Note: Only those names not adequately covered in the Notes and References, or for which the reader is there specifically referred to the Glossary, are included below. A name in bold-face, other than as the title of an entry, indicates the existence of a separate entry for that item.
Absyrtus Brother of Medea, chiefly remembered for his death at her and Jason’s hands during their escape from Colchis. Ovid picks up the version popularized by Pherecydes and Apollodorus (1.9.24), according to which Medea cut Absyrtus to pieces aboard ship and scattered his limbs overboard to slow down pursuit by Aeëtes as he gathered up his son’s remains: by a false etymology (see note ad loc.) the cutting-up (τομή in Greek) was thought to explain how Tomis got its name.
Abydos City at the narrowest point of the Hellespont (Dardanelles), opposite Sestos, and the scene of Leander’s famous swim to visit his beloved Hero on the further side (a feat duplicated by Lord Byron and, in our own time, by Patrick Leigh Fermor).
Accius Lucius Accius, b. 170 BC in Umbria: lived to be over ninety. A tragedian himself, he also wrote critical and historical work on tragedy. Surviving fragments show free adaptation of Greek originals, and an idiosyncratic talent.
Achilles Son of Peleus and Thetis, protagonist of the Iliad, where his barbarous habits are offset by an equally archaic sense of the chivalrous. Educated by the wise Centaur Chiron, and hidden as a girl on Scyros by Thetis, in an attempt to avoid the fate prophesied for him at Troy, he there impregnated Deïdameia, who bore him Neoptolemus. His passionate friendship with Patroclus led, after the latter’s death, to Achilles’ final confrontation with Hector.
Acontius A handsome youth who, at the festival of Artemis (equated with Roman Diana), fell in love with a girl called Cydippe, for whom her father had other plans. To catch her Acontius inscribed on an apple the phrase ‘I swear by Artemis to marry Acontius’, and dropped it where she would find it. She picked it up and (a universal habit in antiquity) read the message aloud, thus obligating herself. She threw the apple away, and forgot the matter. Artemis did not. Each time Cydippe was on the point of getting married she fell ill. Finally the Delphic Oracle explained that she was being punished for oath-breaking, and her father married her to Acontius after all. Ovid treats this story at length in Her. 20–21.
Actaeon Mythical hunter, who provoked the wrath of Artemis (according to the version Ovid follows) by accidentally seeing her bathing naked. By way of punishment she turned him into a stag, and he was thereupon devoured by his own hounds.
Admetus King of Pherae in Thessaly, who won the gratitude of Apollo by treating him generously when the god was forced to serve him for a year in consequence of having killed the Cyclopes. Afterwards Apollo persuaded the Fates to grant Admetus a postponement of death, and later to let him live if his mother, father or wife would die for him. His wife Alcestis agreed to-do so, and Heracles subsequently brought her back from the underworld.
Adrastus Mythical prince of Argos: exiled as the result of dynastic rivalries he fled to Sicyon, where he succeeded Polybus as king, and founded the Nemean Games, but later returned to the throne of Argos. Tydeus of Calydon and Polyneices of Thebes both sought his aid there, and each married one of his daughters. Adrastus supported them in the famous war of the Seven against Thebes.
Aegean That recess of the Mediterranean bounded on the east by the coast of Ionia and Caria (modern Turkey), on the west by mainland Greece, on the south by the island of Crete and on the north by the coast of Macedonia and Thrace.
Aegisthus Best known as the son of Thyestes who became the lover of his cousin-by-marriage Clytemnestra, took part in the murder of Agamemnon, and was murdered in his turn by Agamemnon’s son Orestes; but his earlier life is equally mouvementé. He was the result of unwitting incest between his father Thyestes and Thyestes’ daughter Pelopia; exposed, and suckled by a goat (hence his name), he survived, being brought up by Thyestes’ brother Atreus, who at a pretended feast of reconciliation with Thyestes, cooked and served up the latter’s other sons at dinner, and sent Aegisthus to murder Thyestes himself. Instead, Aegisthus revealed the fact of his incestuous birth, and afterwards killed Atreus.
Aeneas Son of Anchises and Aphrodite, and a member of the cadet branch of the royal house of Troy. Like Achilles, he had an immortal mother and divine horses; with Hector, he was one of the main Trojan heroes against the Greeks. After the war kingship was prophesied for him by Poseidon. His various wanderings, to Carthage and Sicily among other places, made him a hero in the West, where he was credited with being the founder of Lavinium. Virgil from this congeries of traditional material fashioned his epic of imperial destiny, the Aeneid.
Aeolus King of Lipara in the floating island Aeolia, off Sicily, and according to some accounts (including Homer’s Odyssey) the king of the winds, which he gave to Odysseus, but which the latter’s crew released from their leather bag while he slept.
Aërope Mother, by Pleisthenes, son of Atreus, of Agamemnon and Menelaus. After her husband’s death she married Atreus, who brought up her sons as his own. She, meanwhile, was seduced by Thyestes, and this led to Atreus’s revenge on his brother (see Aegisthus).
Aesculapius Latinized form of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, father of Machaon and Podalirius (who inherited his healing skills), and perhaps not originally divine, since tradition had it that Zeus killed him with a lightning-bolt for restoring the dead to life. His cult was widespread, but particularly associated with Epidaurus, whence (at the instance of the Sibylline Books) it was imported to Rome in 293 BC after an outbreak of plague.
Aeson Son of Cretheus, half-brother of Pelias, king of Thessaly, and father of the leader of the Argonauts, Jason. Accounts differ as to whether he was forced to commit suicide by Pelias, or survived until Jason’s return from Colchis and was then magically rejuvenated by Medea.
Agamemnon Brother of Menelaus, son of Aërope and Pleisthenes, brought up (with Aegisthus) by Atreus. Married Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus and sister of Helen, who married Menelaus. When Helen was carried off by the Trojan prince Paris, Agamemnon, as king of Mycenae, raised a force from the Greek states to recover her and avenge his brother’s honour. The fleet was held up at Aulis by contrary winds, and Agamemnon was commanded by Artemis (whom he had offended by shooting her deer) to sacrifice his daugher Iphigeneia if the fleet was to sail. He did so, after summoning her on the pretext that she was to marry Achilles. (In some versions a doe was magically substituted as sacrificial victim: for her subsequent adventures see Iphigeneia). This caused the implacable enmity of Clytemnestra, who in Agamemnon’s absence took his cousin Aegisthus as her lover. When, after the ten years of the Trojan War, Agamemnon returned to Mycenae, they killed him. For subsequent developments in this family vendetta see Orestes.
Agrippina Youngest daughter of M. Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus’s friend and general, and Augustus’s daughter Julia (I): in AD 5 (?) she married Germanicus, and bore him no less than nine children. She accompanied her husband on his German and Eastern campaigns, in which she showed herself a woman of great courage and initiative (Tac. Ann. 1.69). After his (highly suspicious) death in AD 19 she returned to Italy, where she was greeted amid scenes of extraordinary enthusiasm. Her relations with Tiberius were bad: she was convinced he had been responsible for Germanicus’s death, and that he planned a similar fate for her. After ten years her support among senators led Tiberius to banish her (on the Senate’s authority) to the island of Pandataria (AD 29) where in 33 she starved herself to death. Among her surviving children was the future emperor Caligula.
Ajax, son of Telamon Greek warrior of huge size and strength who went mad and killed himself in rage and despair when the arms of Achilles, after that hero’s death, were awarded not to him but to Odysseus/Ulysses.
Alcestis Daughter of Pelias and wife of Admetus, who in order to win her hand was forced by her father to come courting driving a chariot drawn by wild beasts, including lions and bears. This he achieved with the aid of Apollo. She subsequently volunteered to die on his behalf (Admetus had exacted this concession from the Fates by getting them drunk), and was brought back from the underworld by Heracles.
Alcinoüs King of the Phaeacians on the island of Scheria: husband of Arete and father of Nausicaä. In Homer’s Odyssey (Books 6–13) he entertains Odysseus/Ulysses and sends him home to Ithaca loaded with gifts, but as a result offends Poseidon, who turns the vessel that carried Odysseus to stone (Od. 13. 159ff.)
Alcmena Daughter of Electryon, wife of Amphitryon: visited by Zeus in the guise of her husband, she bore twins: Heracles to Zeus, Iphicles to Amphitryon. On death she was translated to the Islands of the Blest.
Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BC), son of Philip II, and conqueror of the Persian empire ruled by the Achaemenids (see also Green AM in Abbreviations).
Alexandria The name of numerous city-foundations by Alexander the Great, but here (and most often) the most famous of these, that on the coast of Egypt, still surviving to this day. Alexander himself is said to have chosen the site and laid out the city-plan. Alexandria rapidly became a flourishing international port and, under the Ptolemies in the Hellenistic period, a great centre of culture, science and the arts, with its great Library and Museum (the latter a hive of scholarly research). It also contained the tomb of Alexander himself, a great tourist attraction under Roman rule.
Amphiaraüs Married to Eriphyle, sister of Adrastus, he refused to participate in the expedition of the Seven against Thebes until forced to by his wife, who had been bribed with the necklace of Harmonia. A seer, he foresaw his own death (he was blasted by the thunderbolt of Zeus when forced back from his assault on one of Thebes’ seven gates), and subsequently became associated posthumously with a famous oracular shrine.
Anacreon Ionian lyric, elegiac and iambic poet (b. c. 570 BC): his patrons included Polycrates of Samos, who protected him from the invading Persians (c. 545), and, after that tyrant’s death (522), the Athenian Hipparchus. In 514 he went to Thessaly, but later returned to Athens, where he was commemorated by a statue on the Acropolis. What survives of his work is light, witty, often erotic, and pleasantly hedonistic.
Anchialus or Anchiale Greek town on the west coast of the Black Sea, south of Tomis, and subject to the larger foundation of Apollonia, further to the north.
Anchises Son of Capys and a cadet member of the Trojan royal house. Aphrodite, enamoured of his physical beauty, visited him (disguised as a mortal girl) while he was tending his flocks on the slopes of Mt Ida, and by him conceived Aeneas. Before leaving him she revealed her identity, swore him to secrecy over the child’s parentage, and threatened him with destruction by Zeus’s lightning should he reveal it. He boasted, nevertheless, of his conquest and was lamed or blinded as a result. For his rescue from Troy and subsequent wanderings see Aeneas.
Andromache Wife of Hector, and one of the more notable victims of the Greeks after their victory in the Trojan War. Achilles killed her father and brothers, her son Astyanax was hurled to death from the city ramparts, and she herself became the slave of Achilles’ son Neoptolemus. Her sufferings are graphically portrayed in Euripides’ Trojan Women.
Andromeda Daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, exposed on a rock to the attentions of a ravaging sea-monster (sent by Poseidon, along with flooding, as the result of her mother boasting she was more beautiful than the Nereids), an oracle having declared that this was the only way of appeasing the injured god. From this embarrassing situation she was rescued by Danaë’s son Perseus, whom she married. They, and her parents, were subsequently turned into the constellations that bear their names.
Anser Erotic poet (1st cent. BC), a friend of Mark Antony and critic of Virgil.
Antigone Daughter of Oedipus by his incestuous union with his mother Jocasta, and sister to Eteocles and Polyneices. Best known from Sophocles’ play of the same name, in which her determination, against the orders of Creon, to bury Polyneices after his failed assault on Thebes leads to her imprisonment and death, as well as to the suicide of her fiancé Haemon, Creon’s own son.
Apelles Famous painter (4th cent BC) of Ephesus, well known for his portraits of Philip II of Macedon and the latter’s son Alexander the Great, whom he portrayed in the pose of the seated Zeus, holding a poised thunderbolt.
Aphrodite See Venus.
Apollo Son of Zeus and Leto, and the most widely accepted among the gods of the Greek pantheon. His multiple functions included the care of herds and flocks, the art of prophecy, archery (in which capacity he could show himself as vengeful as Zeus with lightning-bolts), music and the arts in general, and healing. For his period of servitude to a human master see Admetus.
Appian Way (Via Appia) The main trunk road from Rome to south Italy, by way of Beneventum, Tarentum and Brundisium (Brindisi). The earliest stretch, covering the 132 miles from Rome to Capua, was built c. 312 BC by Appius Claudius Caecus. By the mid 3rd cent. BC it seems to have been complete, and was fully paved about a century later.
Argo, Argonauts: When Aeson’s son Jason attempted to reclaim the throne of Iolcos in Thessaly on his father’s behalf from the latter’s half-brother Pelias, Pelias made it a condition of his agreement to this demand that Jason should first lead an expedition to bring back the Golden Fleece from Colchis, hoping that he would die in the venture. With the help of Hera and Athena Jason both raised a band of heroes from all over Bronze Age Greece to undertake the quest with him, and acquired a magical vessel, the Argo, built by Argos and Athena together. For the events of their voyage to Colchis, the winning of the Fleece, and their subsequent adventures, see Jason and Medea.
Aristarchus of Samothrace Scholar and critic (c. 217–145 BC), tutor of Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator and Director of the Library in Alexandria. On the accession of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (Physcon) in 145 BC he retired to Cyprus. He made critical recensions of numerous ancient authors, most notably Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar, on whom he also wrote commentaries.
Artemis Daughter of Zeus and Leto, and twin sister of Apollo. The origins of this goddess are obscure: she seems to have been connected with childbirth, and also to have functioned as a ‘Mistress of Beasts’: to Greeks of the classical period and later she was the archetypal virgin huntress. At Brauron in Attica her votaries were young girls involved in a bear-cult; at Ephesus she was the symbol of fertility; in the Tauric Chersonese she was connected with a grisly cult involving human sacrifice, to which the legend of Iphigeneia and Orestes, several times treated by Ovid, is intimately connected. The Romans identified her with Diana.
Atalanta Daughter of Iasos and Clymene, she grew up an athletic virgin huntress with a marked distaste for marriage, who took part in the famous Calydonian boar-hunt, fought Centaurs, wrestled with Peleus, Achilles’ father, at the funeral games of Pelias, and may in fact have been a local avatar of Artemis. To her suitors she made the proposition that they should compete with, her in a foot-race: if they won, they would win her hand, but if she did, she would kill them (cf. Oenomaüs for another similar myth). Melanion defeated this ploy by getting three golden apples from Aphrodite and dropping them as he ran; Atalanta stopped to pick them up and lost the race. They married, and produced a son, Parthenopaeus. When Melanion failed to fulfil his vow to Aphrodite, the goddess induced the pair to copulate on sacred ground, and then turned them into lions for their impiety.
Athena Patron goddess of Athens and widely worshipped elsewhere, closely associated with the protection of ancient citadels (e.g. the Acropolis), with the development of arts and crafts (especially spinning, weaving and pottery), with olive-cultivation, and with wisdom, learning, and technology in general. Perhaps the oddest myth concerning her is that of her parthenogenetic birth, grown and fully armed, from the head of Zeus. Like Artemis, she remained eternally virgin, despite vigorous attempts (e.g. by Hephaestus) on her chastity.
Athens, Attica Attica forms a roughly triangular promontory in south-east Greece, separated from Boeotia in the north by the Cithaeron—Pastra range and from Megara in the west by Mt Cerata. Its east coast faces towards Euboea and the Aegean, and to the south-west it borders the Saronic Gulf. Its main port, Piraeus, lies across a narrow strait from the island of Salamis, and in classical times was connected to the city of Athens, five miles inland, by the Long Walls. The Athenians regarded themselves (wrongly) as autochthonous; it is certainly true that the Acropolis was occupied from neolithic times, and resisted all attacks till the Persians finally occupied it in 480 BC. The city survived all the vicissitudes of time to become the capital of modern Greece.
Atreus, Atreids Atreus was the son of Pelops and Hippodameia, and the brother of Thyestes, with whom he was induced, by his mother, to kill their half-brother Chrysippus, Pelops’ son by a nymph. In consequence of this crime, they both fled the kingdom. For the further history of the Atreids see Aërope, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes. After Atreus served up Thyestes with his own children, cooked, at a supposed feast of reconciliation, the Sun was said to have reversed its course in horror over Mycenae, travelling from west to east.
Augustus Born C. Octavius (63 BC—AD 14), he was adopted, as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian) and made chief beneficiary of Julius Caesar in the latter’s will. Triumvir with Mark Antony and Lepidus in 43 BC, he found relations with the former increasingly strained (not least on account of Antony’s relations with the Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII). In 40 the Treaty of Brundisium patched things up, and Antony married Octavian’s sister Octavia. Octavian now divorced his own wife Scribonia and married Livia (who was pregnant by her first husband). Despite a renewal of the triumvirate in 38, Octavian and Antony moved inexorably towards war, which was declared — against Cleopatra alone — in 31. In September of that year Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, and acquired Egypt with its wealth and natural resources. Though the Republic was technically restored, and Octavian (soon to be given the title of Augustus) regularly held the consulship, he ruled as de facto emperor for the rest of his life. Ovid was particularly affected by Augustus’s legislation penalizing adultery (see Introduction, p. xv), and subsequently by the imperial fiat of AD 8 banishing him. For relevant details see Notes.
Aurora Goddess of the dawn, the Roman version of Greek Eos, daughter of Hyperion and married to Tithonus: each day she was supposed to rise from Ocean to bring light to gods and mortals alike. By Tithonus she was the mother of Memnon; her affairs, especially that with Procris’ husband Cephalus, were notorious. Though she won immortality for Tithonus, she forgot to include eternal youth, so that he withered away into a dry ancient husk of a man: according to one tradition she then metamorphosed him into a cricket.
Automedon The charioteer and companion of Achilles, who subsequently, according to Virgil (Aen. 2.476) fought at the side of Achilles’ son Neoptolemus (also known as Pyrrhus).
Bacchus, Bacchic An alternative name for the Greek deity Dionysus, regularly used by Roman writers, who also equated Bacchus with their own fertility-god Liber: perhaps for this reason Roman Bacchus (and the post-Renaissance tradition derived from Rome) appears as a less dangerous, fleshier, more amiably bibulous figure than the coldly powerful purveyor of ecstatic possession drawn by Euripides.
Bassus Among the poets Ovid mentions as the heroes of his youth (Tr. IV.10.41ff.), only Bassus and Macer are obscure (as opposed to the carefully chosen list of fashionable nonentities paraded at EP IV.16.5ff.). Bassus wrote iambic verse, and may be the Bassus addressed by Propertius (1.4): that is all we know about him. He gets no mention by Quintilian or any other critic.
Bellerophon Grandson of Sisyphus, with whom Anteia, wife of Proetus, king of the Argives, fell in love: when he rejected her advances, she accused him to her husband of having tried to seduce her. Proetus then sent Bellerophon to Iobates, king of Lycia, with a sealed letter requiring Iobates (in some traditions his father-in-law) to kill the messenger. Iobates set him a series of ordeals: the first of these, destroying the Chimaera, he accomplished by shooting this monster from the winged horse Pegasus (which Athena enabled him to master). When he proved equally successful in the other tests (which included fighting the Amazons), Iobates married him to his daughter and made him his successor as king.
Bessi A widely dispersed Thracian tribe located in Ovid’s day, according to Strabo (7.5.12, C.318), all along the southern slopes of the Haemus range, from the Black Sea as far as the Dardani (north of Macedonia). Like the Aetolians, they had a bad reputation, being ‘called brigands even by the brigands’.
Bistonia, -an A Thracian people occupying the area around Abdera and Dicaea, and probably extending as far west as the R. Nestos. It should be noted, however, that Roman poets frequently used them, by loose synecdoche, as a synonym for Thrace or the Thracians as a whole.
Bosporus The narrow channel separating the Black Sea (Euxine) from the Propontis (modern Sea of Marmara), with Byzantium on its west bank and Chalcedon on its right. Often described as the ‘Thracian Bosporus’ to distinguish it from the ‘Cimmerian Bosporus’ in the Crimea, the passage between the Euxine and the Maeotic Lake (Sea of Azov).
Briseïs The patronymic (‘daughter of Briseus’) of the pretty widow who became a war-prize of Achilles, but was taken from him by Agamemnon, thus precipitating the great quarrel at the beginning of the Iliad. (Her real name, something seldom remembered, was Hippodameia.)
Busiris In early Greek myth, the name of an Egyptian king who supposedly killed all foreigners he caught entering Egypt; when Heracles was threatened with being treated thus, he broke his chains and dispatched Busiris, together with his son and herald (a scene popular among vase-painters). Later authors, from Herodotus to Strabo and Diodorus, endeavoured to rationalize the myth or explain it away.
Byzantium City on the western, European, side of the Bosporus, founded in the mid 7th cent. BC, probably by Megarians; the earlier foundation of Chalcedon, on the Asiatic side, became known proverbially as the ‘city of the blind’ for missing the superb site opposite, by the Golden Horn. In AD 330 Byzantium was refounded by Constantine as New Rome, and from then on was known as Constantinople (the modern Istanbul).
Cadmus Son of Agenor, king of Tyre. His search for his sister Europa ended when the Delphic Oracle told him to found a city where the cow that he would find on leaving the oracular shrine lay down to rest. The spot the cow chose was Thebes. Here he built the citadel that became known as the Cadmea. Among his children by Harmonia (daughter of Ares and Aphrodite) was Semele, destroyed by her own insistence on seeing Zeus in his full glory.
Callimachus Hellenistic scholar-poet (c. 305–c. 240 BC) from Cyrene in north Africa, a prominent member of the Museum and Library in Alexandria under Ptolemy II Philadelphos, where he produced a catalogue raisonné (the Pinakes) of the Library’s holdings. His Hymns, and fragments of his Aitia and other works, survive.
Calvus C. Licinius Calvus (82–?47 BC), distinguished orator and poet. In the former capacity, Quintilian says (10.1.115), some ranked him above Cicero (who disliked his Atticizing style). As a poet he wrote epyllia, epigrams, vers d’occasion, fierce lampoons, which won the admiration not only of Ovid but also of Horace and Propertius. His tiny stature contrasted oddly with his vigorous courtroom manner: Catullus calls him a ‘salaputium disertum’, or ‘learned Lilliputian’.
Calydon City of Aetolia in western Greece, a few miles inland, on the R. Evenus, and best known as the site of the famous Calydonian boarhunt led by Meleager.
Campus Martius See Field of Mars.
Canace Daughter of Aeolus and Enarete, who, not content with bearing an assortment of offspring to Poseidon, had a violent passion for her brother Macareus, and as a result either committed suicide or was put to death by her father.
Capaneus One of the Seven against Thebes (see also Adrastus and Polyneices). As he made his assault on the Electra Gate he boasted that not even Zeus could stop him, and was promptly blasted with a thunderbolt for his blasphemous presumption. While his body was still burning his wife Evadne threw herself into the flames and died with him, an early example of suttee that Ovid was not slow to use as a moral object-lesson for his own wife.
Cassandra Traditionally the most beautiful of Priam’s daughters by Hecuba, she had (like her brother Helenus) the gift of prophecy from Apollo. However, since Apollo had bestowed this favour on her in return for promised sexual accommodation which she had then refused him, the god also ensured that no one would ever believe her prophecies. After the capture of Troy Cassandra was raped in sanctuary by Ajax, the son of Oileus. She accompanied Agamemnon home as his concubine after the Trojan War, but was killed with him by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
Cato C. Valerius Cato (not the more famous bearer of that name, M. Porcius Cato), known as ‘the Latin Siren’, flourished at Rome in the second half of the 1st cent. BC. He was both rhetorician and poet (Suet. De Illustr. Gramm. 2–9), and had a great reputation for training poets-in-the-making. At one time rich, he spent his latter years in extreme poverty.
Catullus C. Valerius Catullus (?84–?54 BC), lyric and iambic poet, leading exponent of the neoteric movement, with its emphasis on the technical refinements and learned allusiveness of Hellenistic Alexandria. His erotic verse was chiefly addressed to the woman he calls ‘Lesbia’ (probably Clodia, sister of Cicero’s bête noire P. Clodius Pulcher and wife of Q. Metellus Celer); he also wrote epithalamia, epigrams, and at least one epyllion, on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis.
Caÿster, R. Major river of Lydia in Asia Minor, with its outfall near Ephesus and its sources in the Tmolus mountains.
Cenchreae The eastern port of Corinth, on the Saronic Gulf: a well-protected harbour between two promontories, and the city’s emporium for trade with Asia. It was linked with the Gulf of Corinth by a slipway (diolkos) on which vessels could be winched across the Isthmus.
Centaurs Mythical beings, half human, half horse: originally located in Thessaly, and best known for their great fight with the Lapiths at the wedding of Pirithoüs.
Cerberus The mythical dog believed to guard the entrance to Hades: estimates of the number of heads this creature had varied (anything up to a hundred), but the canonical number was three. He was also believed to have a serpent-tail, and a mane similarly composed of an assortment of snakes.
Ceres Ancient Italian goddess of fertility and crops (grain in particular), later assimilated to the cult of Greek Demeter, which seems to have reached Rome by way of Sicily. Her most famous cult in Rome was located on the Aventine, and goes back to the 5th cent. BC.
Charybdis A whirlpool or maelstrom best known from Homer’s Odyssey, Book 12, and located in a narrow channel opposite Scylla. Three times a day it was supposed to suck down (and afterwards spew out) the waters of the strait, together with any object, ships included, that came within range.
Chimaera A fire-breathing triform monster comprising the forequarters of a lion, the rear of a serpent, and the mid-parts of a she-goat, that was located in Caria and ravaged the countryside until disposed of by Bellerophon.
Chiron The wisest and most civilized of the Centaurs, skilled in hunting, music, medicine and gymnastics, and thus regarded as an ideal teacher: Achilles and many other Greek heroes are said to have been his pupils.
Cinna C. Helvius Cinna, neoteric poet, friend of Catullus and a student of Valerius Cato. His highly obscure epyllion Zmyrna described the incestuous passion of the eponymous heroine (sometimes called Myrrha) for her father Cinyras; like Catullus, he also wrote light verse. Tribune in 44 BC, he was torn to pieces by an angry mob that mistook him for the anti-Caesarean praetor of that year, L. Cornelius Cinna.
Circe Mythical sorceress, daughter of Helios and Perse, and sister to Aeëtes, best known for her encounter with Odysseus and his crew, whom she transformed into swine on her magical island of Aeaea (later located off the coast of Latium in Italy). Ovid in Met. XIV also has her metamorphose Picus, king of the.Ausonians.
Clashing Rocks Located in the Bosporus channel at the entrance to the Black Sea, these mythical rocks (also known as the Cyaneae or Symplegades) were a major obstacle to the Argonauts during their outward voyage. But with the help of Athena they successfully passed through them, after which (in accordance with an ancient oracle) they fused together and clashed no more. The ‘Wandering Rocks’ (Planctae), though distinct from the ‘Clashing Rocks’ in Apollonius Rhodius’s epic, probably represent the same original myth.
Clytemnestra Daughter of Tyndareus and wife of Agamemnon, whom she, with her lover Aegisthus, murdered on his return from the Trojan War, largely on account of his having sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia at the outset of the war when the Greek fleet was becalmed at Aulis, in order to appease Artemis and obtain a favourable wind. She in her turn was killed by her son Orestes, aided by Orestes’ sister Electra.
Colchis, -ian Territory at the east end of the Black Sea, south of the Caucasus, and best known for the mythical expedition, to the kingdom of Aeëtes, made by Jason and the Argonauts. In historical times its main river, the Phasis, offered a route for the trade of central Asia; Colchis itself was rich in timber, linen, hemp, pitch and gold-dust.
Corinth Powerful commercial city on the Isthmus, controlling both land and sea trade, between north Greece and the Peloponnese, and (by means of the famous slipway, or diolkos) between the Saronic and Corinthian Gulfs. Allied with Sparta against Athens during the Peloponnesian War, Corinth switched sides thereafter; Philip II of Macedon made it the meeting-place of the Hellenic League. Destroyed in 146 BC by the Roman general Mummius, it was rebuilt in 44 BC by order of Julius Caesar as a Roman colony, but never regained its former greatness.
Cornificius The identity of this poetaster is uncertain. Macrobius (Sat. 6.5) seems to be referring to the same person as Ovid: he quotes from a lost poem of Cornificius entitled Glaucus. Donatus (Vit. Donat. §§ 67, 76) and Servius (Comment. on Ecl. 2.39, 5.8) describe him as hostile to Virgil: it is suggested that ‘Amyntas’ in the latter’s Eclogues is a portrait of him. The likeliest candidate is Q. Cornificius, the friend of Catullus and Cicero, a career politician who was proscribed by the Second Triumvirate and killed while defending his province of Africa Nova (42 BC).
Cyclades A group of islands in the south-central Aegean, so called because they lay ‘in a circle’ around Apollo’s sacred island of Delos. Naxos, Paros and Andros were, and remain, the largest and most important of these.
Cyzicus Milesian colony (early 7th cent. BC foundation) situated on the island of Arctonnesus in the Propontis (Sea of Marmara), linked to the mainland by a sandy isthmus. A wealthy (and easily defendable) commercial site, it was famous for its electrum coinage, known as ‘Cyzicenes’.
Daedalus Mythical craftsman and inventor, chiefly associated with the legends of Crete: he built the Labyrinth to keep the Minotaur in, and created the famous ‘dancing floor’ of Cnossos. He also provided Ariadne with the thread that guided Theseus, and Pasiphaë with the artificial cow in which she indulged her urge for taurine miscegenation (of which the Minotaur was the fruit). Irked by this last service, King Minos imprisoned Daedalus, together with his son Icarus; but the wily artist built wings for them both, and they escaped by flying. Icarus, however, flew too near the sun, and the wax with which his wings were fastened melted, causing his death by drowning when he fell.
Danaë Daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. An oracle declared that Danaë would bear a son who would kill his grandfather; Acrisius therefore shut her up in a tower, away from all male contact. However, his plans were circumvented by Zeus who visited Danaë as a shower of gold, and sired Perseus on her. Mother and child were cast adrift in a chest, which washed up on the island of Seriphos, and were rescued by Dictys, brother of King Polydectes. For the fulfilment of the oracle see Perseus.
Danaïds, Danaüs In myth, Danaüs was a native of the Egyptian Thebaïd, brother of Aegyptus, and father of no fewer than fifty daughters, the Danaïds. Afraid that Aegyptus was plotting against him, he fled the country with his daughters, arriving in the Peloponnese by way of Rhodes, and becoming king of Argos. The sons of Aegyptus pursued them to Greece, and pressed for Danaü’s daughters in marriage. Danaüs granted their request, but instructed the brides to kill their husbands on their wedding-night: all did so except Hypermnestra, who spared her husband Lynceus. The myth is treated by Aeschylus in his Supplices, and is the basis of Ovid’s own Her. XIV.
Danube (Ister) R. In antiquity as today, the greatest river of south-east Europe, running from Germany to its outfall on the west coast of the Black Sea, some seventy miles north of Tomis.
Deïaneira Sister of Meleager, and fought over by Heracles and the river-god Acheloüs: Heracles won her. On the way home he let the Centaur Nessus carry her across a river. Nessus tried to rape her, and was shot by Heracles. Dying, he gave Deïaneira his mingled blood and sperm, telling her it was an infallible love-charm. Many years (and several children) later, Heracles brought back a new love, Iole; Deïaneira smeared the poison on a shirt of Heracles to get his love back, but instead caused his death (see Sophocles’ play the Trachiniae).
Deïdameia Daughter of King Lycomedes on the island of Scyros. When Achilles was concealed there in adolescence, disguised as a girl, he impregnated Deïdameia, who subsequently gave birth to Neoptolemus, also known as Pyrrhus.
Delphi, Delphic Oracle Impressive site on the lower slopes of Parnassus, some 2,000 ft above sea-level, overlooking the Pleistos Valley, and famous as the site of Apollo’s leading oracle in Greece. It was regarded as the ‘centre’ (omphalos, navel) of the earth, where two eagles (still a feature of the landscape) supposedly met. Though its political prestige diminished from the 4th cent. BC, it continued as a private shrine until finally closed by Theodosius in AD 390.
Diana Ancient Italian (probably Sabine) goddess of crops, fertility and groves, identified from an early period with Greek Artemis, and established in a cult on the Aventine in Rome. Her most famous local cult, however, was that near Aricia, in the ‘Nemus Dianae’, where the priest was a fugitive slave, the ‘Rex Nemorensis’, who won his position by killing his predecessor, and provided the starting-point for Frazer’s Golden Bough. According to Strabo (5.3.12, C.239), the cult was imported from the Tauric Chersonese (see Artemis and Iphigeneia).
Dido Mythical princess of Tyre (where she was known as Elissa), whose husband was murdered by her brother Pygmalion, and who therefore fled to north Africa, where she founded the city of Carthage, and acquired the new name of Dido. Accounts differ as to her fate; the version best known, that of the Aeneid, seems to have been in large part invented by Virgil, who has Aeneas come to Carthage, take Dido as his queen, but leave once more for Italy, prompted by Mercury, in pursuit of his imperial destiny, while Dido immolates herself on her own funeral pyre (as she also does in another tradition to escape the unwelcome attentions of Iarbas).
Diomedes Ovid refers to two men of this name: (1) the Thracian king of the Bistonians, who owned a team of mares that he fed on human flesh: their capture formed the eighth Labour of Heracles; and (2) the son of Tydeus, who took a prominent part in the Trojan War, helping Odysseus against Rhesus and Palamedes, and with him fetching Philoctetes from Lemnos.
Dionysus Son of Zeus and Semele (q.v. for his miraculous birth), a god of ecstatic and orgiastic worship, known from the Linear B tablets to have been worshipped in Bronze Age Greece, and historically associated with Thrace. His connection with wine appears to have been secondary. See also Maenads, maenadism. Fifth-century Attic drama was under his patronage, and Euripides’ last play, the Bacchae, dealt memorably with his Theban epiphany (see Pentheus).
Dioscuri Name given collectively to Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux to Romans), twin sons of Zeus (or Tyndareus) and Leda, and brothers of Helen. Famous for their devotion to one another, they took part in the expedition of the Argonauts (Castor was an expert horseman, Polydeuces a superb boxer), and came to be regarded as protectors of sailors (in which capacity they were catasterized as the constellation that bears their name).
Dodona Oracular sanctuary of Zeus in Epirus, where divine utterance was at first interpreted (by priests known as Selli) from the rustle of oak-leaves, but later inquirers wrote questions on lead strips, many of which have survived. The shrine never really recovered from the Aetolian sack of 219 BC and the Roman devastation of 167 BC.
Dolon A Trojan, son of Eumedes, who figures in Book 10 of the Iliad. He volunteered to spy out the Greek camp, and demanded the horses of Achilles as a reward, but was killed by Odysseus and Diomedes during their own raid behind the Trojan lines.
Elba (Ilva) Ilva, the modern Elba, is an island lying off the coast of Etruria in the Tyrrhenian Sea: it was, and remains, famous for its iron-mines.
Electra Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and sister to Chrysothemis, Iphigeneia and Orestes. Greek tragedy represents her as a brooding, vengeful old maid, devoted to Orestes, implacably hostile to her mother and Aegisthus, but not an active killer except in Euripides’ Electra, where she seems half-insane.
Elis Area of the north-west Peloponnese famous for its horse-breeding: the Elians from very early presided over the Olympic Games.
Elpenor In the Odyssey, one of Odysseus’s companions who were metamorphosed into swine, but subsequently restored to human form: he fell from the roof of Circe’s palace while drunk, broke his neck and died, afterwards (as a ghost in Hades) begging Odysseus to burn his body and erect him a memorial.
Elysium Elysium (seemingly a pre-Greek name), or the Elysian Fields, was identified by Greeks in historical times with the Islands of the Blest, a happy paradise ruled over by Rhadamanthys and made sweet by flowers and sea-breezes, where the lucky dead pursued aristocratic pleasures such as riding, wrestling, or playing the lyre. Its exact location remains vague, though it was thought of as being in some sense distinct from Hades.
Endymion A beautiful youth, from either Elis or Caria (versions differ), who was said to have been struck into eternal sleep in a cave of Mt Latmos in Caria by Zeus (for attempting to seduce Hera): here he was visited, and kissed, by the Moon (Selene). Sleep seems to have been no impediment to congress: traditionally Selene bore him fifty daughters.
Ennius Q. Ennius (239–169 BC), from Rudiae in Calabria: Roman poet and tragedian, best known for his Annales, an eighteen-book epic in dactylic hexameters treating the history of Rome (including the Punic and eastern wars).
Eteocles Elder son of Oedipus and Jocasta, and brother of Polyneices and Antigone. Both brothers were cursed (for trifling slights) by their blinded but still irascible father. They agreed to alternating years of rule in Thebes; but at the end of his first term Eteocles refused to cede power to Polyneices, who then went to Adrastus and raised the war of the Seven against Thebes, which ended with the two brothers killing one another in single combat. See also Antigone.
Euboea, -an One of the largest Aegean islands, lying close to the south-east coast of Greece, off Locris, Boeotia and Attica (Athens), and stretching from the Maliac Gulf and the Gulf of Pagasae in the north to the neighbouring island of Andros in the south. At Chalcis it is less than a hundred yards from the mainland.
Eumolpus Mythical founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which he is held to have learned either from Demeter herself (whose first priest he was thought to be) or from Orpheus. His origins seem to have been in Thrace. The priestly clan of the Eumolpidae claimed descent from him, as the Kerykidae did from his son Keryx, who succeeded him in his priestly office.
Euryalus In Virgil’s Aeneid (9.176ff.) the beautiful boy beloved of Nisus, son of Hyrtacus, who avenges his death by killing his assailant Volcens, and then himself expiring, pierced through with countless wounds, on Euryalus’s corpse, in a burst of hysterical homoerotic melodrama uncharacteristic of Virgil, who was clearly obsessed by the episode.
Eurydice Of the mythical characters bearing this name, the most famous (and the one to which Ovid refers) was the wife of Orpheus. Fleeing the unwelcome attentions of Aristaeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene, minor agricultural deity and bee-keeper, Eurydice was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus followed her down to Hades, and by his magical playing charmed the chthonian deities into letting him take her back up to earth — provided she followed him, and he never looked back. Concern proved too strong: he looked back, and lost her. In anger at Aristaeus the Nymphs destroyed his bees. The whole episode is treated in Book 4 of Virgil’s Georgics.
Evadne Daughter of Iphis and wife of Capaneus, one of the Seven against Thebes. When Capaneus was blasted by Zeus’s lightning for blasphemous arrogance, Evadne threw herself in the flames and perished with her husband.
Falerii Etruscan city to the north-west of Rome, beyond Mt Soracte, captured by Rome in 241 BC. It was famous for its rich pasture, orchards and cattle. Ovid’s second wife was from Falerii (Am. III. 13).
Fate-goddesses The three Fates (Moirai), in Greek myth, were Clotho, the Spinner; Lachesis, the Assigner of Destinies; and Atropos, the Irresistible. They were all regarded as spinning the threads of destiny for mortals, in particular at the crucial moments of birth, marriage and death. The Roman Parcae (also three in number), though in origin goddesses of childbearing, came to be completely assimilated to the Moirai.
Field of Mars (Campus Martius) Originally open pasture outside the city boundary (pomerium), in the bend of the Tiber south of the Pincian Hill and east of the Janiculum, used for army musters and political assemblies. It took its name from the Altar of Mars located in it. During the late Republic and early empire it was progressively encroached on by various public buildings, from the Portico of Octavia to the Theatre of Pompey, but still retained its original function as a common park and exercise ground.
Fortuna The Roman goddess of Chance or Luck, commonly identified with Greek Tyche, but showing traces of an early Italian association with women, childbirth and fertility. Traditionally brought to Rome by Servius Tullius, perhaps from Praeneste, where she had an oracular shrine. Commonly represented on a wheel or globe.
Gallus C. Cornelius Gallus (69–26 BC), statesman, general and elegiac poet, friend of Virgil and (to begin with) of Augustus, who appointed him his first prefect of Egypt. In this office, however, he pursued his own ambitions in too tactlessly active a manner (he put up statues and immodest inscriptions to himself everywhere), and Augustus, with Antony’s example in mind, recalled him. He committed suicide to avoid prosecution for treason. He had taken over Antony’s mistress Cythéris, and as ‘Lycóris’ wrote her four books of love-elegies. These unfortunately do not survive: Gallus seems to have been one of the more interesting of the Roman neoterics.
Ganymede A beautiful boy carried off by the eagle of Zeus, or Zeus in eagle form, to be the cupbearer of the gods and, in later tradition, Zeus’s minion. His father was given either a splendid breed of horses or a golden vine (which suggests Persian influence) in exchange for him. The Roman term catamitus is a corruption of his name.
Geryon The tenth Labour of Heracles was to fetch the red cattle of Geryon from the island of Erythia. Geryon himself was a monstrous being with three heads and the bodies of three men in one (Hes. Theog. 287, Apollod. 2.5.10). Heracles shot Geryon dead and took home the cattle.
Getae A Thracian tribe occupying both banks of the lower Danube to the south and east of the Carpathians, regarded as of superior intelligence by Herodotus (4.92) in comparison with their neighbours. Alexander defeated them; Lysimachus in 292 was not so lucky. At some point they seem to have also acquired the name of Daci (Dacians). Strabo (7.3.11–12, C.304) explains this by the interfusion of two Thracian groups — the Getae nearer the Black Sea, the Daci nearer Germany and the upper reaches of the Danube. Strabo also describes their aggressive habits in a way that matches Ovid’s account.
66Giants A race of primitive beings — originally regarded as human, latterly as monstrous divinities, born of the blood of Ge (Earth) by Ouranos (Heaven) — mainly remembered for their epic, but ultimately unsuccessful, battle (Gigantomachy) to dethrone the Olympian pantheon. A full literary account is given by Apollodorus (1.6.1–3), and the subject was popular in art (e.g. on the Siphnian Treasury and the Great Altar of Pergamon). The gods could prevail only with the aid of a mortal: hence the crucial participation in the battle of Heracles. Later mythographers confused the Giants with the Titans. After defeat they were buried under various volcanoes (the activities of which may have given rise to the legend).
Gorgons See Medusa.
Goths See Getae. The old theory identifying the Getae with the Scandinavian Goths has long been exploded as fallacious; nevertheless its literary associations (in Gibbon as elsewhere) are strong, and I have not hesitated to exploit it in my translation as an evocative poetic device.
Gyas or Gyges One of the Giants, equipped with no fewer than a hundred arms.
Haemon Son of Creon, ruler of Thebes, and nephew of Jocasta. In the Sophoclean version of the Oedipus myth, the fiancé of Oedipus’s daughter Antigone; on learning that his father had condemned Antigone to be buried alive he committed suicide.
Harpies Mythical winged beings mainly noted, as their name implies (Ἁρπυῖαι = ‘Snatchers’), for carrying off persons or things, and perhaps an amalgam of wind-spirits and scavenging birds of prey like vultures or kites (in which latter form they will have stolen and befouled the food of Phineus in the Argonaut legend). In art they are represented as winged women, though literary accounts often describe them as birds with women’s heads, an iconographic motif visually reserved for the Sirens.
Hebe Daughter of Hera and Zeus, and the cupbearer of the Olympian deities: also in some accounts married to Heracles (who persuaded her to rejuvenate him).
Hector Leading Trojan warrior against the Greeks: the eldest son of Priam and Hecuba, married to Andromache and the father of Astyanax, the child killed by the Greeks during the sack of Troy. After killing Achilles’ comrade Patroclus, he was himself slain in single combat by Achilles, dragged behind the Greek warrior’s chariot, and ransomed for burial by Priam. His funeral forms the closing scene of Homer’s Iliad.
Heliades The sisters of Phaëethon, who harnessed the chariot of his father Helios (the Sun) for him, and, after he perished in his attempt to drive it, were metamorphosed into poplars, and wept tears of amber into the Eridanus (Po) River.
Helicon The highest (5,868 ft) mountain in Boeotia, a continuation of the Parnassus range, lying between Lake Copaïs and the Gulf of Corinth, and traditionally identified as the home of the nine Muses: the spring of Hippocrene, struck from the rock by the winged horse Pegasus, and the supposed source of poetic inspiration, is situated a little below the summit. Hesiod’s village of Ascra lay on its lower slopes.
Hephaestus The lame artificer-god of Olympus, skilled smith and metalworker, responsible in myth for many fabulous works of art, ranging from the armour of Achilles to the sceptre of Agamemnon, and including Pandora, the first woman. Married to Aphrodite, he used his technical skill to catch her and Ares (Roman Mars), the war-god, in an act of adultery.
Heracles/Hercules Originally a hero rather than a god, from Tiryns in the Argolid, and a kinsman of Eurystheus, king of Argos, at whose behest he performed the Twelve Labours, six of which were local: the Lernaean Hydra, the Erymanthian boar, the hind of Ceryneia, the Stymphalian birds and the stables of Augeas. Several of the others seem to be related to the conquest of Death (e.g. Cerberus, Geryon and the Apples of the Hesperides). Son of Zeus by Alcmena, he was pursued by the unrelenting hatred of Hera, who inter alia induced the fit of madness that led Heracles to murder his children. For the events leading to his death by burning on Mt Oeta see Deïaneira. After death he was translated to heaven by the sponsorship of Athena. The more common form ‘Hercules’ is the Roman version of his name.
Hermione Daughter of Menelaus and Helen, and traditionally as beautiful as her mother. The tradition of her marital status is confused, perhaps justifiably. According to different versions, Menelaus (or her grandfather Tyndareus) promised her in marriage both to Orestes and to Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. Orestes claimed her, Neoptolemus refused to give her up, and Orestes persuaded the Delphians to kill him. Hermione, meanwhile, had made an (unsuccessful) attempt to kill Andromache, the widow of Hector, whom Neoptolemus had obtained as war-booty, and seemed to fancy more than Hermione. Scared of revenge by Neoptolemus’s kin, she went with Orestes and, finally, became his wife. Like mother, like daughter.
Hippodameia Daughter of Oenomaüs, king of Pisa in Elis, who according to one tradition was secretly in love with her, something that would certainly explain his behaviour. When suitors applied for Hippodameia’s hand, they were compelled to engage in a chariot-race with the king, from Pisa to the Isthmus. If the suitor won, he would marry Hippodameia; if he lost, Oenomaüs would kill him. Oenomaüs, helped by a superb team of horses and a brilliant charioteer, Myrtilus, defeated all comers, sticking their heads up as trophies on his house-gable. However, Pelops, son of Tantalus, and the ancestor of the Atreids, bribed Myrtilus either to throw the race or to weaken the linchpin in Oenomaüs’s chariot-wheel, and thus won Hippodameia and the throne of Pisa. Oenomaüs cursed Myrtilus, who in turn (having been refused his agreed reward) cursed Pelops, from which came the fatal estrangement between Atreus and Thyestes.
Hippolytus Son of Theseus by the Amazon Hippolyte or Antiope. When Theseus married Phaedra, daughter of Minos of Crete, she conceived a passion for her handsome stepson: he did not return her affection, being more devoted to hunting and male companionship. She thereupon hanged herself, leaving a message accusing Hippolytus of attempted rape. Theseus refused to believe his son’s protestations of innocence, and used up one of the three wishes granted him by Poseidon in demanding his death. Poseidon sent a bull from the sea that scared Hippolytus’s horses, overturned his chariot, and injured him so severely that he died. Euripides’ play (from which this story is best known) presents these events as a battle between Aphrodite and Artemis, symbolizing desire and chastity.
Homer Earliest and most famous poet of the Greek world, but (largely through lack of sure evidence) the source of many conflicting theories. Notions of multiple composition in the two great epics attributed to him, the Iliad and the Odyssey, can be confidently discarded, however much each draws on a variety of earlier lays. Whether both poems are the work of one man is less certain. What facts we have suggest a floruit in the late 8th cent. BC for Homer, and Chios or perhaps Smyrna as his birthplace.
Horace Q. Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BC), son of a freedman, Roman lyrical poet and satirist: he enjoyed the patronage of Maecenas (who presented him with his beloved Sabine farm), and the friendship of Augustus, whose social interests sometimes influenced Horace’s work, but who failed to persuade him to become his personal secretary. His lyrics imitate Greek poets (e.g. Sappho and Alcaeus) in matter and metre; his satires and verse-epistles represent a more purely Italic tradition.
Hortensius Q. Hortensius Hortalus (114–50 BC) was a prominent advocate in the early 1st cent. BC, but notorious for bribery: he defended Verres against Cicero (whom he looked down on as a ‘new man’, nouus homo), but lost the case. He then turned to a political career, reaching the consulship in 69, but after the formation of the First Triumvirate (60) prudently retreated from politics and went back to advocacy. His enormous wealth seems to have been accompanied by private eccentricities (he was in the habit of personally feeding his trees with wine), and, as Ovid notes, he published luridly erotic love-poetry.
Hybla Hybla, or Megara Hyblaea, was the name of a small town in eastern Sicily, slightly north of Syracuse, and famous for the sweet-smelling honey produced by bees in the nearby hills.
Hylas Son of Theiodamas, king of the Dryopians. Theiodamas attacked Heracles for having killed and eaten one of his oxen, but was defeated and slain in the subsequent battle. Heracles spared Hylas, a beautiful boy, and made him his squire (and lover). They both joined the expedition of the Argonauts, but Hylas, while drawing water, excited the desire of the Naiads, who drew him down into the stream and kept him. Heracles went searching for him, and was left behind by the Argonauts.
Icarus Son of Daedalus: his death gave the Icarian Sea its name.
Ida An extensive range of mountains in western Mysia: its highest peak, Gargaros, rises over 4,500 ft and commands a panoramic view of the Hellespont and Propontis.
Ilia/Rhea Silvia Daughter of Aeneas (according to Greek legend) or Numitor (as Roman tradition had it), and by Mars the mother of Romulus (q.v.) and Remus.
Imbros North Aegean island, lying to the south-west of the Thracian Chersonese, near Samothrace and Lemnos.
Iole Daughter of Eurytus, king of Oechalia, and the unwitting cause of Heracles’ death. After the hero captured Oechalia and killed Eurytus, he carried off Iole, for whom he conceived a great passion. His wife Deïaneira, hearing of this, determined to keep his affection, and therefore impregnated the white garment he required for a sacrifice with the blood of the Centaur Nessus, thinking it a sure love-potion. In fact it was a deadly poison. Cf. Heracles and Deïaneira.
Iphigeneia Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, demanded by Artemis as sacrifice at Aulis in requital for Agamemnon’s having offended her. Without this sacrifice the Greek fleet would not get a favourable wind for the voyage to Troy. Brought to Aulis on the excuse that she was to marry Achilles, Iphigeneia was (at least in later versions of the myth) rescued from sacrifice by Artemis substituting a deer, and transported to the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea) where she became priestess of the goddess, sacrificing any strangers who ventured there. Orestes came, with Pylades, bent on stealing the goddess’s image and carrying it off to Attica. Brought before his sister for sacrifice he made his identity known to her, and the three fled to Athens together, taking the image with them. Iphigeneia later became priestess of Artemis at Brauron.
Ithaca Ionian island off the west coast of Greece, between the Acarnanian coast and the larger island of Cephallenia: home of Odysseus, and still as rugged (with hills and deep fjords) as Homer describes it, but lacking today those thick oak-woods that kept the swine of Eumaeus fat on acorns.
Itys Son of Tereus, king of Thrace, by Pandion’s daughter Procne, who afterwards murdered Itys in the course of a complex vendetta involving her sister Philomela (q.v. for the whole story) in what Swinburne called ‘the tongueless vigil and all the pain’, and, eventually, metamorphosis into birds.
Jason Son of Aeson and leader of the Argonauts in their expedition to recover the Golden Fleece. When Pelias usurped the throne of Aeson his stepbrother, Jason’s parents got him away from Iolcos and handed him over to Chiron to educate. Pelias had been warned that a man with one sandal would be his undoing; when Jason, as a young man, arrived in Iolcos minus a shoe after fording a torrent, Pelias induced him to set out on the voyage to Colchis, hoping he would die before returning. Jason, however, with the aid of Medea, accomplished this task. For events after his return, see Aeson and Medea.
Julia (1) Only daughter (b. 39 BC) of Augustus and Scribonia. Married (i) M. Marcellus; (ii) M. Vipsanius Agrippa, by whom she had G. and L. Caesar, Agrippina (q.v.), Julia (2), and Agrippa Postumus; (iii) Tiberius, a predictably unhappy match. This, combined with a strict upbringing, led her into a dissolute life-style — though Augustus’s decision in 2 BC to banish her to the island of Pandataria may also have been politically motivated. In AD 4 she was moved to Rhegium (Reggio) on the mainland, but was never released, and died soon after her father (AD 14): Tiberius cut off her allowance, thus in effect starving her to death. In her prime she was a witty and elegant salon hostess.
Julia (2) Daughter of Julia (1) and Agrippa, b. 19 BC, she largely duplicated her mother’s unfortunate career; married to L. Aemilius Paullus (?4 BC), she shared his disgrace (and possibly his guilt) when his conspiracy against Augustus was discovered (AD 8). He was executed; she was banished to the island of Trimerus off the coast of Apulia (officially for adultery) and died there in AD 28.
Jupiter/Jove The great Italian sky- and weather-god, the equivalent of (and indeed etymologically connected with) Zeus, like whom he wielded thunderbolts against perjurers and the ungodly in general. The cult of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (‘The Best and Greatest’) seems to have been introduced by the Etruscans.
Laestrygonians A mythical race of cannibal giants familiar from Book 10 of the Odyssey: under their king, Antiphates, they seized and ate several of Odysseus’s men. Traditionally they were located in Magna Graecia, but their short summer nights (Od. 10.82ff.) suggest memories of a region far further north.
Lampsacus Greek city situated on the eastern shore of the Hellespont (Dardanelles), opposite Callipolis (Gallipoli). Its excellent harbour and fine strategic position at the entrance to the Propontis guaranteed its prosperity. A fine wine-growing region, it was also a chief centre of the worship of the phallic garden-god Priapus.
Laodameia Daughter of the Argonaut Acastus and granddaughter of Pelias, she married Protesilaüs, the first Greek ashore, and the first casualty, during the Trojan War. By special intercession with the gods, Laodameia was granted three hours with Protesilaüs after his death (Hermes escorted him back from Hades for this purpose). When he returned to the underworld, Laodameia had a lifelike statue of him made, with which she had intercourse. Her father ordered her to burn this figure, and she threw herself into the flames, an early instance of suttee.
Leander A young man of Abydos, on the narrows of the Hellespont (Dardanelles). Myth related that he fell in love with Hero, the priestess of Aphrodite in Sestos on the opposite bank, and would swim the channel, guided by a light she put out, to visit her. One stormy night the light blew out, and Leander was drowned. When his corpse washed ashore, Hero drowned herself. The legend was the subject of a poem by Musaeus (5th cent. AD).
Lemnos, Lemnian Island in the north-eastern Aegean, south-west of Imbros, and best known for the marooning there of Philoctetes, abandoned by his comrades because of a suppurating and malodorous wound in his foot (caused by snakebite), and his loud cries of agony. Lemnos was also the scene of a notorious mass murder: the women of the island, having neglected the cult of Aphrodite, were afflicted by the goddess with such foul body-odour that their husbands instead took lovers from the women of Thrace. The wives, thus abandoned, killed every male on the island in the course of one night, the only exception being Thoas, the father of their queen, Hypsipyle, who smuggled him to safety. Their action gave rise to the proverbial phrase ‘Lemnian deeds’. When the Argonauts put in to Lemnos they impregnated the women (Hypsipyle bore Jason twins) and repopulated the island.
Lethe Oblivion personified, and, more commonly, a river or spring of the underworld (one of the canonical six, the others being Styx, Acheron, Phlegethon, Cocytus, Avernus), with the ability to confer forgetfulness.
Livia Livia Drusilla (58/57 BC-29 AD), daughter of M. Livius Drusus Claudianus, married, first, in BC 43/2, Tib. Claudius Nero (who fought against Octavian in the Perusine War), and bore him Tiberius, the future emperor, and Drusus, Octavian’s future general in Germany, with whom she was still pregnant when she remarried; and second, in BC 38, Octavian himself, the future Augustus, then Triumvir, who forced Claudius to give up his wife to him. The marriage that began so strangely lasted a long lifetime; and though Livia never bore Augustus children (a fact of considerable importance for the succession), she was largely instrumental in securing the throne for Tiberius, after various prior candidates from Augustus’s family had died, some in suspicious circumstances. She also maintained enormous influence over the Princeps throughout his life. After his death her efforts to play the open part of co-ruler with her son seem to have turned him against her: when she died Tiberius refused to ratify her will or have her deified, duties eventually carried out by her great-grandson Caligula (who referred to her as a ‘Ulysses in skirts’, presumably a tribute to her powers of intrigue). If Ovid got on Livia’s wrong side by becoming involved with the anti-Claudian opposition, it is easy to see why he never won a reprieve: indeed, after Augustus’s death he was lucky not to have suffered the fate of Julia II and Agrippa Postumus.
Livilla Claudia Livia Julia, sister to Germanicus and the future emperor Claudius, and daughter of Drusus I (Nero Claudius Drusus, son of Tib. Claudius Nero by Livia), b. c. 13 BC. Married (1) to C. Caesar, grandson of Augustus, and after his premature death (2) to her first cousin, Drusus II (son of Tiberius by Vipsania), whom in AD 23 she is said to have poisoned at the instigation of her lover, the ambitious praetorian prefect Sejanus.
Lucretius T. Lucretius Carus (?99–?55 BC), Roman didactic poet, author of the De Rerum Natura, a verse-treatise in six books on the theories of Epicureanism. Little is known about him: the suggestion that he was poisoned by a love-philtre and wrote the poem in his lucid intervals is probably based solely on the diatribe against sex in Book 4 (1058ff.).
Lycóris The pseudonym under which Gallus wrote love-elegies to his mistress Cythéris.
Lycurgus Son of Dryas and king of the Edonians in Thrace: notable in myth for having cut down the vines introduced to his country by Dionysus. His fate is variously described by our sources: the tradition to which Ovid refers alleges that the offended god drove him mad (or made him intoxicated), and that in this state he first tried to rape his mother, and then cut off his foot with an axe, under the delusion that it was a vine.
Maenads, maenadism Also known as Bacchants (Bacchae), these were women followers of Dionysus, inspired by the god to a condition of ecstatic frenzy, during which they would roam the hills (an activity known as oreibasia), dressed in fawn-skins, wreathed with ivy, and carrying a ritual wand tipped with a pine-cone, the thyrsus. In this state they were capable of feats of superhuman strength, e.g. uprooting trees and tearing live animals limb from limb (sparagmos), after which they would eat their flesh raw (omophagia). Frequently portrayed in vase-paintings, their most memorable literary representation is by Euripides in his last play, the Bacchae.
Mars Also known as Mavors or Mamers: the Italian war-god, identified from early times with Greek Ares, but in origin an agricultural and pastoral deity, who bore the title Silvanus. In his military aspect he became known as Gradivus, while as protector of the State he was Quirinus. After Jupiter the most important deity in the Roman pantheon.
Marsyas A Phrygian satyr, associated with the river of that name (a tributary of the Maeander in Asia Minor), and a skilled musician, who learnt the art from his father. With more-than-human arrogance he challenged Apollo to a contest on the aulos (generally rendered as ‘flute’, but more properly the oboe), the winner to do what he liked with the loser. The god won, and had the wretched Marsyas flayed alive.
Medea Daughter of King Aeëtes in Colchis: when the Argonauts arrived in search of the Golden Fleece, she fell passionately in love with Jason, and helped him, by her magic art, to survive the tests (ploughing with fire-breathing bulls, killing the ‘Sown Men’) imposed on him by her father. She fled to Iolcos with Jason, after killing her brother Absyrtus, and married him. She also magically rejuvenated his father Aeson, but got revenge on Pelias by persuading the latter’s daughters to boil him (as she had done to Aeson), but without the proper magical herbs, so that he died. Pelias’s son Acastus expelled them both, and they sought refuge in Corinth. Here they lived for ten years, at which point the ruler, Creon, betrothed Jason to his daughter, Glauce, with a view to Jason eventually taking over the throne. Medea, thus discarded, sent Glauce a poisoned dress and wreath which, when worn, burst into flames (cf. the similar story told of Heracles and Deïaneira), setting the palace on fire and killing both her and Creon, though Jason escaped. She then murdered her two children by Jason and made her getaway in a chariot drawn by winged serpents, seeking refuge, according to one tradition, in Athens. Her death (like that of Jason) is variously reported; one version has her being made immortal and marrying Achilles in Elysium.
Medusa One of the three Gorgons, and sometimes herself known as Gorgo (‘the Grim One’), the other two being Sthenno (‘the Strong One’) and Euryale (‘the Wide Leaper’). Athena turned Medusa’s hair into snakes and made her of hideous appearance, with a great round face, huge claws and teeth, and eyes that turned those who looked directly at her to stone. She was killed by Perseus, who carefully viewed her in a mirror; her head was put by Athena on her aegis as an apotropaic symbol.
Memmius Gaius Memmius, governor of Bithynia in 57 BC (Catullus was on his staff there), and a patron of poets, including Lucretius, besides being an orator and poet himself. He married the dictator Sulla’s daughter Fausta: his political career was scandal-ridden, and he went into exile to Mytilene in 54 after being convicted of bribery (ambitus) in his run for the consulship.
Memnon Son of Tithonus and Eos (= Aurora, the Dawn), and king of Ethiopia (hence traditionally black). He went to Troy to support Priam, his uncle, and killed Antilochus, but was himself slain by Achilles. His mother rescued his body from the battlefield (a scene popular with vase-painters), and begged Zeus to grant him immortality; the dewdrops of dawn were regarded as the tears she shed over her dead son.
Menander Athenian playwright (342–293/89 BC, when he was drowned swimming off Piraeus), regarded as among the best practitioners of the so-called New Comedy, with its emphasis on social and domestic life, formulaic plots, and sententious apophthegms.
Mesembria Graeco-Thracian city on the west coast of the Black Sea, about half-way between Tomis and Byzantium, at the foot of the Haemus range, on the frontier of Roman Moesia.
Messalinus M. Valerius Corvinus Messalinus, elder son of Messalla Corvinus, born 36 BC, consul 3 BC, legate of Illyricum in AD 6, and an orator of some talent. Ovid’s relationship with him was never close: see introductory note to Tr. IV.4 (p. 261). He was notorious for his extreme flattery of Tiberius.
Messalla Corvinus M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus (64 BC–AD 8), distinguished soldier, statesman, and patron of the arts (his protégés included, besides Ovid, Tibullus and Lygdamus). During the Civil Wars he adroitly switched sides three times, escaping proscription, supporting Cassius at Philippi (42 BC), and then transferring his allegiance, first to Antony, and then (when it became clear Antony was a loser) to Octavian, on whose side, as consul, he fought in the battle of Actium (31 BC). As proconsul of Gaul he celebrated a triumph (27 BC). Briefly city prefect (25 BC), he became Rome’s first Overseer of Aqueducts (curator aquarum) in 11, and nine years later proposed the title ‘Father of his Country’ (pater patriae) for Augustus. Noted for public works no less than for cultural munificence, he was, with the possible exception of Fabius Maximus, the most powerful and most influential of all Ovid’s patrons.
Metella Mistress of Ticidas, to whom he wrote poems, addressing her by the pseudonym of ‘Perilla’. Her identity remains uncertain, though it seems likely that she was a member of the Caecilii Metelli family: the likeliest candidate is the wife of P. Lentulus Spinther (who divorced her in 45 BC), who had affairs with Cicero’s son-in-law Dolabella and Aesopus the actor’s son.
Miletus, Milesian Ionian city, lying south-west of Samos and across the Latmian Gulf from the R. Maeander: a great commercial port from the Bronze Age onwards, and during the period 800–600 BC actively engaged in colonizing the Black Sea region. The period that followed saw Miletus not only a major entrepôt for trade, but the home of early pioneering physicists such as Thales and Anaximander. After the defeat of the Ionian Revolt in 494 Miletus declined, but still remained a considerable city until the final silting-up of its harbour removed its main source of income.
Minerva The third in the Capitoline Triad of Rome’s major deities, the other two being Jupiter and Juno. In origin an Italic goddess of handicrafts and arts, she was at a very early period (being both virgin and daughter of the sky-god) identified with Greek Athena, many of whose characteristics (including that of protection in war) she came to share.
Minotaur The half-human, half-taurine (sources differ as to which half was which) result of Pasiphaë’s miscegenation with the bull sent from the sea for Minos to sacrifice. Myth relates that Minos shut this creature in the Labyrinth built for him by Daedalus, and fed it on an annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens from Athens, till finally Theseus, with the help of Ariadne, made his way to the heart of the Labyrinth and killed it. The legend (‘labyrinth’ means ‘the place of the axe’) seems to reflect ancient Minoan ritual.
Moesia A Roman province covering, roughly, the region occupied by modern Bulgaria and Serbia, which got its name from a Thracian tribe, the Moesi, located on the lower Danube. It acquired provincial status not before AD 2, and possibly later, only being thoroughly subdued under Tiberius: it always remained a military frontier area. The raids and attacks described by Ovid are confirmed by other sources: see, e.g., Tac. Ann. 16.6, Suet. Tib. 41. In fact a protective wall was built eastward to Tomis from Axiopolis, one of the defensive Roman forts on the Danube, to defend the inhabitants against such incursions. Ovid did not live to see the results of the pax Augusta in Moesia: the development of those wheatfields and orchards he so missed, and the spread of Latin as a lingua franca throughout the region.
Muses Greek patron deities of song, dance, poetry and (later) the arts and sciences generally. Various legends are preserved as to their genesis, number, names and functions: that most commonly accepted is Hesiod’s, according to which they were nine in number, daughters of Zeus by Mnemosyne (Memory), and closely connected with Mt Helicon in Boeotia.
Nemesis Obscure in origin, Nemesis (reputedly the daughter of Night or Erebus) had a celebrated shrine at Rhamnous in Attica, and was widely reverenced as the incarnation of moral retribution, the spirit curbing and punishing human excess. Yet to begin with she was regarded as real enough to be pursued by both Zeus and Apollo, as a result of whose attentions she, in one account, laid the egg (!) that Leda found, and from which Helen and the Dioscuri were hatched; in another version Leda herself, impregnated by Zeus-as-swan, laid two eggs (one for Helen, one for her brothers), and was subsequently immortalized as Nemesis. The logical connection between these events remains, like Nemesis herself, obscure.
neoterics, neoteric movement A group of Roman poets writing during the late Republic, younger contemporaries of Cicero (who disliked these ‘New Poets’ and made fun of their mannerisms): the bestknown, and only one to survive except in fragments, was Catullus. They wanted to bring Latin poetry into line with the learned Alexandrianism practised by 3rd-cent. BC Greek poets, most notably by Callimachus. Other models included Aratus of Soli (whose astronomical poem Phaenomena was translated by both Cicero and Germanicus), Euphorion, and Apollonius Rhodius. Catullus’s ‘Marriage of Peleus and Thetis’ is a miniature epic (epyllion) owing something to both Callimachus and (probably) Euphorion, both of whom practised this form. The pastoral tradition of Theocritus, Bion and Moschus also left its mark on the neoterics, in the form of the eclogue.
Neptune A Roman god of water who became god of the sea after identification with Poseidon.
Nestor Son of Neleus and king of Pylos, chiefly remembered (most of all from Homer’s Iliad) for his longevity, and the often portentous garrulity that went with it. In his youth (the adventures of which Homer makes him recount, at length, whenever he gets the chance) he had been a companion of Heracles, who presented him with the fief of Messenia in the south-west Peloponnese. Surviving the Trojan War, he returned home to Pylos, where he is found entertaining Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, in the Odyssey.
Niobe In the best-known version of the myth (others exist), Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus and sister of Pelops, and married to Amphion, king of Thebes, to whom she bore six sons and six daughters. She then made the mistake of boasting herself superior to Leto, the mother of two children only, the twins Artemis and Apollo, who, enraged at this slur on their mother, shot all Niobe’s children to death. Niobe herself was turned to stone on Mt Sipylos in Lydia: a rock-formation suggestive of a weeping woman may have given rise to this part of the legend.
Nisus Son of Hyrtacus, and the devoted companion, in the Aeneid, of Euryalus. He also plays a prominent part in the foot-race described in Book 5 (286–361).
Numa Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome (traditional dates 715–673 BC): probably an actual historical figure, and traditionally credited with the establishment of Rome’s calendar and complex religious ceremonial. The legend of his association with Pythagoras, however, is precluded on chronological grounds.
Odésos Port on the Thracian coast of the Black Sea, about eighty miles south of Tomis.
Odysseus See Ulysses.
Oenomaüs King of Pisa in Elis, son of Ares, and father of Hippodameia. Informed by an oracle that he would die if his daughter were to marry, and (some sources allege) himself incestuously attached to her, he challenged prospective suitors to a race he made sure he won, and then killed them pour décourager les autres. For his defeat by Pelops see also Hippodameia.
Olympiad Beginning in 776 BC, the great athletic festival of the Olympic Games was celebrated — by inclusive reckoning — every fifth year, and the careful record kept of these events (including the names of the victors) made a useful device for measuring time: an Olympiad was thus the period from one festival to the next.
Olympus A famous ‘Phrygian flute-player,’ who learned his art from Marsyas.
Orestes Only son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and brother of Electra, Chrysothemis and Iphigeneia. Still an infant when his father left for the Trojan War, he was sent away from Mycenae to Strophius in Phocis by Electra when she learned that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus planned to kill him as well as Agamemnon. While living in Phocis he formed a strong attachment to Strophius’s son Pylades. When Electra, reinforced by the Delphic Oracle, finally convinced Orestes of his duty to avenge his father’s murder, Pylades accompanied him on his journey home. The murder accomplished, Orestes, driven mad and pursued by the Furies of his dead mother, sought sanctuary at Apollo’s navel-stone in Delphi. One version of the myth (followed by Aeschylus in his Eumenides) has Orestes brought before the Areopagus Court and acquitted of matricide on a tied vote, with Athena casting the decisive ballot. In the version Ovid uses, Orestes was instructed to go to the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea) and bring back the image of Artemis from her temple there to Athens: for this part of the story see Iphigeneia. Orestes afterwards succeeded to the kingdom of Mycenae, and later also to that of Argos. For his marriage to Helen’s daughter see Hermione. Tradition also linked him with the colonization of the Aeolid, and Italian myth has him bring the image of Artemis (Diana) to Aricia, the home of the Golden Bough.
Orpheus Traditionally a Thracian, Orpheus was famous for his entrancing musical skill on the lyre, with which, tradition alleged, he could charm not only wild beasts but even trees and rocks. He took part in the expedition of the Argonauts; the best-known myth about him (given wide currency by Virgil) describes his attempt to recover his wife Eurydice from the underworld. He is said to have been killed and dismembered by Thracian maenads, and his severed head washed ‘down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore’.
Palatine The most important of Rome’s seven hills, and traditionally the site of the earliest settlements: immediately adjacent to the Tiber, south-east of the Capitol and north of the Aventine. By Ovid’s day it had become a highly fashionable residential area; Augustus himself lived there, in a house that had once belonged to the orator Q. Hortensius. Other distinguished residents included Cicero and Mark Antony.
Pallas See Athena.
Patroclus Having accidentally killed a son of Amphidamas while still a boy, Patroclus was sent by his father Menoetius to be brought up by Peleus. Somewhat older than Peleus’s son Achilles, Patroclus was assigned to the latter as squire, and a strong bond developed between them. They both went to Troy together; when Achilles withdrew from the fighting as a result of his quarrel with Agamemnon, Patroclus did so too. But when the Greeks were under hard pressure from the Trojans, Patroclus persuaded Achilles to lend him his armour, and thus disguised extinguished the fire raging among the ships, and drove back the enemy. However in the end, by the machinations of Apollo, Patroclus was killed, and his armour taken (see Book 16 of the Iliad). This brought about Achilles’ re-entry into the war.
Pegasus A mythical winged horse, sired on the Gorgon Medusa by Poseidon (who assumed equine form for the occasion), and born when Perseus cut off Medusa’s head. Tamed by Bellerophon, Pegasus helped him to overcome the Chimaera, and was also responsible for starting the spring of the Muses, Hippocrene, with a blow from his hoof. Translated to Olympus, Pegasus became the bearer of Zeus’s thunderbolts.
Pelias King of Thessaly, stepbrother of Aeson, and responsible for sending Aeson’s son Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece.
Pelops Son of Tantalus (and thus grandson of Zeus), Pelops was, as a boy, cut up, cooked, and served to the Olympians by his father at a feast: Tantalus wanted to find out if the gods could tell human from animal flesh. Only Demeter, preoccupied by her grief for her daughter Persephone, ate part of Pelops’ shoulder unawares: the other deities at once recognized what had been put before them. Pelops was magically restored to life by Hermes, and provided with an ivory substitute for the missing part. Poseidon, at one time his lover, had in gratitude provided him with superb horses and taught him to be an incomparable charioteer, something that stood him in good stead when he was challenged by Oenomaüs to a chariot-race for the hand of the latter’s daughter Hippodameia (q.v. for the details of the race). He won the contest and became king of Pisa after Oenomaüs’s death.
Penelope Daughter of Tyndareus’s brother Icarius and his wife Periboea, of Sparta, and married to Odysseus, king of Ithaca, by whom she had one son, Telemachus, shortly before her husband’s departure to Troy. During his twenty-year absence she was besieged by numerous suitors, all anxious to secure the kingdom, and put them off by her plea that she had to weave a great shroud for her aged father-in-law, Laertes — which she then unwove again each night. This trick was eventually betrayed by one of her maids, and she had to finish the task. Instead, she now set a test: that suitor would win her who could bend the great bow of Odysseus. The victor was Odysseus himself, who had returned home disguised as a beggar: he and Telemachus and their servants killed all the suitors, and Penelope finally recognized him as her husband. This story forms the second major theme of Homer’s Odyssey, the first being the Wanderings of Odysseus.
Pentheus Son of Echion by Agave, daughter of Cadmus, whom Pentheus, while still a very young man, succeeded as king of Thebes. In this capacity he sought to stop the worship of Dionysus, who had returned in triumph from his eastern conquests, and who was attracting the women of Thebes as his votaries. Pentheus’s defiance of the god resulted in his being afflicted with delusions and sent up Mt Cithaeron to spy on the revels of the maenads, including his own mother: he was torn to pieces by them in the belief that he was a lion-cub, and Agave returned to Thebes with his head on her thyrsus.
Perillus Sculptor and inventor, designer of an ingenious brazen bull, an instrument of torture and execution in which victims could be roasted alive, their screams emerging as the bull’s bellowing. Perillus offered this device to the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas in Sicily (mid 6th cent. BC), who, after accepting the gift, had Perillus himself immolated in it.
Perseus Son of Zeus and Danaë, and grandson of Acrisius. Receiving an oracle to the effect that if Danaë had a son, the child would grow up to kill him, Acrisius shut his daughter away in a tower. Here, however, Zeus visited her in the famous shower of gold, and Perseus was conceived. When Danaë gave birth, mother and child were cast adrift in a wooden chest, and drifted to the island of Seriphos. When Perseus grew up, the king, Polydectes, who was enamoured of Danaë, sent Perseus off to bring him the Gorgon Medusa’s head. Perseus succeeded, and on returning turned Polydectes to stone with it, in requital for harassment of his mother. Eventually he killed Acrisius by accident with a discus, thus fulfilling the oracle. For his marriage see Andromeda.
Phaedra Daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë: married to Theseus, with whose son Hippolytus, by his previous marriage (to an Amazon, Antiope or Hippolyte), she fell passionately in love. When Hippolytus rejected her advances, she hanged herself, leaving a note accusing him of attempted rape.
Phaëthon Son of Helios (the Sun) by an Oceanid: his name, appropriately, means ‘the Bright Shiner’. He begged his father, as a special favour, to let him drive the solar chariot for one day. Since Helios had, rashly, promised to grant him any boon he asked, Phaëthon got his way. The chariot plunged out of control, and came within an ace of burning up the earth. Zeus averted disaster by killing Phaëthon with a thunderbolt. His body fell in the Eridanus (Po) River, and his sisters the Heliades, who had yoked up the chariot for him, were changed into poplars, and the tears they shed over him to amber.
Phalaris Tyrant of Acragas in Sicily during the middle decades of the 6th cent. BC, and a by-word for cruelty. For his use of the famous brazen bull to roast his victims in see Perillus.
Pheidias Athenian sculptor and painter (?490–?432 BC), the creator of several gigantic works (the Athena Promachos, the Zeus of Olympia, the Athena Parthenos), and general director of the Acropolis building project under Pericles.
Philoctetes The most notable archer in the Trojan War, Philoctetes nevertheless spent all but the final year of it marooned on Lemnos because of a suppurating sore in his foot, the result of a snakebite, which left him so malodorous that his companions could not stand his presence, and on the advice of Odysseus he was left behind. However, an oracle having declared that the war could not be won without the bow and arrows of Heracles (which Philoctetes had inherited), Odysseus and Achilles’ son Neoptolemus (or Diomedes) were sent to bring him to Troy, where he shot and killed Paris.
Philomela Daughter of King Pandion in Attica, and sister of Procne, the wife of Tereus, king of Thrace. Tereus, pretending Procne was dead, had Philomela sent to him, raped her, and then cut out her tongue to prevent her telling anyone what had happened. But she managed to incorporate the truth in a piece of embroidery she got to Procne, and Procne took vengeance on Tereus by serving him the flesh of their son, Itys, at dinner. Tereus, discovering this, pursued the sisters, but was turned into a hoopoe, while Procne became a nightingale and Philomela a swallow (the Roman tradition, accepted by Ovid, reverses these last two transformations).
Phrygia Originally the ancient kingdom lying north of Mysia and adjacent to the Troad: by Ovid’s day the term had come to be used loosely as a synonym for Asia Minor in general, or, in a literary context, for Troy and the Trojans.
Pirithoüs A Lapith, whose chief interest for Ovid was his friendship with Theseus, whom he accompanied down to Hades in an attempt to carry off Persephone (according to one version as a wife for Pirithoüs himself, in return for his having helped Theseus abduct the young Helen). Both were held captive in the lower world; Theseus was rescued by Heracles; Pirithoüs was not so lucky. His other claim to fame was his marriage to Butes’ daughter Hippodameia: at the wedding-feast the Centaurs, extremely drunk, tried to rape the bride, and a great brawl took place, which the Lapiths won. The incident became popular in 5th-cent. art, as a symbol of civilization triumphant over barbarism.
Pisa The region round Olympia, in the north-west Peloponnese: till c. 580 BC Pisa presided over the Olympic Games.
Pleiades A cluster of seven stars in the constellation Taurus, the rising and setting of which (roughly, in May and late October or early November) have throughout history provided seasonal guidance to farmers, especially for sowing and harvest. See Hesiod, WD 383ff., Arat. Phaen. 242–54. They were thought to be daughters of Atlas: one of the seven supposedly faded into invisibility, either through shame at having married a mere mortal when her sisters all snapped up gods, or out of grief at the destruction of Troy, which her son had founded.
Podalirius Brother of Machaon and son of Asclepius. He led a contingent to Troy from Thessaly, but his chief distinction (like that of his whole family) was as a physician: he is said to have healed Philoctetes. After the war he settled in Caria.
Polydeuces/Pollux See Dioscuri.
Polyneices Brother of Eteocles and Antigone, and son of Oedipus and Jocasta: leader of the Seven against Thebes. For the account of his fate see Adrastus, Antigone and Eteocles.
Polyphemus The one-eyed giant Cyclops, shepherd and dairyman, dwelling on the island of Trinacria (Sicily), whom Odysseus and his men, trapped in the monster’s cave, blinded — thus earning the enmity of Polyphemus’s father Poseidon. A second tradition linked the Cyclops with metalworking and the volcano of Mt Etna.
Ponticus Epic poet who appears to have written a Thebaïd: Propertius, who addresses two poems to him (1.7 and 1.9), was clearly on intimate terms with him (he teases him for being in love, and says he’ll have to abandon his serious work for love-poetry). Nothing else is known about him: Propertius assures him he will rival Homer if Fate is kind to his poems (1.7.3–4), but unfortunately Fate had other things in mind.
Pontus Both the Black Sea and, in general terms, the land immediately adjacent to it, most often along its southern shore as far as Colchis, but sometimes also for Ovid extended to include the Thracian littoral.
Poseidon Greek god of the sea and a god of horses. See Neptune.
Priam Son of Laomedon and king of Troy at the time of the Trojan War when he was already advanced in years. Traditionally he had no fewer than fifty sons, of whom nineteen were supposedly born of Hecuba: he was the father, among others, of Hector, Paris and Cassandra. The Iliad recounts (Book 24) how he ransomed the dead body of Hector from Achilles. He died during the sack of Troy, killed by Achilles’ son Neoptolemus while in sanctuary at the altar of Zeus.
Procne Sister of Philomela.
Propertius Sextus Propertius (c. 50–c. 15 BC), Roman elegiac poet, powerful and original, from Asisium (Assisi) in Umbria. Older than Ovid, he shared the younger poet’s literary interests (as well as his erotic obsessions), and exercised a strong influence over him. His first volume, the Monobiblos, celebrating his liaison with the woman he called ‘Cynthia’, won him admission to the circle of Maecenas. Like Tibullus, he was sickly, and died young.
Propontis The landlocked sea lying between the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and the Thracian Bosporus, linking the Aegean with the Black Sea (Euxine), and known today as the Sea of Marmara.
Protesilaüs The first Greek ashore, and the first to be killed, in the Trojan War: see also Laodameia.
Pylades Son of Strophius and close companion of Orestes, whom he accompanied on his return to Mycenae, and whose sister Electra he later married.
Pythagoras, Pythagoreans Pythagoras was a 6th-cent. BC sage, religious leader and mathematician from Samos, who c. 531 BC migrated to Croton in south Italy, where he founded a religious order of Pythagoreans that to begin with ruled Croton, and survived as a sect into the 4th cent. BC. However, the tradition that Numa had Pythagoras as a teacher cannot be true, since he lived over a century before Pythagoras.
Romulus With his brother Remus the mythical founder of Rome. The twins were the children of Ilia/Rhea Silvia, daughter either (in the Greek tradition) of Aeneas, or, more commonly, of the deposed king of Alba Longa, Numitor. Numitor’s brother Amulius, who usurped his throne, had made Rhea Silvia a Vestal Virgin to prevent the siring of possible future rivals (and avengers). But she was visited by Mars himself, and all Amulius could do was order the babies thrown in the Tiber. The cradle in which they were lying was snagged by the roots of a fig-tree (the Ficus Ruminalis) growing on the bank, and the twins were rescued by a she-wolf and afterwards fed by a woodpecker (both sacred to Mars). Brought up by the usual peasant family, Romulus and Remus made the first walled settlement of Rome, on the Palatine, and Romulus killed his brother for jumping over the wall. He himself reigned for some forty years, and after mysteriously vanishing at the time of his death became the Roman god Quirinus.
Rutulians A small Italic people located on the coast of Latium: unimportant historically, and before the end of the monarchy absorbed by Rome, but given special prominence by the part they and their king, Turnus, play in Virgil’s epic the Aeneid, stirred to fight against the Trojans through the malice of Juno.
Sacred Way (Via Sacra) Old street running south-east from the Forum Romanum and the Capitoline in Rome, with the Palatine on its right. In Ovid’s day it was a smart shopping-centre, and probably took its name from the number of venerable buildings and monuments (the Basilica Julia, the temple of Venus and Rome) in close proximity to it.
Samos Island in the eastern Aegean, a little north-west of Miletus, famous in antiquity for its wine, and in the 6th cent. BC a great naval power under its tyrant Polycrates, as well as attracting architects, sculptors, scientists and poets such as Ibycus and Anacreon. But the island’s most famous figure, Pythagoras, emigrated to Magna Graecia, perhaps in opposition to Polycrates’ rule.
Sappho Lyric poet, born c. 618 BC on the island of Lesbos, where she spent all her life apart from a short period of exile in Sicily. Known in antiquity as ‘the Tenth Muse’, she survives almost entirely in fragments, perhaps less than one-twentieth of her total output: enough to justify her reputation, but still tantalizingly little. The erotic interest she so clearly shows in various girl-companions has always formed a crucial element in her legend, ancient no less than modern.
Sarmatians A nomadic Indo-European people, closely related to the Scythians and speaking a similar language: horse-breeders and horsemen, whose women (if we can trust Herodotus) had at least as much freedom as those of the Spartans. By Ovid’s day a Sarmatian tribe known as the Roxolani had advanced westward as far as the lower Danube basin, and it is their incursions that find a place in the poems of exile.
Scylla (1) A mythical octopus-like creature with six heads and long necks, that lurked in a rock near Charybdis, and snatched passing sailors, including half a dozen of those sailing with Odysseus, to eat. In the Roman tradition she had a girdle of dogs’ heads around, or actually sprouting from, her groin. (2) Daughter of Nisus, king of Megara, who in myth had a red or purple lock of hair on which his life, and the safety of Megara, depended. Scylla was bribed by Minos of Crete (with whom she was in love) to cut off the magic lock, thus allowing him to capture Megara. Both she and her father ended up metamorphosed (like Philomela and Tereus) into birds. She was often confused in antiquity (and still is) with (1).
Scythi, Scythians Originally a nomadic people occupying the region between the Borysthenes (Dnieper) and Tanaï’s (Don) rivers. By Ovid’s day, however, the appellation had come to be used, loosely and generically, for the various inhabitants of an area stretching from northern Thrace across south Russia to the Caspian, and including the Getae and Sarmatians. Similarities of life-style (nomadic) and fighting methods (cavalry, horse-archers, hit-and-run raiding) made such assimilation plausible. Ovid himself seems to have drawn no clear distinctions between the various groups beyond their names.
Semele Daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and an object of Zeus’s attentions. Since this, predictably, annoyed Hera, she appeared to Semele in the likeness of her old nurse, and urged her to ask Zeus to appear to her in all his splendour, which Semele guilelessly did. Since the request had been preceded by Zeus’s agreeing, besottedly, to grant any boon she might ask, he had no option but to agree, knowing that such an epiphany would burn the wretched girl to a crisp in the god’s blazing lightnings, which it duly did. She was at the time pregnant with Dionysus, and Zeus (in one of the more bizarre aetiological myths from antiquity) rescued the foetus, sewed it into his own thigh, and carried it to term there.
Servius The younger Pliny (Ep 5.3.5) mentions a poet of this name notorious for his indecent (improba) verses; Horace also names a Servius (Sat. 1.10.86) whose poetic judgement he values. The two are very probably identical, and the same as Ovid’s Servius, also credited with ‘scabrous’ jeux d’esprit. The theory that he was the son or grandson of the great jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus (and thus the father or brother of Sulpicia the poetess) is far more speculative, but an interesting possibility.
Sestos Greek city on the European shore of the Hellespont (Dardanelles), at its narrowest point, and directly opposite Abydos. Famous as the crossing-point for Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480 BC, it also became renowned in myth as the home of the priestess Hero, to visit whom her lover Leander use to swim the dangerous channel at night, finally losing his life when attempting the feat during a storm.
Sidon Ancient commercial port on the coast of Phoenicia, north of Tyre; several times referred to by Homer, and famous in antiquity for its purple-dyeing and glass-blowing industries. Cadmus, in Greek myth, was presented as the son of Phoenix (?Phoenicia personified), and lord of Sidon.
Sisenna L. Cornelius Sisenna, praetor 78 BC, and author of a Roman history which won the plaudits of Varro and Cicero; but — the context in which Ovid refers to him — also the translator of the risqué Milesian Tales of Aristeides (2nd cent. BC).
Sphinx Mythical hybrid monster with human head (most often female) and the body of a lion, originally Egyptian, but assimilated and transmuted by Greek influence: from the alarming monster of Hesiod and the Theban cycle (including the riddler who devoured unsuccessful challengers, finally neutralized by Oedipus), the Sphinx developed into a wise (and musical) harbinger of divine justice.
Styx The most famous river of Hades, forming the frontier of the Underworld, and identified with a wild and remote stream in Arcadia, plunging down a 600-ft waterfall through a gorge above Nonacris, and joining the R. Crathis. Its savage splendour and inaccessibility undoubtedly give it a numinous quality: but the association with Hades may depend more on the network of underground limestone river-caverns criss-crossing the Peloponnese from Arcadia to the Deep Mani (where Cape Taenarum was regarded, significantly, as an entry-point to Hades).
Symplegades See Clashing Rocks.
Tarpeian Rock In Rome, the cliff-edge from which certain criminals — murderers, traitors — were thrown. Originally the name of the Capitoline Hill as a whole, it is now impossible to locate with accuracy, since nature and man have combined to make substantial changes in the terrain. Ancient sources place it variously close to the Roman Forum, the temple of Saturn, or the temple of Jupiter, which suggests a point somewhere south-west of the Capitol.
Telephus Son of Heracles and Auge, and king of Mysia. When the Greek expeditionary force under Agamemnon mistakenly invaded Mysia en route for Troy, Telephus drove them back to their ships, but was then confronted by Achilles and Patroclus. He would have escaped them, but Dionysus, who was helping the Greeks, made him trip over a vine-root, and enabled Achilles to spear him. Though the wound was not fatal it would not heal; the oracle Telephus consulted told him that his wounder would be his healer. He therefore went to the Greek camp, and was finally cured by rust from Achilles’ spear. There is a good deal more to the Telephus legend (his birth and childhood offer a classic case of the Lost Foundling motif), but it is this odd example of sympathetic magic that caught Ovid’s attention.
Tempyra A Thracian town on the transcontinental trunk road (Via Egnatia), from where Ovid continued his journey to Tomis overland. He is inaccurate in implying (Tr. I.10.21–22) that he sailed directly from Samothrace to Tempyra, since the latter lies some way inland; he probably disembarked at either Salé or Zoné. The latter would have appealed to his literary sense, being, traditionally, the place to which Orpheus led the beasts and trees he had enchanted with his music.
Terence P. Terentius Afer (c. 195–159 BC), an ex-slave from north Africa who became a polished and highly fashionable Roman playwright, adapting freely from Greek originals such as Menander and Apollodorus, often blending material from several plays (a practice known as contaminatio, and frowned on by critics), and in general showing more elegant sophistication and more non-stereotyped realism than his immediate predecessor Plautus. Ovid’s characterization of him (Tr. II.359) as a ‘reveller’ (conuiua) does him less than justice.
Tereus A Thracian king from Daulis: see Philomela for the legend concerning him, and the circumstances leading to his metamorphosis into a hoopoe.
Teucer Son of Telamon, king of Salamis, and half-brother of Ajax, he was reckoned one of the best Greek archers during the Trojan War. However, when he returned home after the war Telamon refused to admit him, on the grounds that he had not avenged Ajax’s death, and had brought back neither his remains, nor his son Eurysaces, nor Eurysaces’ mother Tecmessa. Teucer thereupon, encouraged by an oracle of Apollo, sailed off in search of a new home. This he attained on Cyprus, where he founded a city, naming it Salamis in memory of his birthplace.
Thebes The oldest and most famous city of Boeotia, chiefly of interest to Ovid through the mythic ‘Theban cycle’, involving the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Antigone, and above all the fratricidal strife of the Seven against Thebes, pitting Eteocles against his brother Polyneices. Archaeological evidence now confirms not only Thebes’ seven gates, but also the city’s links with the Near East. In historical times Thebes suffered as a result of supporting Persia during the Persian Wars, but later, particularly during the Peloponnesian War, gained considerable control over the cities of Boeotia. The Thebans attained their greatest power in the period 371–362 BC, when under Epaminondas they defeated Sparta and, until the battle of Mantinea in which Epaminondas was killed, dominated mainland Greece. Savagely destroyed by Alexander the Great after an attempted revolt (335), the city was rebuilt but never regained its former position.
Theromedon or Therodamas A king of Libya who fed his victims to wild lions: Ovid refers to him again in the Ibis (383).
Thersites The ugly, abusive Dick Dead-Eye of the Trojan War, immortalized by Homer in Book 2 of his Iliad, where he is beaten into submission by Odysseus for talking out of turn to his betters, and thus presumably low-born — though the genealogy given him by the scholiasts suggests that he was related to Diomedes (2). He was killed - as we learn from the post-Homeric tradition — by Achilles, for mocking the latter’s grief over the dead warrior-princess Penthesilea (whose eyes, according to one tradition, Thersites also tore out).
Theseus Attic mythical hero connected with Heracles, whose exploits he tends to emulate (battles with monsters and Amazons). Ovid’s interest in him is restricted to one or two specific legends: (1) his Cretan exploit of slaying the Minotaur with the assistance of Ariadne, daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, who gave him the thread to find his way through the Labyrinth, but was subsequently deserted by him on Naxos; (2) his role as the father of Hippolytus and husband of Phaedra; and (3) his famous friendship with Pirithoüs, whom he accompanied to Hades (but failed to bring back to earth).
Thoas Father of the mythical Lemnian queen, Hypsipyle: see Lemnos.
Thrace, Thracian The boundaries of Thrace shifted in ancient as in modern history, though the core of the country is roughly identical with an area including north-east Greece (plus European Turkey as far as the Bosporus) and the southern part of Romania. In Ovid’s day the western boundary of the Roman province lay on the R. Nestus, and the northern along the Haemus range, while its coastline ran from the Aegean through the Propontis into the Black Sea.
Thyestes Son of Pelops and Hippodameia, and father of Aegisthus: for his part in the dynastic and marital troubles of the House of Atreus, in particular for his falling-out with his brother, see Atreus.
Thynias A promontory and small town on the Black Sea coast of Thrace, about thirty miles north of Salmydessos, and rather less than two hundred south of Tomis.
Tibullus Albius Tibullus (?55/48—19 BC), elegiac poet, who enjoyed the patronage of Messalla Corvinus, and accompanied him on a campaign in Gaul (31 BC) for which Corvinus later celebrated a triumph (27 BC). The two books of erotic elegies securely attributed to him (as opposed to a third book, the Corpus Tibullianum, by various hands) are addressed to two mistresses — Delia (whose real name seems to have been Plania) and the ominously named Nemesis — and a boy, Marathus. Eschewing mythology, these poems are subtler and more psychologically acute than is often assumed. Ovid and Tibullus were friends, separated too soon (Tr. IV.10.41–2) by the latter’s early death.
Tibur (Tivoli) A fashionable resort situated no more than eighteen miles east-north-east of Rome, in an elbow-bend of the Anio R., which cascaded down nearly one hundred feet into the valley below. Beautiful countryside and fertile orchards added to the attractiveness of the site, a fact that would not have been lost on Ovid when referring to it, ironically, as a place of exile.
Ticidas Roman Neoteric poet, referred to by Messalla Corvinus in a letter (but not under his patronage), who wrote an epithalamium in the style of Catullus, as well as epigrams and love-poems, in which he celebrated his mistress Metella under the pseudonym of ‘Perilla’.
Tiphys Son of Phorbas, a Boeotian, and the mythical helmsman of the Argo on the voyage in search of the Golden Fleece.
Tityus A Giant, son of Ge (Earth), whose home was traditionally located in Euboea. For his attempted rape of Leto (Roman Latona) Tityus was blasted by the bolt of Zeus (or, alternatively, shot by Leto’s twin children Apollo and Artemis), and hurled down into Tartarus, where he lay stretched out over nine acres, while two vultures, in Promethean style, attacked his liver.
Triptolemus Son of Celeus, king of Eleusis, and Metaneira: by favour of Demeter he received a chariot drawn by winged dragons, and the gift of seed-wheat, and thus equipped flew over the whole inhabited earth scattering grain, which now for the first time grew and was harvested. On his return he took over Eleusis from Celeus and instituted the worship of Demeter.
Troad The rocky north-west area of Asia Minor facing directly on the Hellespont, dominated by the Ida range, and immediately west of Hellespontine Phrygia. Its name arose from the (erroneous) belief that Troy had once controlled the entire region.
Trojan War The ten years’ war, probably historical in origin, but much mythicized in the epic cycle (most importantly Homer’s Iliad) that forms our chief literary evidence for it, between the Trojans and their allies and an Achaean expeditionary force assembled from the leading baronies of Bronze Age Greece, under the titular command of Agamemnon, lord of Mycenae. After years of inconclusive campaigning the Greeks finally sacked the citadel of Troy; a substantial part of the cycle dealt with their various subsequent adventures (Nostoi, ‘Returns’) — e.g. those of Odysseus — en route for home.
Troy Walled and fortified city of the Troad, convincingly identified by H. Schliemann in the late 19th cent. as surviving in the ruins he excavated from the mound of Hissarlik, about four miles inland from the Aegean end of the Hellespont, and revealing continuous habitation from the Early Bronze Age (perhaps as early as 3000 BC). If the destruction associated with the Trojan War took place here, it was either at the end of Troy VI (c. 1300 BC), when there is evidence of both earthquake and widespread fire, or between Troy VIIA and VIIB (about half a century later). Troy VI, with its wealth and great batter walls, accords better with the description offered by Homer.
Turnus King of the Rutulians, and a protagonist of Virgil’s epic the Aeneid, in which he loses both his betrothed, Lavinia, and ultimately his life, to Aeneas.
Tydeus King of Calydon, father of Diomedes (2), and one of the Seven against Thebes. Obliged to flee his country because of murdering a relative (either his paternal or maternal uncle: his killing rages were notorious, and the more so in so small a man), he went to Adrastus in Argos (who purified him), and with him joined the expedition of Polyneices to oust Eteocles. Mortally wounded, he still managed in extremis to devour the brains of his opponent: this barbarity turned Athena against him — she had been on the point of healing his wounds magically and making him immortal — so that instead she let him die.
Ulysses (more accurately, Ulixes) The Roman name of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, son of Laertes and husband of Penelope. In the Trojan War (certainly as recounted by Homer in the Iliad), he shows himself a brave warrior and a wise counsellor: always pragmatic and down-to-earth, perhaps not quite ‘heroic’ in the high fashion of Achilles, but infinitely resourceful. These qualities are well to the fore in the Odyssey, where he (alone of his crew) survives monsters, witches and shipwreck (induced by the wrath of Poseidon: see Polyphemus) to win his way home after ten years, kill the suitors infesting his palace, and enjoy a reunion with his wife. Later tradition (of which Ovid shows himself very conscious) took a far lower view of Odysseus/Ulysses, painting him variously as a liar, a coward and a murderer.
Varro of Atax P. Terentius Varro Atacinus, born 82 BC in Gallia Narbonensis, near the modern city of Carcassonne. Very little is known about him. His chief fame seems to have rested on a translation or adaptation of Apollonius Rhodius’s Argonautica, the Argonautae, of which only a few lines survive. He also wrote a historical epic dealing with Caesar’s campaign (58 BC) against the Sequani, perhaps after the manner of Ennius, and erotic elegies (to which Ovid alludes) addressed to his mistress, whom he referred to by the pseudonym of ‘Leucadia’.
Venus Associated from an early date with Greek Aphrodite, perhaps through the Sicilian cult of Aphrodite at Eryx: apart from her obvious connections with the erotic as such, Ovid much enjoyed, and made good literary use of, the fact of her supposed presence in the family tree of the gens Julia, through her union with Anchises, of which the offspring was Aeneas, the putative ancestor both of Julius Caesar and, by adoption, of Augustus himself.
Vesta Roman goddess of the hearth, cognate with Greek Hestia. Her worship was located in a circular building near the ancient Regia, and conducted by six Vestal Virgins, who in Ovid’s day had to serve for thirty years, guarding the secret objects in Vesta’s holy of holies (to be revealed to none but Vestals) and maintaining the sacred flame associated with hearth-worship. It was supposed never to go out; but since Vestals could be scourged if it did, and then were required to relight it by the primitive method of rubbing pieces of wood together, we may assume that accidents occurred.
Virgil P. Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC), bucolic and epic poet: born near Mantua, educated at Cremona and subsequently in Rome. Deeply influenced by Catullus and the Neoterics, as his Ecologues — begun when he was twenty-eight, in 42 BC — show, he was influenced later by Augustus’s plans for national regeneration and agricultural reform, which led, first, to the Georgics, and finally to the Aeneid, the latter still unfinished at the time of his death, and only rescued from the destruction he insisted on by the express command of the Princeps. A close friend of Maecenas, Virgil was responsible for introducing Horace to the Imperial circle. Ovid, who clearly saw him as in every sense Augustus’s mouthpiece, thoroughly enjoyed deflating his ideological views while at the same time paying him the literary compliment of knowing his poetry virtually by heart, as is apparent from all his work.
Zeus The greatest god in the Olympian pantheon, Indo-European in origin, and predominantly a deity of sky and weather, with control over rain, lightning, and in particular the thunderbolts associated with lightning. Known as ‘father of gods and men’, he thus shows generic, as well as traditional, association with Roman Jupiter, whose name carries similar overtones (the variant ‘Diespiter’ = ‘Dayfather’). In this capacity he was the guardian of earthly authority and power: one reason perhaps why his own position survived when other Olympians faded, so that he became the supreme moral and civic deity, easily assimilable to philosophical notions of Mind as the prime mover (e.g. the Novs of Anaxagoras) and indeed to trends towards monotheism.