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Bk XIV:1-74. A city (modern Reggio) in
the southern part of Ausonia (modern Calabria), on the Sicilian
Strait. (The Straits of Messina) It was founded c 723
BC by the Chalcidians, who were later joined by the Messenese, was sacked
by Syracuse, and repopulated by the Romans. |
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Bk I:199-243. The city on the Tiber, capital of the Empire.
Bk XIV:772-804. Founded by Romulus in 753BC on the feast of Pales, the Palilia, April 21st.
Bk XV:418-452. Its future greatness prophesied.
Bk XV:552-621. Cipus puts its good before his own.
Bk XV:622-745. Aesculapius ends the plague.
Bk XV:871-879. Ovid claims immortality
wherever Rome’s potentia, that is its power, but equally its authority,
or its influence, extends, over the lands, terris domitis, that it
has conquered, or equally tamed, that is civilised. |
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The Sabines, a people of Central Italy who merged with the
people of Romulus. ( See Giambologna’s sculpture –
The Rape of the Sabines – Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence)
Bk XIV:772-804. Their king is Tatius. They make peace.
Bk XIV:829-851. They are absorbed into
the Roman people.
Bk XV:1-59. Numa
desires knowledge beyond theirs. |
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Bk II:63-89. The constellation and zodiacal
sun sign of the Archer, half man and half beast, formed when Chiron the centaur was placed by Jupiter among the stars. He aims his stellar
arrow at the heart of Scorpio. The star-rich constellation
contains the centre of the galaxy. It is full of star clusters and nebulae
(Trifid, Lagoon, Horseshoe etc). The sun is in Sagittarius at the winter solstice. |
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A city on the island of Cyprus,
founded by Teucer, who came from the island of Salamis in the Saronic
Sea, site of the famous naval battle where the Greeks defeated the Persians.
Bk XIV:698-771. It contains Anaxarete’s statue, and a temple to Venus Prospiciens – ‘she who looks out’. |
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Bk XV:1-59. Of the Sallentines, a people
of Calabria. |
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Bk IV:274-316. A pool in Caria whose waters were enervating, and the nymph
of the pool who loved Hermaphroditus.
Bk IV:346-388. Salmacis dives into the pool
to pursue Hermaphroditus, and is merged with him. He prays that the pool will
weaken anyone who bathes there.
Bk XV:307-360. Its waters have enervating
powers. |
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An island off the coast of Asia Minor opposite Ephesus,
sacred to Juno, and the birthplace of
Pythagoras (at Pythagórion = Tigáni).
Samos was famous for its Heraion, the great sanctuary of the goddess Hera-Juno.
Bk VIII:183-235. Daedalus and Icarus fly towards it after leaving
Crete.
Bk XV:60-142. Pythagoras flees from Samos
and enters voluntary exile at Crotona. |
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Bk VII:425-452. A famous robber on the coast
between Megaris and Attica who threw his victims into the sea. Theseus did the same to him, and his bones eventually became
the sea cliffs near the Molurian Rocks. |
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Bk II:63-89. The constellation and zodiacal
sun sign of the Scorpion. It contains the red giant Antares (‘like Mars’),
one of the four Babylonian guardian stars of the heavens, lying nearly on
the ecliptic. (The others are Regulus in Leo,
Aldebaran in Taurus, and Fomalhaut ‘the Fish’s
Eye’ in Piscis Austrinus. All four are at roughly ninety degrees to one another).
Scorpius, because of its position, is one of the two ‘gateways’ to the Milky
Way, the other being the opposite constellation of Orion. The Scorpion men attacked Osiris in Egyptian
legend, and the Scorpion’s sting killed Orion in Greek myth.
Bk II:178-200. In ancient Greek times Scorpius
was a larger constellation extending over two star signs, Scorpio and Libra. |
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Bk XV:622-745. Of Scylaceum, a place on
the Bruttian coast. (This is the modern
town of Squillace overlooking the Gulf of Squillace, between the ‘heel’ and
‘toe’ of Italy. The Greek city of Schilletion, it was renamed Solacium by
the Romans.) |
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Bk VII:1-73. Bk XIV:75-100. The daughter of Phorcys
and the nymph Crataeis, remarkable for her beauty. Circe or Amphitrite,
jealous of Neptune’s love for her changed
her into a dog-like sea monster, ‘the Render’, with six heads and twelve feet.
Each head had three rows of close-set teeth.Her cry was a muted yelping. She
seized sailors and cracked their bones before slowly swallowing them.
Bk XIII:705-737. She threatens Aeneas’s ships. She was once a nymph who rejected
many suitors and spent time with the ocean nymphs who loved her.
Bk XIII:738-788. She listens to Galatea’s story.
Bk XIII:898-968. She meets Glaucus and hears his story.
Bk XIV:1-74. She is changed by Circe’s poisons into a monster with a circle
of yelping dogs around her waist. Finally she is turned into a rock. (The
rock projects from the Calabrian coast near the village of Scilla, opposite
Cape Peloro on Sicily. See Ernle Bradford ‘Ulysses Found’ Ch.20) |
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Bk VIII:1-80. The daughter of Nisus of Megara, who loved Minos. She decides to betray the city to him.
Bk VIII:81-151. She cuts off the purple lock
of Nisus’s hair that guarantees the safety of his kingdom and his life. Minos
rejects her and she is changed into the rock dove, columba livia, with
its purple breast and red legs, while her father is changed into the sea eagle,
haliaeetus albicilla. Her name Ciris, from κείρω,
‘I cut’, reflects her shearing of Nisus’s hair, as does the purple breast
of the bird. But she is also an embodiment of the Cretan
Great Goddess, Car, Ker or Q’re, to whom doves were sacred. Pausanias I xxxix
says that Kar founded Megara, Nisus’s city and was king there. The acropolis
was named Karia, and Kar built a great hall to Demeter (Ceres) there, Pausanias I xxxx. His tumulus
was decorated with shell-stone sacred to the goddess at the command of an
oracle, Pausanias I xxxxiii. The rock dove no doubt nested on the rocks of
the citadel and coastline. Pausanias II xxxiv says that Cape Skyllaion (Skyli)
was named after Scylla. Hair cutting reflects ancient ritual and the Curetes
were the ‘young men with shaved hair’ the devotees of the moon-goddess Cer,
whose weapon clashing drove off evil spirits at eclipses and during the rites. |
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The country of the Scythians of northern Europe and Asia
to the north of the Black Sea. Noted for the Sarmatian people, their warrior
princesses, and burial mounds in the steppe (kurgans). They were initially
horse-riding nomads. See (Herodotus, The Histories).
Bk
II:201-226. Scorched by the chariot of Phaethon.
Bk
V:642-678. Ruled by Lyncus, the barbarian
king.
Bk VII:404-424. There is a dark cave there,
a path to the underworld by which Hercules
drags the dog Cerberus to the light.
Bk VIII:777-842. The haunts of Famine.
Bk X:560-637. The Scythians were famous bowmen,
noted for the swiftness and surety of their arrows.
Bk XIV:320-396. Scythian Diana was worshipped at Aricia in Italy, to which Orestes carried her
image, from Taurus.
Bk XV:259-306. Contains the river Hypanis.
Bk XV:307-360. The Scythian women cover
their bodies with plumage by sprinkling themselves with magic drugs. See Herodotus
IV 31 where he suggests the feathers are snowflakes. |
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Bk IV:31-54. The daughter of Dercetis or Atargatis, the Syrian goddess.
She was said to have been cast out at birth and tended by doves. Doves were
sacred to her, as they were to Dercetis. Historically she is Sammuramat, Queen
of Babylon, and wife of Shamshi-Adad V (Ninus). She reigned after him as regent
from 810-805 BC.
Bk V:74-106. Polydegmon is her descendant. |
Serpens, The Dragon, Draco
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Bk II:150-177. The constellation of the Dragon,
once confusingly called Serpens. It is said to be the dragon Ladon killed
by Hercules when stealing the golden
apples of the Hesperides. It contains
the north pole of the ecliptic (ninety degrees from the plane of earth’s orbit)
and represents the icy north. |
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Bk II:111-149. Bk VIII:152-182.The constellation of the
Serpent, north of the ecliptic in the northern hemisphere. It is separated
into two parts, Serpens Cauda, and Serpens Caput, the tail and the head. It
contains M5 the finest globular star cluster in the northern sky, and M16
a cluster in the Eagle Nebula. |
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Bk XV:622-745. The priestess of Apollo in the temple at Cumae built by Daedalus. She prophesied perched on or over
a tripod.
Bk XIV:101-153. She guides Aeneas through the underworld and shows him the
golden bough that he must pluck from the tree. She tells him how she was offered
immortality by Phoebus, but forgot to
ask also for lasting youth, dooming her to wither away until she is merely
a voice.
Bk XIV:154-222. She leads Aeneas back
from the Underworld. |
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Bk IV:1-30. Silenus and his sons the satyrs were originally primitive mountaineers of northern Greece
who became stock comic characters in Attic
drama. He was called an autochthon or son of Pan
by one of the nymphs. He was Bacchus’s
tutor, portrayed usually as a drunken old man with an old pack-ass, who is
unable to tell truth from lies.( See the copy of the sculpture attributed
to Lysippus, ‘Silenus holding the infant Bacchus’ in the Vatican)
Bk XI:85-145. He is captured by the Lydians and taken to King Midas. Bacchus grants Midas a gift (he chooses
the golden touch) as a reward for returning Silenus to him. |
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Bk XV:622-745. A town in Campania, established
as a Roman colony in 296 BC. (Its site was on the Via Appia, near the modern
Mondragone on the Gulf of Gaeta.) |
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One of the seven sons of Niobe,
named after Mount Sipylus in his mother’s country.
Bk VI:146-203. The mountain, near Smyrna, is
where Niobe lived before her marriage.
Bk VI:204-266. He is killed by Apollo’s and Diana’s
assault on the seven sons. |
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Bk V:533-571. The daughters of Achelous, the Acheloides, companions of Proserpina, turned to woman-headed birds,
or women with the legs of birds, and luring the sailors of passing ships with
their sweet song. They searched for Proserpine on land, and were turned to
birds so that they could search for her by sea. (There are various lists of
their names, but Ernle Bradford suggests two triplets: Thelxinoe, the Enchantress;
Aglaope, She of the Beautiful Face, and Peisinoe, the Seductress: and his
preferred triplet Parthenope, the Virgin Face; Ligeia, the Bright Voice; and
Leucosia, the White One – see ‘Ulysses Found’ Ch.17. Robert Graves in the
index to the ‘The Greek Myths’ adds Aglaophonos, Molpe, Raidne, Teles, and
Thelxepeia.)
(See Draper’s painting – Ulysses and the Sirens – Ferens
Art Gallery, Hull, England, and Gustave Moreau’s watercolour in the Fogg Art
Museum, Harvard)
Bk XIV:75-100. Aeneas passes their island, between the Aeolian Islands and Cumae. (This was traditionally Capri, or more
likely one of the five Galli islets, the Sirenusae, at the entrance
to the Gulf of Salerno) |
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Bk XV:1-59. Of Siris, a town and river in
Lucania. |
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The son of Aeolus, and brother of Athamas, famous for his cunning and thievery.
Bk IV:416-463. He was punished in Hades, continually having to push a stone to
the top of a hill, and then pursuing it as it rolled down again.
Bk X:1-85. His punishment in the underworld
ceases for a time at the sound of Orpheus’s
song.
Bk XIII:1-122. The reputed father of Ulysses. |
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Bk IV:274-316. A nymph who was loved by Crocus, who pined away from hopeless love of
her. She was changed into the flowering bindweed and he into the crocus flower. |
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Bk I:747-764. Bk XIII:789-869. Bk XV:1-59.The sun-god, son of Hyperion. Identified with Phoebus Apollo.
Bk I:765-779. Clymene
swears to Phaethon that he is Sol’s sun. Sol, appealed
to as witness here in Egypt, and by Clymene, married to the king of Ethiopia,
is synonymous with Ra, the Egyptian sun-god. He is worshipped with outstretched
arms and his glittering rays are depicted in the heiroglyphs as having hands
at the end to reach out to his worshippers. Hathor-Io
is sometimes described as the daughter of Ra and wife of Horus, sometimes
as the mother or ‘dwelling’ of Horus, who is himself an incarnation of the
sun and identified with Phoebus Apollo,
and the sun-god is enclosed by her each evening to be re-born at dawn.
Bk II:1-30. His son
Phaethon visits his palace and is granted a favour. He asks to drive the Sun’s
chariot for a day.
Bk II:49-62. Sol tries to dissuade Phaethon
from driving the chariot.
Bk II:63-89. The Sun progresses annually along
the ecliptic through the zodiac in the opposite direction (anti-clockwise)
to the daily (clockwise) rotation of the fixed stars.
Bk II:111-149. Sol concedes the sun chariot
to Phaethon with dire warnings.
Bk II:381-400. He mourns Phaethon and is reluctantly
persuaded to resume his daily driving of the sun chariot.
Bk IV:167-189. He sees the adultery of Venus with Mars and informs
Vulcan her husband.
Bk IV:190-213. In revenge for his interference
Venus makes him fall in love with Leucothoe.
Bk IV:214-255. She is killed by her father
and Sol attempts to restore her, changing her into a tree, with incense bearing
resin (frankincense, genus Boswellia?).
Bk IV:604-662. The western ocean receives
his chariot and his weary horses at the end of each day.
Bk VII:74-99. The father of King Aeetes of Colchis,
and of his sister Circe by the Oceanid
Perse.
Bk VII:179-233. The grandfather of Medea.
Bk IX:714-763. The father of Pasiphae by the nymph Crete, or Perseis.
Bk XIII:789-869. Bk XIV:1-74. The father of Circe. In revenge for his tale-bearing, see above,
Venus perhaps made Circe susceptible to passion. |
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Bk XIII:705-737. Two small islands in
the Ionian Sea, ‘the turning islands’, with a dangerous anchorage. Aeneas
encounters the Harpies there, foul-bellied
birds with girls’ faces, with clawed hands and pallid faces (See Virgil Aeneid
III:190-220). |
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Bk V:572-641. Of Stymphalus, a district in
Arcadia with a town, mountain and lake of the
same name, near Mount Cyllene. It is
a haunt of Diana and Arethusa. (Pausanias says, VIII xxii, that there
were three temples of Juno-Hera, at ancient
Stymphelos, as the Child, the Perfect One, and the Widow, the moon phases.)
Bk IX:159-210. In the Sixth Labour Hercules killed or dispersed the brazen
beaked and clawed man-eating birds of the Stymphalian Lake that killed men
and animals and blighted crops. According to some accounts they were bird-legged
women sacred to Artemis-Diana. |
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Bk XV:622-745. Of Surrentum, a town on
the Bay of Naples. The modern Sorrento, La Gentile, perched on a tufa
rock and bounded by ravines, in a district famed for its beauty, and its fruit.
(Torquato Tasso the poet was born there.) |
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Bk XV:1-59. Bk XV:307-360. A town in Italy, on the
Gulf of Taranto. It probably stood on the left bank
of the Crathis (modern Crati) and was
an Achaean colony whose luxury and corruption became a byword (hence sybaritic)
and was destroyed by the men of Croton
in 510 BC. The descendants of the survivors founded Thurii inland, with the
help of Athenian colonists, including Lysias the orator and Herodotus who
died there. Sybaris was Romanised after 290 BC and named Copiae. |
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Bk VII:1-99. Two rocky islands in the Euxine
Sea, clashing rocks according to the fable, crushing what attempted to pass
between them.
Bk XV:307-360. The Argo had to avoid them. |
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Bk I:689-721. An Arcadian nymph pursued by Pan and changed to marsh reeds by her sisters in
order to escape him. She gave her name to the syrinx, or pan pipes, the reedy
flute. (See Signorelli’s painting – Court of Pan – Staatliche Museum, Berlin) |
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Bk VIII:81-151. A dangerous series
of sandbanks on the north coast of Africa. |
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Bk XV:552-621. An Etrurian deity, grandson
of Jupiter. He sprang from a clod
of earth in human form, and taught the Etruscans
the art of divination. |
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Bk II:227-271. The river in Spain and Portugal,
reputedly gold bearing. |
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Bk X:638-680. Of Tamasus, a city in Cyprus. Its sacred field is sacred to Venus and contains a tree with golden apples |
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Bk II:227-271. The river and river-god of Scythia.
The River Don. |
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Bk XV:1-59. A city on the ‘heel’ of Italy
founded by Lacedaemonians, the modern
Taranto, and a commercial port. The Spartan colony of
Taras, it was founded in 708 BC and became the greatest city of Magna Graecia,
famous for its purple murex dyes, wool etc. It was a centre of Pythagorean
philosophy. It became subject to Rome in 272 BC, and surrendered to Hannibal
in 209 BC for which it was severely punished, on being retaken. |
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Bk II:63-89. The constellation and zodiacal
sun sign of the Bull. It represents the white ‘Bull from the Sea’, a disguise
of Jupiter when he carried off Europa. Its glinting red eye is the star Aldebaran
one of the four Babylonian guardians of the heavens, lying near the ecliptic.
(The others are Regulus in Leo, Antares
in Scorpius, and Fomalhaut ‘the Fish’s Eye’ in Piscis
Austrinus. All four are at roughly ninety degrees to one another.) |
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Bk VII:350-403. A fabled family of priests
in Ialysus, an ancient city of Rhodes. Neptune fell
in love with the nymph Halia, and her six sons committed outrages that led
a disgusted Jupiter to sink them
below the earth or under the waves. |
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Bk IX:666-713. The wife of Ligdus, and mother of Iphis. her husband orders to have any
female child killed, but she has a prophetic dream of Isis telling her to save the child in her womb,
a daughter, and deceives him into believing her female infant is male.
Bk IX:764-797. She prays to Isis for help. |
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Bk II:272-300. The Earth Mother, the Goddess
of the Earth. She appeals to Jupiter
to save the world after Phaethon has
lost control of the sun chariot. |
Tempe
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Bk I:568-587. The valley in Thessaly between Ossa and
Olympus through which the River Peneus flows. It was celebrated in antiquity
for its abundance of water and luxurious vegetation, and as the place where
Apollo came to purify himself after killing Python. It was the principal route into Greece
from the north.)
Bk VII:179-233. Medea gathers magic herbs there. |
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Bk VI:401-438. The king of Thrace,
husband of Procne.
Bk VI:438-485. Brings her sister, Philomela, to stay with her, while conceiving
a frenzied desire for the sister.
Bk VI:486-548. He violates the girl.
Bk VI:549-570. He cuts out her tongue, and
tells Procne she is dead.
Bk VI:619-652. Procne serves him the flesh
of his murdered son Itys at a banquet.
Bk VI:653-674. Pursuing the sisters in his
desire for revenge, he is turned into a bird, the hoopoe, upupa epops,
with its distinctive feathered crest and elongated beak. Its rapid, far-carrying,
‘hoo-hoo-hoo’ call is interpreted as ‘pou-pou-pou’ meaning ‘where? where?
where?’.
Book VI:675-721. His actions sour the relationship
between Thrace and Attica. |
Thaumantea, Thaumantias, Thaumantis
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Bk I:313-347. A Titaness,
co- ruler of the planet Jupiter, daughter of heaven and earth. Her daughters
are the Seasons and the Three Fates. She is the Triple-Goddess with prophetic
powers.
Bk IV:604-662. She has prophesied the theft
of the golden apples from Atlas’s orchard
in the Hesperides.
Bk VII:759-795. Ovid suggests the Sphinx
was sacred to Themis (as the moon-goddess of Thebes?)
who then avenges her death.
Bk IX:394-417. Bk IX:418-438. She prophesies concerning the
war of the Seven against Thebes and its aftermath.
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Bk VII:404-424. King of Athens, son of Aegeus,
hence Aegides. His mother was Aethra,
daughter of Pittheus king of Troezen. Aegeus had lain with her in the temple. His father
had hidden a sword , and a pair of sandals, under a stone (The Rock of Theseus)
as a trial, which he lifted, and he made his way to Athens, cleansing the
Isthmus of robbers along the way.
Bk VII:404-424. Medea attempts to poison Theseus but Aegeus recognises
his sword, and his son, and prevents her.
Bk VII:425-452. Escaping the attempt by Medea to poison him, his deeds are celebrated
by the Athenians: the killing of the Minotaur,
and the wild sow of Cromyon, the defeat
of Periphetes, Procrustes, Cercyon, Sinis, and Sciron.
Bk VIII:152-182. He kills the Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth, and abandons Ariadne on Dia
(Naxos). (See Canova’s sculpture – Theseus and the Dead Minotaur – Victoria
and Albert Museum, London)
Bk VIII:260-328. Athens no longers pays tribute
to Minos since he destroyed the Minotaur. The towns of Achaia beg his help in the Calydonian boar hunt, which he joins.
Bk VIII:376-424. He warns off his friend
Pirithous, and aims at the boar, but his spear
is deflected.
Bk VIII:547-610. He is delayed on his return
from the Calydonian Boar Hunt,
by the River Achelous, and the river-god
tells the story of Perimele.
Bk VIII:725-776. He wishes to hear more stories
of the god’s actions.
Bk IX:1-88. He asks Achelous to explain how
he lost one of his horns.
Bk XII:290-326. He is present at the battle
of the Lapiths and Centaurs, with his oaken club.
Bk XV:479-546. Hippolytus is his son, loved by Theseus’s
wife Phaedra.
Bk XV:843-870. He surpasses his father
Aegeus. |
Thessaly, Haemonia, Haemonius, Thessalis, Thessalus
(of Thesssaly)
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Of Thurii, a city on the Tarentine Gulf. |
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Bk XV:453-478. A ‘Thyestean meal’, such
as that of Thyestes, whose two sons were cooked and served to him, by his
brother Atreus, as a revenge. |
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Bk III:316-338. The Theban sage who spent
seven years as a woman and decides the dispute between Juno and Jupiter.
He is blinded by Juno but given the power of prophecy by Jupiter.
Bk VI:146-203. His daughter is Manto, the prophetess. |
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The son of Laomedon,
husband of Aurora, and father of Memnon.
Bk IX:418-438. Aurora, having obtained eternal
life for him wishes she could obtain eternal youth for him also. |
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A giant, who attempted violence to Latona,
and suffers in Hades.
Bk IV:416-463. Vultures feed on his liver,
which is continually renewed.
Bk X:1-85. His punishment in the underworld
ceases for a time at the sound of Orpheus’s
song. |
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Bk I:313-347. Bk
XIII:898-968. The sea and river god, son of Neptune and Amphitrite the Nereid. He is depicted as half man and half
fish and the sound of his conch-shell calms the waves. (See Wordsworth’s sonnet
‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,’)
Bk II:1-30. His image depicted on the palace
of the Sun. |
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Bk II:401-416. An epithet of Diana, worshipped at the meeting of three ways,
‘Diana of the crossroads’. |
Troy, Troia, and Troianus,Troicus (of Troy), Ilium
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Troy in Dardania, the famous city of the Troad in Asia Minor
near the northern Aegean Sea and the entrance to the Hellespont.
Bk VI:70-102. The home city of Antigone, daughter of Laomedon.
Bk VIII:329-375. The future scene of the
TrojanWar.
Bk IX:211-272. The place where Philoctetes will be needed, to make use
of the bow of Hercules, on the Greek
side, in the war.
Bk XI:194-220. Apollo and Neptune
built its walls for Laomedon.
Bk XI:749-795. Priam was its last king.
Bk XII:1-38. The Greeks set sail from Aulis to make war over the abduction of Helen by Paris.
Bk XII:579-628. The ten-year war. The death
of Achilles.
Bk XIII:1-122. Captured by Hercules.
Bk XIII:399-428. Troy falls to the Greeks
and is burned.
Bk XIII:429-480. It lies opposite the
land of the Bistones.
Bk XIII:481-575. The Trojan women, who
aid Hecuba, and are moved by her fate.
Bk XIII:576-622. Its cause was aided
by Aurora.
Bk XIII:623-639. Bk XIV:101-153. Bk XV:745-842. Troy’s destiny lies with
Aeneas.
Bk XIII:640-674. Agamemnon is its ravager.
Bk XIII:705-737. Helenus builds a replica of Troy at Buthrotos.
Bk XIV:445-482. Aeneas and his Trojans wage war in Latium.
BkXV:143-175. Pythagoras fought in the Trojan war, as his
incarnation Euphorbus.
Bk XV:418-452. A symbol of vanished glory,
but as its descendant city, Rome, a symbol of glory to
come.
Bk XV:622-745. An epithet of the goddess
Vesta, a name for Tauric Diana at Nemi. |
Ursa Major, The Great Bear, The Waggon (plaustra),
The Wain, The Plough, The Big Dipper,
Helice
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Bk II:150-177. The constellation of Ursa Major.
It represents Callisto turned into
a bear by Jupiter, or the plough
or waggon or cart of Bootes. The two
stars of the ‘bowl’ furthest from the ‘handle’, Merak and Dubhe, point to
Polaris the pole star. The ‘handle’ points to the star Arcturus in the constellation
Bootes, who is the Waggoner or Herdsman or Bear Herd (Arcturus means the Bearkeeper)
or Ploughman.
Bk II:496-507. Jupiter turns Callisto into
the Great Bear and Arcas her son into the Little Bear, Ursa
Minor.
Bk II:508-530. The constellation is prevented,
through Juno’s request to Tethys and Oceanus, from
dipping below the horizon.
Bk VIII:183-235. Icarus is warned not to fly too near
the constellation. |
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Bk II:150-177. The constellation of the Little
Bear or Little Dipper, said to have been introduced by Thales in about 600BC.
Close to Polaris the Pole Star it is a smaller version of the Great Bear,
Ursa Major, and represents the far north.
Bk II:496-507. Jupiter turns Arcas into the Little Bear and his mother Callisto into the Great Bear, Ursa Major. |
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Bk I:438-472. The Goddess of Love. The daughter
of Jupiter and Dione. She is Aphrodite,
born from the waves, an incarnation of Astarte, Goddess of the Phoenicians.
The mother of Cupid by Mars.
(See Botticelli’s painting – Venus and Mars – National Gallery,
London)
Bk IV:167-189. Bk XIV:1-74. She commits adultery with
Mars and is caught in a net by her husband Vulcan after Sol has betrayed their affair.
Bk IV:190-213. She is called Cytherea, from the island of Cythera, and
takes her revenge on Sol.
Bk IV:346-388. She is the mother of Hermaphroditus, by Mercury, and grants, with him, their son’s
prayer that the pool of Salmacis weaken anyone who
bathes there.
Bk IV:512-542. She asks Neptune her uncle to change Ino and her son into sea-deities.
Bk V:294-331. The Emathides pretend that she fled to Egypt
in the war between the giants and the gods, and there she hid in the form
of a fish.
Bk VII:796-865. Cephalus would prefer Procris to her.
Bk IX:394-417. She gave Harmonia the fatal necklace made by Vulcan (Hephaestus), that was Jupiter’s love gift to Europa, and that conferred irresistible beauty.
Bk IX:418-438. She wishes to ward off old
age from her mortal lover Anchises.
Bk IX:439-516. Bk IX:517-594. Byblis names her.
Bk IX:764-797. She attends weddings with Juno and Hymen.
Bk X:220-242. She turned the Cerastae into wild bullocks, and forced the
Propoetides to perform acts of public
prostitution. This latter was a feature of the worship of the great goddess
as Astarte and Diana(at Ephesus etc).
Cyprus was one of her sacred islands.
Bk X:243-297. She brings the ivory girl Pygmalion created to life.
Bk X:503-559. She falls in love with Adonis. (He is a vegetation god, and as her consort,
mirrors Attis with Cybele, Tammuz with Astarte etc See Frazer’s ‘The Golden
Bough’.)
Bk X:560-637 . Bk X:638-680. She tells the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes.
Bk X:681-707. She initiates her revenge on
Hippomenes, and warns Adonis to avoid the wild beasts of the forest.
Bk X:708-739. Adonis
ignores her warning and is killed by a wild boar (sacred to her as the moon
goddess) that gores his thigh. She initiates the annual re-enactment of his
death (a vegetation ritual, of the death and resurrection of the Goddess’s
consort), and turns his blood into the fragile anemone, the windflower. (See
Frazer: The Golden Bough XXIX).
Bk XIII:623-639. Aeneas is her son by Anchises.
Bk XIII:640-674. She is Aeneas’s guardian
goddess in his wanderings, and the white doves, into which the daughters of
Anius are turned, are sacred to her.
Bk XIII:738-788. Her influence is gentle
but powerful, making Polyphemus change
his nature after falling in love with Galatea.
Bk XIV:1-74. She perhaps made Circe, Sol’s daughter, susceptible
to passion, in revenge for her father’s tale-bearing, see above.
Bk XIV:445-482. Bk XV:745-842. She punished Diomede for wounding her during the Trojan War.
Bk XIV:483-511. She changes Diomede’s
friends into birds.
Bk XIV:566-580. She obtains deification
for her son Aeneas.
Bk XIV:623-697. She hates hard hearts.
Bk XIV:698-771. Cyprian Salamis has a
temple of Venus Prospiciens –‘she who looks out’.
Bk XIV:772-804. She asks the naiades to help the Romans.
(Pursuing her support for the descendants of her son Aeneas.)
Bk XV:745-842. She asks the gods to prevent
the assassination of her descendant Julius Caesar. Jupiter, however, declares his deification,
prophesies the glory of his ‘son’ Augustus,
and allows Venus to snatch him up into heaven, as a comet.
Bk XV:843-870. She sets Julius Caesar
among the stars. |
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The daughter of Saturn. The goddess of fire. The ‘shining one’. Every hearth
had its Vesta, and she presided over the preparation of meals and was offered
first food and drink. Her priestesses were the Vestal Virgins. Her chief festival
was the Vestalia in June. The Virgins took a strict vow of chastity and served
for thirty years. They enjoyed enormous prestige, and were preceded by a lictor
when in public. Breaking of their vow resulted in whipping and death. There
were twenty recorded instances in eleven centuries.
Bk XV:622-745. A name for the Tauric Diana at Nemi.
Bk XV:745-842. She ‘married’ her high
priest the ‘king of Rome’, e.g. Julius
Caesar. See Fraser’s ‘The Golden Bough’ Ch1 et seq.
Bk XV:843-870. She is worshipped with
her brother Phoebus, and is set among
Caesar’s ancestral gods. |
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Bk XV:622-745. A river, the modern Volturno,
in Campania that runs by the site of ancient Capua. |
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Bk II:227-271. A river of Troy
in Asia Minor and the river-god. His brother and companion river is the Simois.
(See Homer’s Iliad). He is a son of Zeus. In the Iliad Achilles drives the
Trojans into a bend of the river ‘as though a swarm of locusts driven into
the river by a raging fire, clustered in the water to escape the flames’ and
slaughters them till Scamander runs red with blood. |
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Bk I:52-68. The West
Wind. Eurus is the East Wind, Auster is the South Wind, and Boreas is the
North Wind. |
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