by Peter Wright

Page 190, Line 13. The utmost of deep Ocean-stream. In the ‘mythical’ cosmology of early Hellenic belief the earth was a round, flat disc, around which flowed a fresh-water river named after the Titan Oceanus. Out of that stream rose the sun and stars (and dawn), and into it they descended to ‘bathe’: cf. Books iv, 565; v, 275; x, 508; xii, 1; xx, 65; xxiii, 244. This conception is discussed in The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, ed. G. S. Kirk & J. E. Raven  (Cambridge U. P., 1957), pp. 11--19. After, in the mid-7th century, a Samian sea-farer accidentally passed the fabled ’Pillars of Heracles’ and reached Tartessus in southern Spain (cf. Herodotus, History, Book 4, ch. 152), the newly discovered salt sea, outside the Midland Sea which his people knew, was given the name of that legendary river.  

Page 190, Line 14. the folk Cimmerian. The Cimmerians were a horse-riding nomadic people who in the early 7^th century from across the Caucasus mountains invaded and over-ran Asia Minor, killing a king of Lydia, and rousing defiance in an early poet of Ephesus: cf. Callinus, fr. 4. Possibly, however, the name of these barbarians may in an early alteration to Homer’s text may have replaced a mention of the ‘Cheimerioi’, a ‘wintry’ people who as the next five lines indicate never see the Sun, but endure perpetual night. 

Page 191, Line 25. a cubit. Tr. ‘pugousion’: apparently about 15 inches.

Page 193, Line 86. Autolycus. See Note to Book xix, lines 394-466.

Page 193, Line 89. the Theban Tiresias. Tiresias in his youth was blinded by Athena because he had seen her bathing, but she compensated him with the gift of prophecy. Thereafter for several generations, he used his powers to reveal unwelcome truths to successive rulers of his city. He had died not long before the Trojan war, as the Thebans, retreating before a renewed Argive attack, carried him away from their city.

Page 194, Line 107. the Three-horned Island. Tr. 'Thrinacrie': with three sharp corners.

Page 194, Lines 114-15. These lines match lines 533-4 of Polyphemus' curse in Book ix.

Page 194, Line 124. ships of the crimson cheek. Cf. Note on Book ix, line 125.

Page 194, Line 128. a winnowing fan. Tr. 'athereloigos': a destroyer of ears of corn.

Page 195, Lines 134-5. Then thy death from the sea shall come ... Exceedingly mild and gentle’ and thereby shalt thou fade out ... By eld smooth-creeping wasted. These lines seem to foretell an easy death from old age. What the poet originally intended by it coming from the 'salt' is uncertain. However, in the late 6^th century a poet of the Dorian colony Cyrene provided a strange interpretation of it; after making Odysseus abandon his beloved Penelope to wed a queen on the mainland, he had his supposed son by Circe called Telegonus (‘far-born’), of whom Homer knows nothing, arrive in Ithaca seeking his returned father, and kill him when he opposes Telegonus’ plundering.  This farrago concludes on Aeaea with Telegonus wedding Penelope and Telemachus wedding Circe: see Greek Epic Fragments, ed. West, pp. 164-71. A more dignified version produced by Landor (‘The Last of Ulysses’: Hellenics (1847 edn.,  no. xxix), has Ulysses withdrawing from Ithaca to dwell with his old comrade-in-arms Diomed in Italy, to evade the fulfillment by Telemachus of a misleading prophecy that a son of his will kill him. The hero is finally and accidentally slain by an unknown, newly arrived Telegonus.

Page 197, Line 190. in the feast-hall. Tr. ‘eni oiko’: in the house.

Page 197, Line 192. the mother of wine. Morris’s metaphorical version of ‘gounon aloes’: a fruitful vineyard.

Page 198, Lines 225-327. This hundred-line passage about women of legend has often been suspected of being an interpolation, owing to its resemblance to the Catalogues of Women in the Hesiodic corpus: Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, ed. Evelyn White (Loeb Libr.), pp. 151-219.

Page 198, Lines 235-52. Tyro ... Salmoneus ... Cretheus ... Enipeus. Both Salmoneus, Tyro’s father, and Cretheus (later presented as Tyro’s guardian, not her husband) were sons of Aeolus (cf. Note on Book x, lines 1-2). Enipeus was an inland river of Thessaly, a tributary of that region’s main river, the Peneus, through whose mouth its waters entered the sea. 

Page 199, Lines 253-9. Neleus ... Pelias ... Iolchus … Aeson … Pheres … Amythaon ll. For Neleus and Pylos, see Note on Book iii, lines 3-4. Pelias deposed as ruler of Iolchus his half-brother Aeson, father of Jason; their story is told at length in Morris’s Jason. Pheres, founder of Pherae, also on the gulf south of Thessaly, was succeeded there by his son Admetus, whose story Morris told in ‘The Loves of Alcestis’.  Amythaon ’of the car’ (tr. 'hippocharmes': rejoicing in horses) has no legend of his own, but was father of Melampus, discussed in Note to Book xv, lines 257-300.

Page 199, Lines 260-5. Asopus …  Antiope … Amphion … Zethus …Thebes. Asopus was the chief river of Boeotia. Antiope, persecuted by Dirce, who had superseded her as wife of the Boeotian ruler Lycus, was avenged on Dirce by her sons by Zeus, Amphion, and Zethus. Amphion was credited with assembling stones into the walls round Thebes by the power of his music.  

There were alternative accounts of the founding of Thebes, one ascribing it to Cadmus (hence its people are called Cadmeans in line 276), the other to these two brothers. Late antique mythographers had to use desperate ingenuity, including inventing royal minorities and regencies, to gather the differing dynastic successions at Thebes into a chronological sequence: cf, Apollodorus, Library [of Mythology], Book 3, ch. 4-5.

Page 199, Lines 267-70. Alcmene … Heracles … Megara … Creon ... Amphitryon. Alcmene was wife to her cousin Amphitryon, an Argive prince in exile in Thebes, While he was away at war, Zeus came to her in her husband’s form and begot on her the mightiest Greek hero, Heracles. Megara was Heracles’ first wife, during the time of his early exploits centered on Thebes; later, driven mad at Hera’s instigation, he killed her and all his children by her, as is fully presented in Euripides’ tragedy, The Madness of Heracles. Her father Creon (who bears a ‘stopgap’ name, ‘Powerful’, for rulers), placed as ruling at Thebes in the cycle of tales about Heracles, should probably not, despite line 18 of Euripides’ play, be identified with the Creon son of Menoeceus, Oedipus’  brother-in-law and eventual successor as king of Thebes: he is virtually a creation of Sophocles, and in his Theban tragedies has no connection with Heracles.

Pages 199-200, Lines 271-80. Oedipus … Epicaste. Epicaste is the Homeric equivalent of the Jocasta of Sophocles’ ’Oedipus the King’, who bore to Laius, king of Thebes, a son of whom it was prophesied that he would slay his father and wed his mother. Vainly exposed to evade such a fate, Oedipus was preserved and did both, unknowingly killing Laius on his way to  Thebes and wedding Epicaste after he had delivered the city from the Sphinx. When the Gods revealed that the curse had thus been accomplished, his mother hanged herself, so Homer relates here. But it s not certain that Homer was aware of the subsequent events told in Attic tragedy, Oedipus’ self-blinding and wandering in exile; lines 275-6 seem to indicate that he continued to rule in Thebes and lines in the Iliad (Book XXIII, 679-80), suggest that he may have fallen in battle.

Page 200, Lines 281-7. Chloris … Amphion … Minyan Orchomenus ... C[h]romius ... Periclymenus. Chromius and Periclymenus were two of the sons of Neleus whom Heracles slew when he attacked Neleus in Pylos, sparing only Nestor; Periclymenus could not escape that fate despite his power to transform himself into creatures that could fly.

Orchomenus was a city in western Boeotia, which in legendary times was the rival of Thebes for dominance in that region, but by the classical period had fallen into decline. The Minyans were a legendary people who dwelt both at Orchomenus and around Iolchus in Thessaly, providing several Argonauts: cf. Iliad, Book II, 511-15, Herodotus, History, Book 4, ch. 145. No tales are recorded of this Amphion son of Iasus, not to be confused with his Theban namesake.

Page 200, Lines 287-97. Pero ... Iphicles … Phylace. See Note on Book xv, lines 257-300 for an account of how the ‘blameless seer’ Melampus won for his brother Bias the hand of Pero by acquiring Iphicles’ cattle.

Pages 200-201, Lines 298-304. Leda ... Tyndareus ... Polydeuces … Castor. In later legend, it is usually said that at least one of these twin brothers was a son not of Tyndareus, king of Sparta, but along with Helen born from Leda’s seduction by Zeus, and that, after this pair, the Dioscouroi, were killed fighting the sons of Aphareus over their rivalry about the daughters of Leucippus, the child of Zeus was offered immortality, but, out of affection for his twin, chose to share it with him, so that each of them might spend alternate days in Heaven (or Elysium) and in the Underworld. Castor is most often said to be the mortal twin. He was famous for his skill in boxing, Polydeuces for chariot-racing.