William Morris Archive

by Peter Wright

Page 201, Lines 305-20. Iphimedeia … Aloeus … Otus … Ephialtes. Later mythographers add nothing of substance to this narrative about these giant children; the nine cubits (‘pecheis’) of their breadth, ‘euros’, (not length) would be of 1 ½ feet each, and the nine fathoms (‘orguiai’) of their height, ‘mekos’, just over 6 feet each. The Iliad also relates, in Book V, 385--91, that they had already used their strength to capture the war-god Ares and bind him painfully in a brazen jar. Their piling Mount Pelion on Ossa and that on Olympus (all mountains east of Thessaly) to reach the Gods’ home in the sky gives a different view of that abode from the one that places it on Olympus. The sons of Aloeus’ slaying by Apollo as teenagers was later said to be affected, after they pursued his sister Artemis, who concealed herself in the form of a deer, by their being tricked into aiming their spears at her (disguised as a deer), or at a deer sent by her, as she (or it) fled between them, but instead piercing one another.

Page 201, Lines 321-4. Phaedra … Procris … Ariadne … Minos ... Theseus ... Crete ... Dia … Dionysus. These women are all associated with Athens. Procris was the wife of Cephalus, carried off for his beauty by the Dawn Goddess, and after his release (like Odysseus he preferred his mortal spouse), accidentally killed by him, as she spied on him while he bunted, believing that the mist (Nephele), which he called on to cool him, was the name of a mistress.

Ariadne, daughter of the Cretan king Minos, out of love provided the thread which enabled Theseus, brought to Crete to be destroyed, with other captive Athenians, by the ’man-bull’ which lurked at the heart of the Labyrinth, to find his way back through its windings after slaying that ‘Minotaur’. On their way to his Athenian homeland, they landed on the island of Dia (Naxos), where for this poet Artemis caused her death. Later versions, already present in the Hesiodic corpus, had it that Theseus sailed away, deserting her, and the wine-god Dionysus came to rescue and espouse her. What part Homer imagined that god’s ‘witness’ called by Morris 'nursing a tale', had in her doom is unclear.

Phaedra, sister to Ariadne, whom Theseus eventually married, angered when her stepson Hippolytis (son of her predecessor the Amazon Hippolyte) refused her offer of love, accused him to his father of seeking to violate her. Theseus cursed his son, who was killed when a bull-like monster sent out of the sea in response by Poseidon, assailed his chariot.

 

Page 201, Line 325-6. Maera … Clymene … Eryiphyle. Pherecydes, an early mythographer, said that Maera was a nymph who hunted with Artemis, who slew her after, having been seduced by Zeus, she gave birth to a child: Gantz, Early Greek Myth, vol. 2, pp. 733-4. 

A Clymene, apparently a Minyan maiden, had several spouses ascribed to her in legend: Gzntz, op. cit. vol. 1, pp. 182-3, Another, daughter of Minos’ son Catreus, became by Nauplius the mother of Odysseus’ legendary rival and victim, Palamedes: ibid. p. 271.

Eriphyle, sister of the Argive king Adrastus and wife of the seer Amphiaraus, was bribed by Oedipus’ son Polynices with the magnificent necklace, which the gods had given to his ancestors Cadmus and Harmonia at their wedding, to oblige her husband to join the expedition of the Seven Argive chiefs to win for Polynices from his brother Eteocles the kingship of Thebes, though the seer foresaw that all but Adrastus would perish on it. Amphiaraus was swallowed by the earth during the fighting. Later his son Alcmaeon avenged his father, Orestes-like, by killing his mother.

 

Page 203, Line 360. more awful. Tr. ‘aidoioteros’: more reverenced.

 

Page 203. Line 382. beneath the bale. Tr. 'metopisthen': backwards

 

Page 204, Lines 401-3. Odysseus imagines that Agamemnon may have attacked some people on his way home in the same way that he himself had assailed the Cicones, as reported in Book ix.

 

Page 205, Line 415. or the gild. Tr. ‘eilapine’: see Note to Book I, line 229.

 

Page 205, Line 416. Where man the man withstandeth. Tr. ‘mounax kteinomenon’: in single combat.

 

Page 205, Lines 421-422. Cassandra's wail, The daughter of King Priam. Probably the first appearance in surviving epic of Agamemnon’s having taken as his concubine the Trojan princess and prophetess, of whom Aeschylus made such striking use in his tragedy. The greater stress in this passage, than in the earlier accounts of Agamemnon’s end in Books iii and iv, on his wife’s wickedness, is perhaps due to an awareness of her likely jealousy of that relationship.

 

Page 205, Line 432. well-learned in sin. Tr. ‘exoca lugra iduia’: knowing outstandingly baneful [things].

 

Page 208, Line 511. out of Scyros   Odysseus and Diomedes went to Scyros. (cf. Note on Book iv, lines 5-6) to bring to the war Achilles, hidden there by his mother Thetis in women’s attire.

 

Page 209, Lines 519-21. Telephus’ son … Eurypylus … Ceteians ... for the gifts of a wife. Telephus, a king in Mysia, the region south-east of Troy, fought the Achaeans when they landed in his territory by mistake on their way to Troy, and could only be healed of the wounds inflicted by Achilles by the touch, or the rust,  of that hero’s spear.

Eurypylus, his son by a sister of King Priam, was the last of the three outland champions who came to defend Troy after Hector’s death, and was killed by  Neoptolemus. His mother had been bribed with a golden vine to engage in the war. His people, the Ceteians, were named after a river in Mysia.

 

Page 209, Line 522. Memnon the mighty in strife. For Memnon see Note on Book iii, line 111.

 

Page 209, Line 523. the horse that was made by Epeius’ deed. See Note on Book viii, lines 492-3.

 

Page 209, Line 537. the Ares’ strife. Omitting the implication of madness in the word ‘mainetai’: applied to the war-god’s activity.

 

Page 209, Line 538. the asphodel meadow. The asphodel with its grey foliage was planted on graves, and its yellowish flowers provided a garland for Persephone’s head.

 

Page 209, Line 547. doomed … the sons of the Trojans. The Trojans’ opinion of the relative valour of Ajax and Odysseus was obtained either by asking prisoners in the Achaean camp, or by spies listening at the walls of Troy to hear which hero they feared most. 

 

Page 210, Line 572. Orion. See Note on Book v, line 121.

 

Pages 210-211, Lines 576-600. In this passage, Homer established for classical poetry the list (omitting -only Ixion) of the great sinners condemned to the ‘penal section’ of the Underworld; cf. Lucretius, Boethius; Notably they are all offenders against the Gods. It was only in Virgil’s description of Tartarus, in Aeneid, Book 6, lines 558-627, esp. 608-14, 621-4, that those who have harmed their fellow-men are also condemned to suffer infernal punishment.

 

Pages 210-211, Lines 576-81. Tityus … Pytho … Psnopeus … Leto. Tityus, suffering the same penalty as Prometheus, had tried to rape Zeus’ consort Leto on the way to Delphi, near Panopeus, a city in Phocis.

 

Page 211, Lines 582-92. Tantalus. This sinner, a king in Asia  Minor and ancestor of the Pelopids, condemned never to enjoy either the water or the fruit surrounding him, had been a guest at feasts of the Gods. His offense was variously reported: either he had tried to steal food from them, so perhaps gaining immortality, or he had tested his hosts’ divine knowledge, by feeding to them the flesh of his son Pelops. Later his punishment was conventionally supposed to be for excessive gluttony.

 

Page 211, Lines 593-600. Sisyphus  This sinner, a Corinthian, later sometimes made a parent of Odysseus, had used a variety of ingenious tricks to escape from the custody of the Death spirit. His stone-rolling was to prevent him escaping yet again.