by 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.