The Ibis, by Ovid, Translated by A.S. Kline

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: The Ibis, by Ovid, Translated by A.S. Kline

Postby admin » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:46 am

Ibis:413-464 The Litany of Maledictions: Ancient Torments

Let these ills, and none lighter than these, fall on you,
you whom my anger rightly heaps with curses.
Such as Achaemenides knew, abandoned on Sicilian
Etna, who saw Aeneas’ Trojan sails approaching:
such a fate as Irus, too, that beggar with two names, and those
who haunt the bridge: let it be more than you dare hope for.
May you love Plutus, god of wealth, Ceres’ son, in vain,
and riches fail however you search for them:
and as the ebbing wave retreats in its turn,
and the soft sand washes from under your feet,
so may your fortune always vanish, who knows how,
slipping away, endlessly, flowing through your hands.
And like Erysichthon, the father of Mestra who changed her form
repeatedly, may you be wasted by endless hunger though full-fed:
and may you not be averse to human flesh: but in whatever
way you can, may you be the Tydeus of this age.
And may you commit an act to make the frantic horses
of the Sun hurtle back from west to east:
may you repeat the vile banquet at a Lycaonian table,
trying to mislead Jupiter with a deceptive food:
and I beg someone to test the power of the god,
serve you as Tantalus’s son, or the son of Tereus.
And scatter your limbs through the open fields
like the ones that delayed a father’s pursuit.
May you imitate real bulls in Perillus’s bronze,
with cries that match the contours of the beast:
like cruel Phalaris, your tongue first slit with a sword,
may you bellow like an ox in that Paphian metal.
When you wish to return to years of youth, may you
be deceived like Pelias, Admetus’s old father-in-law.
Or may you be drowned, as you ride, sucked down
by the mud, so long as your name wins no renown.
I want you to die like those born from the serpent’s teeth
that Cadmus, the Sidonian, scattered on Theban fields.
Or as Pittheus’s scion’s did to Medusa’s cousin,
may ominous imprecations descend on your head:
like one cursed by the birds without warning,
who purifies his body in a shower of water
And may you suffer as many wounds as they say
they suffered, whom a knife used to cut at from beneath.
And, inspired, slash your private parts to Phrygian music,
like those whom Cybele, the Mother, maddens:
and like Attis, once a man, become not man or woman,
and strike the harsh cymbals with effeminate hand,
and at a stroke become one of the Great Mother’s cattle,
turned, in one swift step, from winner to sacrifice.
And lest Limon should suffer his punishment alone,
may a horse with cruel teeth feed on your entrails.
Or like Cassandreus, no gentler than his master,
be wounded and buried under a pile of earth.
Or like the infant Perseus, or the Cycnean hero,
may you fall, confined, into the ocean waves.
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Re: The Ibis, by Ovid, Translated by A.S. Kline

Postby admin » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:46 am

Ibis:465-540 The Litany of Maledictions: Ancient Torments

Or be struck down, a sacrifice to Apollo at the holy altars,
as Theudotus suffered death from a savage enemy.
Or may Abdera set you apart for certain days,
and many stones hail down on you, accursed.
Or may you suffer the three-pronged bolts of angry Jove,
like Hipponous’s son, Capaneus, or Dexithea’s father,
or Autonoe’s sister, Semele, or Maia’s nephew,
like Phaethon who guided the terrified horses he chose:
like the cruel scion of Aeolus, and his son of that blood,
of whom Arctos was begot, that never knows the water,
or as Macelo and her husband, struck down by swift flames,
so, I pray, may you die by the fire of the divine avenger.
And may you be their prize to whom is Diana’s Delos,
not before the day Thasos needed to be wasted:
and those who tore apart Actaeon catching shy
Artemis bathing, and Linus, scion of Crotopus.
Nor may you suffer less from a poisonous snake
than Eurydice, daughter-in-law of Calliope and old Oeagrus:
than Hypsipyle’s ward, Opheltes: than he, of famous horses,
who first fastened a sharp point into hollowed wood.
May you approach high places no more safely than Elpenor,
and suffer the effects of wine in the same way he did.
And die as tamely, as whoever delighted in calling
savage Dryops to his Theiodamantine weapons:
or as cruel Cacus died, crushed, in his cave,
given away by the bellowing of oxen inside:
or Lichas who brought Nessus’ gift steeped in venom,
and stained the Euboean waters with his blood.
Or like Prometheus may you hang in Tartarus
from a high rock, or, as books tell, die Socrates’ death:
as Aegeus who saw the deceptive sail of Theseus’s ship,
as the child, Astyanax, thrown from the Trojan citadel,
as Ino, the nurse, also aunt, of infant Bacchus,
as Talus who found a saw the cause of his death:
as the envious girl who threw herself from high cliffs,
who had spoken evil words to the unconquered god.
May a brooding lioness of your country, attack you
in your native fields, and be the cause of a death like Phalaecus’.
May the wild boar that killed Lycurgus’s son, and Adonis
born of a tree, and brave Idmon, destroy you too.
And may it even wound you as it dies, like him
on whom the mouth, he had transfixed, closed.
Or may you be like the Phrygian, the Berecyntian hunter,
whom a pine tree killed in the same way.
If your ship touches the Minoan sands,
may the Cretan crowd think you’re from Corfu.
May you be buried in a falling house, like the offspring
of Aleus, when Jove’s star befriended a scion of Leoprepeus.
Or may you give your name to the flowing waters,
like Evenus or Tiberinus, drowned in the rushing river.
May you be worthy of truncation, like that son of Astacus,
Melanippus, a maimed corpse, your head eaten by your fellow men,
or may you give your burning limbs to the kindling pyre,
as they say Broteas did in his desire for death.
May you suffer death shut in a cave,
like that author of unprofitable stories.
And as fierce iambics harm their creator,
may your insolent tongue be your destruction.
And like him who wounded Athens with endless
song, die hated through a deficiency of food.
And as it’s said the poet of the grim lyre perished
may a wound to your right hand be the cause of ruin.
And as a serpent wounded Agamemnonian Orestes
may you too die of an envenomed sting.
May the first night of your marriage be the last
of your life: so Eupolis and his new bride died.
And as they say the tragedian Lycophron ended,
may an arrow pierce you, and cling to your entrails.
Or be torn apart and scattered in the woods by your kin,
as Pentheus at Thebes, grandson of the serpent, Cadmus.
May you be caught by a raging bull, dragged over wild
mountains, as Lycus’s imperial wife Dirce was dragged.
May your severed tongue lie there, before your feet,
as Philomela, her own sister’s unwilling rival, suffered.
And like dull Myrrha’s author, Cinna, harmed by his name,
may you be found scattered about throughout the city.
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Re: The Ibis, by Ovid, Translated by A.S. Kline

Postby admin » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:46 am

Ibis:541-596 The Litany of Maledictions: Ancient Torments

And may that artisan, the bee, bury his venomous
sting in your eye, as he did to the Achaean poet.
And, on the harsh cliff, may your entrails be torn
like Prometheus, whose brother’s daughter was Pyrrha.
May you follow Thyestes’ example, like Harpagus’s son,
and, carved in pieces, enter your father’s gut.
May the cruel sword maim your trunk, and mutilate
the parts, as they say Mamertas’s limbs were maimed.
Or may a noose close the passage of your breath
as the Syracusan poet’s throat was stopped.
Or may your naked entrails be revealed by stripping
your skin, like Marsyas who named a Phrygian river.
Unhappy, may you see Medusa’s petrifying face,
that dealt death to many of the Cephenes.
Like Glaucus, be bitten by the horses of Potniae,
or like the other Glaucus, leap into the sea’s waves.
Or may Cretan honey choke your windpipe, like one
who had the same name as the two I’ve mentioned.
May you drink anxiously, where Socrates, wisest of men,
accused by Anytus, once drank with imperturbable lips.
Nor may you be happier than Haemon in your love:
or may you possess your sister as Macareus did his.
Or see what Hector’s son, Astyanax, saw from his
native citadel, when all was gripped by flames.
May you pay for infamies in your offspring, as for his grandfather,
that father’s son, by whose crime his sister became a mother.
And may that kind of weapon cling to your bones, with which
they say Ulysses, the son-in-law of Icarius, was killed.
And as that noisy throat was crushed in the wooden Horse,
so may your vocal passage be closed off with a thumb.
Or like Anaxarchus may you be ground in a deep mortar,
and your bones resound like grain does being pounded.
And may Apollo bury you in Tartarus’s depths like Psamathe’s
father, Crotopus, because of what he did to his son Linus.
And may that plague affect your people, that Coroebus’s
right hand ended, bringing aid to the wretched Argolis.
Like Hippolytus, Aethra’s grandson, killed by Venus’s anger,
may you an exile, be dragged away by your terrified horses.
As a host, Polymestor, killed his foster-child Polydorus, for
his great wealth, may a host murder you for your scant riches.
And may all your race die with you, as they say
his six brothers died with Damasicthon.
As his funeral added to the musician’s natal ills,
may a just loathing visit your existence.
Like Pelops’ sister, Niobe, may you be hardened
to standing stone, or Battus harmed by his own tongue.
If a Spartan boy attacks the empty air with a hurled
discus, may you fall to a blow from that disc.
If any water’s struck by your flailing arms,
may it all be worse to you than the straits of Abydos.
As the comic writer died in the clear waves, while
swimming, may the waters of Styx choke your mouth.
Or as shipwrecked you ride the stormy sea,
may you die on touching land, like Palinurus.
As Diana’s guardian did to Euripides, the tragic poet
may a pack of vigilant dogs tear you to shreds.
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Re: The Ibis, by Ovid, Translated by A.S. Kline

Postby admin » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:47 am

Ibis:597-644 The Litany of Maledictions: Concluding Words

Or like a Sicilian may you leap over the giants’ mouth,
because of whom Etna emits its wealth of flame.
May the Thracian women, thinking you Orpheus,
tear your limbs apart with maddened fingers.
As Althaea’s son burned in the distant flames,
so may your pyre be lit by a burning brand.
As the Colchian bride was held captive by her new crown,
and the bride’s father, and with the father the household:
as the thinning blood ebbed from Hercules’ body:
so may the baleful venom devour your body.
As his Athenian child avenged Lycurgus may a wound
be left for you too to receive from a fresh weapon.
Like Milo, may you try to split open the wood with ease,
but be unable to withdraw your captive hand.
May you be hurt like Icarius, by gifts that an armed
hand brought him from the drunken crowd.
And as a virtuous daughter brought to death sadly
to her father, may your throat be bound in a noose.
And may you suffer starvation behind your own locked door
like the father who punished himself according to his own law.
May you outrage a phantom, like that of Minerva’s,
who stopped the straits at Aulis being an easy harbour.
Or may you pay by death for a false charge, as Palamedes
was punished, and not delight in what you did not earn.
As Isindius, the host, took the life of Aethalos,
whom even now Ion, mindful, drives from his rites:
as her father himself, from duty, brought Melanthea to light,
when she was hidden in the dark because of murder,
so may your entrails be stabbed by spears,
so, I pray, may all help be withheld from you.
May such night be yours, as Dolon, the Trojan, who by a coward’s pact, wished to drive the horses, that great Achilles drove.
May you have no quieter a sleep than Rhesus,
and his comrades before him on death’s road:
like those that forceful Nisus son of Hyrtacus, and his friend
Euryalus, sent to their deaths with Rhamnes the Rutulian.
Or like the scion of Clinias, surrounded by dark fires,
may you bear your half-burned bones to a Stygian death.
Or like Remus who dared to leap the new-made
walls, may a simple spear take your life.
Last, I pray that you may live and die in this place,
between the Sarmatian and the Getan arrows.
Meanwhile lest you complain that I’ve forgotten you,
these words are sent to you in a hasty work.
It’s brief indeed, I confess: but, by their favour, may the gods
grant more than I ask, and multiply the power of my prayers.
You’ll read more in time, containing your true name,
in that metre in which bitter wars should be waged.

The End of Ibis
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Re: The Ibis, by Ovid, Translated by A.S. Kline

Postby admin » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:49 am

Part 1 of 2

Index

Abdera
Ibis:465-540 The city in Thrace. It was publicly purified once a year and one of the burghers set apart for that purpose was stoned to death as a scapegoat. He was excommunicated six days before in order to ‘bear the sins of the people’. (See Frazer: The Golden Bough LVIII: The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece.)

Abydos
A town at the narrows of the Dardanelles, opposite Sestos.
Ibis:541-596 Swum by Leander, hence a destructive passage.

Achaemenides
A companion of Ulysses left behind in Sicily and rescued by Aeneas. See Aeneid Book III:588.
Ibis:413-464 A castaway.

Achilles
The Greek hero of the Trojan War. The son of Peleus, king of Thessaly, and the sea-goddess Thetis, (See Homer’s Iliad).
Ibis:251-310 Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) was his son.
Ibis:311-364 Achilles came from Thessaly.

Actaeon
The grandson of Cadmus, son of Autonoë, called Hyantius from an ancient name for Boeotia. He saw Diana bathing naked and was turned into a stag. Pursued by his hounds, he was torn to pieces by his own pack. (See the Metope of Temple E at Selinus – the Death of Actaeon – Palermo, National Museum: and Titian’s painting – the Death of Actaeon – National Gallery, London.) See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book III:138.
Ibis:465-540 Torn apart by the hounds.

Admetus
The husband of Alcestis who agreed to die on his behalf.
Ibis:413-464 Pelias was his father-in-law.

Adonis
Ibis:465-540 The son of Myrrha by her father Cinyras, born after her transformation into a myrrh-tree. (As such he is a vegetation god born from the heart of the wood.) See Metamorphoses X:681 Venus fell in love with him, but he was killed by a wild boar that gashed his thigh. His blood formed the windflower, the anemone.

Aeacides
Descendants of Aeacus, usually Achilles or his son Pyrrhus.
Ibis:365-412 Probably Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) at the fall of Troy.

Aeacus
Ibis:163-208 The son of Jupiter and Aegina, grandson of Asopus, the river-god of the north-eastern Peloponnese. He named his island, in the Saronic gulf, Aegina after his mother. Jupiter appointed him one of the three judges of the Underworld. The others were Minos and Rhadamanthys.

Aeëtes
King of Colchis, son of Sol and the Oceanid Perse, brother of Circe, and father of Medea. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book VII:1. The Argonauts reached his court, and requested the return of the Golden Fleece. The fleece was that of the divine ram on which Phrixus had fled from Orchemonos, to avoid being sacrificed. Iolcus could never prosper until it was brought back to Thessaly. King Aeetes was reluctant and set Jason demanding tasks as a pre-condition for its return. Medea assisted Jason to perform them.
Ibis:413-464 Medea killed her half-brother Apsyrtus, and scattered his limbs about to delay her father’s pursuit.

Aegeus
Ibis:465-540 The father of Theseus and king of Athens. Theseus forgot to raise a white sail as a signal of success on his return to Athens from Crete and Aegeus leapt to his death in sorrow.

Aegyptus
Son of Belus, brother of Danaus. He was King of Egypt and Arabia. His fifty sons married the Danaides, the fifty daughters of Danaus. Learning of his sons’ fate at the hands of the Danaids, he fled to Aroe where he died, and was buried at Patrae in the sanctuary of Serapis (Pausanias VII.21.6)

Aeneas
The Trojan son of Venus and Anchises. Aeneas escaped from Troy at its fall, and travelled to Latium. The Julian family claimed descent from his son Ascanius (Iulus). See Virgil’s Aeneid.

Aethra
Ibis:541-596 The daughter of Pittheus King of Troezen who bore Theseus to Aegeus of Athens.

Aetna
Mount Etna. The Volcano on Sicily.
Ibis:413-464 On Sicily.
Ibis:597-644 Fuelled by the anger of the giants beneath it.

Agamemnon
The king of Mycenae, son of Atreus, brother of Menelaüs, husband of Clytaemnestra, father of Orestes, Iphigenia, and Electra. The leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War. See Homer’s Iliad, and Aeschylus’s Oresteian tragedies.
Ibis:465-540 Orestes was his son.

Alcmaeon
Ibis:311-364 The son of Amphiaraus, who killed his mother Eriphyle for causing the death of his father, and was maddened by the Furies. He married Callirhoe daughter of the river-god Achelous.

Aleus
Ibis:465-540 The king and founder of Tegea in Arcadia, and father to Auge, who bore Telephus to Hercules. There was an ancient statue of Alean Athene at Tegea that Augustus moved to Rome after the defeat of Antony, and which was placed in the Forum Augustum (vowed at Philippi in 42BC and consecrated forty years later.)
Ibis:251-310 Scene of Philopoimen’s last defeat.

Allia
A tributary of the Tiber. The Romans were crushed by the Gauls under Brennius in a battle by the river on 18th July 390BC, leading to the capture and sacking of Rome. It was a day of national mourning (dies ater) when no public business was transacted.
Ibis:209-250 A black day.

Althaea
The mother of Meleager, and wife of Oeneus, king of Calydon. The sister of the Thestiadae, Plexippus and Toxeus. She sought revenge for their deaths at the hands of her own son, Meleager, and threw into the fire the piece of wood that was linked to Meleager’s life, and which she had once rescued from the flames, at the time of the Fates prophecy to her.

Amastris
Ibis:311-364 A town in Paphlagonia in Asia Minor, on a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea. It was mentioned by Homer (Iliad, II, 853), was a flourishing town in the time of Trajan (98-117), and was of some importance until the seventh century AD. Lenaeus was a title of Bacchus as lord of the wine-press. The reference is obscure.

Ambracia
Ibis:251-310 The region of western Greece in Epirus, round the Gulf of Ambracia.

Amyntor
Ibis:251-310 King of Ormenium, near Mount Pelion. His concubine Phthia accused his son Phoenix of violating her. Amyntor blinded him and cursed him with childlessness.

Antaeus
Ibis:365-412 The King of Lybia, son of Neptune and Earth, whom Hercules defeated by lifting him off the ground in a wrestling match. He gained strength from touching the ground. Busiris was his brother.

Antigone
The daughter of Oedipus, King of Thebes. She performed the burial rites for her brother Polynices, though King Creon had forbidden it because of her brother’s role in the war of the Seven against Thebes. See Sophocles’ Antigone.
Ibis:251-310 She acted as guide to her blinded father Oedipus.

Anytus
Book TV.XII:1-68 Ibis:541-596 An Athenian democrat, one of the accusers of Socrates. See Plato’s Apology.

Apollo
Son of Jupiter and Latona (Leto), brother of Diana (Artemis), born on Delos. God of poetry, art, medicine, prophecy, archery, herds and flocks, and of the sun.
Ibis:105-134 The god of prophecy.
Ibis:251-310 Tiresias was gifted with prophecy, Apollo’s art.
Ibis:465-540 Sacrificed to at the altars.
Ibis:541-596 The father of Linus.

Aquilo
The north wind. As a god he is Boreas.

Argo
The ship of Jason and the Argonauts, built with the aid of Athene. The Argonauts sailed her to the Black Sea to find the Golden Fleece.
Ibis:251-310 Athene-Minerva protected the Argo, and her sacred dove was sent ahead through the clashing rocks to guide the ship.

Ariadne
A daughter of Minos. Half-sister of the Minotaur, and sister of Phaedra who helped Theseus escape the Cretan Labyrinth. She fled to Dia with Theseus and he abandoned her there, but she was rescued by Bacchus, and her crown was set among the stars as the Corona Borealis. (See Titian’s painting – Bacchus and Ariadne – National Gallery, London: and Annibale Carracci’s fresco – The triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne – Farnese Palace, Rome)). The Northern Crown, the Corona Borealis, is a constellation between Hercules and Serpens Caput, consisting of an arc of seven stars, its central jewel being the blue-white star Gemma.
Ibis:251-310 This a variant of her fate.

Asclepius, Aesculapius
The son of Coronis and Apollo, hence great grandson of Saturn, and named Coronides. He was saved by Apollo from his mother’s body and given to Chiron the Centaur to rear. He is represented in the sky by the constellation Ophiucus near Scorpius, depicting a man entwined in the coils of a serpent, consisting of the split constellation, Serpens Cauda and Serpens Caput, which contains Barnard’s star, having the greatest proper motion of any star and being the second nearest to the sun. He restored Hippolytus and others to life. He saved Rome from the plague, and becomes a resident god. (His cult centre was Epidaurus where there was a statue of the god with a golden beard. Cicero mentions that Dionysius the Elder, Tyrant of Syracuse wrenched off the gold. (‘On the Nature of the Gods, Bk III 82). Asclepius himself was killed and restored to life by Jupiter-Zeus.
Ibis:365-412 Great grandson of Saturn, via Jupiter and Apollo.

Astyanax
Ibis:465-540 Ibis:541-596 The son of Hector and Andromache, who at the fall of Troy was hurled from the citadel onto the rocks below, or as some sources say leapt to his death.

Atalanta
The daughter of King Schoeneus of Boeotia, famous for her swift running. Warned against marriage by the oracle, her suitors were forced to race against her on penalty of death for losing. She fell in love with Hippomenes. He raced with her, and by use of the golden apples, won the race and her. (See Guido Reni’s painting – Atalanta and Hippomenes – Naples, Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte)
Ibis:365-412 The golden apples.

Atarneus
Ibis:311-364 A city in Mysia in Asia Minor, opposite Mytilene the city of Lesbos. Herodotus I.160. The incident described is obscure.

Athamas
Ibis:311-364 The son of Aeolus, who married Ino, Cadmus’s daughter. He was maddened by Hera (See Metamorphoses IV:512). Ovid also refers to the myth in which Cadmus and his wife Harmonia were turned into serpents. (See Metamorphoses IV:563)

Athene (Minerva)
The patron goddess of Athens, born fully grown and armed from the head of Zeus. Associated with virginity, olive-cultivation, domestic arts (spinning, weaving, and pottery etc) wisdom, learning, technology and the mind.

Athens
The chief city of Attica in Greece, sacred to Minerva ( Pallas Athene).

Athos
A high promontory of the Macedonian Chalcidice, on a peninsula in the northern Aegean.
Ibis:163-208 Snow covered in winter.

Attis
Ibis:413-464 A Phrygian shepherd, loved by Cybele. An incarnation of the vegetation god, the consort of the Great Goddess. He castrated himself and became a sexless follower of hers. See Catullus:63.

Augustus
The Emperor Augustus Caesar (63BC –14AD). (The title was also granted to Tiberius). Augustus was Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew, whom Julius adopted and declared as his heir, Octavius Caesar (Octavian). (The honorary title Augustus was bestowed by the Senate 16th Jan 27BC). He married Scribonia and then Livia. He exiled Ovid to the Black Sea region in 8AD for ‘a poem and a mistake’ (carmen et error). The poem probably the Ars Amatoria, the mistake probably something to do with the notorious Julias’ set (the younger Julia, Augustus’s grandaughter, was banished as was the Elder Julia his daughter), that Ovid knew of and repeated. He may possibly have witnessed ‘an illegal’, that is politically unacceptable, marriage between Julia the Younger and her lover. (She subsequently had an illegitimate child while in exile).
Ibis:1-40 He allowed Ovid to retain his possessions.

Bacchus, Dionysus
The god Dionysus, the ‘twice-born’, the god of the vine. The son of Jupiter-Zeus and Semele. His worship was celebrated with orgiastic rites borrowed from Phrygia. His female followers are the Maenades. He carries the thyrsus, a wand tipped with a pine-cone, the Maenads and Satyrs following him carrying ivy-twined fir branches as thyrsi. (See Caravaggio’s painting – Bacchus – Uffizi, Florence) He was equated by the Romans with Liber the fertility god. See Euripides’ Bacchae. Also called Lenaeus, ‘of the winepress’.
Ibis:465-540 Nursed by Persephone and by the nymphs of Mount Nysa.

Battiades
Ibis:41-104 Ovid used a poem of Callimachus as a model and adopted the name of Ibis for his enemy.

Battus
Ibis:541-596 A countryman changed by Mercury into a flint (touchstone, the ‘informer’) See Metamorphoses II:676

Belides
See Danaides

Bistonii
A Thracian people of the Aegean coast around Abdera and Dicaea, and as far west as the Nestos. Used by Ovid and others as a term for the Thracians generally.

Broteas
Ibis:465-540 A son of Tantalus. He committed suicide in the flames because of his ugliness, or as some say on being driven mad by Artemis.

Busiris
A king of Egypt who sacrificed strangers to Jupiter, killed by Hercules. He was the brother of Antaeus of Libya.
Ibis:365-412 An example of cruelty.

Byblis
Ibis:311-364 The daughter of Miletus, and Cyanee, twin sister of Caunus.The twins were noted for their beauty. Byblis fell in love with Caunus and wooed him incestuously. See Metamorphoses IX:439.

Cacus
Ibis:465-540 The three-headed giant who lived in a cave, stole Hercules’ cattle, and was killed by him. The bellowing of the stolen bulls gave him away.

Cadmus
The son of the Phoenician king Agenor, who searched for his sister Europa stolen by Jupiter. The founder of (Boeotian)Thebes. The father of Semele.
Ibis:413-464 Athene commanded him to sow the teeth of the serpent (from the snake of the Castalian Spring, that he had killed) in the soil of Thebes. The Sparti or sown men were born from the soil, and they fought each other until only five were left.
Ibis:465-540 Grandfather of Pentheus.

Calliope
The Muse of epic poetry. The mother of Orpheus.
Ibis:465-540 The mother of Orpheus.

Callisto
A nymph of Nonacris in Arcadia, a favourite of Phoebe-Diana. The daughter of Lycaon, and descended from Atlas. Jupiter raped her and pregnant by him she was expelled from the band of Diana’s virgin followers by Diana as Cynthia, in her Moon goddess mode. She gave birth to a son Arcas, and was turned into a bear by Juno. Her constellation is the Great Bear.
Ibis:465-540 Callisto the daughter of Lycaon.

Canace
The daughter of Aeolus, God of the Winds and Enarete. Her ill-fated love for her brother Macareus was the theme of Euripides’ Aeolus.

Capaneus
The son of Hipponous and Astynome. One of the seven leaders who attacked Thebes. He was killed by Zeus’s lightning bolt when attempting to scale the walls (or attack the Electra Gate). His wife Evadne threw herself into his funeral pyre.
Ibis:465-540 Blasted by Jove’s lightning.

Cassandreus
Ibis:413-464 His fate.

Centaurs
Creatures, half-man and half-horse living in the mountains of Thessaly, hence called biformes, duplex natura, semihomines, bimembres.
They were the sons of Ixion, and a cloud, in the form of Juno. Invited to the marriage feast of Pirithoüs and Hippodamia, Eurytus the Centaur precipitated a fight with the Lapithae.
Ibis:365-412 The Centaurs Nessus and Eurytion.

Ceres
The Corn Goddess. The daughter of Saturn and Rhea, and Jupiter’s sister. As Demeter she is represented in the sky by the constellation and zodiacal sign of Virgo, holding an ear of wheat, the star Spica. It contains the brightest quasar, 3C 273. (The constellation alternatively depicts Astraea.) The worship of her and her daughter Persephone, as the Mother and the Maiden, was central to the Eleusinian mysteries, where the ritual of the rebirth of the world from winter was enacted. Ceres was there a representation of the Great Goddess of Neolithic times, and her daughter her incarnation, in the underworld and on earth. Her most famous cult in Rome was on the Aventine, and dated from the 5th century BC.
Ibis:251-310 Her rites were the Eleusinian mysteries. The reference is obscure.
Ibis:365-412 Her delight at the death of Cercyon.
Ibis:413-464 The mother of Plutus.

Cercyon
Ibis:365-412 A brigand who wrestled with travellers and crushed them to death. He was served in the same way by Theseus, to Ceres great delight.

Charybdis
The whirlpool between Italy and Sicily in the Messenian straits. Charybdis was the voracious daughter of Mother Earth and Neptune, hurled into the sea, and thrice, daily, drawing in and spewing out a huge volume of water.
See Homer’s Odyssey Book XII.
Ibis:365-412 Ulysses’ men caught in the whirlpool.

Cilicia
Ibis:163-208 The southeast coastal region of Asia Minor, incorporated into the Empire from 67BC when Pompey suppressed the endemic piracy of the coastal area. Famous for its saffron, derived from crocus flowers.

Cinna
Gaius Helvius Cinna, the neoteric poet and friend of Catullus and a student of Valerius Cato. His epyllion Zmyrna described the incest between Myrrha and her father Cinyras. He also wrote light verse. Mistaken for one of the conspirators, the praetor Lucius Cornelius Cinna, after Julius Caesar’s assassination, he was killed by the mob. See Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Cinyphus
The river Cinyps of North Africa flowing into the sea near the Syrtes. In the Metamorphoses Medea uses one of its water snakes as an ingredient for her magic potion. Ovid also gives it as Juba’s place of origin.
Ibis:209-250 Cursed soil.

Circe
The sea-nymph, daughter of Sol and Perse, and the granddaughter of Oceanus. (Kirke or Circe means a small falcon) She was famed for her beauty and magic arts and lived on the ‘island’ of Aeaea, which is the promontory of Circeii. (Cape Circeo between Anzio and Gaeta, on the west coast of Italy, now part of the magnificent Parco Nazionale del Circeo extending to Capo Portiere in the north, and providing a reminder of the ancient Pontine Marshes before they were drained: rich in wildfowl and varied tree species.) Cicero mentions that Circe was worshipped religiously by the colonists at Circei. (‘On the Nature of the Gods’, Bk III 47)
(See John Melhuish Strudwick’s painting – Circe and Scylla – Walker Art Gallery, Sudley, Merseyside, England: See Dosso Dossi’s painting - Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape- National gallery of Art, Washington)
She transformed Ulysses’s men into beasts. Mercury gave him the plant moly to enable him to approach her. He married her and freed his men, staying for a year on her island. (Moly has been variously identified as ‘wild rue’, wild cyclamen, and a sort of garlic, allium moly. John Gerard’s Herbal of 1633 Ch.100 gives seven plants under this heading, of which the third, Moly Homericum, is he suggests the Moly of Theophrastus, Pliny and Homer – Odyssey XX – and he describes it as a wild garlic). Circe was the mother by Ulysses of Telegonus.

Clotho
One of the three Fates. Clotho spins the thread. Lachesis measures it. Atropos wields the shears.
Ibis:209-250 She spins Ibis’s fate.

Coroebus
Ibis:541-596 He destroyed the Harpy, Poene, visited on Argos by Apollo after Crotopus’s crime of killing Linus and Psamathe. A plague then descended on the Argolis, which was ended by Corobeus confessing to his act at Delphi, and being sent out to build a temple to Apollo wherever the sacred tripod he was carrying fell to earth.

Crotopus
Ibis:541-596 The Argive father of Psamathe who killed her son Linus.

Cybele, Rhea
The Phrygian great goddess, Magna Mater, the Great Mother, personifying the earth in its savage state, worshipped in caves and on mountaintops. Merged with Rhea, the mother of the gods. Her consort was Attis, slain by a wild boar like Adonis. His festival was celebrated by the followers of Cybele, the Galli, or Corybantes, who were noted for convulsive dances to the music of flutes, drums and cymbals, and self-mutilation in an orgiastic fury. Her worship was introduced at Rome in 204BC. She wore a many-turretted crown, and is often represented with many breasts.
Ibis:413-464 Worshipped with ecstatic self-mutilation.

Cychreus
Ibis:251-310 The first king of Salamis, in some versions of myth the grandfather of Telamon. He killed, bred, or was killed by a serpent in various mythological variants. He is said to have appeared to the Greek fleet at the Battle of Salamis as a snake.

Cycnus
Ibis:413-464 The son of Apollo and Hyrie, a great hunter of Tempe. He is turned into a swan when he attempts suicide to spite Phylius by diving into a lake, thereafter called the Cycnean Lake. Ovid gives a variant myth here. See Metamorphoses VII:350

Damasicthon
Ibis:541-596 Possibly Damasicthon son of Kodros, the Ionian.

Danaides, Belides
The fifty daughters of Danaüs, granddaughters of Belus, king of Egypt.
They were forced to marry their cousins, the fifty sons of Aegyptus, and, with one exception, Hypermnestra, who saved the life of Lynceus because he preserved her virginity, killed them on their wedding night. The others were punished in Hades by having to fill a bottomless cistern with water carried in leaking sieves.
Ibis:163-208 Ibis:311-364 Their crime and punishment.

Dareus, Darius
Darius III, King of Persia (d 330 BC). He was defeated by Alexander the Great at Issus. Alexander subsequently gave Darius rites of burial after he had been murdered by his own kin.
Ibis:311-364 Ovid may intend Darius III (not the second, who was not historically significant) Codomannus, defeated by Alexander at the Issus in 333BC and Gaugamela in 331BC, and subsequently murdered by the satrap Bessus. The incident referred to is unclear.

Delos, Delia tellus
The Greek island in the Aegean, one of the Cyclades, birthplace of, and sacred to, Apollo (Phoebus) and Diana (Phoebe, Artemis), hence the adjective Delian. Its ancient name was Ortygia. A wandering island it gave sanctuary to Latona (Leto). Having been hounded by jealous Juno (Hera), she gave birth there to the twins Apollo and Diana, between an olive tree and a date-palm on the north side of Mount Cynthus. (Pausanias VIII xlvii, mentions the sacred palm-tree, noted there in Homer’s Odyssey 6, 162, and the ancient olive.) Delos then became fixed in the sea. In a variant she gave birth to Artemis-Diana on the islet of Ortygia nearby.
Ibis:465-540 Diana’s island. Possibly Ovid is referring obscurely to the Delian league and its sacking of the island of Thasos, which because of its gold mines was a source of riches.

Demodocus
Ibis:251-310 The blind Greek bard who entertains the guests in Alcinous’ palace in Phaeacia in Homer’s Odyssey VIII.

Dexamenus
Ibis:365-412 King of Olenus. Hercules rescued his daughter Mnesimache from the Centaur Eurytion, the king’s son-in-law.

Dexithea
Ibis:465-540 The Telchines, mythical craftsmen and wizards living on Ceos, angered the gods by blighting the fruits of the earth. Zeus and Poseidon (or Apollo) destroyed the island and its population, but spared Dexithea and her sisters, daughters of Damon (or Demonax), the chief of theTelkhines, because Macelo, Dexithea’s sister, had entertained the two gods. Macelo’s husband offended the gods, and they were both destroyed.

Diana, Artemis
Daughter of Jupiter and Latona (hence her epithet Latonia) and twin sister of Apollo. She was born on the island of Ortygia which is Delos (hence her epithet Ortygia). Goddess of the moon and the hunt. She carries a bow, quiver and arrows. She and her followers are virgins. She is worshipped as the triple goddess, as Hecate in the underworld, Luna the moon, in the heavens, and Diana the huntress on earth. (Skelton’s ‘Diana in the leaves green, Luna who so bright doth sheen, Persephone in hell’) Callisto is one of her followers. (See Luca Penni’s – Diana Huntress – Louvre, Paris, and Jean Goujon’s sculpture (attributed) – Diana of Anet – Louvre, Paris.) She was worshipped at the sacred grove and lake of Nemi in Aricia, as Diana Nemorensis, and the rites practised there are the starting point for Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ (see Chapter I et seq.) She hid Hippolytus, and set him down at Aricia (Nemi), as her consort Virbius. The Romans identified the original Sabine goddess Diana with the Greek Artemis and established her cult on the Aventine. Strabo mentions the connection of the cult of Aricia with the Tauric Chersonese (5.3.12, C.239)
Ibis:465-540 Delos was her island.
Ibis:541-596 Her pack of hounds. Cerberus was an incarnation of Hecate, a mask of Diana.

Diomedes (2)
The Thracian King of the Bistones who fed his horses on human flesh. Their capture formed Hercules’s eighth labour.

Dirce
Ibis:465-540 The wife of Lycus, King of Thebes, who mistreated her niece Antiope. Antiope was rescued by her sons Amphion and Zethus who tied Dirce to the horns of a wild bull and set it loose.

Dolon
The Trojan son of Eumedes. He acted as a spy in the Greek camp and asked for the horses of Achilles as his reward. He was killed by Ulysses and Diomedes during their raid behind the enemy lines. See Iliad Book X.

Dryas
Ibis:311-364 The son of Mars, and brother of the Thracian Tereus. If this is the Dryas referred to, the incident of his son is obscure.

Dryops
Ibis:465-540 The father of Theiodamas, who ruled the area below Mount Parnassus, and who was easily defeated by Hercules. The Dryopians were taken to the shrine of Apollo and made slaves.

Dulichium
An unidentified island, like Same, near Ithaca, and belonging to Ulysses. Ulysses (Odysseus) and his comrades are called ‘Dulichian’.

Elpenor
A comrade of Ulysses. The Odyssey describes his death when he tumbles from the roof of Circe’s house, the morning after a heavy bout of drinking. His ghost begs Ulysses for proper burial, and for the oar that he pulled with his comrades to be set up over his grave. His ashes were entombed on Mount Circeo.
Ibis:465-540 His fate.

Elysian Fields
Ibis:163-208 A region of the underworld for spirits in bliss, rewarding virtue in life.

Erebus
The Underworld (also a god of darkness).
Ibis:209-250 Source of the Furies’ snake venom.

Erichthonius
A son of Vulcan (Hephaestus), born without a mother (or born from the Earth after Hephaestus the victim of a deception had been repulsed by Athene). Legendary king of Athens (as Erechtheus) and a skilled charioteer. He is represented by the constellation Auriga the charioteer, containing the star Capella. (Alternatively the constellation represents the she-goat Amaltheia that suckled the infant Jupiter, and the stars ζ (zeta) and η (eta) Aurigae are her Kids. It is a constellation visible in the winter months.)

Erigone
The daughter of Icarius.
Ibis:597-644 She hung herself on finding him dead.

Erysichthon
Ibis:413-464 The son of the Thessalian king Triopas. His daughter was Mestra. After living off Mestra’s shape-changing skills he ended by consuming himself. See Metamorphoses VIII:725

Euboea
One of the largest of the Aegean islands close to the south-east of Greece and stretching from the Maliac Gulf and the Gulf of Pagasae in the north to the island of Andros in the south. At Chalcis it is less than a hundred yards from the mainland.
Ibis:465-540 Lichas hurled there.

Eumolpus
A mythical Thracian singer, the son of Poseidon and Chione (the daughter of Boreas and Oreithiya, making Eumolpus a decendant of Erictheus, king of Athens), and a priest of Ceres-Demeter, who brought the Eleusinian mysteries to Attica. He learned the mysteries from Demeter herself or from Orpheus (see Metamorphoses Book XI:85). The priestly clan of the Eumolpidae claimed descent from him, as the Kerkidae did from his son Keryx. His son Ismarus married a daughter of Tegyrius the King of Thrace, and Eumolpus himself succeeded to the throne on their death. He taught Hercules the lyre.
Ibis:251-310 His mother Chione hurled him into his father Neptune’s sea to avoid Boreas’s anger. Neptune saved him.

Eupolis
Ibis:465-540 A younger contemporary of Aristophanes, a comic poet and playwright. An Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, he flourished at the time of the Peloponnesian War (c. 446—411BC). Fragments of his plays survive. May be intended here.

Euripides
The tragic poet c480-406BC, one of the three major writers of Attic tragedy, according to tradition born in Salamis on the day Xerxes’ fleet was destroyed.
Ibis:541-596 Eaten by dogs in the temple according to Hyginus Fabula 247.

Euryalus
The beautiful boy in Virgil’s Aeneid (IX:176) loved by Nisus, son of Hyrtacus, who avenged his death by killing Volcens, before dying himself.
Ibis:597-644 Died with his friend after killing the sleeping Rhamnes.

Eurydice
Ibis:465-540 The wife of Orpheus, who died after being bitten by a snake. Orpheus went to the Underworld to ask for her life, but lost her when he broke the injunction not to look back at her. See Metamorphoses Books X:1 and XI:1. (See also Rilke’s poem, ‘Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes’, and his ‘Sonnets to Orpheus’, and Gluck’s Opera ‘Orphée’).

Eurylochus
Ibis:251-310 Supposedly a companion of Odysseus, who expelled Cychreus, son of Neptune and Salamis, daughter of the river god Asopus, from the throne of Salamis. Cychreus had killed a serpent to gain the kingdom, and bred one to defend it, and Ovid has some variant on what is a fragmentary myth whereby he was eaten by serpents.

Eurytion
Ibis:365-412 The Centaur. Hercules rescued Mnesimache the daughter of King Dexamenus of Olenus from him, and apparently killed him, though Eurytion also appears in the myth of Theseus’s fight against the Centaurs.

Evenus
Ibis:465-540 Son of Mars. He married Alcippe and had a daughter Marpessa. Suitors contended with him for her in a chariot race, the loser being killed. Idas stole her, and Evenus drowned himself in the river Lycormas which became the river Evenus.

Fates
The three Fates, the Moirai, or Parcae, were goddesses born of Erebus and Night. Clothed in white, they spin, measure out, and sever the thread of each human life. Clotho (the Spinner) spins the thread. Lachesis (The Assigner of Destinies) measures it. Atropos (She Who Cannot Be Resisted) wields the shears. The Parcae were originally Roman goddesses of childbearing but were assimilated to the Fates who preside over birth marriage and death.

Fauns
Woodland spirits.
Ibis:41-104 Powers invoked by Ovid.

Furiae, the Furies
The Furies, Erinyes, or Eumenides (ironically ‘The Kindly Ones’). The Three Sisters, were Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera, the daughters of Night and Uranus. They were the personified pangs of cruel conscience that pursued the guilty. (See Aeschylus – The Eumenides). Their abode was in Hades by the Styx.
Ibis:41-104 The Furies sat at the ‘prison’ gate of the city of Dis. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book IV:416
Ibis:163-208 Their whips, snaky hair and smoking torches.
Ibis:209-250 Their ministrations to the newborn Ibis.

Ganges
The sacred river of northern India.
Ibis:135-162 Its warm waters

Getae
A Thracian tribe occupying both banks of the lower Danube south and east of the Carpathians, considered of superior intelligence by Herodotus (4.92). Alexander defeated them. They were also called the Daci (Dacians). Strabo ( 7.3.11-12, C.304) considers them a merging of two tribes and aggressive by nature.
Ibis:597-644 The Getic bowmen.

Gigantes, Giants
Monsters, sons of Tartarus and Earth, with many arms and serpent feet, who made war on the gods by piling up the mountains, and overthrown by Jupiter. They were buried under Sicily.
Ibis:597-644 Buried beneath Sicily.

Glaucus(1)
Ibis:541-596 The son of Sisyphus and Merope, and father of Bellerephon, who lived at Potniae near Thebes. Aphrodite punished him for feeding his mares on human flesh by causing them to eat him alive.

Glaucus(2)
Ibis:541-596 The Boeotian son of Anthedon or Poseidon who tasted the herb of immortality and leapt into the sea where he became a marine god. See Metamorphoses VII:179

Glaucus(3)
Ibis:541-596 Ovid indicates another Glaucus, who drowned in honey. This was Glaucus son of Minos, who drowned in a jar of honey in the cellars of Cnossos, whom Polyeidus restored to life.

Haemon
The son of Creon, King of Thebes and the nephew of Jocasta. Antigone’s betrothed in the Sophoclean version, he committed suicide at her death.
Ibis:541-596 His fate.

Hannibal
Ibis:251-310 The great Carthaginian commander, son of Hamilcar Barca. Ovid may refer to the incident after Cannae when Hannibal sent ten Roman survivors under oath to discuss ransom terms with the Senate. One of the men sent broke his oath to return, when the Senate refused the plea, and they then sent him back forcibly to Hannibal, to be dealt with. They thereafter established a rule that Roman soldiers must conquer or die in the field. (Polybius The Roman History VI.57)

Harpagus
Ibis:541-596 A Mede in the service of King Astyages, who disobeyed his orders and failed to destroy the infant Cyrus. He was cruelly punished by Astyages who served him his own child at a banquet. The story is told in full in Herodotus I.107-119.

Hector
The Trojan hero, eldest son of Priam and Hecuba, the husband of Andromache and father of Astyanax. After killing Patroclus he was himself killed by Achilles and his body dragged round the walls of Troy. His body was yielded to Priam for burial, and his funeral forms the close of Homer’s Iliad.
Ibis:311-364 Book EIV.XVI:1-52 His body was dragged three times round the walls of Troy by Achilles’ chariot.
Ibis:541-596 Father of Astyanax.

Hercules
(The following material covered by Ovid in the Metamorphoses). The Hero, son of Jupiter. He was set in the sky as the constellation Hercules between Lyra and Corona Borealis. The son of Jupiter and Alcmena, the wife of Amphitryon (so Hercules is of Theban descent, and a Boeotian). Called Alcides from Amphitryon’s father Alceus. Called also Amphitryoniades. Called also Tyrinthius from Tiryns his city in the Argolis. Jupiter predicted at his birth that a scion of Perseus would be born, greater than all other descendants. Juno delayed Hercules’ birth and hastened that of Eurystheus, grandson of Perseus, making Hercules subservient to him. Hercules was set twelve labours by Eurystheus at Juno’s instigation.
1. The killing of the Nemean lion.
2. The destruction of the Lernean Hydra. He uses the poison from the Hydra for his arrows.
3. The capture of the stag with golden antlers.
4. The capture of the Erymanthian Boar.
5. The cleansing of the stables of Augeas king of Elis.
6. The killing of the birds of the Stymphalian Lake in Arcadia.
7. The capture of the Cretan wild bull.
8. The capture of the mares of Diomede of Thrace, that ate human flesh.
9. The taking of the girdle of Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons.
10.The killing of Geryon and the capture of his oxen.
11.The securing of the apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. He held up the sky for Atlas in order to deceive him and obtain them.
12.The bringing of the dog Cerberus from Hades to the upper world.
He fought with Acheloüs for the hand of Deianira. He married Deianira, killed Nessus, fell in love with Iole, daughter of Eurytus who had cheated him, and received the shirt of Nessus from the outraged Deianira. (See Cavalli’s opera with Lully’s dances – Ercole Amante). He was then tormented to death by the shirt of Nessus.
Ibis:365-412 He killed King Antaeus of Libya, brother of Busiris, who was a giant, child of mother Earth, by lifting him from the ground that gave him strength, and, cracking his ribs, held him up until he died. He also killed Busiris, King of Egypt brother of Antaeus, who sacrificed strangers at the altars, to fulfil a prophecy that an eight-year drought and famine would end if he did so.He killed the servant Lichas who brought the fatal shirt, then built a funeral pyre, and became a constellation and was deified. (See Canova’s sculpture – Hercules and Lichas – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome). He had asked his son Hyllus, by Deianira to marry Iole. His birth is described when the sun is in the tenth sign, Capricorn, i.e. at midwinter, making him a solar god. His mother’s seven night labour would also make his birth at the new year, a week after the winter solstice. He captured Troy and rescued Hesione, with the help of Telamon, and gave her to Telamon in marriage.Philoctetes received his bow and arrows after his death, destined to be needed at Troy. Ulysses went to fetch Philoctetes and the arrows.
Ibis:251-310 Sacrificing at the altars to Jupiter after taking Oechalia, Hercules put on the shirt of Nessus, and the poison of the Hydra tormented him, and corroded his flesh. Philoctetes received his bow. Taught the lyre by Eumolpus whom he defeated in contest. Hercules was the son of Jupiter connected with the shrine of Jupiter Ammon in Libya.Ibis:311-364 Ibis:597-644 He endured the torment of the shirt of Nessus and built his funeral pyre on Mount Oeta, between Aetolia and Thessaly. (see Metamorphoses IX:159)
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Re: The Ibis, by Ovid, Translated by A.S. Kline

Postby admin » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:49 am

Part 2 of 2

Hippolytus
The son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyte. He was admired by Phaedra, his step-mother, and was killed at Troezen, after meeting ‘a bull from the sea’. He was brought to life again by Aesculapius, and hidden by Diana (Cynthia, the moon-goddess) who set him down in the sacred grove at Arician Nemi, where he became Virbius, the consort of the goddess (as Adonis was of Venus, and Attis of Cybele), and the King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). All this is retold and developed in Frazer’s monumental work, on magic and religion, ‘The Golden Bough’ (see Chapter I et seq.). (See also Euripides’s play ‘Hippolytos’, and Racine’s ‘Phaedra’.)
Ibis:541-596 Venus made him fall in love with Phaedra. He died when his horses stampeded at the vision of a bull from the sea.

Hippomenes
Ibis:311-364 The son of Megareus. Great-grandson of Neptune. Falling in love with Atalanta, he determined to race against her, on penalty of death for failure.By means of the golden apples he won the race and claimed Atalanta.He desecrated Cybele’s sacred cave with the sexual act and was turned, with Atalanta, into a lion. The reference to his daughter is obscure, if this is the Hippomenes’ Ovid intended.

Hister
Ibis:135-162 Its cold waters.

Hybla
Megara Hyblaea, a small town in eastern Sicily, near to and north of Syracuse, famous for its sweet-scented honey. Modern Mellili.
Ibis:163-208 Its flowery meadows.

Hypsipyle
Ibis:465-540 The daughter of Thoas, who nursed Lycurgus’s son Opheltes. The boy was attacked and bitten to death by a serpent.

Iazyges
A Sarmatian tribe living near the Danube.

Ibis
The mysterious enemy of Ovid, subject of his curse-poem Ibis based on a poem of Callimachus’s. TIV.IX has close similarities with Ibis:1-61.
Ibis:41-104 Ovid adopts the name Ibis as a cover for his true enemy.

Icarius
Ibis:541-596 Odysseus was the above’s son-in-law.
Ibis:597-644 Also Icarius or Icarus the father of Erigone, killed by drunken shepherds.

Ida, Idaean ‘measures’
The extensive range of mountains in western Mysia, the highest peak Gargaros rising to over 4500 feet and commanding a fine view of the Hellespont and Propontis. There is also a Cretan Mount Ida.
Ibis:163-208 Heavily wooded.

Idmon
Ibis:465-540 The seer, the son of Apollo and Cyrene. He was one of the Argonauts and was killed by a wild boar by the river Lycus on the Black Sea coast.

Irus
The Ithacan beggar with whom Ulysses had a boxing match on returning to his palace. His nickname Irus was a version of Iris since he was also a messenger, at the beck and call of the suitors.

Ixion
Ibis:163-208 King of the Lapithae, father of Pirithoüs, and of the Centaurs. He attempted to seduce Juno, but Jupiter created a false image of her, caught Ixion in the act with this simulacrum, and bound him to a fiery wheel that turns in the Underworld.

Jupiter, Zeus
The sky-god, the Greek Zeus, son of Saturn and Rhea, born on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia and nurtured on Mount Ida in Crete. The oak is his sacred tree. His emblems of power are the sceptre and lightning-bolt. His wife and sister is Juno (the Greek Hera). (See the sculpted bust (copy) by Brassides, the Jupiter of Otricoli, Vatican)
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a beneficent planet, ruling knowledge, travel etc. Jupiter was the father of Mercury, by Maia.
Ibis:251-310 Jupiter’s temple of Ammon in Libya where he was the ram-horned god.
Ibis:311-364 Cambyses sent an army to attack the Ammonians and the temple of Jupiter at Ammon (Siwa Oasis, El Khargeh) but the army vanished in a sandstorm. (Herodotus III.26)
Ibis:541-596 Married his sister Juno, and avenged his grandfather

Laestrygonians
A mythical race of cannibal giants appearing in Odyssey Book X. Under their king Antiphates they captured and ate several of Ulysses’s men. Traditionally located in Magna Graecia, but perhaps from regions further north.
Ibis:365-412 Attacked Ulysses’ men.

Lares
Beneficent spirits watching over the household, fields, public areas etc. Each house had a Lararium where the image of the Lar was kept. The Lares are usually coupled with the Penates the gods of the larder.
Ibis:41-104 Powers invoked by Ovid.

Larissa
Ibis:311-364 Larisa was the daughter of Pelasgos, and two of the cities of Thessaly were named after her. There was an Aleuas of Larissa who organised the Thessalian League in the seventh century BC, and claimed descent from Hercules. The incident described is obscure.

Lemnos
The north Aegean island south west of Imbros, and the home of Vulcan the blacksmith of the gods. Philoctetes was bitten by a snake there, and on Ulysses advice was abandoned there. He had inherited the bow and arrows of Hercules and Ulysses subsequently sailed for the island to bring them back to be used at Troy. Thoas was once king there when the Lemnian women murdered their menfolk because of their adultery with Thracian girls. His life was spared because his daughter Hypsipyle set him adrift in an oarless boat.
Ibis:365-412 The Lemnian women who killed their husbands.

Leucon
Ibis:251-310 There was a Leucon son of Athamas who sickened and died of disease. The reference is obscure.

Leucothea, Ino
The White Goddess, the sea-goddess into whom Ino was changed, who as a sea-mew helps Ulysses (See Homer’s Odyssey). She is a manifestation of the Great Goddess in her archetypal form. (See Robert Graves’s ‘The White Goddess’). Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, wife of Athamas, and sister of Semele and Agave fostered the infant Bacchus. She participated in the killing of Pentheus and incurred the hatred of Juno. Maddened by Tisiphone, and the death of her son Learchus, at the hand of his father, she leapt into the sea, and was changed to the sea-goddess Leucothoë by Neptune, at Venus’s request.
Ibis:465-540 As Ino she nursed the infant Bacchus-Dionysus.

Libya
The coastal district of North Africa, west of Egypt.
Ibis:163-208 Extensive coastal waters.

Lichas
Ibis:465-540 The servant who brought Hercules the gift of Nessus given to Deianira, the envenomed shirt that killed him. Hercules killed Lichas, throwing him from the Euboean heights.

Linus
Ibis:465-540 Ibis:541-596 The son of Psamathe daughter of Crotopus of Argos. Linus was torn to pieces by Crotopus’s hounds. Not to be confused with the Poet Linus brother of Orpheus.

Lycaon
Son of Pelasgus. Lycaon was a king of primitive Arcadia (Parrhasia) who presided over barbarous cannibalistic practises. He was transformed into a wolf by Zeus, angered by human sacrifice. His sons offered Zeus, disguised as a traveller, a banquet containing human remains. They were also changed into wolves and Zeus then precipitated a great flood to cleanse the world. The father of Callisto who was changed into the Great Bear, hence the north pole is ‘Lycaonian’ or ‘Parrhasian’.
Ibis:465-540 His barbaric banquets.

Lycophron
Ibis:465-540 An Alexandrian Greek poet, of the early 3d cent. BC born in Chalcis, one of the Pleiad, a group of seven tragic poets of Alexandria who flourished under Ptolemy II Philadelphus. His only extant poem Cassandra or Alexandra, is an obscure and difficult work in iambic verse. In ancient times his tragedies were highly esteemed. May be intended here.

Lycurgus(1)
King of the Edonians (Edoni) of Thrace who opposed Bacchus’ entry into his kingdom at the River Strymon and tried to cut down the god’s vines. Lycurgus was driven mad and killed his own son Dryas with an axe thinking he was a vine, and hewed at his own foot thinking it one. He pruned the corpse, and the Edonians, horrified, instructed by Bacchus, tore Lycurgus to pieces with wild horses on Mount Pangaeum. There are many variants of this myth.
Ibis:465-540 Ovid appears to give an alternative myth of Dryas’s death if this is the Lycurgus intended.

Lycurgus(2)
Ibis:597-644 Ovid may refer to the Athenian orator (c.396-325BC).Pupil of Plato and Isocrates, Lycurgus became a successful financier, statesman and orator in Athens. He increased the wealth of Athens after readministrating its finances, and had several buildings built or refurbished. He was on Demosthenes side in the orator’s opposition to Philip II of Macedon.

Lycus(1)
Rivers of that name in Bithynia and in Pontus.
Ibis:41-104 Arrows stained in Scythian blood.

Lycus(2)
Ibis:465-540 The King of Thebes whose wife was Dirce, and niece was Antiope.

Macareus
Ibis:541-596 Son of Aeolus. He slept with his sister Canace, whom Aeolus in horror drove to suicide.

Maia
The daughter of Atlas, a Pleiad, and mother of Mercury by Jupiter.
Ibis:209-250 Ibis:465-540 The mother of Mercury. The second reference is to Iasion, son of Maia’s sister Elektra, whom, according to one tradition, Zeus killed with a flash of lightning when he slept with Demeter. (See: Hom. Od. v. 125, &c.; Hes. Theog. 969, &c.; Apollod. l. c.; Diod. v. 49, 77; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 29; Conon, Narrat. 21.)

Mars, Ares
The war god, son of Jupiter, the Roman name for the Greek god Ares. An old name for him is Mavors or Mamers. In his military aspect he became known as Gradivus.
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a maleficent planet, ruling war, passion, and sexuality.

Marsyas
A Satyr of Phrygia who challenged Apollo to a contest in musical skill, and was flayed alive by the God when he was defeated. (An analogue for the method of making primitive flutes, Minerva’s invention, by extracting the core from the outer sheath) (See Perugino’s painting – Apollo and Marsyas – The Louvre, Paris). He taught the famous flute-player, Olympus.
Ibis:541-596 A river named after him in Asia Minor.

Medusa, Gorgo
One of the three Gorgons, daughter of Phorcys the wise old man of the sea. She is represented in the sky by part of the constellation Perseus, who holds her decapitated head. Athene turned her into a monster because she was raped by Neptune in Athene’s temple. The sight of her face turned the onlooker to stone. She was killed by Perseus, who used his shield as a mirror. Her head decorated Athene’s aegis breastplate.
Ibis:413-464 Medusa had various cousins, including the Harpies.

Melanippus
Ibis:465-540 The son of Astacus, the Theban. He helped defend Thebes in the War of the Seven, and was killed by Tydeus who ate his brains.

Mercury
The messenger god, Hermes, son of Jupiter and the Pleiad Maia, the daughter of Atlas. He is therefore called Atlantiades. His birthplace was Mount Cyllene, and he is therefore called Cyllenius. He has winged feet, and a winged cap, carries a scimitar, and has a magic wand, the caduceus, with twin snakes twined around it, that brings sleep and healing. The caduceus is the symbol of medicine. (See Botticelli’s painting Primavera.)
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a beneficent planet of mind and communication.

Mestra
Ibis:413-464 The daughter of Erysichthon who could change her shape at will.

Minerva
The Roman name for Athene the goddess of the mind and women’s arts (also a goddess of war and the goddess of boundaries – see the Stele of Athena, bas-relief, Athens, Acropolis Museum). Originally an Italic goddess of handicrafts and arts, she was early identified with the virgin Pallas Athena.
Ibis:365-412 Ovid seems to refer to a cult of Thracian Minerva, though the detail sounds more like that of Diana at Ephesus, whose veil might not be lifted, and in the Chersonese, where she was the object of human sacrifice.
Ibis:597-644 The reference is possibly to the substitution of a phantom for Iphigenia at Aulis, but that is usually attributed to Artemis-Diana and not Athene-Minerva. Alternatively it may refer to Ajax the Lesser’s rape of Cassandra in Athene’s temple during the sack of Troy which caused Athene to delay the Greek’s return voyage.

Minotaur
The son of Pasiphaë, wife of Minos, and the white bull from the sea. A man-headed bull, imprisoned in the Labyrinth (‘the place of the axe’) built by Daedalus at Cnossos, who was destroyed by Theseus. (See the sculpture and drawings of Michael Ayrton, and Picasso’s variations on the theme in the Vollard Suite)
Ibis:365-412 Destroyed by Theseus.

Muses, Musae
The nine Muses were the virgin daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory). They are the patronesses of the arts. Clio (History), Melpomene (Tragedy), Thalia (Comedy), Euterpe (Lyric Poetry), Terpsichore (Dance), Calliope (Epic Poetry), Erato (Love Poetry), Urania (Astronomy), and Polyhymnia (Sacred Song). Mount Helicon is hence called Virgineus. Their epithets are Aonides, and Thespiades.
Ibis:1-40 His work harmless to others.

Myrrha
Ibis:311-364 The daughter of Cinyras, mother of Adonis, incestuously, by her father.
Ibis:465-540 Subject of a poem by Cinna.

Myrtilus
Ibis:365-412 The charioteer of King Oenomaus, who traitorously caused the King’s chariot to crash, killing him and allowing Pelops to claim the king’s daughter Hippodameia. Pelops subsequently threw Myrtilus into the sea. He was set among the stars as the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer, and gave his name to the Myrtoan Sea that stretches from Euboea past Helene to the Aegean.

Neptune, Poseidon
God of the sea, brother of Pluto and Jupiter. The trident is his emblem. (see Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing of Neptune with four sea-horses, Royal Library, Windsor: See the Neptune Fountain by Bartolomeo Ammannati, Piazza della Signoria, Florence.) Identified with the Greek Poseidon.
Ibis:251-310 Neptune caused Ceyx to be drowned, and him and his wife Alcyone to be turned into birds, the halycons. Ceyx was son of Lucifer (Phosphorus, the Morning Star), Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. The significance of frater here is not clear to me. Athamas was Alcyone’s brother, as a son of Aeolus, and Ceyx was his brother-in-law (uxoris frater). Athamas too suffered extensively, his wife Ino being turned into the sea-mew, the sea-goddess Leucothea, who is mentioned in the next verses.

Nessus
Ibis:365-412 The Centaur killed by Hercules for carrying off Deianira. See Metamorphoses IX:89
Ibis:465-540 The fatal gift of the poisoned shirt steeped in Nessus’s blood, which contained the venom of the Hydra from Hercules’ arrow.

Niobe
The daughter of the Phrygian king Tantalus, and Dione one of the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas. The wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. She rejected Latona and boasted rashly about her fourteen children. Her seven sons were killed by Apollo and Diana, the children of Latona (Leto), and her husband commited suicide. Still unrepentant, her daughters were also killed, and she was turned to stone and set on top of a mountain in her native country of Lydia where she weeps eternally. (A natural stone feature exists above the valley of the Hermus, on Mount Sipylus, which weeps when the sun strikes its winter cap of snow – See Freya Stark ‘Rome on the Euphrates’ p9. Pausanias also lived nearby at one time, and saw the rock.) See Metamorphoses Book VI:146
Ibis:541-596 Turned to stone.

Nisus(1)
The son of Hyrtacus. He and Euryalus, followers of Aeneas were noted for their friendship. They died together after entering Turnus’s camp and killing Rhamnes the Rutulian who was sleeping, and his followers, see Virgil’s Aeneid (IX:176).
Ibis:597-644 Died with his friend, after killing the sleeping Rhamnes.

Nisus(2)
Ibis:311-364 The King of Megara, besieged by Minos. He had a purple lock of hair on his head, on which his life, and the safety of his kingdom, depended. His daughter was Scylla. Scylla cut off the sacred lock and betrayed the city.

Nyctimene
Ibis:311-364 The daughter of Epopeus king of Lesbos who unknowingly slept with her father. She fled to the woods and was changed by Minerva to her sacred bird the Little Owl, often depicted on ancient Athenian coins. See Metamorphoses II:566

Oeagrus
Ibis:465-540 The Thracian king, father of Orpheus by Calliope the Muse.

Oedipus
King of Thebes, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. See Sophocles great trilogy The Theban Plays.
Ibis:251-310 He blinded himself, and was led around by his daughter Antigone.

Oenomaus
Ibis:365-412 King of Pisa in Elis, son of Ares and the father of Hippodameia. He caused her suitors to race against him in their chariots, killing the losers. He was eventually killed by Pelops.

Opheltes
Ibis:465-540 The son of Lycurgus devoured by a serpent. The Nemean games were founded in his memory.

Orestes
The only son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, brother of Electra, Iphigenia and Chrysothemis. Pylades was his faithful friend. He avenged the murder of his father by killing Clytmenestra and her lover Aegisthus. He brought back his sister Iphigenia from the Tauric Chersonese, and the image of Artemis from her temple there to Athens, or in Roman myth to Aricia. The rites of the sanctuary there, at Nemi, are the starting point for Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ (see Chapter I et seq.)
Ibis:311-364 Maddened by the Furies.
Ibis:465-540 There seems to be a variant myth here of Clytemnestra’s dream of a serpent, interpreted as Orestes, who killed her and Aegisthus. Orestes is killed by a snake according to Apollodorus.

Orpheus
The mythical musician of Thrace, son of Oeagrus and Calliope the Muse. His lyre, given to him by Apollo, and invented by Hermes-Mercury, is the constellation Lyra containing the star Vega. (See John William Waterhouse’s painting – Nymphs finding the head of Orpheus – Private Collection, and Gustave Moreau’s painting – Orpheus – in the Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris: See Peter Vischer the Younger’s Bronze relief – Orpheus and Eurydice – Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg: and the bas-relief – Hermes, Eurydice and Orpheus – a copy of a votive stele attributed to Callimachus or the school of Phidias, Naples, National Archaeological Museum: Note also Rilke’s - Sonnets to Orpheus – and his Poem - Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes.) See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books X and XI. He summoned Hymen to his wedding with Eurydice. After she was stung by a snake and died he travelled to Hades, to ask for her life to be renewed. Granted it, on condition he does not look back at her till she reaches the upper world, he faltered, and she was lost. He mourned her, and turned from the love of women to that of young men. He was killed by the Maenads of Thrace and dismembered, his head and lyre floating down the river Hebrus to the sea, being washed to Lesbos. (This head had powers of prophetic utterance) His ghost sank to the Fields of the Blessed where he was reunited with Eurydice. He taught Midas and Eumolpus the Bacchic rites.
Ibis:465-540 Eurydice stung by the snake.
Ibis:597-644 Killed by the Bacchantes.

Ossa
A mountain in Thessaly in Northern Greece.
Ibis:251-310 Thessalus apparently died there.

Palamedes
Ibis:597-644 The son of Nauplius whom Ulysses’ wrongfully had stoned to death, after making it appear that he had been a traitor and received enemy gold.

Palinurus
Aeneas’s helmsman who fell into the sea while asleep and drowned. See Virgil’s Aeneid.
Ibis:541-596 Drowned in sight of land according to Ovid.

Pallas, Minerva
See Athene
Ibis:251-310 She protected the Argo, and her sacred dove was sent ahead through the clashing rocks to guide the ship.

Pasiphae
The daughter of the Sun and the nymph Crete (Perseis). She was the wife of King Minos of Crete and mother of Phaedra and Ariadne.
She was inspired, by Poseidon, with a mad passion for a white bull from the sea, and Daedalus built for her a wooden frame in the form of a cow, to entice it. From the union she produced the Minotaur, Asterion, with a bull’s head and a man’s body.
Ibis:41-104 Named as a source of an accursed race.

Pelasgi
The Greeks. Originally an ancient Greek people (Pelasgi) and their king Pelasgus, son of Phoroneus the brother of Io. He was the brother of Agenor and Iasus.
Ibis:465-540 Possibly Pelasgus is intended here.

Pelias
The half-brother of Aeson whom he drove from the throne of Iolchos in Thessaly. He sent Aeson’s son Jason in search of the Golden Fleece. Medea pretended to rejuvenate him but instead employed his daughters to help destroy him.
Ibis:413-464 Failed rejuvenation.

Pelops
The son of Tantalus, and brother of Niobe. He was cut in pieces and served to the gods at a banquet by his father to test their divinity. Ceres-Demeter, mourning for Persephone, did not perceive the wickedness and ate a piece of the shoulder. The gods gave him life again and an ivory shoulder. He gave his name to the Peloponnese. He was a famous horseman and charioteer. Later he carried off Hippodamia.
Ibis:163-208 The son of Tantalus.
Ibis:541-596 Brother of Niobe.

Penelope
The wife of Ulysses, and daughter of Icarius and the Naiad Periboa.
(See J R Spencer Stanhope’s painting- Penelope – The De Morgan Foundation). See Homer’s Odyssey.
Ibis:365-412 Her maids and the suitors killed at the end of the Odyssey.

Pentheus
The son of Echion and Agave, the grandson of Cadmus through his mother. He was King of Thebes. Tiresias foretold his fate at the hands of the Maenads (Bacchantes). He rejected the worship of Bacchus-Dionysus and ordered the capture of the god. He was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes for his impiety.
Ibis:465-540 Torn to pieces by his mother and the other Bacchantes.

Perillus
See Phalaris.

Perseus
The son of Jupiter and Danaë, grandson of Acrisius, King of Argos. He was conceived as a result of Jupiter’s rape of Danaë, in the form of a shower of gold. He is represented by the constellation Perseus near Cassiopeia. He is depicted holding the head of the Medusa, whose evil eye is the winking star Algol. It contains the radiant of the Perseid meteor shower. His epithets are Abantiades (scion of Abas), Acrisioniades, Agenorides, Danaëius, Inachides, Lyncides. (See Burne-Jones’s oil paintings and gouaches in the Perseus series particularly The Arming of Perseus, The Escape of Perseus, The Rock of Doom, Perseus slaying the Sea-Serpent, and The Baleful Head.)( See Benvenuto Cellini’s bronze Perseus - the Loggia, Florence). He slew the gorgon, Medusa, killed Acrisius accidentally in fulfilment of prophecy, and married Andromeda.
Ibis:413-464 Called Abantiades. The infant Perseus and his mother Danae were cast into the sea in a wooden box by her father Acrisius, son of Abas, King of Argolis.

Phaethon
Son of Clymene, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys whose husband was the Ethiopian king Merops. His true father is Sol, the sun-god ( Phoebus). He asked his mother for proof of his divine origin and went to the courts of the Sun to see his father who granted him a favour. He asked to drive the Sun chariot, lost control of the chariot and was destroyed by Jupiter in order to save the earth from being consumed by fire. See Metamorphoses Books I and II.
Ibis:465-540 Struck down by Jupiter’s thunderbolt to avoid the earth being consumed.

Phalaris
The Tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, 571-555BC. He was noted for his cruelty. He had Perillus the sculptor and inventor design a brazen bull for him where victims could be roasted alive and made Perillus himself its first victim. Polybius (Histories XII.25) claims to have seen the bull, which had been taken to Carthage at the time of the Carthaginian conquest in 406/5BC. Diodorus Siculus (History XIII.90.4) reports the same and that subsequently Scipio returned it to Agrigentum after the sack of Carthage in 146BC.
Ibis:413-464 Ovid implies he was also tormented in the bull.

Phasis
A river in Colchis, famous for its gold. Medea is called the Phasian.
Ibis:597-644 Of the region of the river, hence Colchian.

Pheraean
Ibis:311-364Alexander d. 358 BC was tyrant of the city of Pherae in Thessaly after 369. He was opposed by other Thessalian cities and by the Thebans. Pelopidas failed (368) in one expedition against him and was briefly imprisoned. Returning in 364, Pelopidas destroyed Alexander's power in the battle of Cynoscephalae, though he himself was killed. Alexander was subsequently murdered by members of his own family, led by his wife Thebe (see Plutarch’s: Life of Pelopidas)

Philoctetes
The son of Poeas. He lit Hercules’ funeral pyre and received from him the bow, quiver and arrows that would enable the Greeks to finally win at Troy, and that had been with Hercules when he rescued Hesione there.
Bitten by a snake on Lemnos, he was abandoned there on Ulysses advice. Ulysses accepted later that Philoctetes and his weapons were essential for the defeat of the Trojans and brought Philoctetes and the weapons to Troy.

Philomela
The daughter of Pandion, sister of Procne, raped by her sister’s husband Tereus. She convinced her father to allow her to visit her sister Procne, unaware of Tereus’s lust for her. Tereus violated her, and she vowed to tell the world of his crime. He severed her tongue and told Procne she was dead. Philomela communicated with Procne by means of a woven message, and was rescued by her during the Bacchic revels. She then helped Procne to murder Itys, the son of Tereus and Procne.
Pursued by Tereus she turned into a swallow or a nightingale. See Metamorphoses Book VI.
Ibis:465-540 Her tongue cut out.

Philopoimen
Ibis:251-310 The Arcadian Greek general of Megalopolis (c253-182BC: see the life by Plutarch: a life by Polybius, who carried home the general’s bones after his death, is lost: see also Pausanias VIII.49.3). He fought in various battles for the Achaian League against Laconia. In old age he fought the Messenians, his proud aggressive character leading him to wage war when unfit to do so. He fell from his horse through weakness, and was captured, and ultimately executed by Deinocrates and the Messenians, drinking poison. Ovid perhaps plays here on the fact of his face being ‘no picture’, and the hubris that led to his downfall. Ovid places his final battle near Tegea in the Alean fields, since Aleus was the founder of Tegea, or perhaps uses Alean loosely for Arcadian.

Phineus
King of Salmydessus in Thrace, and son of Agenor, he was a blind prophet, who had received the gift of prophecy from Apollo. He was blinded by the gods for prophesying the future too accurately, and was plagued by a pair of Harpies. Calais and Zetes, the sons of Boreas, and his brothers-in-law, rid him of their loathsome attentions, in return for advice on how to obtain the Golden Fleece. The two winged sons chased the Harpies to the Strophades islands, where some say their lives were spared. Phineus and his second wife Idaea persecuted his two children by his first wife, Cleopatra, the sister of Calais and Zetes.

Phoenix
The son of Amyntor, hence Amyntorides, blinded by his father and cursed with childlessness, who was cured by Cheiron the Centaur and became guardian to Achilles.
Ibis:251-310 Blinded.

Phrygia
A region in Asia Minor, containing Dardania and Troy, and Mysia and Pergamum. Ovid uses the term for the whole of Asia Minor bordering the Aegean. Phrygius often means Trojan.

Pisa
The district of Elis in which Olympia lay, and often synonymous with Elis. Pisa presided over the Olympic games until c 580BC.

Polydorus
Ibis:541-596 The son of Priam of Troy sent to his uncle Polymestor who murdered him.

Pluto, Dis, Hades, Plutus
The God of the Underworld, elder brother of Jupiter and Neptune, and like them the son of Saturn and Rhea. Identified with Plutus the son of Ceres, god of riches.
Ibis:413-464 Identified with Plutus, wealth.

Polymestor
Ibis:251-310 Ibis:541-596 King of Thrace, husband of Ilione daughter of Priam. He murdered his own child Deiphilus rather than Polydorus, Iliona’s nephew, sent to him by Priam for safety, whom Agamemnon had bribed him with gold to kill. Polydorus blinded him. Alternatively Polymestor killed Polydorus for the gold sent by Priam for safekeeping, with the boy, and the boy’s mother Hecuba in turn murdered him, and tore out his eyes.

Polynices
The brother of Eteocles and Antigone, the son of Oedipus and Jocasta. The leader of the Seven against Thebes.
Ibis:1-40 The smoke of their funeral pyre divided by enmity.

Polyphemus
One of the Cyclopes, sons of Neptune, one-eyed giants living in Sicily (Trinacria). He was blinded by Ulysses, causing Poseidon/Neptune’s enmity against him, and adding to his long wanderings. The Cyclops were linked to metal-working and the volcano of Mount Etna on Sicily.
Ibis:251-310 Ibis:365-412 Blinded by Ulysses whose men he had attacked and some of whom he had consumed.

Pontus
The Black Sea, originally called αξειυος:axenus, inhospitable, because of its storms, and the barbarous tribes on its coast, later hospitable, εϋξειυος:euxinus, as a euphemism. Hence Euxene as an epithet. Ovid also calls the region in which Tomis lay, Pontus. The name is extended to the land adjacent to the Sea, along its southern shore as far as Colchis, sometimes the whole Thracian shore.
Ibis:1-40 A witness to his ‘gratitude’ to Augustus for being merciful.

Procrustes
Ibis:365-412 Or Polypemon, the father of Sinis, who used to cut travellers down to the size of his bed or stretch them accordingly. Theseus served him in the same way.

Prometheus
Ibis:251-310 Ibis:465-540 Ibis:541-596 The creator of mankind, son of the Titan Eurymedon, or of Iapetus by the nymph Clymene. He stole fire from the gods. He was tormented by Jupiter, by being chained naked to a pillar in the Caucasus, where a vulture tore at his liver day and night.

Psamathe
Ibis:541-596 The daughter of Crotopus who bore Linus to Apollo. Her father’s hounds killed the boy.

Pterelaus
Ibis:311-364 Son of Taphius (son of Poseidon) and king of Taphos (an island off the coast of Acarnania) at the time when Amphitryon ravaged the islands of the Taphians or Teleboans. Poseidon made him immortal by implanting a golden hair in his head, but his daughter Comaetho, having fallen in love with the besieger Amphitryon, betrayed her father and caused his death by pulling out the golden hair from his head.

Pyrrha
Ibis:541-596 Wife and cousin to Deucalion, and the only woman to survive the Great Flood. Daughter of the Titan Epimetheus, hence called Titania. Epimetheus was a brother to Prometheus.

Pyrrhus
The son of Achilles, later called Neoptolemus. He had children by Andromache.
Ibis:251-310 Pyrrhus killed Priam at Troy on the altar of Apollo, and was in turn killed by Machaereus a Phocian and the priest of Apollo at Delphi on the Pythoness’s orders, for interfering with the sacrifice there. Ovid says his bones were scattered in Ambracia, where he had built a city near Lake Pambrotis and the oracle of Dodona in Epirus.

Remus
The son of Mars and Ilia, hence Iliades, twin brother of Romulus.
He leapt the fresh walls Romulus was building to found Rome, in derision, and Romulus killed him.
Ibis:597-644 He leapt the unfinished walls.

Rhesus
Ibis:597-644 A Thracian king, famous for his horses, killed by Ulysses and Diomedes in a night raid at Troy.

Rhodope
Ibis:311-364 A mountain in Thrace. Supposed to be a mortal turned into a mountain for assuming the name of a great god. The scene of the triennial festival of Bacchus, the trietericus. Orpheus fled there after losing Eurydice a second time, hence Rhodopeius an epithet of Orpheus.

Sardanapalus
Ibis:311-364 An unidentified, possibly mythical, King of Assyrian Nineveh, who lived in great luxury, and who when besieged by the Medes set fire to his palace killing himself and his court.

Sarmatia, Sarmatians, Sauromatae
A nomadic Indo-European people related to the Scythians, and speaking a similar language. They were noted horse-breeders and horsemen. Their warrior princesses are known from Herodotus and from archaeological remains (burial mounds or kurgans). They may have formed the basis for the Amazons. Sarmatia was used as a general name for Europe east of the Carpathians and north of the Black Sea. Ovid often calls the region of Tomis, Sarmatian. By his day a Sarmatian tribe, the Roxolani, had reached as far west as the Danube basin.

Saturn
Son of Earth and Heaven (Uranus) ruler of the universe in the Golden Age. Mother Earth persuaded her sons to attack Uranus, and depose him. Saturn the youngest was given a sickle and castrated Uranus. The Furies sprang from the shed blood. Saturn was deposed by his three sons Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto who ruled Heaven, Ocean and the Underworld respectively. He was banished to Tarturus. He was the father also of Juno, Ceres and Vesta by Ops.
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a maleficent planet of old age, duty, grief and cold.
Ibis:251-310 Castrated his father, Uranus.
Ibis:365-412 Great grandfather of Asclepius (the son of Apollo, son of Jupiter-Zeus, son of Saturn).

Satyrs, Satyri
Demi-gods. Woodland deities of male human form but with goats’ ears, tails, legs and budding horns. Sexually lustful. They were followers of Bacchus-Dionysus.
Ibis:41-104 Powers invoked by Ovid.

Sciron
Ibis:365-412 A brigand of the Isthmus who used to kick travellers into the sea. Theseus served him in the same way.

Scylla (1)
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. She threatened Ulysses men and destroyed six of them, and threatened Aeneas’s ships. Finally she was 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)
Ibis:365-412 She attacked Ulysses’ men.

Semele
The daughter of Cadmus, loved by Jupiter. The mother of Bacchus (Dionysus). (See the painting by Gustave Moreau – Jupiter and Semele – in the Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris) She was consumed by Jupiter’s fire having been deceived by Juno. Her unborn child Bacchus was rescued.
Ibis:251-310 Sister of Ino.
Ibis:465-540 Sister of Autonoe.

Sicily
Sicania, Trinacri. The Mediterranean island, west of Italy.
Ibis:163-208 The flowery meadows of Hybla.
Ibis:413-464 Achaemenides abandoned there.
Ibis:597-644 The giants were imprisoned beneath the island.

Sicyon
A town of the Peloponnese west of Corinth on the Asopus River. (The home of the sculptor Lysippos. It is near modern Vasilikó.)
Ibis:311-364 The incident referred to is obscure.

Sidon
The city and port of the Phoenicians in the Lebanon, north of Tyre. Home of Europa. Famous like Tyre for its purple dyes, and for blown glass. Referred to by Homer.

Sinis
Ibis:365-412 A brigand living at the narrowest point of the Isthmus who tied travellers to bent trees and tore them apart. Theseus served him in the same way.

Sisyphus
Ibis:163-208 Founder of Corinth, the son of Aeolus. He was condemned to continually roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades, from which it rolled to the bottom again.

Socrates
The Athenian Greek philosopher (c469-399BC), Plato’s teacher. An ethical philosopher with an emphasis on logic, and the ‘Socratic method’ of interrogation to reveal inconsistency. He was charged with atheism and corruption of the young and was condemned to die by drinking hemlock. See Plato’s Phaedo, Symposium etc.
Ibis:465-540 He died by drinking hemlock.
Ibis:541-596 The Delphic oracle acclaimed him as the wisest of men, which he took to mean that he knew his own ignorance. Anytus was one of his accusers.

Sphinx
The mythical hybrid moinster with human head (usually female), and lion’s body. Imported from Egypt, and initially a monster, including that which questioned Oedipus, the Sphinx eventually became a winged, musical, harbinger of justice.
Ibis:365-412 Killed those who failed to answer her riddles.

Styx
A river of the underworld, with its lakes and pools, used to mean the underworld or the state of death itself. Arethusa passed its streams while journeying through the deep caverns from Elis to Sicily. This is the Arcadian river Styx near Nonacris. It forms the falls of Mavroneri, plunging six hundred feet down the cliffs of the Chelmos ridge to jojn the River Crathis. Pausanias says (VIII xvii), that Hesiod (Theogony 383) makes Styx the daughter of Ocean and the wife of the Titan Pallas. Their children were Victory and Strength. Epimenedes makes her the mother of Echidna. Pausanias says the waters of the river dissolve glass and stone etc.
Ibis:41-104 The gods swore oaths on the waters of Styx.

Talaus
Ibis:311-364 There was a Talaus, King of Argos, who married Lysianassa (or alternatively Lysimache). The reference is obscure.

Talus, Talos
Ibis:465-540 Talus, the son of Perdix, was a pupil of Daedalus and invented the saw. He was killed by Daedalus in a fit of jealousy, and thrown from the Athenian citadel, but Pallas turned him into the partridge, which takes its name from his mother, perdix perdix.

Tantalus
The king of Phrygia, son of Jupiter, father of Pelops and Niobe. He served his son Pelops to the gods at a banquet and was punished by eternal thirst in Hades. He was the great-grandfather of Menelaus, called Tantalides.
Ibis:163-208 His punishment.

Tartarus, Tartara
The underworld. The infernal regions ruled by Pluto (Dis) or specifically the region where the wicked were punished.
Ibis:541-596 The infernal deep.

Tauri
A people of the Crimea, the Tauric Chersonese.

Telemus
Ibis:251-310 A soothsayer, son of Eurymus, who prophesied Polyphemus’s blinding by Odysseus. See Homer’s Odyssey IX:506

Telephus
King of Teuthrantia in Mysia, son of Hercules and the nymph Auge. He was suckled by a deer on Mount Parthenius. He was wounded and healed by the touch of Achilles’s spear at Troy.

Tereus
The king of Thrace, husband of Procne. He brought her sister, Philomela, to stay with her, while conceiving a frenzied desire for the sister. He violated the girl and cut out her tongue, and told Procne she is dead. Procne then served him the flesh of his murdered son Itys at a banquet. Pursuing the sisters in his desire for revenge, he was 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?’.
Ibis:413-464 The fate of Itys.

Thamyris
Ibis:251-310 The poet of Thrace who fell in love with Hyacinthus the Spartan prince. Apollo was a rival for the boy, and hearing Thamyris boast that he rivalled the Muses in song, he told them and Thamyris was blinded by them, and robbed of his voice and memory.

Thebes, Thebae
The oldest and most famous city of Boeotia, founded by Cadmus. The seven-gated city suffered as a result of its support for Persia, but gained power over Boeotia in the Peloponnesian War. The Thebans were at their zenith 371-362BC, when they defeated Sparta under Epaminondes, and until he was killed at the battle of Mantinea dominated the mainland. Destroyed by Alexander the Great after a revolt (335) the city was rebuilt but never regained its former glory.
Ibis:465-540 City of Pentheus.

Theromedon, Therodamas
A Scythian chieftain, or alternatively a king of Libya, who fed lions on human flesh. Ovid refers to him in Ibis.

Theseus
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 (Periphetes, Sinis, Sciron and Procrustes). He killed the Minotaur with help from Ariadne who gave him the clue that he unwound to mark his trail, subsequently abandoning her. His friendship for Pirithous whom he accompanied to the underworld was proverbial.
Ibis:365-412 His cleansing of the brigands from the Isthmus of Corinth.
Ibis:413-464 Possibly Theseus is intended here.
Ibis:465-540 He gave the wrong signal to his father on returning from Crete.

Thessalus
Ibis:251-310 Perhaps Thessalus son of Hercules by Chalciope. Ovid has him leap from Ossa to his death. Alternatively, but less likely given the previous verses concerning Hercules, Thessalus who was a son of Medea, who escaped death after Medea sacrificed her sons on the altar of Jupiter, later reigned over Iolcus, and gave his name to all Thessaly.

Thoas, Thoans
The king of Lemnos, son of Andraemon, and father of Hypsipyle. Thoas was king when the Lemnian women murdered their menfolk because of their adultery with Thracian girls. His life was spared because his daughter Hypsipyle set him adrift in an oarless boat. He later ruled over the Thracians, when Orestes rescued Iphigenia.

Thrace, Thracian
Roughly the area including north-east Greece, European Turkey as far as the Bosphorus, and the southern part of Romania. In Ovid’s day the western boundary was on the River Nestus, and the northern along the Haemus range, while its coastline ran from the Macedonian Aegean through Propontis to the Black Sea.
Ibis:135-162 Thracian arrows.
Ibis:365-412 Diomedes the cruel Thracian king.
Ibis:597-644 The River Strymon in Thrace, hence Thracian.

Thybris
A poetic name for the River Tiber on which Rome is situated, after King Tiberinus who drowned there.
Ibis:135-162 Its waters.
Ibis:465-540 King Tiberinus drowned there.

Thyestes
The son of Pelops and Hippodamia, brother of Atreus, and father of Aesgithus. The feud between the brothers over the kingship of Mycenae was long and complex, and gave rise to a network of myths. Thyestes committed adultery with Aerope, Atreus’ wife, and Atreus in revenge killed Thyestes’ children, cooked the flesh, and served it to him at a banquet. Later Thyestes’ son Aegisthus killed Atreus, and subsequently Agamemnon.
Ibis:311-364 Pelopia his daughter was a priestess at Sicyon. He raped her, while disguised.
Ibis:541-596 The banquet.

Tiresias
The Theban sage who spent seven years as a woman and decided the dispute between Juno and Jupiter as to which partner gained more enjoyment in love-making. He was blinded by Juno but given the power of prophecy by Jupiter.
Ibis:251-310 Blinded.

Tityus
A giant, son of Ge (Earth) whose home was traditionally located in Euboea, and who attempted violence to Latona (Leto), and suffered in Hades. Vultures fed on his liver, which was continually renewed.

Troy, Troad
The ancient city destroyed in the ten-war year with the Greeks, and identified by Schliemann with Hissarlik four miles inland from the Aegean end of the Hellespont. The archaeological evidence would indicate destruction by fire between 1300 and 1200BC. The story of the War is told in Homer’s Iliad, and the aftermath of it and the Greek return in the Odyssey. The Troad is the rocky north-west area of Asia Minor along the Hellespont, dominated by the Ida range, traditionally believed to have been ruled by Troy.
Ibis:251-310 A troubled people.

Tydeus
The King of Calydon and father of Diomedes, and one of the Seven against Thebes. Mortally wounded he gnawed on the skull and ate the brains of his opponent, incurring Athene’s anger. She allowed him to die for his barbarity, having been prepared to save him and render him immortal.
Ibis:311-364 Diomedes loved Helen whom Tydeus would have blushed to have as a daughter in law.
Ibis:413-464 His fate.

Tyndareus
The husband of Leda, hence her children are the Tyndaridae. (Castor and Pollux, Helen, Clytemnestra)
Ibis:311-364 Agamemnon, husband of Clytemnestra was his son-in-law.

Ulysses
Ulixes, the Greek Odysseus, the son of Laertes, and King of Ithaca. Present at the Trojan War, and most cunning and resilient of the Greek leaders, the tale of his return home is told in Homer’s Odyssey. His wife was the faithful Penelope, and his son Telemachus.
Ibis:541-596 He was reputedly killed, by Telegonus, with a spear armed with the spine of a sting-ray.

Venus
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). Through her union with Anchises she was the mother of Aeneas and therefore putative ancestress to the Julian House.
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a beneficent planet, ruling wealth, love etc.
Ibis:541-596 Insulted, she made Hippolytus fall in love with Phaedra.
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