a deception by Hera: Hera assumed the form of her nurse, Beroe, and appealed to her vanity: if Zeus really loved her, she should ask him to come to her as he would to a goddess (Hyg. 179, VM 2. 79; see also Ov. Met. 3. 259 ff., this would also serve as a test that he is not merely pretending to be a god).
daughters ofCadmos . . . because of that: see Eur. Bacchae23 ff. and 242 ff.; the slander is central to the plot of the Bacchae, because it is this that provokes Dionysos to demonstrate his powers in Thebes and drive the women mad, as described below, p. 102.
Hera . . . drove them mad: see also p. 43 and note.
Leucothea: she became the ‘White Goddess’, who had a general Mediterranean cult as a deity who protected seafarers. It was she who saved Odysseus when Poseidon sent a storm against him after he had left Calypso, Od. 5. 333 ff.
Isthmian Games. . . in honour of Melicertes: his body was cast ashore on the Isthmus of Corinth; he is often said to have been carried there by a dolphin, see P. 1. 44. 11. These games were held at Corinth. For Sisyphos, king of Ephyra/Corinth, see p. 44. His hero-cult as Palaimon was centred in this area (see e.g. P. 2. 2. 3).
the Hyades: seven stars in the constellation Taurus, outlining the face of the bull; it was commonly said that Zeus placed them there for delivering Dionysos safely to Ino (ascribed to Pherecydes in Hyg. PA21).
saw Artemis bathing: this story, which first appears in Callimachus (Hymn5. 107 ff.; cf. Hyg. 181), is generally accepted in the later tradition; hunting on a hot day on Mount Cithairon in Boeotia, he fell asleep by a spring, and awoke to see Artemis bathing. It displaces the earlier tradition, as represented in Hes. Cat. (see note on Appendix, 4) and Stesichorus (P. 9. 2. 3) that the anger of Zeus led to his death. Or according to Eur. Bacchae339 ff., she killed him because he boasted that he was a better hunter.
driven mad by Hera: because he was a son of Zeus by another woman.
learned the rites of initiation: the rites of Cybele, the great mother-goddess of Phrygia, who was worshipped with ecstatic rites and mountain wandering, came to be identified with those of Rhea in Crete. Accordingly, Dionysos is taught his ecstatic rites by Rhea at Cybele’s home in north-western Asia Minor.
Lycourgos: for his hostility and the flight of Dionysos, cf. Il. 6. 130 ff.; the land of the Edonians lay in north-eastern Macedonia, bordering Thrace.
Bacchai: the women seized by Bacchic frenzy.
Satyrs: daemons who attended Dionysos. They had a thick tail like that of a horse, and in many depictions, the lower half of their body is like that of a goat or a horse and they are ithyphallic. The behaviour of the Satyr on pp. 60–1 is characteristic.
believing that he was pruning a vine branch: he was trying to eliminate the vines as a source of intoxication associated with Dionysos; it is also said that he mutilated himself (Hyg. 132, VM 1. 122; Carriere suggests a slight alteration in the text to give that meaning here).
and the whole of India . . . pillars: marking the eastern limits of the inhabited world, corresponding to the pillars of Heracles in the west, see p. 80 and note. Some regard this phrase as an interpolation.
he arrived in Thebes: the following is a summary of Eur. Bacchae, which contains much of interest on Dionysos.
When they had him on board: see the fuller version of the following story in the first Homeric Hymn to Dionysos;there he frightened the sailors by causing a bear to appear and turning himself into a lion (and it is not stated that the oars and mast were changed into snakes). See also Ov. Met. 3. 605 ff.
Cadmos left Thebes. . . the Encheleans: resigning the throne to Pentheus; the reason for his departure is unclear. The Encheleans, like the Illyrians, lived in the western Balkans, north of Epirus.
into a snake: in hero-cult, a snake would often symbolize the hero or represent the form in which he supposedly manifested himself; but in late sources (e.g. Hyg. 6, cf. Ov. Met. 4. 562 ff.) it was suggested that the metamorphosis was a punishment for the murder of Ares’ dragon.
thought in much the same way: with regard to the Bacchants, presumably; but there is no record of that elsewhere. Polydoros became king after Pentheus was killed in the way described above, and he was succeeded by Labdacos. According to P. 9. 5. 2, Labdacos was a child when he came to the throne, and was placed under the guardianship of Nycteus and then of Lycos, but ruled briefly in his own right when he came of age (no reason is given for his death); and Lycos then became guardian of the young Laios.
as long as Laios remained a child: but Lycos never restored the throne to Laios, and the suggestion of a guardianship conflicts with the previous statement (confirmed below) that Lycos usurped the throne; perhaps a clumsy way of saying that Lycos initially took power as Laios’ guardian.
from Euboea . . . settled at Hyria: a problematic passage. Ap. gives two genealogies for Lycos and Nycteus. The present story is irreconcilable with that given just above, for if they were sons of Chthonios, a ‘Sown Man’ (see p. 100), they would be native-born Thebans and their presence in Thebes would need no explanation. But if they were sons of Hyrieus (as on p. 117, of Atlantid descent), they would have been born in Hyria (near Aulis in Boeotia) because their father was the eponymous king of the city, and would not have come there from elsewhere. Furthermore, since Phlegyas, whom they are said to have killed, was king of Orchomenos (P. 9. 36. 1), which lies on the mainland in Boeotia, and the brothers themselves had no known connection with Euboea, it is not clear why their killing of Phlegyas should have made them flee from Euboea. (Perhaps in the original story this explained why they left their native Hyria. There is a Euboean Lycos in Eur. Heracles.)
from there. . . to Thebes: following a suggestion by Heyne to fill a short gap in the text.
polemarch: military commander.
to Epopeus: a son of Aiolos’ daughter, Canace, p. 38, who left Thessaly for Sicyon (in the north-eastern Peloponnese near the Isthmus of Corinth), where he became king when the previous ruler died without children, see P. 2. 6. 1 ff.
killed himself: or according to P. 2. 6. 2, he himself attacked Epopeus, but was wounded, and gave the following orders before he died.
the stones followed. . . Amphion’s lyre: cf. AR 1. 735 ff. and P. 9. 5. 3 f. Homer tells of their fortification of Thebes, Od. 11. 260 ff., but not of the power of Amphion’s music; similar stories were told of Orpheus’ music, p. 30. These were the famous walls with the seven gates.