(1) The epithet probably indicates coquettishness.
(2) A proverbial saying meaning, `why enlarge on irrelevant
topics?'
(3) `She of the noble voice': Calliope is queen of Epic poetry.
(4) Earth, in the cosmology of Hesiod, is a disk surrounded by
the river Oceanus and floating upon a waste of waters. It
is called the foundation of all (the qualification `the
deathless ones...' etc. is an interpolation), because not
only trees, men, and animals, but even the hills and seas
(ll. 129, 131) are supported by it.
(5) Aether is the bright, untainted upper atmosphere, as
distinguished from Aer, the lower atmosphere of the earth.
(6) Brontes is the Thunderer; Steropes, the Lightener; and
Arges, the Vivid One.
(7) The myth accounts for the separation of Heaven and Earth.
In Egyptian cosmology Nut (the Sky) is thrust and held apart
from her brother Geb (the Earth) by their father Shu, who
corresponds to the Greek Atlas.
(8) Nymphs of the ash-trees, as Dryads are nymphs of the oak-
trees. Cp. note on "Works and Days", l. 145.
(9) `Member-loving': the title is perhaps only a perversion of
the regular PHILOMEIDES (laughter-loving).
(10) Cletho (the Spinner) is she who spins the thread of man's
life; Lachesis (the Disposer of Lots) assigns to each man
his destiny; Atropos (She who cannot be turned) is the `Fury
with the abhorred shears.'
(11) Many of the names which follow express various qualities or
aspects of the sea: thus Galene is `Calm', Cymothoe is the
`Wave-swift', Pherusa and Dynamene are `She who speeds
(ships)' and `She who has power'.
(12) The `Wave-receiver' and the `Wave-stiller'.
(13) `The Unerring' or `Truthful'; cp. l. 235.
(14) i.e. Poseidon.
(15) Goettling notes that some of these nymphs derive their names
from lands over which they preside, as Europa, Asia, Doris,
Ianeira (`Lady of the Ionians'), but that most are called
after some quality which their streams possessed: thus
Xanthe is the `Brown' or `Turbid', Amphirho is the
`Surrounding' river, Ianthe is `She who delights', and
Ocyrrhoe is the `Swift-flowing'.
(16) i.e. Eos, the `Early-born'.
(17) Van Lennep explains that Hecate, having no brothers to
support her claim, might have been slighted.
(18) The goddess of the hearth (the Roman "Vesta"), and so of the
house. Cp. "Homeric Hymns" v.22 ff.; xxxix.1 ff.
(19) The variant reading `of his father' (sc. Heaven) rests on
inferior MS. authority and is probably an alteration due to
the difficulty stated by a Scholiast: `How could Zeus, being
not yet begotten, plot against his father?' The phrase is,
however, part of the prophecy. The whole line may well be
spurious, and is rejected by Heyne, Wolf, Gaisford and
Guyet.
(20) Pausanias (x. 24.6) saw near the tomb of Neoptolemus `a
stone of no great size', which the Delphians anointed every
day with oil, and which he says was supposed to be the stone
given to Cronos.
(21) A Scholiast explains: `Either because they (men) sprang from
the Melian nymphs (cp. l. 187); or because, when they were
born (?), they cast themselves under the ash-trees, that is,
the trees.' The reference may be to the origin of men from
ash-trees: cp. "Works and Days", l. 145 and note.
(22) sc. Atlas, the Shu of Egyptian mythology: cp. note on line
177.
(23) Oceanus is here regarded as a continuous stream enclosing
the earth and the seas, and so as flowing back upon himself.
(24) The conception of Oceanus is here different: he has nine
streams which encircle the earth and the flow out into the
`main' which appears to be the waste of waters on which,
according to early Greek and Hebrew cosmology, the disk-like
earth floated.
(25) i.e. the threshold is of `native' metal, and not artificial.
(26) According to Homer Typhoeus was overwhelmed by Zeus amongst
the Arimi in Cilicia. Pindar represents him as buried under
Aetna, and Tzetzes reads Aetna in this passage.
(27) The epithet (which means literally `well-bored') seems to
refer to the spout of the crucible.
(28) The fire god. There is no reference to volcanic action:
iron was smelted on Mount Ida; cp. "Epigrams of Homer", ix.
2-4.
(29) i.e. Athena, who was born `on the banks of the river Trito'
(cp. l. 929l)
(30) Restored by Peppmuller. The nineteen following lines from
another recension of lines 889-900, 924-9 are quoted by
Chrysippus (in Galen).
(31) sc. the aegis. Line 929s is probably spurious, since it
disagrees with l. 929q and contains a suspicious reference
to Athens.
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