium and the origins of Rome. Although a similar attitude can be detected in other authors at that time and the matter raises questions of wider interest, with regard to the specific question of the authors origins we can surely conclude that it is most unlikely that he came from Italy or the west. Some have tried to draw more positive conclusions, but it is doubtful whether there is sufficient evidence to support them. Robert suggested that the author was an Athenian (like the Hellenistic Apollodorus); but the coverage of Athenian mythology, although quite extensive, is not disproportionate in terms of the place that Athenian myth occupied in the general tradition, and it can hardly be accepted that references to topographical features like the sea of Erechtheus (p. 130) are explicable only on grounds of local knowledge. Again, it could be argued that Apollodorus shows a special interest in the east, and it is quite possible that he lived there, but we cannot say more than that.
There is no suggestion in Photius review that he regarded the Library as an introductory work for schoolchildren or the uneducated, and the citations in the scholia show that in late antiquity at least it was used by scholars as a reference work. We have no corresponding evidence of how it was viewed in earlier times, or whether it was widely used. It may be suspected, however, that readers of much education would have preferred more solid fare, and scholars at that period would surely have found little use for an elementary work of this kind when they could refer to more scholarly and comprehensive
handbooks by the Hellenistic mythographers.
A modern reader leafing through the Library is likely to gain conflicting impressions about its general level and the kind of audience that the author would have had in mind when writing it. Unlike many of the mythographical works which survive from antiquity, this is not a specialist study, and the author is happy to recount the most familiar stories; and most of them are summarized quite briefly. If the Library is used merely as a mythological dictionary and consulted for the stories associated with the main heroes, the reader may feel that it is very elementary, containing little that any moderately educated ancient reader would not have known already. Thus the story of Perseus is summarized in three pages, that of Oedipus in about a page, and the plot of Sophocles Antigone in two sentences. Many have concluded that the Library was written as a primer for schoolchildren, or perhaps for semi-Hellenized adults in the eastern reaches of the Roman empire; such a view has been held by scholars whose opinion is worthy of respect (and some have advanced specific arguments in its favour, suggesting, for instance, that certain stories have been bowdlerized for a youthful audience).
On the other hand, if the Library is read consecutively, the reader may feel that it is not as elementary as all that. Within its brief confines it contains a remarkable quantity of information, and much that a reader with a fairly comprehensive knowledge of Greek mythology would not expect to hold in mind. Perhaps the work was intended not as a primer, but as an epitome of mythical history for a general if unsophisticated readership. As we have already observed, there was an extensive literature of this kind in the Roman period, and the part that popular handbooks and epitomes played in transmitting many aspects of Hellenic culture to a broad public should not be underestimated. For their knowledge of philosophy, for instance, many Greeks of that period would have relied on handbooks summarizing the opinions of the different schools on each of the standard questions. Works of such a kind may have been aimed at a relatively uncultivated audience, but they were not written specifically for use in schools.