thyrsos: a staff with a fir-cone ornament at the head, carried by Dionysos and others who engaged in his rites.
Nisyron: this explains the origin of Nisyros, a small island south of Cos; it was part of Cos until Poseidon broke it off with his trident (cf. Strabo 10. 5. 16).
Gration: probably corrupt, but the proposed corrections are uncertain; perhaps Aigaion.
Typhon: Hesiod offers a rather different account of his struggle with Zeus, in Theog. 820 ff.
a hundred dragons’ heads: following Theog. 824 ff, but in a confused manner, for there ‘a hundred heads of a serpent’ grow from his shoulders in place of a human head. The serpents’ coils beneath his thighs are derived from the standard depiction of him in the visual arts.
took flight to Egypt: the following story, first attested for Pindar (fr. 81 Bowra), explains why the Egyptians had gods in animal form. In the earliest full account (AL 28, following Nicander) Hermes, for example, turns into an ibis, and Artemis into a cat, identifying them with Thoth and Bast respectively.
Aigipan: ‘Goat-Pan’; some saw him as Pan himself in his quality as a goat, others as a separate figure.
ephemeral fruits: nothing further is known of them, but their effect is clearly the opposite of what the Fates suggested.
blood: haimain Greek, hence the name of Mount Haimos.
eruptions of fire: cf. Pind. Pyth. 1. 15 ff., [Aesch.] PV363 ff., and later, Ov. Met. 5. 352 ff; in all these sources Typhon himself is responsible for the eruptions.
fashioned men: not attested before the fourth century; in earlier sources, Prometheus is a benefactor of the human race, but not its creator (Hes. Theog. 510 ff. and WD48 ff., cf. [Aesch.] PV). It was commonly assumed at an early period that the first men sprang directly from the earth, and different areas would have their own ‘first man’, e.g. Phoroneus in Argos, see p. 58 and note.
fenneclass="underline" the narthex or giant fennel (a relative of the British cow-parsley), whose stalks contain a slow-burning white pith; cf. Hes. Theog. 565 ff., WD50 ff.
as we will show: see p. 83.
Pandora . . . the first woman: described by Hesiod as a ‘beautiful evil’ (Theog. 585), she was moulded by Hephaistos on the orders of Zeus, as the price men would have to pay for having gained possession of fire (Theog. 569 ff. and WD60 ff). Epimetheus (‘Afterthought’), the brother of Prometheus, was foolish enough to accept her (WD83 ff, Theog. 511 ft).
the race of bronze: see Hes. WD143 ff., where the members of this violent primordial race are responsible for their own destruction; there is no mention of the flood there (or in Theog.). This is the best mythographical account; for an imaginative portrayal, see Ov. Met. 1. 260 ff. For another explanation of its cause, see p. 115.
laoi ... a stone: the same etymology is implied in Pind. ol. 9. 44–6; the two words were of separate origin. The story originally accounted for the origin of the local people only (the Locrian Leleges, Hes. Cat. fr. 234; the stone-throwing took place at Opous in east Locris, Pind. ol. 9. 43 ff.; but in Latin sources from Ovid onwards it is often suggested that Deucalion and Pyrrha were the only human beings to survive a universal flood). Here ‘metaphor’ means simply a transference of meaning (as often in Greek usage).
the Graicoi he named Hellenes: here the Hellenes are a Greek people who lived in southern Thessaly, as in the Iliad(2. 683, cf. 9. 395, although their name was later applied to the Greek race as a whole), and the Graicoi, a tribe who lived to the west of them in Epirus. For the present story, cf. Aristotle Meteorology352a32 ff. The Graicoi remained prominent in the west, and the Romans used their name as a general term for the Hellenes.
opposite the Peloponnese: i.e. north of the Corinthian Gulf; specifically the small region known as Doris, north-west of Mount Parnassos (Strabo 8. 7. 1), which the Peloponnesian Dorians regarded as their original home. In myth, this was the area ruled by Doros’ son, Aigimios (see p. 90 and note); the movement of the Dorians to the Peloponnese occurs very late in mythological history, see pp. 92 f.
halcyon: a fabulous bird that nests by, or on, the sea during the halcyon days of winter.
sea-swallow: or tern, for the ceux, a poetical bird of uncertain identity. Ap.’s version of this story is probably derived from Hes. Cat. (cf. frs. 15 and 16); in another version, Ceux is killed in a shipwreck and Alcyone throws herself into the sea for love of him, arousing the pity of the gods, who transform them into halcyons (Ov. Met. 11. 410 ff, Hyg. 65).
known as the Aloads: ‘sons of Aloeus’ (for Aloeus was their putative father as the husband of Iphimedeia). For their story, cf. Od. 11. 305 ff.
a cubit. . . a fathom: the English equivalents for the ancient measurements representing the lengths of a man’s forearm and of his outstretched arms (fœthmin Old English). These measured about eighteen inches and six feet respectively.
Ossa . . . Olympos . . . Pelion: tall mountains in the coastal region of Thessaly. This story gave rise to the proverbial phrase, ‘piling Pelion on Ossa’.
imprisoned Ares: in a bronze jar, for thirteen months, and he would have died if the Aloads’ stepmother had not informed Hermes (Il. 5. 385 ff.).
met their death on Naxos: according to Od. 11. 318 they were killed by Apollo, for trying to climb to heaven (cf. Hyg. 28); here their failure in that enterprise is left unexplained, and Artemis causes their death on another occasion because of their designs on herself. It is said elsewhere that they set out to rape Artemis (Hyg. 28, cf. sc. Pind. Pyth. 4. 156) and that Apollo (Hyg.) or Artemis (sc. Il. 5. 385) sent a deer between them. Pindar knew a version of this story (Pyth. 4. 88 f., cf. P. 9. 22. 5).