of Amymone: see p. 61.
Iolaos: the son of Heracles’ half-brother Iphicles, p. 72; he accompanied Heracles on several of his adventures, acting as his charioteer.
sacred to Artemis: when Zeus wanted to rape Taygete, daughter of Atlas, Artemis rescued her by turning her into a deer; on returning to human form she dedicated the present deer to Artemis, and attached an inscription to it stating this (Pind. ol. 3. 29 f., with sc. to 53).
struck it with an arrow: to bring it down without harming it. According to other accounts he used nets to trap it, or overpowered it when it was asleep or exhausted (DS 4. 13. 1).
the common property of the Centaurs: according to another tradition, Dionysos left the jar with Pholos to be opened when Heracles arrived four generations later, and the local Centaurs were driven into a frenzy by the scent of the wine (DS 4. 12. 3 f.).
Cheiron . . . by the Lapiths: he was driven out of Thessaly with the other Centaurs by this Thessalian people under the command of their king, Peirithoos (see also p. 142). Malea was a promontory at the south-east corner of the Peloponnese, far to the south of Pholoe in Arcadia.
Only when Prometheus. . . able to die: see p. 83 with note.
killing him instantly: it will be remembered that Heracles dipped his arrows in the hydra’s gall; the virulence of the poison explains both their effect on the Centaurs and why Cheiron’s wound is incurable.
he refused to pay the reward: thus far he had some justification, as he could reasonably claim that he had been deceived when he was asked to pay for a task that Heracles had to perform anyhow as an unpaid service to Eurystheus.
Phyleus. . . testified against his father: cf. P. 5. 1. 10, where Phyleus is exiled for admonishing his father (and there is no mention of the arbitration). Homer remarks that Phyleus went into exile in anger at his father, but gives no details ( Il. 2. 628 ff.).
shoot them down: Heracles was not ordered to kill them, and in some accounts he merely scares them off (P. 8. 22. 4, referring to Peisandros, DS 4. 13. 2). It would seem that the birds were a problem only because of their numbers (DS is more explicit on this); Pausanias’ suggestion (P. 8. 22. 4 ff.) that they may have been man-eaters is based on a later tradition in which they were identified with a fabulous race of Arabian birds.
Acousilaos. . . bull that had carried Europa: the earliest author known to have referred to this labour, but the identification he offered for the bull cannot be reconciled with the usual tradition that Europa’s bull was Zeus himself in animal form (p. 96, cf. Hes. fr. 140).
sent up from the sea by Poseidon: see also p. 97; the identification favoured by DS (4. 13. 4) and Pausanias (1. 27. 9).
arrived at Marathon: where it is conveniently available for Theseus to kill, p. 139; Theseus’ exploits as a killer of beasts and malefactors were modelled on those of Heracles.
man-eating mares: cf. Eur. Alcestis481 ff.; in DS 4. 15. 3 f. he captures the mares after he has satisfied their hunger by feeding them on Diomedes himself.
by the River Thermodon: in north-eastern Asia Minor.
pressed down: exethlibon: suggesting compression rather than removal. According to the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places, 17, an Amazon mother would apply a hot iron to her daughter’s breast while she was still a child to prevent it from growing; similarly DS 2. 45. 3 (who cites the common etymology that they are called Amazons because they are ‘without a breast’, a-mazos).
the belt of Ares: this zoster—which came from the god of war— would be a heavy warrior’s belt, not a woman’s girdle (zone), although it sometimes seems to have been taken as such in the later tradition (as Admete’s desire to possess it may imply). In AR 2. 966 ff. Heracles captures Melanippe, the queen’s sister, in an ambush and obtains the belt as a ransom; or he captures Melanippe, their commander, after killing many Amazons in battle, and then ransoms her for the belt, DS 4. 16. 1 ff.
Lycos, and when Lycos: added to fill a short gap in the text; his kingdom lay in the north-western corner of Asia Minor, and the land of his enemies the Bebryces (later Bithynia) to the north-west of that. On Amycos, see also p. 51.
undertaken to fortify Pergamon: see Il. 7. 452 ff. and 21. 441 ff. (in the latter Apollo serves as a herdsman). They were acting on the bidding of Zeus, 21. 444, apparently as a punishment for their attempted revolt against Zeus (see Il. 1. 398 ff., where Apollo is not mentioned; cf. sc. Il. 21. 444). In Il. 21. 453 ff, not only does Laomedon refuse to pay, but he threatens to tie them up, sell them into slavery, and cut off their ears.
to Tros: added for clarity, cf. Il. 5. 265 ff; he was Laomedon’s grandfather. On Ganymede see p. 123.
at some future time: for his attack on Troy, see p. 86.
three men joined into one: in Theog. 287 he is merely three-headed; but in Aesch. Agamemnon870 he is three-bodied, and in Stesichorus (mid-sixth century, as reported by sc. Theog. 287) he is six-handed and six-footed (and winged).
killed many savage beasts: the killing of wild beasts, and of foreigners who are hostile to strangers, is an important part of Heracles’ activity as a furtherer of civilization (or as a hero who made the world safe for Greek colonization). Diodorus is much more informative on this aspect of Heracles (see DS 4. 17. 3 ff. for the taming of Crete and Libya).
two pillars: these marked the boundaries of the inhabited world, oikoumene, to the west, as did those of Dionysos, p. 102, to the east; commonly identified with Gibraltar and Ceuta on either side of the entry to the Mediterranean.
a golden cup: the Sun passed from east to west across the sky, from sunrise to sunset, in a fiery chariot, and sailed back again in this golden cup by way of the Ocean (which encircles the earth). We are to imagine that Erytheia, the Red Isle, lies in the Ocean beyond Spain. Hdt. 4. 8 placed it near Cadiz, and it was later identified with Cadiz (Gadeira) as Ap. remarks above.
Rhegion: or Rhegium, now Reggio, at the toe of Italy, was a Greek colony, although its name was not of Greek origin. Here it is said to owe its name to the fact that the bull aporrhegnusi, breaks free there (from amongst Geryon’s cattle). DS 4. 21–4 includes a mass of Italian and Sicilian material which Ap. characteristically ignores.