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4.236:swan feathers The Latin Ledaeus apex (swan crest) alludes to Leda, mother of Castor and Pollux, who were buried in Lacedaemon, the capital of Laconia. The flourish on the armor pays tribute to the twins.
4.249:His mother Statius follows the Arcadian version of the myth of Atalanta. As an infant, she had been left to die in an Arcadian forest, where she was nursed by a bear, raised by hunters, and herself became a great huntress, devoted to her virginity. Milanion eventually wooed her, and by him she gave birth to Parthenopaeus. Because the boy was so beautiful, Diana (virgin goddess and patron of the hunt to whom Atalanta had dedicated herself before marriage) forgave Atalanta for giving up her virginity (see Apollodorus, Library 3.9.2ff.)
4.267:Calydonia Atalanta was the first to hit the Calydonian boar in Meleager’s great hunt in Ovid’s version of her story (Met. 10.560ff.).
4.269:Cydonean Cydon was a town on the north coast of Crete (cf. Virgil’s Eclogues 10.59).
4.286–91:Rhipe . . . Pheneos The catalog of Agapenor’s troops in the second book of the Iliad names the first five of Statius’s Arcadian towns. Cyllene was the fabled birthplace of Mercury and home of his temple. Pheneos was a town at the foot of Mount Cyllene; its lake fed the waters of the infernal rivers.
4.292:Azan A district of Arcadia named after Azan, one of the sons of King Arcas and the nymph Erato (see Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.4.2–3). Further names of Arcadian towns follow in this passage.
4.297:Hercules The hero defeated the Erymanthean boar, his third labor, and used bronze rattles to disperse the ill-omened birds of Stymphalos.
4.308:two other brothers Underscoring the betrayal theme, Statius makes another disparaging reference to Mycenae, referring to the strife of Atreus (father of Agamemnon and Menelaus) and Thyestes; see note to 2.184.
4.373:Plataea A city on Mount Cithaeron
4.383:Nysaean father Bacchus, after Nysa, the village on Mount Helicon that was home to the god. His cult had spread far from Boeotia by Statius’s time— hence the references to Thrace, India (Ganges), and Ethiopia (Red Sea), all of which had towns called Nysus.
4.389:Hermus A river in Asia Minor
4.393:Caucasus Mountain range between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea; home of the mythical Amazons
4.414:grim Death Tiresias prefers oracles of the dead as a method of prophecy over augury (used by Amphiaraus in book 3) and haruspicy. Therefore, the ghost of Laius once again plays an important role in the epic; ironically, he is now doling out the kind of obscure prophecies that he could not comprehend when he was alive.
4.494:Gaetulia A province in northwestern Africa
4.514:afraid/to say According to Lactantius, this god, whose name cannot be pronounced, was the demiurge, which became, by a scribal errors, the Demogorgone of Renaissance poets like Boiardo and Spenser. See C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 39–40.
4.530:Minos King of Crete, known for his wisdom and justice—hence, he was appointed judge of the dead in the underworld (cf. Aeneid 6.432 and Met. 9.436)
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4.536–40:there is no need/to tell of these In this passage, Tiresias alludes to punishments doled out in Tartarus, the part of the underworld reserved for the damned. Sisyphus, a wicked king of Corinth, was condemned eternally to push a rock up a hill. Tantalus tested the omniscience of the gods by serving them his son Pelops in a pie; he was placed in a lake whose waters receded when he attempted to drink from it. Tityos was killed and punished for impiety toward Diana; vultures continually fed on his flesh (Met. 4.457–58). Ixion was punished for failing to honor Jupiter after the god had shown mercy toward him; he was consequently strapped to a wheel that turned perpetually. Versions of these figures can be found in the Odyssey, Aeneid, and Meta-morphoses.4.551:Medea . . . Circe Two enchantresses. Medea, subject of a play by Euripides, took vengeance on her husband Jason for his infidelity by killing their children and his mistress. Circe, who appears in Homer’s Odyssey, turned Odysseus’s companions into swine.
4.553–78:Cadmus is first The following passage provides a genealogy of the house of Cadmus; Statius has already alluded to most of these figures earlier in the epic. All the ghosts of the family are described in their most miserable states.
4.561–78:group of daughters Daughters of Cadmus and Harmonia. Autonoë was the mother of Actaeon. Ino jumped into the sea with her infant son when her husband Athamas attempted to kill them (he did kill their older son, Learchus). Semele died before giving birth to Bacchus. Agave, in a Bacchic frenzy, killed her son Pentheus. According to Fulgentius, the daughters represent the various stages of drunkenness, a moral appropriate to a city dedicated to the god of wine.
4.652:Start from the dim beginnings of their fame Statius calls attention to his own digression, suggesting that its subject matter is relevant, particularly because nothing else remains of the Theban narrative but the inevitable loss of life in the war.
4.653:Liber Bacchus
4.658:unbridled lynxes The lynx was sacred to Bacchus; they are unbridled because the god of wine is unrestrained.
4.662:the members of his sect Statius lists personifications of moods associated with drunkenness.
[4.716–23]: This translation leaves out these lines, generally considered spurious. Line numbers, however, continue as if the passage were included.
4.745:Syene A city on the east bank of the Nile in southern Egypt; source of a reddish granite (Statius, Silvae 4.2.27).
4.789:the Berecynthian mother From the mountain Berecentus in Phrygia, sacred to Cybele, mother of Jupiter
4.801:So did Statius refers to escapades of the young gods to dignify Opheltes, renamed Archemorus (first to die), who will undergo apotheosis upon his death.
4.815:Leucas An island off the northwest coast of Greece in the Ionian Sea, which housed a temple dedicated to Apollo. Ambracia was a town on the coast.
4.834:the raging lion’s shaggy mane Another allusion to Hercules’ defeat of the Nemean lion
4.844–46:Ladon A river that flowed in Arcadia. Xanthus flowed in Lycia; Spercheos in Thessaly; and Lycormas in Aetolia.
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Book 5. The story of Lemnos
5.12:Paraetonian Nile Paraetonium was a city on the northern coast of Africa between Egypt and the Syrtes; the adjectival form means “Egyptian.” Pharus was an island off the coast of Egypt.
5.20:then spoke Adrastus takes advantage of the opportunity for delay by asking Hypsipyle to tell her story to the troops. Hypsipyle’s narrative not only prevents the army from continuing but also provides an example of filial piety that underscores the sinfulness of the Argive campaign.
5.51:Mulciber A surname of Vulcan, meaning one who softens things
5.61:Paphos A city on Cyprus that housed a temple of Venus
5.70:Amores Little loves, cupids, or putti5.71:Hymen The god of marriage—here a metaphor for conjugal relations. Apollodorus says that Venus cursed the Lemnian women with a foul body odor that scared their husbands away (Library 1.9.17). Apollonius says that the men were more interested in their Thracian lovers (Argonautica 1.609ff.).
5.90: Polyxo In the Argonautica (1.667ff.), Polyxo is Hypsipyle’s nurse; she convinces the Lemnian women to admit the Argonauts, reasoning that Lemnos will eventually need men to sustain itself. Statius rewrites her as an agitator.
5.92:Teumesian Theban. A thyad (from thiasus, a riotous group of revelers) is a Bacchante.
5.120:while we stand here idly Polyxo refers to the Danaids; see note to 2.217.
5.122:she avenged her bed, her marriage Tereus, king of Thrace, raped his sister-in-law Philomela; he then imprisoned her and cut out her tongue to prevent her from speaking of the crime. She communicated the story to her sister Procne through a tapestry she wove. The two women avenged themselves on Tereus by killing his son and serving the boy’s fl
esh to him at a banquet. See Met. 6.420–674.
5.176:No vigorous god An ill portent, signifying that the gods have withdrawn from the island
5.182–83:Paros . . . Cyclades . . . Thasos Neighboring islands
5.184:shadowed Lemnos Mount Athos, west of Lemnos on the Strymonian Gulf in Macedonia. The mountain casts a long shadow on Lemnos at sunset.
5.189–91:They had leisure The Lemnian men tell stories of their northern conquests. The Strymon was a river in Macedonia.
5.207:Let me consider! A brief catalog of the dead follows; Hypsipyle calls attention to the various impieties committed by mothers, sisters, and wives against the men and boys.
5.227:her twin These twins are the only brother-sister pair in the epic (not counting Antigone, Ismene, Polynices, and Eteocles, and if we assume Statius suppressed the fact that Eriphyle was Adrastus’s sister, for which see Lewis and Short’s entry on Talaus, their father). Lycaste’s unwillingness to harm her brother, and her subsequent despair at his death, suggests Statius’s ideal of a natural piety between siblings.
5.263:cloud-born gods The Centaurs (see note to 2.562)
5.265:Thyoneus Thyone is the name Bacchus bestowed on his mother Semele when he raised her from the dead; Thyoneus, or son of Thyone, is one of the various names Ovid lists for the god of wine (Met. 4.13).
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5.332:Massylian The Massyli were a tribe of Numidia, in northern Africa; here, poetic for African (cf. Aeneid 4.132).
5.337:Minyans A name for the Argonauts, from Minyas, a king in Thessaly (cf. Met. 7.1)
5.347:Symplegades The Cyaneae, in Statius’s Latin, also called Symplegades according to Lewis and Short, were two small rocky islands at the entrance to the Black Sea at the Strait of Bosporus.
5.398:We saw the sons A catalog of Argonauts follows; these warriors all appear in the first book of Apollonius’s Argonautica. Telamon and Peleus were both banished from their father’s kingdom after having conspired in the murder of their brother Phocus (Argo-nautica 1.90–94).
5.405:Meleager, Idas, and Talaus Meleager was the son of King Oeneus and hunted the Calydonian boar (Met. 8.299ff.). Talaus was Adrastus’s father, although Statius does not indicate this. Idas and his brother Lynceus, who are mentioned together in the Argonautica (1.151–55), were cousins of Castor and Pollux and died at their hands (see Apollodorus, Library 3.11.2).
5.407:Tyndareus’s son Castor or Pollux
5.413:Tiphys The first helmsman of the Argos (cf. Virgil, Eclogues, 4.34). Because he died before the Argonauts reached Colchis, Ancaeus took over steering the ship (Argonautica 2.851ff.).
5.428:Aethiopia’s Red Sea shores See Iliad 1.420ff.
5.431:Marathon The Cretan bull (object of the seventh labor of Hercules) had terrorized the countryside of Marathon until Theseus captured it. Ovid refers to the incident (Met.7.433–34).
5.432:brothers from Thrace Boreas’s sons, Calais (mentioned at line 411) and Zetes (cf. Met.6.716). Apollonius describes them as having wings with golden scales (Argonautica1.211ff.). They were the heroes responsible for chasing the Harpies away from Phineus (Met. 7.3).
5.435:Admetus The Pheraean king for whom Apollo served as a shepherd to atone for killing the Cyclops (cf. Virgil’s Georgics 3.9 and Aeneid 7.761; also Apollodorus, Library3.10.4)
5.436:son of Calydon Meleager.
5.437:Oebalidae The epithet refers to Oebalus, king of Sparta, who was the paternal grandfather of Castor and Pollux. Since at least one of the two was already mentioned at line 407, this allusion completes the pair.
5.443:Young Hylas Friend and quiver bearer to Hercules (Argonautica 1.131–32). The boy was famous for his beauty, which brought about his demise; while filling a pitcher at a spring, Hylas was pulled under water by a nymph or nymphs who wanted to kiss him. Hercules was devastated by the loss and left the Argonautic expedition as a result. Cf. Virgil, Eclogues 6.44.
5.458:In Colchis When the Argonauts reached Colchis, where King Aeëtes guarded the golden fleece, Jason seduced Medea, the king’s daughter (cf. Met. 7.1ff.).
5.487:Chios An island southeast of Lemnos near the Ionian coast
5.506:a dragon born of earth The Inachian serpent, like the Delphic Python that Adrastus describes in book 1, is sacred to a god—in this case Jupiter, the Thunderer (line 511).
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Statius derives his description of the beast from Ovid’s account of the dragon of Cadmus (sacred to Mars) in Met. 3.30–34.
5.529:His size recalled the dragon Statius refers to the large constellation Draco, the tail of which circles Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (cf. Met. 3.45).
5.609:Archemorus “First to die.” Hypsipyle renames Opheltes to honor him as the first casualty of the Theban war; see line 739 for Amphiaraus’s public renaming of the boy.
5.640:Perseus’s mountain Mount Aphesas, the same place where Amphiaraus and Melampus conduct their augury (cf. note to 3.462)
5.707:two-formed Triton The son of Neptune, represented as a man with a dolphin’s tail (cf. Met. 2.8)
5.709:Thetis A sea nymph, mother of Achilles by Peleus
Book 6. Funeral Games
6.5:Such contests Statius refers to the origins of the games of Olympia, Delphi, and the Isthmus of Corinth; this book relates the establishment of the Nemean games. Hercules held funeral games at Olympia (in the district of Pisatis) in honor of Pelops. The Delphic games celebrated Apollo’s slaying of the Python. The Isthmian festival originated from funeral games held in honor of Melicertes, the infant son of Ino; both were deified (as Palaemon and Leucothea) after they jumped off the Isthmus of Corinth into the Mediterranean (see Met. 4.519–30).
6.7:wild olive leaves The winners in the festival were crowned with wreaths of olive branches.
6.54:young cypress Cypress was associated with funerals.
6.64:Linus Apollo’s son, the baby whose death Adrastus describes in book 1. The child’s story is ominously depicted on Opheltes’ baby blanket.
6.87:ill-fated war The scene of warriors attempting to expiate their crime of having killed a sacred snake recalls Apollo’s situation after his destruction of the Python at Delphi. Like Apollo, the Argives commit further impieties in their efforts to appease the deities.
[6.88–89]: Lines probably spurious, omitted in translation
6.93–103:Sacred it stood The sacred forest is an epic trope (cf. Met. 3.28). Statius presents a catalog of Nemean trees in this passage; the list closely resembles the catalog of trees in Virgil’s Culex, 123–45. Boccaccio includes a close imitation of Statius’s lines in Teseida 11.
6.108:Ismara A Thracian town (cf. Aeneid 10.351)
6.111:Pales The Italian goddess of shepherds and pastures
6.111:Silvanus Roman god of forests, sometimes identified with Pan and Faunus, linked by Virgil with the cypress (Georgics 1.20)
6.124:two quivers had undone her Niobe lost all her children—twelve according to Homer (Iliad 24.603), fourteen in later sources—to the arrows of Apollo and Diana. Pelops was Niobe’s brother; Sipylus was her home and the place where she metamorphosed into stone (Met. 6.310–12).
6.227–33: Many editors believe these verses are spurious. Hill surrounds them by brackets.
6.238:Nine times Nine days was the time allotted for mourning in Roman practice; the
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same number of days passes between the funeral rites for Anchises and the commencement of the games in his honor (Aeneid 5.104–5).
6.249:the unarmed contests The rest of book 6 describes the games played in honor of Opheltes (now Archemorus). Statius employs the epic convention of funeral games (cf. Iliad 23, Aeneid 5) to depict the seven Argive heroes in their glory before they go on to meet their doom at Thebes. Each hero participates in a game that is appropriate to his physical strength, age, and temperament; for example Parthenopaeus is perfectly suited to footraces (“This sport suits a
gile men,” lines 550–51) because he is young and lean, and because his mother, Atalanta, was a runner.
6.269:effigies Statius describes a Roman funeral rite. Noble families kept masks (imagines) of their ancestors that they used in funeral processions. Tacitus describes one such procession in honor of Junia, Cato’s niece (Annals 3.74). The ancestors listed here are Argives rather than Nemeans, perhaps because the procession is introducing the games rather than accompanying the funeral of Opheltes. As with previous catalogs of Argives, Statius calls attention to unflattering details of the kingdom’s history.
6.277:Argus The hundred-eyed creature that Juno commanded to watch over Io (Met.1.625)
6.285:Myrtilos King Oenomaus’s charioteer, whom Pelops bribed to throw the race (see note to 2.166). Rather than rewarding Myrtilos for his treachery, Pelops killed him.
6.286:Acrisius Danaë’s father, who suffered for refusing to recognize Bacchus as a god (Met. 4.607–11)
6.288:Amymone A daughter of Danaus identified with a river in Argos
6.291:sons of Belus Danaus and Aegyptus, whose truce was broken when Danaus ordered his daughters to kill their husbands, Aegyptus’s sons (see note to 2.217)
6.311:King Eurystheus’s toils That is, the twelve labors of Hercules, assigned by Eurystheus, king of Mycenae (Nemean lion, Lernaean hydra, rapid stag with golden horns, Erymanthian boar, stables of Augeas, Stymphalian birds, Cretan bull, mares of Diomede, girdle of Hippolyte, Geryon and his oxen, apples of the Hesperides, Cerberus; see Met.9.184–96).
6.321:his happy son Phaëthon (see note to 1.221).
6.328:Cyllarus One of the centaurs killed at the wedding of Pirithoüs (see note to 2.563). Because he was so beautiful, many female centaurs vied for his attention (Met.12.393–403).
6.329:Amyclean Amyclae, a town in Laconia, home of Castor and Pollux
6.358:Phlegra The location of the battle between the Olympians and the Giants (see note to
2.596)
6.360:his brothers’ deeds Apollo’s brothers—other sons of Jove—could refer to Mars, Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus, among others.
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