human
Can you continue this poem for me?
  Vol. I--Books I-VII
Copyright, 1899, By David McKay
The Metamorphoses of Ovid are a compendium of the Mythological
connected with the learning, traditions, manners, and customs of
To render the work, which, from its nature and design, must, of
explanations, the reader will not be surprised at the absence of
Chaos is divided by the Deity into four Elements: to these their
Influenced by the example of the Muses, Pallas determines on the
Up to the age of fifty Ovid had lived a life of prosperity and
coincident with this publication was the discovery of the scandal
My design leads me to speak of forms changed into new bodies. Ye
new forms;’ and they fancy that there is a certain beauty in the
transposition of words. This supposition is perhaps based rather
accidental; while the passage may be explained without any
reference to Hypallage, as the word ‘forma’ is sometimes used to
signify the thing itself; thus the words ‘formæ deorum’ and
‘ferarum’ are used to signify ‘the Gods,’ or ‘the wild beasts’
themselves.]
‘adspirate’ is a metaphor taken from the winds, which, while they
sufficiently long or elaborate for a work of so grave and
dignified a nature as the Metamorphoses.]
God reduces Chaos into order. He separates the four elements, and
account of his supposed father, Hyperion, who was one of the
Titans. Hyperion is thought to have been the first who, by
from the Greek φοῖβος, ‘shining,’ and as being the sister of
Oceanus and Doris, and the wife of Neptune, God of the Sea. Being
ocean itself.]
operations are ascribed all those phenomena which it is found
difficult or impossible to explain upon known and established
principles. In the present instance it may be considered to mean
natura,’ ‘God, or in other words, nature.’]
called ‘convex,’ from being supposed to assume the same shape as
the terrestrial globe which they surround.]
be here understood in the presence of ‘infima,’ or as signifying
‘last,’ or ‘lowest,’ in a strict philosophical sense, for that
would contradict the account of the formation of the world given
by Hesiod, and which is here closely followed by Ovid; indeed, it
solidum orbem.’ The meaning seems to be, that the waters possess
the lowest place only in respect to the earth whereon we tread,
and not relatively to the terrestrial globe, the supposed centre
of the system, inasmuch as the external surface of the earth in
It is clear that this system was but a confused and disfigured
He commanded the plains, too, to be extended, the valleys to sink
either these he placed as many more, and gave them a temperate
climate, heat being mingled with cold.
expression the Poet perhaps may intend to intimate that the God
stream of Arethusa, the Lycus in Asia, the Erasinus in Argolis,
appear again and discharge their waters into the sea.]
considered as being remarkably sublime and appropriate, and
serving well to express the ease wherewith an infinitely powerful
beauty here that was long since remarked by Longinus, one of the
most celebrated critics among the ancients, in the words used by
Moses, ‘And God said, Let there be light, and there was light,’
divided the heavens into five parallel circles. First, the
equinoctial, which lies in the middle, between the poles of the
earth, and obtains its name from the equality of days and nights
on the earth while the sun is in its plane. On each side are the
two tropics, at the distance of 23 deg. 30 min., and described by
the summer and winter solstices. That on the north side of the
equinoctial is called the tropic of Cancer, because the sun
describes it when in that sign of the ecliptic; and that on the
south side is, for a similar reason, called the tropic of
Capricorn. Again, at the distance of 23½ degrees from the poles
are two other parallels called the polar circles, either because
they are near to the poles, or because, if we suppose the whole
frame of the heavens to turn round on the plane of the
equinoctial, these circles are marked out by the poles of the
ecliptic. By means of these parallels, astronomers have divided
divides into two equal parts. On each side of this are the
temperate zones, which extend from the tropics to the two polar
circles. And lastly, the portions enclosed by the polar circles
make up the frigid zones. As the planes of these circles produced
heavens, astronomers have conceived five zones upon the earth,
corresponding to those in the heavens, and bounded by the same
circles.]
ecliptic in which the sun moves, cuts the equator in two opposite
revolution of this circle, must in that time be twice vertical to
uninhabitable. Modern discovery has shown that this is not the
case as to a considerable part of the torrid zone, though with
some parts of it our acquaintance is still very limited.]
frigid zones. For as the sun never approaches these nearer than
the tropic on that side, and is, during one part of the year,
removed by the additional extent of the whole torrid zone, his
rays must be very oblique and faint, so as to leave these tracts
exposed to almost perpetual cold.]
zones, lying between the torrid and the frigid, partake of the
character of each in a modified degree, and are of a middle
temperature between hot and cold. Here, too, the distinction of
the seasons is manifest. For in either temperate zone, when the
sun is in that tropic, which borders upon it, being nearly
vertical, the heat must be considerable, and produce summer; but
degrees, his rays will strike but faintly, and winter will be the
being so called from its name, because it blows from the east. As
rises eastward, she was supposed to have her habitation in the
eastern quarter of the world; and often, in the language of
ancient poetry, her name signifies the east.]
learn that Nabath, the son of Ishmael, with his eleven brothers,
call their capital Petra. Tacitus, in his Annals (Book ii.
ch. 57), speaks of them as having a king. Perhaps the term
‘Nabathæa regna’ implies here, generally, the whole of Arabia.]
called by a Greek derivation because they cherish and enliven
of Scythia, the ancients generally comprehended all the countries
our time by the name of Charles’s Wain. Boreas, one of the names
of ‘Aquilo,’ or the ‘north wind,’ is derived from a Greek word,
signifying ‘an eddy.’ This name was probably given to it from its
Mediterranean sea on the coast of France and Italy, it generally
brings with it clouds and rain.]
doubt what the Poet here means by the ‘forms of the Gods.’ Some
think that the stars are meant, as if it were to be understood
that they are forms of the Gods. But it is most probably only a
poetical expression for the Gods themselves, and he here assigns
the heavens as the habitation of the Gods and the stars; these
last, according to the notion of the Platonic philosophers being
either intelligent beings, or guided and actuated by such.]
‘Cesserunt nitidis habitandæ piscibus;’ Clarke translates ‘fell
to the neat fishes to inhabit.’]
chapter of Genesis, ver. 28. ‘And God said unto them--_have
dominion_ over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
Genesis, is the last work of the Creator, and was, for the same
purpose, that man might have dominion over the other animated
works of the creation.]
Some writers have labored to prove that this Prometheus, of the
mankind how to produce fire from the flint and steel.
“tuba” was a straight trumpet, while the ‘lituus’ was bent into a
trumpet, and that it was employed by Romulus when he proclaimed
the title of his newly-founded city. Acro says that it was
peculiar to the cavalry, while the ‘tuba’ belonged to the
The Age of Brass succeeded, as the third {in order}, after these;
And not only was the rich soil required to furnish corn and due
{Deities} to abandon the Earth, {now} drenched in slaughter.
signifies among other things, a vein or track of metal as it lies
carinæ.’ This line is translated by Clarke, ‘The keel-pieces
bounced over unknown waves.’]
the earth.]
more by bribes than the sword, and used to say, that he deemed no
parents were likely to die, and to leave them their property.]
Justice. On leaving the earth, she was supposed to have taken her
The Poet here informs us, that during the Golden Age, a perpetual
Olympus, and struck Ossa away from Pelion, that lay beneath it.
While the dreadful carcasses lay overwhelmed beneath their own
Pelion. These the Giants are said to have heaped one on another,
in order to scale heaven.]
The war of the giants, which is here mentioned, is not to be
confounded with that between Jupiter and the Titans, who were
inhabitants of heaven. The fall of the angels, as conveyed by
tradition, probably gave rise to the story of the Titans; while,
perhaps, the building of the tower of Babel may have laid the
foundation of that of the attempt by the giants to reach heaven.
There is a way on high, easily seen in a clear sky, and which,
gives a description of the court of heaven; and supposing the
galaxy, or Milky Way, to be the great road to the palace of
Jupiter, places the habitations of the Gods on each side of it,
and adjoining the palace itself. The mythologists also invented a
milk of Juno flowing from the mouth of Hercules, when suckled by
her. Aristotle, however, suspected what has been since confirmed
Jupiter as one, they were twelve in number, and are enumerated by
of Jupiter, the sanction by which he confirms his decrees, is an
idea taken from Homer; by whom it is so vividly depicted at the
metu tremefecit Olympum.’]
duration of their existence depending upon the life of particular
matter of doubt whether he here refers to the conspiracies of
Brutus and Cassius against Julius Cæsar, or whether to that
against Augustus, which is mentioned by Suetonius, in the
probably this is the circumstance here alluded to.]
determination.”
Cyllene, was a mountain of Arcadia, sacred to Mercury, who was
people of Epirus, on the eastern side of the Ambracian gulf. Ovid
Molossus, the son of Neoptolemus, long after the time of Lycaon.
Besides, as Burmann observes, who could believe that ‘wars could
punishment was awarded to the Penates, or household Gods of
Lycaon, for taking such a miscreant under their protection.]
actions of men.]
Almighty for his deed of blood.
related by the Poet. This solution is given by Pausanias, in his
Arcadica. We are also told by that historian, and by Suidas, that
The standing corn is beaten down, and the expectations of the
ages, corn or wheaten flour, was the customary offering to the
Deities, and not frankincense, which was introduced among the
luxuries of more refined times. Ovid is consequently guilty of an
informs us that the Sibyls predicted that the world should perish
Quæstiones Naturales, mentions the same destined termination of
the present state of the universe. It was a doctrine of the Stoic
universe would ensue.]
sinusque,’ is quaintly translated by Clarke, ‘his wings and the
plaits of his coat drop.’]
swimming among the sheep without devouring them. Seneca is,
however, too severe upon our author in saying that he is trifling
sheep and wolves are doing: for he gravely means to say, that the
Pausanias makes mention of five deluges. The two most celebrated
represented by Deucalion and Pyrrha. Both Noah and Deucalion were
region of Bœotia; and Actæa was an ancient name of Attica, from
ἄκτη, the sea-shore.]
a river near Delphi. There was another Corycian cave in Cilicia,
the name of the shell-fish from which the Tyrian purple, so much
valued by the ancients, was procured. Some suppose that the
meaning here is, that Triton had his shoulders tinted with the
purple color of the murex. It is, however, more probable that the
Tritons, or minor sea gods. The one mentioned here, the chief
Triton, was fabled to be the son of Neptune and Amphitrite, who
always preceded Neptune in his course, and whose arrival he was
wont to proclaim by the sound of his shell. He was usually
represented as swimming, with the upper part of his body
‘Buccina,’ or, as we call it, ‘the conch shell,’ was a kind of
horn, or trumpet, made out of a shell, called ‘buccinum.’ It was
sometimes artificially curved, and sometimes straight, retaining
the original form of the shell. The twisted form of the shell was
shell. It was chiefly used among the Romans, to proclaim the
watches of the day and of the night, which watches were thence
called ‘buccina prima,’ ‘secunda,’ etc. It was also blown at
funerals, and at festive entertainments, both before sitting down
‘buccinæ’ were fixed on the roof of the temple of Saturn.]
was ‘to sound the retreat,’ as the signal for the soldiers to
cease fighting, and to resume their march.]
terseness and brevity, as depicting by their short detached
sentences the instantaneous effect produced by the commands of
Neptune in reducing his dominions to a state of order.]
Epimetheus being the sons of Iapetus. It is in an extended sense
that he styles her ‘sister,’ she being really his cousin.]
the story of his father, Prometheus, having formed men of clay,
and animated them with fire stolen from heaven.]
Deucalion and Pyrrha re-people the earth by casting stones behind
pavement. And thus they said:
Cephisus rises on Mount Parnassus, and flows near Delphi.]
custom of the ancients, before entering a temple, either to
sprinkle themselves with water, or to wash the body all over.]
worship, either as a mark of humility, or, according to Plutarch,
interrupt the performance of the rites.]
propensity for punning, he alludes to the use of the word ‘vena,’
The Earth, being warmed by the heat of the sun, produces many
for its inundations, which happen regularly every year, and
which, settling upon the land, enrich it, and continually
reinvigorate it.]
Diomedes; others, again, say by Eurylochus the Thessalian; and
others, by Amphictyon, or Adrastus. The Pythian games were
celebrated near Delphi, on the Crissæan plain, which contained a
race-course, a stadium of 1000 feet in length, and a theatre, in
which the musical contests took place. They were once held at
Athens, by the advice of Demetrius Poliorcetes, because the
Ætolians were in possession of the passes round Delphi. They
were most probably originally a religious ceremonial, and were
perhaps only a musical contest, which consisted in singing a hymn
cithara. In later times, gymnastic and equestrian games and
exercises were introduced there. Previously to the 48th Olympiad,
year; after that period they were held at the end of every fourth
time of the Emperor Julian they still continued to be held.]
prize which was originally given to the conquerors in the Pythian
The story of the serpent Python, being explained on philosophical
The Delian {God}, proud of having lately subdued the serpent, had
properties of simples are subjected to me. Ah, wretched me! that
virgin; he swift with hopes, she with fear.
presented to the Latian chieftains, when the joyous voice of the
soldiers shall sing the song of triumph, and the long procession
from having been born in the Isle of Delos, in the Ægean Sea. The
the hair. It was worn by maidens and by married women also; but
character, or even by the ‘libertinæ,’ or female slaves who had
been liberated; so that it was not only deemed an emblem of
the Gods of Marriage; hence the name ‘Hymen’ was given to the
union of two persons in marriage.]
that it was the custom in the bridal procession to carry five
torches before the bride, on her way to the house of her husband.
hearth of the bride, and was borne before her by a boy, whose
parents were alive. The torch was also used at funerals, for the
purpose of lighting the pile, and because funerals were often
nocturnal ceremonies. Hence the expression of Propertius,--
‘Vivimus inter utramque facem,’ ‘We are living between the two
torches.’ Originally, the ‘tædæ’ seem to have been slips or
lengths of resinous pine wood: while the ‘fax’ was formed of a
bundle of wooden staves, either bound by a rope drawn round them
in a spiral form, or surrounded by circular bands at equal
distances. They were used by travellers and others, who were
who has thrown his torch there on the approach of morning.]
of Ionia, famed for a temple and oracle of Apollo, and near which
cultivators of the medical art pretended to nothing beyond an
allegorically saying that Apollo, or the Sun, was the discoverer
of the healing art.]
occurs in the Heroides, v. 149, ‘Me miseram, quod amor non est
medicabilis herbis.’]
represented as a youth, and was supposed never to grow old. The
Scholiast on the Thebais of Statius, b. i., v. 694, says, ‘The
here mentioned, to account for his ardent pursuit of the flying
here of the flight of Apollo after Daphne, to that of the
greyhound after the hare, is considered to be very beautifully
Forest, has evidently imitated this passage, where he describes
‘Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly,
When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky;
Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves,
When through the clouds he drives the trembling doves;
As from the God she flew with furious pace,
Or as the God more furious urged the chase.
Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears;
Now close behind, his sounding steps she hears;
And now his shadow reach’d her as she run,
His shadow lengthened by the setting sun;
And now his shorter breath, with sultry air,
Pants on her neck, and fans her parting hair.’
The greyhound was probably called ‘canis Gallicus,’ from having
been originally introduced into Italy from Gaul. ‘Vertagus’ was
their Gallic name, which we find used by Martial, and Gratian in
virgo est’ is translated by Clarke, ‘So is the God and the young
lady;’ indeed, he mostly translates ‘virgo,’ ‘young lady.’]
‘Remanet nitor unus in illa,’ ‘her neatness alone continues in
the instrument of Apollo, were crowned with laurel, in the scenic
wreathed with laurel; and after the time of Julius Cæsar, the
Roman general, when triumphing, wore a laurel wreath on his head,
the civic crown of oak leaves which, by order of the Senate, was
placed before the gate of the Palatium, where Augustus Cæsar
resided, with branches of laurel on either side of it.]
congratulate, or whether console the parent; the poplar-bearing
Spercheus, and the restless Enipeus, the aged Apidanus, the
gentle Amphrysus, and Æas, and, soon after, the other rivers,
later name.]
Thessaly, proverbial for its pleasantness and the beauty of its
scenery. The river Peneus ran through it, but not with the
violence which Ovid here depicts; for Ælian tells us that it runs
situate on the confines of Thessaly.]
spray, which in the fineness of its particles resembles smoke.]
stream, flowing at the foot of Mount Æta into the Malian Gulf,
and on whose banks many poplars grew.]
Othrys, and runs through Thessaly. Virgil (Georgics, iv. 468)
calls it ‘Altus Enipeus,’ the deep Enipeus.]
stream of the Enipeus at Pharsalia, flows into the Peneus. It is
supposed by some commentators to be here called ‘senex,’ aged,
from the slowness of its tide. But where it unites the Enipeus it
having been known and celebrated by the poets from of old.]
through Epirus and Thessaly, and discharging itself into the
Ionian sea.]
now known as the Naio. It took its rise either in Lycæus or
Artemisium, mountains of Arcadia. Stephens, however, thinks that
Lycæus was a mountain of Argolis.]
Argive territory, where the poets say that the dragon with seven
heads, called Hydra, which was slain by Hercules, had made his
haunt. It is not improbable that the pestilential vapors of this
spot were got rid of by means of its being drained under the
superintendence of Hercules, on which fact the story was founded.
flowing stream.]
The Greek authors, Apollodorus, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and
Jupiter, having changed Io into a cow, to conceal her from the
hair. After he had put these things in order, the son of Jupiter
The keeper appointed by Juno, charmed by the sound of this new
abundant for thy flock; and thou seest, too, that the shade is
the words, ‘nitentem juvencam,’ a neat heifer.]
manebant.’ This is a metaphorical expression, taken from military
station, when they keep watch and ward.]
received among the constellations.]
called ‘Petasus.’ It had broad brims, and was not unlike the
‘causia,’ or Macedonian hat, except that the brims of the latter
were turned up at the sides.]
explanation of each circumstance attending them, either upon a
philosophical, or an historical principle of solution.
Then the God says, “In the cold mountains of Arcadia, among the
both a mountain and a city of Arcadia, in the Peloponnesus.]
whose names was Ortygia, from the quantity of quails, ὄρτυγες,
there found.]
Arcadia, flowing into the Alpheus: its banks were covered with
vast quantities of reeds. Ovid here calls its stream ‘placidum;’
whereas in the fifth book of the Fasti, l. 89, he calls it
‘rapax,’ ‘violent;’ and in the second book of the Fasti, l. 274,
its waters are said to be ‘citæ aquæ,’ swift waters. Some
produce of the banks of the River Ladon, from which circumstance
Syrinx may have been styled the daughter of that river.
The Cyllenian God being about to say such things, perceived that
called from Cyllene, in Arcadia, where he was born.]
translates ‘Adopertaque lumina somno,’ ‘and his peepers covered
with sleep.’]
consecrated to her.
Io, terrified and maddened with dreadful visions, runs over many
To her, at length, Epaphus is believed to have been born from the
and briskly wends his way to the rising of his sire.
‘Pellicis Argolicæ,’ ‘of the Grecian miss.’]
cultivation of flax.]
book, tells us, that this son of Jupiter, by Io, was the same as
that Epaphus was the son of Io, by Telegonus, who married her.]
the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.]
marrying the Nymph Clymene, was either the stepfather of Phaëton,
the time of Ovid, was generally looked upon as one of the regions
sidereis,’ means here the ‘heat,’ or ‘fire of the sun,’ the sun
being considered as a ‘sidus,’ or ‘luminous heavenly body.’]
killed Argus with a stone, and turned Hierax into a spar-hawk.
sounding {with his shell}, and the changing Proteus, and Ægeon,
garment, Phœbus was seated on a throne sparkling with brilliant
sometimes he looks back upon the East. Ignorant what to do, he is
once most famed for its springs; and Helicon, the resort of the
Virgin {Muses}, and Hæmus, not yet {called} Œagrian. Ætna burns
be despoiled of its snows, and Mimas, and Dindyma, and
Mycale, and Cithæron, created for {the performance of} sacred
waters of Pirene. Nor do rivers that have got banks distant in
situation, remain {secure}; Tanais smokes in the midst of its
waters, and the aged Peneus, and Teuthrantian Caïcus, and rapid
Ismenus, with Phocean Erymanthus, and Xanthus again to burn,
and yellow Lycormas, and Mæander, which sports with winding
streams, and the Mygdonian Melas, and the Tænarian Eurotas. The
Alpheus boils; the banks of Spercheus burn; and the gold which
channels, without any stream. The same fate dries up the Ismarian
penetrates into Tartarus, and startles the Infernal King with his
survives, and provide for the preservation of the universe.”
with Briareus. According to another account, which Ovid here
follows, he was a sea God, the son of Oceanus and Terra.]
the wife of Nereus, and the mother of the fifty Nereids.]
the ocean itself.]
this line,--“Add, too, that the heaven was whisked round with a
continual rolling.”]
Sagittarius: while others say that Crotus, or Croto, the son of
Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses, was thus honored.]
is some obscurity in this passage, arising from the mode of
in the plane of the equator. This last is what he calls ‘directos
namely, the two polar circles, the two tropics, and the
equinoctial. The latter runs exactly in the middle, between the
other two circles, so that the expression must be understood to
mean, ‘pursue not your way directly through that circle which is
the middlemost of the five, but observe the track that cuts it
renders these lines.--‘Thus does the chariot give jumps into the
air without its usual weight, and is kicked up on high, and is
like one empty.’]
Clarke’s translation of these two lines,--‘They say, too, that
you, Boötes, scowered off in a mighty bustle, although you were
but slow, and thy cart hindered thee.’]
range which ran through the middle of Cilicia, in Asia Minor.]
mountain of Lydia, famed for its wines and saffron. Pactolus,
a stream with sands reputed to be golden, took its rise there.]
divided Thessaly from Doris and Phocis; famed for the death of
Hercules on one of its ridges.]
Balkan range, was a lofty chain of mountains running through
own, caused them to be redoubled.]
now called San Juliano. On it, a magnificent temple was erected,
in honor of Venus.]
Ionian Sea. It was of very great height; whence Homer calls it
ὑψίκρημνος.]
Phrygia, near Troy, sacred to Cybele, the mother of the Gods.]
slighting the worship of Bacchus.]
France from Italy.]
blackness of the African tribes was produced by the heat of the
turned black by the heat thereof, became of black appearance
in considerable obscurity.]
Mauritania and Cyrene. The Greek writers, however, often use the
word to signify the whole of Africa. Servius gives a trifling
derivation for the name, in saying that Libya was so called,
because λείπει ὁ ὕετος, ‘it is without rain.’]
king of Thebes, was transformed.]
near Lerna, into which the Nymph, Amymone, the daughter of Lycus,
spring Pyrene, of extreme brightness and purity and sacred to the
Arcadia, which, rising in a mountain of that name, fell into the
conflagration of that city.]
Ætolia, which was afterwards known by the name of Evenus.]
flowing between Lydia and Caria; it was said to have 600 windings
rivers of Thrace, Thessaly, and Asia, on account of the darkness
of the color of their waters; the name was derived from the Greek
river of Laconia, which flowed under the walls of the city of
Sparta, and discharged itself into the sea near the promontory of
‘Basilipotamo,’ or ‘king of streams.’]
Asia Minor, which flowed near Antioch.]
Cappadocia, near which the Amazons were said to dwell.]
rivers in Asia, and discharges itself into the Persian Gulf; and
falling into the Euxine Sea.]
its source to the confines of Germany; and thence, in its course
were rivers of Thrace. Ismarus was a mountain of that country,
famous for its vines.]
country,’ was a general name of not only Spain and Gaul, but even
France. The Padus, or Po, and the Tiber, are rivers of Italy.]
of islands in the Ægean Sea, surrounding Delos as though with a
circle, whence their name.]
things.’ So Virgil calls it ‘omniparens.’]
Mauritania, which, by reason of its height, was said to support
the heavens.]
chaos antiquum confundimur,’ ‘We are then jumbled into the old
chaos again.’]
If we were to regard this fable solely as an allegory intended to
command of Joshua, may have been the foundation of the story. St.
Plutarch and Tzetzes tell us that Phaëton was a king of the
The sisters of Phaëton are changed into poplars, and their tears
become amber distilling from those trees.
complaints; and they lie scattered about the tomb.
Thence tears flow forth; and amber distilling from the new-formed
Naiads of Italy. They were by name Phaëthusa, Lampetie, and
perhaps, in this line some faint reference to a tradition of the
sun having, in the language of Scripture, ‘stood still upon
Gibeon, in his course, by the command of Joshua, when dispensing
the divine vengeance upon the Amorites,’ Joshua, x. 13. Or of the
Cycnus, the son of Sthenelus, was present at this strange event;
Ethiopians, as Ovid, in the next line, says was the case. This
overcome with grief, which gave rise to the story that they were
Phaëton and his sisters was utterly unknown to the inhabitants of
chastity.
But the omnipotent father surveys the vast walls of heaven, and
generation had {ever} cut. Here she puts her quiver off from her
perceived it.
as presiding over and worshipped in the places where three roads
met, which were called ‘trivia.’ Being known as Diana on earth,
the Moon in the heavens, and Proserpine in the infernal regions,
she was represented at these places with three faces; those of a
horse, a dog, and a female; the latter being in the middle.]
{Thus} she spoke; and seizing her straight in front by the hair,
There was no one more beauteous in all Hæmonia than Larissæan
too familiarly, renders ‘importuna,’ ‘plaguy baggage.’]
version would have been, perhaps, more appropriate than in the
present instance.]
given at the end of the story, we may here add the curious one
offered by Palæphatus. He says that Calisto was a huntress who
that she had been transformed into a bear.]
‘habili curru,’ ‘her neat chariot.’]
of Thessaly, and was situate on the river Peneus.]
adulterium Phœbeius,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘but the Phœban
bird found out her pranks.’]
within the Arctic Circle, never sets.
violence, and followed me. I fled, and I left the firm shore, and
‘contention,’ and ‘earth,’ Strabo imagines that he was the son of
informs us, that the deformity of his legs gave occasion to the
Nyctimene having entertained a criminal passion for her father,
informing him of the infidelity of his mistress.
When he found that these attempts were made in vain, and that the
staff, with which the player used to strike the strings of the
lyre, or cithara, on which he was playing.]
talking too much. If they are based upon some events which really
worshipped.
Apollo, or of Oceanus, but is supposed not to have been the same
person that is mentioned by Apollodorus as the mother of the
prophet Tiresias.]
countries of Peloponnesus; the former was on the northwest, and
the latter on the southwest side of it.]
cities named Pylos in Peloponnesus. One was in Elis, another in
Messenia, and the third was situate between the other two. The
the father of Nestor.]
means that Battus was changed into one individual stone, which
afterwards was called ‘index.’ Lactantius, by his words, seems to
The Centaurs, fabulous monsters, half men and half horses, were
excellent musician and a good astronomer, as we learn from Homer,
Mercury, falling in love with Herse, the daughter of Cecrops,
approaching, and she ventured to ask the name of the God, and the
promontory and harbor of Attica, between the Piræus and the
not mention it; it had, however, been introduced by the time of
the war with Xerxes, though even then the sling was, perhaps,
used by the Achæans was made of three thongs of leather, and not
of one only, like those of other nations. The natives of the
Balearic isles are said to have attained their skill from the
circumstance of their mothers, when they were children, obliging
them to obtain their food by striking it, from a tree, with a
sling. While other slings were made of leather, theirs were made
of rushes. Besides stones, plummets of lead, called ‘glandes,’
(as in the present instance), and μολύβδιδες, of a form between
particularly on the plains of Marathon. Some have the device of a
It was a prevalent idea with the ancients that the stone
discharged from the sling became red hot in its course, from the
swiftness of its motion.]
pendeat apte, Collocat,’ etc., is translated by Clarke--‘And he
places his coat that it might hang agreeably, that the border and
tersis niteant talaria plantis,’ ‘that his wings shine upon his
spruce feet.’]
precipitated from heaven for his deformity, Vulcan fell upon the
Isle of Lemnos, in the Ægean Sea, where he exercised the craft of
Ericthonius, by the aid of Minerva, is here referred to.]
Cicero tells us, that there were several persons in ancient times
lake of Libya, near which she was said to have been born.]
sacred to Pallas, or Minerva, its tutelary divinity.]
impiety. This seems the more likely, from the fact mentioned by
because she had continued faithful to that Goddess, and had not
mountain.”
{Thus} he spoke; and already were the bullocks, driven from the
maritime city of Phœnicia, near Tyre, of whose greatness it was
not an unworthy rival.]
This Fable depicts one of the most famous events in the ancient
Crete, of which he was the first king. We may then conclude, that
Ἑλλωτὶς, the name she received after her death.
returned thanks, and imprinted kisses upon the stranger land, and
Telephassa, who accompanied him; and that, after her decease, he
proceeded to Delphi to make inquiries of the oracle.]
received its name from the Greek word βοῦς, ‘an ox’ or ‘cow.’
Other writers say that it was so called from Bœotus, the son of
Neptune and Arne. Some authors also say that Thebes received its
name from the Syrian word ‘Thebe,’ which signified ‘an ox.’]
neighboring stream. Other writers say that it was a son of Mars,
Dercyllus by name, and that a Fury, named Tilphosa, was its
serpent of enormous size, which obstructed the passage of the
river Bagrada, in Africa. It was 120 feet in length.]
Reverting to the history of Europa, it may be here remarked, that
Some authors, and Ovid among the rest, have supposed that Europe
received its name from Europa. Bochart has, with considerable
the Poet says in line 91, where we find Cadmus enabled to pin his
death, either by means of their sting, or, in the case of the
larger kinds of serpent, by twisting round it, and suffocating it
notion among the ancients, that some serpents had the power of
killing their prey by their poisonous breath. Though some modern
perhaps, founded on the power which certain serpents have of
fascinating their prey by the agency of the eye, and thus
depriving it of the means of escape.]
stone as large as a mill-stone, and not a mill-stone itself, for
we must remember that this was an uninhabited country, and
consequently a stranger to the industry of man.]
‘pestilential as the exhalations of the marshes of Styx.’]
when, having been expelled from his dominions by Zethus and
Amphion, he retired to Illyria, and was there transformed into a
serpent, a fate which was shared by his wife Hermione.]
feathers was inserted.]
drawing up this curtain to discover the stage and actors,
according to our present practice, it was depressed when the play
premuntur,’ ‘the curtain is dropped,’ meant that the play had
commenced. When the performance was finished, this was raised
again gradually from the foot of the stage; therefore ‘aulæa
tolluntur,’ ‘the curtain is raised,’ would mean that the play had
that the figures of Britons (whose country had then lately been
the scene of new conquests) were woven on the canvas of the
‘siparium,’ having their arms in the attitude of lifting the
curtain.]
Udeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelor, according to Apollodorus.
criminality in him; for what criminality did mistake embrace?
After she had entered there, she handed to one of the Nymphs, her
Nephele, and Hyale, and Rhanis, fetch water, Psecas and
Oribasus, all Arcadian {dogs}; and able Nebrophonus, and with
Lælaps, fierce Theron, and Pterelas, excelling in speed,
Agre in her scent, and Hylæus, lately wounded by a fierce boar,
and Nape, begotten by a wolf, and Pœmenis, that had tended
Sticte, and Tigris, and Alce, and Leucon, with snow-white
hair, and Asbolus, with black, and the able-bodied Lacon, and
Aëllo, good at running, and Thoüs, and swift Lycisca, with
her Cyprian brother, Harpalus, too, having his black face marked
with white down the middle, and Melaneus, and Lachne, with a
wire-haired body, and Labros, and Agriodos, bred of a Dictæan
Mars and Venus. The Deities honored the nuptials with their
presence, and presented marriage gifts, while the Muses and the
Graces celebrated the festivity with hymns of their own
composition.]
grandchildren. His daughters were four in number, Autonoë, Ino,
Semele, and Agave. Ino married Athamas, Autonoë Aristæus, Agave
Echion, while Semele captivated Jupiter. The most famous of the
remark of Solon to Crœsus, when he was the master of the opulent
and flourishing kingdom of Lydia, and seemed so firmly settled on
his happiness. Falling into the hands of Cyrus the Persian, and
Herodotus, who relates the story at length. Euripides has a
similar passage in his Troades, line 510.]
called, as being a Bœotian. The Hyantes were the ancient or
aboriginal inhabitants of Bœotia.]
κεκρύφαλος, an ornament for the head, being a coif, band, or
fillet of network for the hair called in Latin ‘reticulum,’ by
which name her office is denoted. The handmaid, whose duty it was
among the domestics.]
‘Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.’]
Greek verb ῥαίνω, ‘to sprinkle.’]
sprinkling previous to the transformation seems not to have been
neglected any more by the offended Goddesses of the classical
Mythology, than by the intriguing enchantresses of the Arabian
Nights’ Entertainments; as the unfortunate Beder, when under the
displeasure of the vicious queen Labè, experienced to his great
inconvenience. The love for the supernatural, combined with an
character.]
she had let loose his dogs on Actæon, for fear lest, having seen
her naked, he should divulge the deformity of her person.]
ancients called their dogs. The pack of Actæon is said to have
consisted of fifty dogs. Their names were preserved by several
Greek poets, from whom Apollodorus copied them; but the greater
part of his list has perished, and what remains is in a very
Æschylus has named but four of them, and Ovid here names
ἰχνὸς, ‘a footstep,’ and βαίνω, ‘to go.’]
mountain,’ and βαίνω, ‘to go.’]
swiftness and power, λαίλαψ, signifying ‘a whirlwind.’]
the Greek ὕλη, signifying ‘a wood.’]
‘wood,’ being in Greek, νάπη.]
signifies ‘a noise,’ or ‘din.’]
variety of her colors, as στικτὸς, signifies ‘diversified with
various spots,’ from στίζω, ‘to vary with spots.’ ‘Tigris’ means
Greek ἄσβολος, ‘soot.’]
Pliny the Elder states, that ‘thos’ was the name of a kind of
Perhaps, from this animal, the dog here mentioned derived his
λάβρος ‘greedy.’ Dicte was a mountain of Crete; whence the word
‘Dictæan’ is often employed to signify ‘Cretan.’]
word ὑλακτέω, signifying ‘to bark.’]
mountain,’ and τρέφω ‘to nourish.’]
If the maxim of Horace, ‘Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice
nodus,’ had been a little more frequently observed by the ancient
degrading or disgusting light before posterity. There cannot be a
however, of Diana as the Goddess of the Moon, was, most probably,
approached his wife.
therefore, upon engaging in discourse with her, and {after} long
talking, they came to the name of Jupiter, she sighed, and said,
make,’ is sometimes used by the best authors for ‘fecero;’ and
Æneid (l. 620), assumes the form of another Beroë; and a third
person of that name is mentioned in the fourth book of the
the worship of Æsculapius, who was the tutelary Divinity of that
between Jupiter and Juno, concerning the sexes.
tumultus Non tulit æthereos,’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘her mortal
body could not bear this æthereal bustle.’]
of a city and mountain of Arabia, or India. The tradition was,
that there the Nyseian Nymphs, whose names were Cysseis, Nysa,
Erato, Eryphia, Bromia, and Polyhymnia, brought up Bacchus. The
cave where he was concealed from the fury of Juno, was said to
have had two entrances, from which circumstance Bacchus received
female that nursed Bacchus. Hyginus also speaks of her as being
the daughter of Oceanus. From the name ‘Nysa,’ Bacchus received,
in part, his Greek name ‘Dionysus.’]
Echo, having often amused Juno with her stories, to give time to
Jupiter’s mistresses to make their escape, the Goddess, at last,
punishes her for the deception. She is slighted and despised by
Narcissus, with whom she falls in love.
He, much celebrated by fame throughout the cities of Aonia, gave
there. The name is often used to signify the whole of Bœotia.]
Oceanus and Tethys, and was the mother of the youth Narcissus, by
youth’s career, and of the duration of the flower.]
show, that it was the custom of the ancients to place sulphur on
the ends of their torches, to make them ignite the more readily,
in the same manner as the matches of the present day are tipped
with that mineral.]
sylvis.’ Clarke renders, ‘and bouncing out of the wood.’]
If, however, we should endeavor to base the story upon purely
changed into a voice.
Narcissus falls in love with his own shadow, which he sees in a
countenance, like a statue formed of Parian marble. Lying on the
Retribution, and the avenger of crime, was the daughter of
appropriately devoted to the Goddess of Retribution. This statue
wore a crown, and had wings, and holding a spear of ash in the
right hand, it was seated on a stag.]
of making statues of the Gods.]
among the ancients for females, when lamenting the dead, not only
upon the funeral pile.]
grief. According to him, the fountain was near a village called
Donacon, in the country of the Thespians. Pausanias regards the
Narcissus, because that flower commonly grew about graves and
sepulchres.
thereupon goes to Mount Cithæron, to disturb the orgies then
Pentheus looks at him with eyes that anger has made terrible, and
Taygete, and the Hyades, and the Bear, and the quarters of the
the name of a part of Peloponnesus, on the gulf of Corinth; but
the name is very frequently applied to the whole of Greece.]
name of Mars, frequently used by the poets. The Thebans were
‘proles Mavortia,’ as being sprung from the teeth of the dragon,
who was said to be a son of Mars.]
instruments, among the ancients, were of various kinds. Some
resembled the modern tambourine; while others presented a flat
circular disk on the upper surface, and swelled out beneath, like
staff, carried by Bacchus, and by the Satyrs and Bacchanalians
engaged in the worship of the God of the grape. It was sometimes
terminated by the apple of the pine, or fir-cone, the fir-tree
being esteemed sacred to Bacchus, from the turpentine flowing
therefrom and its apples being used in making wine. It is,
however, frequently represented as terminating in a knot of ivy,
the head. We learn from Diodorus Siculus, and Macrobius, that
Bacchus converted the thyrsi carried by himself and his followers
A wound with its point was supposed to produce madness.]
were so called from the verb ‘torqueo,’ ‘to twist,’ from their
overthrowing the battlements, and the ‘catapulta’ was employed to
When New Carthage, the arsenal of the Carthaginians, was taken,
been introduced about the time of Alexander the Great. If so,
Ovid must here be committing an anachronism, in making Pentheus
speak of ‘tormenta,’ who lived so many ages before that time. To
Falstaff talk familiarly of the West Indies. We find the
son of Abas, and the father of Danaë. He refused, and probably
with justice, to admit Bacchus or his rites within the gates of
his city.]
grandfather mentioned in the present line.]
characteristic of the careful ‘pilot,’ or ‘helmsman.’]
that suckled Jupiter, is called Olenian, either because she was
Auriga, or the Charioteer. The rising and setting of this
Constellation were supposed to produce showers.]
Ceos, or Cea, is meant, which Ptolemy calls Κια, and which he
thinks ought here to be written ‘Ciæ.’]
‘pausarius,’ or keeper of time for the rowers.]
been composed of much the same kind of lawless materials that
formed the daring crews of the buccanier Morgan and Captain Kydd
in more recent times.]
line, ‘We have lent our ears to a long tale of a tub.’]
Bœotia, famous for the orgies of Bacchus there celebrated.]
the passage says, ‘Drunkenness had taken away both her reason and
Cicero mentions two Deities of the name of Bacchus; while other
authors speak of several of that name. The first was the son of
The most reasonable opinion seems to be that of Herodotus and
chariot, filling the air with the noise of tambourines and brazen
immodesty, and such as found in these festivals a pretext and
opportunity for the commission of the most horrible offences.
The story of the unfortunate fate of Pentheus is supposed by the
ancient writers to have been strictly true. Pentheus, the son of
Echion and Agave, the daughter of Cadmus, having succeeded his
‘tursio,’ probably the porpoise, or sea-hog. They were probably
The daughters of Minyas, instead of celebrating the festival of
But Alcithoë, the daughter of Minyas, does not think that the
sisters as partners in her impiety.
Dercetis, whom the people of Palestine believe to inhabit the
acquaintance, and their first advances {in love}; with time their
blood-stained mouth.
well-known garment, he gives kisses {to the same}, and he says,
perceived her own garment, and beheld, too, the ivory {sheath}
Minyas, who, according to some, was the son of Orchomenus,
no allusion to the females who are here mentioned by Ovid.]
Alcithoë, according to Plutarch, were Aristippe and Leucippe. The
and Aristippe, who is sometimes called Arsinoë. The latter author
home, and attending to their domestic concerns, to running after
the new rites; on which it was said, by their enemies, that
Bacchus had punished them.]
called by the Greeks κάλαθος, καλαθίσκος, and τάλαρος, generally
signifies the basket in which women placed their work, and
especially the materials used for spinning. They were generally
made of osiers and reeds, but sometimes of more valuable
materials, such as silver, perhaps in filagree work. ‘Calathi’
Ιώ Βάκχε, Εὐοῖ σαβοῖ. ‘Evoë, Bacche! O, Iacche! Io, Bacche! Evoë
either from Semele, his mother, one of whose names was Thyone, or
Bacchanals also received their name of Thyades.]
‘night,’ because his orgies were celebrated by night. Eleleus is
from the shout, or ‘huzza’ of the Greeks, which was ελελεῦ.]
‘Evoë’ which the Bacchanals used in performing his orgies.]
having slighted the worship of Bacchus, was afflicted with
which were first invented by Minerva, but ill accorded with the
idle and vicious mode of celebrating the festival of Bacchus.]
goddess, of a very singular kind. From the middle upwards, it
represents a woman, but below it terminates in a fish. The statue
woman.’ He further says, that the temple of this last city was
thought by some to have been built by Semiramis, who consecrated
it not to Juno, as is generally believed, but to her own mother,
in which Ascalon was situate, was a part of Syria, lying in its
south-western extremity.]
also Nosola, between Taprobana (the modern Ceylon) and the coast
her cruelty, she herself was changed into a fish by the Sun.]
ancient Babylon has been remarked by many ancient writers, from
Herodotus downwards. Its walls are said to have been 60 miles in
compass, 87 feet in thickness, and 350 feet in height.]
layers of bitumen.]
ten stadia in length, and nine in depth; it had the appearance of
of Babylon. Commentators have expressed some surprise that Ovid
here uses the word ‘busta,’ for ‘tomb,’ as the place of meeting
for these chaste lovers, as the prostitutes of Rome used to haunt
water; by channels of masonry, earthen pipes, and leaden pipes.
The latter were smaller, and more generally used; to them
given, though somewhat homely, is extremely natural, and, as
frequent experience shows us, depicts the results when the
soldering of a water-pipe has become decayed.]
color of boxwood, the words ‘buxo pallidiora,’ ‘paler than
boxwood,’ became a proverbial expression among the Romans.]
assistant
Sure, a continuation for this poem could be:
  and is worthy of notice.]
‘sheath’ of the sword, was often highly decorated; and we learn
from Homer and Virgil, as well as Ovid, that ivory was much used
for that purpose. The sheath was worn by the Greeks and Romans on
hold of the hilt, with the thumb next to the blade.]
productive of unhappiness at a future period.
“The Lemnian {God} immediately threw open the folding doors of
perfume-bearing nation produced. But after her daughter grew up,
“The pastures of the horses of the Sun are under the Western sky;
complaints, submits to his embrace.
with the loose story of the loves of Mars and Venus.]
‘Junonigena,’ because, according to some, he was the son of Juno
alone. Other writers, however, say that he was the only son of
‘valvæ’ is often used to signify a door, or entrance, because
among the ancients each doorway generally contained two doors
folding together. The internal doors even of private houses were
bivalve; hence, as in the present case, we often read of the
folding doors of a bed-chamber. Each of these doors or valves was
landed, after she had risen from the sea. It was dedicated to her
Uranus, and the father of the Sun. The name of Hyperion is,
however, often given by the poets to the Sun himself.]
children.]
daughter of Oceanus, and the mother of the enchantress Circe, who
Circe is referred to more at length in the 14th Book of the
Orchamus, and was the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.]
Achæmenian, from Achæmenes, one of its former kings.]
food of the Deities, and nectar their drink.]
‘Virgo victa nitore Dei.’ ‘The young lady--charmed with the
spruceness of the God.’]
Palæphatus gives a historical solution to the story. He says that
rhetorician would have done better to have been silent.
Clytie envied her, (for the love of the Sun for her had not been
shall arise from the earth as a tree bearing frankincense: the
gums of which, burnt in sacrifice to the Gods, shall reach the
heavens with their sweet odors.’ Persia and Arabia have been
celebrated by the poets, ancient and modern, for their great
fertility in frankincense and other aromatic plants.]
large yellow plant which is called the sunflower. The small
aromatic flower which we call heliotrope, with its violet hue and
ancient painters.]
earth after a shower of rain, seems to have no other foundation
names were meant the heaven and the earth.]
for this word are--1. Withwind, a kind of herb. 2. The yew tree.
changed into the first.]
advances, they were both turned into flowers.
Heaven and the Earth. Some suppose them to have been the original
{cymbals} {of} brass are resounding in vain. Upon the Nymph
Minor, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Caria was another
province, adjoining to Lycia.]
wood of the box trees that grow there. The Greeks and Romans made
both sides. Great care was usually taken of the hair; to go with
it uncombed was a sign of affliction.]
magicians, in ancient times, and especially those of Thessaly,
commonly believed, at the period of an eclipse it was supposed by
these magicians, and that she was struggling (laborabat) against
them, on which the sound of drums, trumpets, and cymbals was
resorted to, to distract the attention of the moon, and to drown
the charms repeated by the enchanters, for which reason, the
instruments employed for the purpose were styled ‘auxiliares.’]
explanation of the passage,-- ‘The eyes of the Nymph seemed to
splendid, and contract the fire.’ From the mention of the eyes of
concluding that ‘speculum’ means here not a mirror, but a
burning-glass. The ‘specula,’ or looking-glasses, of the ancients
copper, or silver; but in later times, alloy was mixed with the
silver. Pliny mentions the obsidian stone, or, as it is now
called, the Icelandic agate, as being used for this purpose. Nero
that mirrors were made in the glass-houses of Sidon, which
consisted of glass plates, with leaves of metal at the back; they
were made chiefly at Brundisium. The white metal formed from this
were generally small, of a round or oval shape, and having a
handle; and female slaves usually held them, while their
mistresses were performing the duties of the toilet. Sometimes
mirror; but Minerva repudiated the use of it.]
being jumbled together, are united.’]
Possibly the water of that fountain, by some peculiar chemical
are called νυκτερίδες, from νυξ, ‘night;’ and in Latin,
‘vespertiliones,’ from ‘vesper,’ ‘evening,’ on account of their
whirled round, and both follows and flies from himself. The
purposeless aberrations, and the forgetfulness of a darkened
There is a rock that hangs over the sea; the lowest part is worn
struck {by her fall}, is white with foam. But Venus, pitying the
together with his mother Leucothoë.
sorrows hitherto had been caused by the calamities which befell
her sisters and their offspring: Semele having died a shocking
whose bodies had not received the rites of burial, we learn from
Homer and Virgil, were not allowed to pass the river Styx, but
wandered on its banks for a hundred years.]
fabled to be the daughters of Night and Acheron. They were three
in number, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megæra, and were supposed to be
and Elara. On account of his enormous size, the poets sometimes
style him a son of the earth. Attempting to commit violence upon
Latona, he was slain by the arrows of Apollo, and precipitated to
constantly devoured by a vulture, and then renewed, to perpetuate
differently related by the poets. Some say, that he divulged the
secrets of the Gods, that had been entrusted to him; while others
inadvertently ate his shoulder. He was doomed to suffer intense
hunger and thirst, amid provisions of all kinds within his reach,
punishment of rolling a great stone to the top of a mountain,
which it had no sooner reached than it fell down again, and
renewed his labor.]
heaven, he presumed to make an attempt on Juno. Jupiter, to
wheel, which turned round incessantly.]
‘a female viper;’ but it here refers to the Hydra, or dragon of
the marsh of Lerna, which Hercules slew. It was fabled to be
says, that he mistook him for a stag.]
foster-child of Ino, who was the sister of his mother Semele. The
related by Ovid in the sixth book of the Fasti.]
the Molarian rock, and says, that it was one of the Scironian
rocks, near Megara, in Attica. It was a branch of the Geranian
mountain.]
Melicerta, who, according to Pausanias, was received by dolphins,
must be merely mentioned here as a general name for the broad
expanse of waters, of which the Saronic gulf, into which the
Molarian rock projected, formed part. Ovid may, however, mean to
say that Ino threw herself from some rock in the Ionian sea, and
not from the Molarian rock; following, probably, the account of
some other writer, whose works are lost.]
called Aphrodite, by the Greeks, from ἄφρος, ‘the foam of the
sea,’ from which she was said to have sprung.]
worshipped as Divinities both in Greece and at Rome.]
accompanied him from Phœnices.]
celebrated for many ages at Corinth; and, being interrupted for a
Whoever is by, (some attendants are present), is alarmed; but the
following grounds:--
probably in reference to the Phœnician origin of Cadmus, reported
Scripture ‘Cadmonia,’ or ‘oriental;’ and that Hermione probably
received her name from Mount Hermon.
Abas, king of Argos. He was the father of Danaë, by whom Jupiter
was the father of Perseus.]
grandfather of Acrisius, was the son of Jupiter, who was also the
related.]
The story of the seduction of Danaë, the mother of Perseus, by
Diodorus Siculus says that the Gorgons were female warriors, who
inhabited the neighborhood of Lake Tritonis, in Libya. Pausanias
remarkable that he cut it off, and afterwards took it with him to
Again, many of the ancient historians, with Pliny, Athenæus, and
captive, and threatened, in case of refusal, to put him to death.
exploits of Perseus, spread terror everywhere, and caused passive
Diodorus and Palæphatus. It is not improbable that the Cape Verde
The grandson of Hippotas had shut up the winds in their eternal
innocent Andromeda to suffer punishment for her mother’s tongue.
Ammon, had a temple in the deserts of Libya, where he was
worshipped under the shape of a ram; a form which he was supposed
from the attacks of the Giants. The oracle of Jupiter Ammon being
request of the Nereids, had sent against the Ethiopians, answered
here, not without reason, calls an unjust demand.]
preferable here to ‘trepido,’ ‘trembling.’]
‘appellare’ here is not the correct reading; and suggests
‘aspectare,’ which seems to be more consistent with the sense of
the passage, which would then be, ‘and does not dare to look down
skeleton was forty feet in length, and the spinal bone was six
feet in circumference.]
translates this line, ‘He avoids the monster’s eager snaps with
his swift wings.’]
either wings fitted to the ankles, or shoes having such wings
fastened to them; they were supposed to be usually worn by
juga prima sinistra’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘seizing the tip-top
of it with his left hand.’]
have had but little difficulty in effecting the theft here
mentioned.]
shield Perseus is said to have received from Minerva, and by
by that means afforded him the opportunity of seeing the
reflection of Medusa’s figure; and that Perseus, seizing her by
the hair with his left hand, and keeping his eye fixed on the
image reflected in the shield, took his sword in his right, and
cut off her head, and then, by the aid of his wings, flew away
before the other Gorgon sisters were aware of what he had done.]
Chrysaor were two winged horses, which were fabled to have sprung
Herodotus, who seems to have been often imposed upon.]
fierce, piratical prince, who infested the adjacent seas with his
Some writers think, that Phineus, the uncle of Andromeda, was the
mentioned was to have carried away Andromeda.
Agyrtes, infamous for slaying his father.
prevail; and for once, Bellona is deluging the household Gods
seven-mouthed Nile, and who had engraved on his shield its seven
mentioned in the Metamorphoses.]
mattress or covering of the couch on which the ancients reclined
during meals. It was frequently stuffed with wool; but among the
poorer classes, with straw and dried weeds.]
occasion of the nuptials of Perseus and Andromeda.]
crooked sword, or falchion: such as we call a “scimitar.”]
Epistles (Book i. Ep. 5, l. 79), that “there, at the time of the
summer solstice, bodies as they stand, have no shadow.”]
cratera” “a swingeing bowl.”]
and not the river of Thessaly, flowing into the Malian Gulf.]
illustration of the danger of neutrality, when the necessity of
‘Casuque canit miserabile carmen;’ ‘and in his fall plays but a
dismal ditty.’]
people of Libya, near the Syrtes, or quicksands, who subsisted by
according to Pliny. Celadon was a native of either this place, or
foreseen his own approaching fate.]
united in the same sentence, as meeting in a region so distant as
Andromeda was fastened, were remaining on the rock in his time.
sea-monster. Some authors have suggested that the story of the
The alleged power of Perseus, to turn his enemies into stone, was
terror which everywhere followed the fame of his victory over the
Polydectes continues his hatred against Perseus, and treats his
{become} stone, without blood, by means of the face of Medusa.
Hitherto Tritonia had presented herself as a companion to her
brother, begotten in the golden shower. Now, enwrapped in an
encircling cloud, she abandons Seriphus, Cythnus and Gyarus being
imposing upon the vulgar with your empty melody. If you have any
fish, {Mercury}, the Cyllenian {God}, beneath the wings of an
Polydectes. The latter became smitten with love for Danaë, though
promise from Perseus, of the head of the Gorgon Medusa. When
Perseus returned victorious, he found that his mother, with her
protector Dictys, had taken refuge at the altars of the Deities,
against the violence of Polydectes; on which Perseus changed him
into stone. The story of Perseus afforded abundant materials to
the ancient poets. Æschylus wrote a Tragedy called Polydectes,
Sophocles one called Danaë, while Euripides composed two, called
respectively Danaë and Dictys. Pherecydes also wrote on this
subject, and his work seems to have been a text book for
succeeding poets. Polygnotus painted the return of Perseus with
the head of Medusa, to the island of Seriphus.]
Minerva, and Perseus had Jupiter for their father.]
islands of the Cyclades.]
which was produced by a blow from the hoof of Pegasus.]
‘Mnemonides,’ from the Greek word μνήμων ‘remembering,’ or
a district between Bœotia and Ætolia, in which the city of Delphi
numina,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘and worshipping our
been a common thing to teach parrots and magpies to repeat these
Macedonia, in that part of it which was called Emathia. It was
famed for being the birthplace of Philip, and Alexander the
region of Macedonia, adjacent to Emathia.]
the Hæmonian, or Thessalian Achaia. The other parts of Thessaly
were Phthiotis and Pelasgiotis.]
fountain in Bœotia, near Helicon, sacred to the Muses. It is
called Hyantean, from the ancient name of the inhabitants of the
country.]
transformation of Venus into a fish, to escape the fury of the
Giants, is told, at length, in the second Book of the Fasti.]
name of Aonides from Aonia, a mountainous district of Bœotia.]
tiresome and unmeaning. It is not improbable that the story of
here named by the Poet.]
Italy, whence its present epithet, ‘Ausonian.’ It was so named
from Pelorus, the pilot of Hannibal, who, suspecting him of
treachery, had put him to death, and buried him on that spot.]
is on the west of Sicily, looking towards the African coast.]
Sicilian kings, erected a magnificent temple in her honor.]
Jupiter, the seas to that of Neptune; while the infernal regions,
authors, Enceladus, threw Mount Ætna on his body; and that the
“Not far from the walls of Henna there is a lake of deep water,
Pergus by name; Cayster does not hear more songs of swans, in his
beloved, and seized by Pluto; in such great haste is love. The
seas, built a city between unequal harbors.
exactly situated in the middle of Sicily that it was called the
navel of that island. The worship of Ceres there was so highly
esteemed, that ancient writers remarked, that you might easily
take the whole place for one vast temple of that Goddess, and all
authors, besides Ovid, to have been carried away by Pluto in the
vicinity of Henna; though some writers say that it took place in
Attica, and others again in Asia, while the Hymn of Orpheus
from all [ordinary] means of approach. Around it are many lakes
and groves, and flowers in bloom at all seasons of the year; so
that the very spot seems to portray the rape of the damsel, with
which story, from our very infancy, we have been familiar. Close
by, there is a cavern with its face towards the north, of an
immense depth, from which they say that father Pluto, in his
chariot, suddenly emerged, and carrying off the maiden, bore her
away from that spot, and then, not far from Syracuse, descended
into the earth, from which place a lake suddenly arose; where, at
‘Dis.’ This name was given to him as the God of the Earth, from
the bowels of which riches are dug up.]
Messeniaca, has preserved the names of the companions of Ceres,
having copied them from the works of Homer.]
subject, represents that Ceres heard the cries of her daughter,
when calling upon her mother for assistance. Ovid recounts this
tale much more at length in the fourth Book of the Fasti.]
brothers, sons of Jupiter and the Nymph Thalea, and, according to
earth to open, and to hide her from the vengeful wrath of Juno.
This was done; and when they had arrived at maturity, the Palici
burst from the ground in the island of Sicily. They were Deities
much venerated there, but their worship did not extend to any
other countries. We learn from Macrobius that the natives of
Sicily pointed out two small lakes, from which the brothers were
guiltless would be able to come forth from them unharmed. They
were fetid, sulphureous pools of water, probably affected by the
volcanic action of Mount Ætna.]
from Corinth, was said to have founded Syracuse, the capital of
Sicily. The family sprang either from Bacchius, a son of
Dionysus, or Bacchus, or from the fifth king of Corinth, who was
named Bacchis. The family was expelled from Corinth by Cypselus,
which, mingling with the waters of the fountain Cyane, falls into
island, in which the fountain of Arethusa was situate, was
separated from the isle of Sicily by a narrow strait of the sea,
and communicating with the city of Syracuse by a bridge, was
considered as part of it.]
woman here mentioned by the name of Baubo. Nicander, in his
Theriaca, calls her Metaneira. Antoninus Liberalis calls her
Misma, and Ovid, in the fourth Book of the Fasti, Melanina.]
was the son of the old woman. If so, the Goddess made her but a
poor return for her hospitality.]
The story of the rape of Proserpine has caused much inquiry among
history, defaced and blemished in lapse of time.
Guadalquivir of the present day, which runs through the centre of
walking in the adjacent meadows, and gathering flowers with her
circumstance:--Greece, he says, was afflicted with famine in the
“Then the Alpheian Nymph raised her head from out of the Elean
discredit, with her hair dishevelled; and she said, “I have come,
“{Thus} he spoke; still Ceres is {now} resolved to fetch away her
finely-cultivated garden, she had plucked a pomegranate from the
bending tree, and had chewed in her mouth seven grains taken from
est,’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘It is a tedious business to tell.’]
a fastening round the loins, was much worn by both sexes among
the ancients. It was sometimes made of netted work, and the chief
‘pera,’ ‘wallet,’ or ‘purse,’ was generally fastened to the
girdle. As this article of dress was used to hold up the garments
supposed to be abstracted from the cares of the world, as in
performing sacrifice or attending at funeral rites. A girdle was
that circumstance, allusion is made in the present instance, as a
translates ‘tunc denique raptam Scisset,’ ‘knew that she had been
Arethusa the discoverer to Ceres of the fate of her daughter. In
the Fourth Book of the Fasti, he represents the Sun as giving her
Hermione, a town of Argolis, in Peloponnesus, and the people of
that place as informing Ceres of what had happened to her
daughter.]
and that his master’s kettle was quite safe, for he knew it to be
This fruit was most probably called ‘malum,’ or ‘pomum punicum,’
or ‘puniceum,’ from the deep red or purple color of the inside,
and not as having been first introduced from Phœnicia.]
latter author says, that for his unseasonable discovery, Ceres
placed a rock upon him; but that, having been liberated by
transformation of the boy into a newt, or kind of lizard, which
Campania, near Baiæ, of a fetid smell and gloomy aspect. Being
feigned to be the mouth, or threshold, of the Infernal Regions,
its name became generally used to signify Tartarus, or the
Infernal Regions. The name is said to have been derived from the
the daughters of the river Acheloüs and of one of the Muses,
either Calliope, Melpomene, or Terpsichore.]
invented; the pernicious counsels which he gave his master being
Probably, the story of the Nymph Cyane reproaching Pluto with his
adventures of Ulysses.
and discharged itself into the sea, near Cyllene, the seaport of
that people, they worshipped it with divine honors.]
has a whitish hue, especially on one side of it.]
also, adjoining to the Elean territory, which received its name
from Psophis, the daughter of Lycaon, or of Eryx, according to
some writers. There were several other towns of the same name.
The other places here mentioned, with the exception of Elis, were
Arethusa! What thought had I then, poor soul!’]
the Isle of Delos, where she was born.]
Ceres entrusts her chariot to Triptolemus, and orders him to go
“Thus far Arethusa. The fertile Goddess yoked two dragons to her
through the air.
“The greatest of us had {now} finished her learned song. But the
clapped two snakes to her chariot.’]
meant; the other parts of Asia being included under the term
‘Scythicas oras.’]
here means ‘Athenian.’]
who had commenced her song as the representative of the Muses, at
were,--Celeus, Triptolemus, Eumolpus, and Diocles. Clement of
Alexandria calls them Baubon, Dysaulus, Eubuleüs, Eumolpus, and
Triptolemus. Eumolpus being the Hierophant, or explainer of the
Arachne, vain-glorious of her ingenuity, challenges Minerva to a
Pallas embroiders the rock of Mars in {Athens}, the citadel of
twin offspring; {how} he was Amphitryon, when he beguiled thee,
Tirynthian dame; how, turned to gold, he deceived Danaë; {how},
changed into fire, the daughter of Asopus; {how}, as a shepherd,
Mnemosyne; and as a speckled serpent, Deois. She depicted thee
experienced as a steed; thee, the mother of the winged horse,
Isse, the daughter of Macareus. How Liber deceived Erigone, in a
fictitious bunch of grapes; {and} how Saturn begot the two-formed
Ionia, on the shores of the Mediterranean, famous for its purple
called ‘the purple,’ the juices of which were much used by the
ancients for dyeing a deep purple color. The most valuable kinds
were found near Tyre and Phocæa, mentioned in the text.]
which was said to have sands of gold.]
Thrace. Probably these persons had come from the neighboring
country, to see the exquisite works of Arachne. As the Poet tells
professed their respect and veneration, while Arachne alone
remained unmoved.]
cauldrons were used for the purposes of dyeing, in preference to
those of iron.]
Areiopagus, which was said to have received its name from the
trial there of Mars, when he was accused by Neptune of having
slain his son Halirrothius.]
the rules of prosody than the two lines there quoted:--
which raised her to such a degree of conceit, that she despised
active enemy of the Pygmies. These people were dwarfs, living
either in India, Arabia, or Thrace, and they were said not to
exceed a cubit in height.]
Laomedon, king of Troy, and was remarkable for the extreme beauty
Juno; on which the Goddess, offended at her presumption, changed
her hair into serpents. In compassion, the Deities afterwards
transformed her into a stork.]
(besides Myrrha), remarkable for their extreme beauty. Growing
insolent upon the strength of their good looks, and pretending to
form of an eagle. She was the wife of Perses, and the mother of
insulted by Dirce, she was seized with madness, and was cured by
Phocus, whom she is said to have afterwards married.]
Argos, where Hercules was born and educated, and from which place
father of Æacus.]
mentioned, became the mother of the Nine Muses, having been
seduced by Jupiter.]
Arne, the daughter of Æolus, whom Neptune seduced under the form
of a bull.]
a river of Thessaly, Neptune committed violence upon Iphimedeia,
the wife of the giant Aloëus, and by her was the father of the
giants Otus and Ephialtes.]
twice in this line, Clarke translates, not in a very elegant
manner, ‘had a bout with thee,’ and ‘had a touch from thee.’ By
mention.]
Neptune, though it is more generally said that it sprang from her
Icarus, and was placed among the Constellations.]
‘improba,’ ‘thou wicked jade.’]
Medea. She was the first who sought after, and taught the
from the infernal regions.]
however, Arachne is said to have hanged herself in despair, she
probably fell a prey to some cause of grief or discontent, the
The Jesuit Tournemine suggests the following explanation of the
Phrygian, mingled with many Phœnician words; and, as in those
signification, and spoke of a horse instead of a ship, which was
really the original emblem employed in the fiction.
Vossius thinks that the fable originated in a dispute between the
prevailed, and a life of civilization, marked by attention to the
world, where a king or petty chieftain demanded the daughter of a
interior of Africa.
Nicodamas, she had by him a son, named Mopsus, whom her subjects
suggesting the foundation of the story.
grandsire, when they had put an end to their wonted exercise {of
city and a mountain of Lydia.]
was the father of her husband, Amphion.]
fourteen daughters of Niobe, and gives their names.]
hitherto been a floating island, became immovable, for the
‘manifest,’ or ‘appearing,’ from having risen to the surface of
the sea on that occasion.]
one of the crimes of Tantalus, the father of Niobe, who was
accused of having indiscreetly divulged the secrets of the Gods.]
intention of making his escape.]
known, that the ‘Palæstra’ was called ‘nitida,’ as shining with
the oil which the wrestlers used for making their limbs supple,
and the more difficult for their antagonist to grasp. Juvenal
gives the epithet ‘ceromaticum’ to the neck of the athlete, or
wrestler, which word means ‘rubbed with wrestler’s oil.’]
translates ‘Et jam contulerant arcto luctantia nexu Pectora
pectoribus;’ ‘And now they had clapped breast to breast,
struggling in a close hug.’]
‘Efferor’ literally means, ‘I am carried out.’ ‘Effero’ was the
term used to signify the carrying of the body out of the city
walls, for the purposes of burial.]
deceased person was in ancient times laid out on a bed of the
ordinary kind, with a pillow for supporting the head and back;
among the Romans, it was placed in the vestibule of the house,
with its feet towards the door, and was dressed in the best robe
which the deceased had worn when alive. Among the better classes,
sometimes made of ivory, and covered with gold and purple.]
Sipylus, in Bœotia, which, as we learn from Pausanias, had on its
in an attitude of sorrow. This resemblance is said to exist even
at the present day.]
All the ancient historians agree with Diodorus Siculus and
daughters; but gives the names of fourteen only. The story of the
narration of former events.
new-made frogs, they leap about in the muddy stream.”
nothing more than a volcanic mountain of Lycia, in Asia Minor,
goats; and towards the bottom, being rocky, and full of caverns,
Commentary on the Second Book of the Georgics, says that the name
them into frogs.]
are so fanciful as to say, that the repetition of the words ‘sub
aqua,’ in the line ‘Quamvis sint sub aquâ, sub aquâ, maledicere
find any such resemblance; more so, indeed, than that of
Aristophanes, who makes his frogs say, by way of chorus,
‘brekekekekex koäx koäx.’ Possibly, however, that might have been
clowns; or, which is more probable, it may have been originally
presumption. The tears that are shed on the occasion of his death
him; and whoever {besides} on those mountains was feeding the
wool-bearing flocks, and the horned herds.
of the Satyr Marsyas, under the name of Silenus. Fulgentius
informs us, that in paintings, Marsyas was represented with the
tail of a pig.]
him to a pine-tree, or, according to Pliny the Elder,
a plane-tree, which was to be seen even in his day. The skin was
afterwards suspended by Apollo in the city of Celenæ. Hyginus
disgusting for being so. A commentator justly says, that it might
and pupil of Marsyas. Pausanias describes a picture, painted by
Polygnotus, in which Olympus was represented as sitting by
Marsyas, clad as a youth, and learning to play on the flute.
Euripides, in the Iphigenia in Aulis (l. 576) says that Olympus
discovered some new measures for the ‘tibia,’ or flute. From
Tereus, king of Thrace, having married Progne, the daughter of
brass, and fertile Messene, and Patræ, and humble Cleonæ, and
prevented this act of humanity; and barbarous troops brought
It was {now} day; and Pandion, grasping the right hand of his
which derived its name from Calydon, the son of Endymion. Diana,
being incensed against Œneus, its king, because he omitted her
when offering the first fruits to the other Deities, sent an
immense boar to ravage its fields, which was slain by Meleager.
Ovid recounts these circumstances in the eighth book of the
Corinth, when it was taken and burnt by the Consul Mummius. On
that occasion, they say, that from the immense number of statues
melted in the conflagration, a stream of metal poured through the
The story is, however, very improbable.]
attendants of Venus, were three in number, Aglaia, Thalia, and
circumstance they were said ‘deduci,’ ‘to be led down.’]
the arsenal and the harbor of the Athenians, and owed its
magnificence to the vast conceptions of Themistocles.]
called, from the Odrysæ, a people of Thrace.]
Phrygian design.]
translated by Clarke, ‘And reads the miserable ditty of her
himself into a lapwing.
It is {now} the time when the Sithonian matrons are wont to
paleness spreads over her whole face. Progne having {now} got a
in memory of his Indian expedition.]
Thrace, which lay between Mount Hæmus and the Euxine sea. The
word, however, is often used to signify the whole of Thrace.]
‘nebrides,’ or skins of fawns and deer, which the Bacchanals wore
doubt, the thyrsus.]
wicked rogue’s house.’]
ivy, the deer-skins, and the thyrsus.]
Furies, who are thus called from having their hair wreathed with
Anacreon and Apollodorus, however, reverse the story, saying that
account given by Pausanias and Eusebius: the order of succession
being Actæus, Cecrops, Cranaüs, Amphictyon, Erecthonius, Pandion,
and the grandson of Æolus. According to some writers, he was the
son of Mercury; in and the Art of Love (Book iii. l. 725) he is
called ‘Cyllenia proles.’ Strabo says that he was the son-in-law
of Deioneus. His story is related at length in the next Book.]
people of Thrace, living near Mount Ismarus, and the Bistonian
that that part of the sea had not been navigated before; though
Plato tells us that the story of the rape of Orithyïa is but an
Jason, after having met with various adventures, arrives with the
reached at length the rapid waters of the muddy Phasis.
country, and cities, whose fame is flourishing even here, and the
{Thus} she said, and before her eyes stood Virtue, Affection, and
The Colchians are astonished; the Minyæ fill {the air} with their
Thessaly, at the foot of Mount Pelion, where the ship Argo was
‘accingere,’ more literally than elegantly, ‘buckle to.’]
that part of Greece which was afterwards called Thessaly. The
province of Pelasgiotis, in Thessaly, afterwards retained its
name, which was derived from the Pelasgi, an early people of
Greece. Pliny informs us that Peloponnesus at first had the names
their name from Pelasgus, the son of Jupiter; while other writers
their wandering habits. The name is frequently used, as in the
present instance, to signify the whole of the Greeks.]
being found by Jason, in the isle of Dia, they came with him to
Colchis, and presented him to their mother, who afterwards
commended him to the care of Medea.]
the mouth of Medea, herself a native of the country.]
Argonauts, who were selected from the most noble youths of
rocks, or Symplegades, at the mouth of the Euxine sea.]
according to Diodorus Siculus, was the son of Phœbus, and the
brother of Æetes. Marrying her uncle Æetes, she is said to have
given to her by the poets, because the Moon sometimes is full,
sometimes disappears, and often shows but part of her disk.]
father-in-law of Jason.]
God of fire is here used to signify that element. Apollodorus
says, that Medea gave Jason a drug (φάρμακον) to rub over himself
determine whether ‘silices’ here means ‘flint-stones,’ or
‘lime-stone;’ probably the latter, from the mention of water
which the ancients were perfectly acquainted.]
had sent to Æetes.]
forgetfulness.]
Thessaly, of which country Jason was a native.]
fictions which the poets have mingled with the history of the
uneasiness which Pelias felt was caused by the prediction of an
daughter Medea, falling in love with Jason, promised him her
assistance in preserving them from the dangers to which they were
supposing, that the account of it was originally written in the
Phœnician language; and through not understanding it, the Greeks
instead of the simple narrative, that Jason, by the aid of Medea,
A chariot sent down from heaven was come; which, soon as she had
was esteemed requisite for the due performance of magic rites,
though sometimes on such occasions, and probably in the present
instance, only one foot was left unshod. In times of drought,
according to Tertullian, a procession and ceremonial, called
‘nudipedalia,’ were resorted to, with a view to propitiate the
Gods by this token of grief and humiliation.]
the Moon are here mentioned as distinct, they are frequently
Brutii, on the coast of Etruria, famous for its copper mines. It
was also sometimes called Tempsa. There was also another Temesa,
a city of Cyprus, also famous for its copper.]
characteristic of the mountainous country of Thessaly, where she
now alighted.]
rivers of Thessaly.]
from the mouth of the river Peneus.]
opposite to Eubœa, being situated on the Euripus, now called the
changed into a sea God, on tasting a certain herb. His story is
related at the end of the 13th Book.]
seem to have been deemed of especial virtue in incantations.]
called Hebe, from the Greek word signifying youth. She was the
daughter of Juno, and the wife of Hercules. She was also the
cup-bearer of the Gods, until she was supplanted by Ganymede.]
times. It was slightly contracted in the middle, and its two
handles extended from the top to the bottom. It was employed in
the worship of the Deities, and was used for libations of blood,
Proserpine. Clarke translates this line and the next, ‘And prays
this and the two following lines: ‘And purifies the old gentleman
with sulphur. In the meantime the strong medicine boils, and
bounces about in a brazen kettle set on the fire.’]
is supposed to have been the screech owl, and was a favorite bird
qualities of the vampyre bat were attributed to them.]
venomous water-snake of a powerful and offensive smell. The
Delphin Commentator seems to think that a kind of turtle is here
live four times, and the crow nine times, as long as man.]
l. 314.) he calls by the name of Nyseïdes; but in the Fifth Book
of the Fasti they are styled Hyades, and are placed in the number
Pherecydes, calls them ‘Dodonides.’]
the Nymphs, who had nursed him, renewed, when he had just beheld
Medea, and not Tethys, do it in favor of Æson?]
translated by Clarke, ‘and that her tricks might not cease.’]
Western Ocean, is thus called from Iberia, the ancient name of
Spain; which country, perhaps, was so called from the river
Iberus, or Ebro, flowing through it.]
princess and her father are consumed. She then murders the two
out of stone, and the wood of Ida, in which Bacchus hid a stolen
The city, too, of Eurypylus, in which the Coan matrons wore
horns, at the time when the herd of Hercules departed {thence};
Phœbean Rhodes also, and the Ialysian Telchines, whose eyes
After that, she beholds the lakes of Hyrie, and Cycneian Tempe,
{called} after her own name.
Adjacent to these {places} is Pleuron; in which Combe, the
Thessaly are so called, because Chiron, the son of the Nymph
Phillyra, lived there.]
foot of Mount Pelion; he incurred the resentment of the Nymphs,
who changed him into a scarabæus, or winged beetle. Flying to the
Asia Minor, near the mouth of the river Caicus.]
probably, to the story of the Lesbian changed into a dragon or
serpent, which is mentioned in the Eleventh book, line 58.]
Thyoneus, the son of Bacchus, who, having stolen an ox from some
Phrygian shepherds, was pursued by them; on which Bacchus, to
screen his son, changed the ox into a stag, and invested Thyoneus
father of Corythus, by Œnone. He was said to have been buried at
Cebrena, a little town of Phrygia, near Troy.]
Icarius, the father of Erigone, who discovered the murder of his
master by the shepherds of Attica, and was made a Constellation,
under the name of the Dog-star. As, however, the flight of Medea
was now far distant from Attica, it is more likely that the Poet
refers to the transformation of some female, named Mæra, into a
dog, whose story has not come down to us; indeed, Lactantius
expresses this as his opinion. Burmann thinks that it refers to
the transformation of Hecuba, mentioned in the 13th book, line
of Venus, incurred the resentment of that Goddess, and were
changed by her into cows. Another version of the story is, that
these women, being offended at Hercules for driving the oxen of
Ægeon through their island, were very abusive, on which Juno
transformed them into cows: to this latter version reference is
made in the present passage.]
chief city of the island, which was also called Cos; and having
slain Eurypylus, carried off his daughter Chalciope.]
in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Asia Minor, was sacred to
the Sun, and was said never to be deserted by his rays.]
Thelchines, were a race supposed to have migrated thither from
magicians; such was the belief of Strabo.]
by the ancients not only to have certain fascinating powers, but
to be able to destroy the beauty of any object on which it was
Ægean sea, near Eubœa. Carthæa was a city there, the ruins of
which are still in existence.]
son, she was changed into a lake, called by her name.]
near Mount Curius. It was far distant from Bœotia and Lake Hyrie.
Brauron, a village of Attica, near the confines of Bœotia.]
Curetes of Ætolia, who, perhaps, received that name from Mount
Curius. There was another Combe, the daughter of Asopus, who
discovered the use of brazen arms, and was called Chalcis, from
that circumstance. She was said to have borne a hundred daughters
Crete and the Peloponnesus, in the Saronic gulf, which was sacred
Bœotia, had a daughter, Praxithea. She was the wife of Erectheus,
referred to.]
the sea-coast of Achaia. Triptolemus visited him with his winged
chariot; on which, Antheas, the son of Eumelus, ascended it while
called, either because, as Pindar says, they had sprung from the
the adjective ‘justissime’ of the feminine gender.]
changed into an eagle by Jupiter, while his wife was transformed
into an osprey.]
robber Procrustes, who was slain by Theseus. Halcyone, the
daughter of his son Scyron, having been guilty of incontinence,
was thrown into the sea by her father, on which she was changed
into a kingfisher, which bore her name.]
perform. Going thence to Athens, she married Ægeus.
Alopis was changed into a fox; Cygnus into a swan; Coronis into a
remarked, that the account of the women of Cos being changed into
entrance, {wherein} there is a descending path, along which the
scattered piecemeal; these, long tossed about, length of time is
Acherusia. It was situate in the country of the Mariandyni, near
the city of Heraclea, in Pontus, and was said to be the entrance
of the Infernal Regions. Cerberus was said to have been dragged
from Tartarus by Hercules, through this cave, which circumstance
send his son to him when he was able to lift the stone, and to
take them from under it; and he then returned to Athens, where he
mother led him to the stone under which his father had deposited
slaughter. The bull which Theseus slew there was presented by
Neptune to Minos. Being brought into Attica by Hercules, it laid
waste that territory until it was slain by Theseus.]
Corinthian territory, which was infested by a wild boar of
father of Periphetes, a robber who infested Epidaurus, in the
Peloponnesus. He was so formidable with his club, that he was
called Corynetas, from κορύνη, the Greek for ‘a club.’]
such extreme cruelty that he used to stretch out, or lop off, the
dedicated to Ceres; there the famous Eleusinian mysteries of that
whom reference is made in the Ibis, line 409.]
was founded by Lelex, was almost destroyed by Minos, and was
rebuilt by Alcathoüs, the son of Pelops. He, flying from his
father, on being accused of the murder of his brother Chrysippus,
was then laying waste that territory, he was held in the highest
veneration by the inhabitants.]
in the neighborhood of Megara, and used to insist on those who
became his guests washing his feet. This being done upon the
rocks, Scyron used to kick the strangers into the sea while so
here named, were near the isle of Crete, and perhaps in those
times were subject to the sway of Minos.]
had much the properties of soap. It was of a grayish white color,
inasmuch as it was a very craggy island. It is probably a corrupt
is referred to in the Explanation, p. 242 / p. 270.]
If it is the fact, as many antiquarians suppose, that much of the
Gyaros, and Peparethos, fruitful in the smooth olive, do not aid
the Gnossian ships. Then Minos makes for Œnopia, the kingdom of
Even yet may the Lyctian fleet be beheld from the Œnopian walls,
Cephalus: “and I pray that thy power may increase along with thy
temple there, sacred to Neptune.]
Anius. The Andrian slave, who gives his name to one of the
comedies of Terence, was supposed to be a native of this island.]
settlement for their criminals. The mice of this island were said
reason of its unfruitfulness.]
Jupiter carried thither.]
were the three sons of Æacus.]
or according to some writers, of Mercury and Herse, the daughter
long-winded detail of it.’]
renders the words ‘viscera torrentur primo.’ ‘first people’s
bowels are searched;’ perhaps, however, the latter word is a
misprint for ‘scorched.’]
must be supposed to point with his finger towards the temple.]
friendship of the sons of Pallas, the brother of Ægeus. This
circumstance caused Ægeus to entertain jealous feelings, the more
which was famous for the number and magnitude of its oaks. Doves
were said to give oracular responses there, probably from the
circumstance that the female soothsayers of Thessaly were called
πελειαδαι. Some writers, however, say that the oaks had the gift
of speech, combined with that of prophesying.]
Cephalus, having resisted the advances of Aurora, who has become
enamoured of him while hunting, returns in disguise to his wife,
Athenian brothers replied, and said, “In it, thou wilt admire its
youth inquire into all particulars, why it was given, and whence
the parent of Cephalus, among the children of Apollo.]
Erectheus, king of Athens, and was carried off by Boreas, as
already stated.]
Attica, famous for its honey and its marble.]
that she was found by her husband in company with a young man
named Pteleon, who had made her a present of a golden wreath.
Antoninus Liberalis says, that her husband tried her fidelity by
offering her a bribe, through the medium of a slave.]
attachment of Aurora for her husband, made her a present of a
javelin, which no person could escape; and gave her the dog
Lælaps, which no wild beast could outrun. Such is the version
given by Hyginus. But Apollodorus and Antoninus Liberalis say,
that she fled to Minos, who, prevailing over her virtue, made her
herself before her husband, disguised as a huntress, she gave him
give them to him, she exacted, as a condition, what must,
apparently, have resulted in a breach of the laws of conjugal
fidelity. On his assenting to the proposal, she discovered
herself, and afterwards made him the presents which he desired.]
of Laius, king of Thebes. The Sphinx was a monster, the offspring
monster precipitated itself from a rock. It had the face of a
woman, the wings of a bird, and the extremities of a lion.]
ancient oracle in Bœotia.]
Gortynian, from Gortys or Gortyna, one of its cities, which was
famous for the skill of its inhabitants in archery.]
and Apollodorus say that this was a fox, which was called ‘the
Teumesian,’ from Teumesus, a mountain of Bœotia, and that the
Thebans, to appease its voracity, were wont to give it a child to
There were two princes of the name of Cephalus; one, the son of
Mercury and Herse, the daughter of Cecrops; the other, the son of
Deïoneus, who was carried off by Aurora, and having left her,
according to them, returned to Procris.
javelin, which she has formerly given to him, he kills her.
rival, Aurora.]
Peleus, who had levied these troops.]
The love which Cephalus, the son of Deïoneus, bore for the chase,
attention from her own intrigue. Cephalus, suspecting his wife’s
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Transcriber’s Note on the Text: