LOVE ROMANCES, TRANSLATED BY S. GASELEE
XXI. THE STORY OF PISIDICE
There is a story that Achilles, when he was sailing along and laying waste the islands close to the mainland, arrived at Lesbos, and there attacked each of its cities in turn and plundered it. But the inhabitants of Methymna held out against him very valiantly, and he was in great straits because he was unable to take the city, when a girl of Methymna named Pisidice, a daughter of the king, saw him from the walls and fell in love with him. Accordingly she sent him her nurse, and promised to put the town into his possession if he would take her to wife. At the moment, indeed, he consented to her terms; but when the town was now in his power he felt the utmost loathing for what she had done, and bade his soldiers stone her. The poet67 of the Founding of Lesbos relates this tragedy in these words: –
Achilles slew the hero Lampetus and Hicetaon (of Methymna son
And Lepteymnus, born of noble sires) and Helicaon’s brother, bold like him,
Hypsipylus, the strongest man alive. But lady Cypris laid great wait for him:
For she set poor Pisidice’s young heart a-fluttering with love for him, whenas
She saw him reveling in battle’s lust amid the Achaean champions; and full oft
Into the buxom air her arms she flung in craving for his love.
Then, a little further down, he goes on: –
Within the city straight the maiden brought the whole Achaean hosts, the city gates
Unbarring stealthily; yea, she endured with her own eyes to see her aged sires
Put to the sword, the chains of slavery about the women whom Achilles dragged
– So had he sworn – down to his ships: and all that she might sea-born Thetis’ daughter be,
The sons of Aeacus her kin, and dwell at Phthia, royal husband’s goodly spouse.
But it was not to be: he but rejoiced to see her city’s doom, while her befell
A sorry marriage with great Peleus’ son, poor wretch, at Argive hands; for her they slew,
Casting great stones upon her, one and all.
67. Probably, though not quite certainly, Apollonius of Rhodes.
XXII. THE STORY OF NANIS
From the lyrics of Licymnius68 of Chios and from Hermesianax69
The story has been told that the citadel of Sardis was captured by Cyrus, the king of the Persians, through its betrayal by Nanis, the daughter of Croesus. Cyrus was besieging Sardis, and none of the devices he employed resulted in the capture of the city: he was indeed in great fear that Croesus would get together again an army of allies and would come and destroy the blockading force. Then (so the story went) this girl, Nanis, made an agreement to betray the place to Cyrus if he would take her to wife according to the customs of the Persians; she got together some helpers and let in the enemy by the extreme summit of the citadel, a place where no guards were posted owing to its natural strength. Cyrus, however, refused to perform the promise which he had made to her.
68. A dithyrambic poet of the third century B.C.
69. See titles of No. V.
XXIII. THE STORY OF CHILONIS
Cleonymus of Sparta, who was of royal stock and had done great things for the Lacedaemonians, took to wife his kinswoman Chilonis. He loved her with a great love – his was no gentle passion – but she despised him, and gave her whole heart to Acrotatus, the son of the king. Indeed the stripling let the fire of his love shew openly, so that all men were talking of their intrigue; wherefore Cleonymus, being sorely vexed, and having besides no liking for the Lacedaemonians and their ways, crossed over the Pyrrhus in Epirus and advised him to attack the Peloponnese; if they prosecuted the war vigorously, he said they would without difficulty storm the Lacedaemonian cities; and he added that he had already prepared the ground, so that in many of the cities there would be a revolt in his favour.70
70. The latter part of the story is missing. It appears from the account given by Plutarch (in the Life of Pyrrhus) that during the siege of Sparta by Pyrrhus, Chilonis made ready a halter, in order never to fall into Cleonymus’ hands alive, but that the siege was raised first by the personal valour of Acrotatus, and then by the arrival of his father, King Areus, from Crete with reinforcements.
XXIV. THE STORY OF HIPPARINUS
Hipparinus, tyrant of Syracuse, felt a great affection for a very fair boy named Achaeus, and, by means of presents71 of varying kinds, persuaded him to leave his home and stay with him in his palace. Some little time after, the news was brought to him of a hostile incursion into one of the territories belonging to him, and he had to go with all speed to help his subjects. When he was starting, he told the boy that if anyone of the courtiers offered violence to him, he was to stab him with the dagger which he had given him as a present. Hipparinus met his enemies and inflicted on them an utter defeat, and celebrating his victory by deep potations of wine and by banqueting: then, heated with the wine and by desire to see the lad, he rode off at full gallop to Syracuse. Arriving at the house where he had bidden the boy to stay, he did not tell him who he was, but, putting on a Thessalian72 accent, cried out that he had killed Hipparinus: it was dark, and the boy, in his anger and grief, struck him and gave him a mortal wound. He lived for three days, acquitted Achaeus of the guilt of his death, and then breathed his last.
71. The meaning of exallagmasi is a little doubtful. It may either be “entertainments,” or “changes, variation of gifts.”
72. Parthenius has not mentioned the nationality of the enemy, and it seems doubtful whether Thessalians would be likely to come into conflict with a Sicilian monarch. Meineke proposed psellizôn, "stammering, lisping.”
XXV. THE STORY OF PHAYLLUS
The tyrant Phayllus74 fell in love with the wife of Ariston, chief75 of the Oetaeans: he sent envoys to her, with promises of much silver and gold, and told them to add that if there were anything else which she wanted, she should not fail of her desire. Now she had a great longing for a necklace that was at that time hanging in the temple76 of Athene the goddess of Forethought: it was said formerly to have belonged to Eriphyle77; and this was the present for which she asked. Phayllus took a great booty of the offerings at Delphi, the necklace among the rest: it was sent to the house of Ariston, and for some considerable time the woman wore it, and was greatly famed for so doing. But later she suffered a fate very similar to that of Eriphyle: her youngest son went mad and set fire to their house, and in the course of the conflagration both she and a great part of their possessions were consumed.
73. See title of No. XV.
74. Of Phocis.
75. prostates might also mean that he was the protector or consul of the Oetaeans in Phocis. But Oeta is a wild mountain-range, the inhabitants of which would hardly be so highly organized as to have a representative in foreign cities.
76. At Delphi.
77. The expedition of the Seven against Thebes could not be successful without the company of Amphiaraus, whom his wife Eriphyle, bribed by a necklace, persuaded to go. He there met his end, and was avenged by his son Alcmaeon, who killed his mother.
XXVI. THE STORE OF APRIATE
From the Thrax of Euphorion78
Trambelus the son of Telamon fell in love with a girl named Apriate in Lesbos. He used every effort to gain her: but, as she shewed no signs at all of relenting, he determined to win her by strategy and guile. She was walking one day with her attendant handmaids to one of her father’s domains which was by the seashore, and there he laid an ambush for her and made her captive; but she struggled with the greatest violence to protect her virginity, and at last Trambelus in fury threw her into the sea, which happened at that point to be deep inshore. Thus did she perish; the story has, however, been related by others79 in the sense that she threw herself in while fleeing from his pursuit. It was not long before divine vengeance fell upon Trambelus: Achilles was ravaging Lesbos80 and carrying away great quantities of booty, and Trambelus got together a company of the inhabitants of the island, and went out to meet him in battle. In the course of it he received a wound in the breast and instantly fell to the ground; while he was still breathing, Achilles, who had admired his valour, inquired of his name and origin. When he was told that he was the son of Telamon,81 he bewailed him long and deeply, and piled up a great barrow for him on the beach: it is still called “the hero Trambelus’ mound.”
78. See title of No. XIII.
79. i.e. by Aristocritus, writer on the early history of Miletus. See title of No. XI.
80. See No. XXI., 1.
81. The brother of his own father Peleus.
XXVII. THE STORY OF ALCINOE
From the Curses of Moero82
Alcinoe, so the story goes, was the daughter of Polybus of Corinth and the wife of Amphilochus the son of Dryas; by the wrath of Athene she became infatuated with a stranger from Samos, named Xanthus. This was the reason of her visitation: she had hired a woman named Nicandra to come and spin for her, but after she had worked for her for a year, she turned her out of her house without paying her the full wages she had promised, and Nicandra had earnestly prayed Athene to avenge her for the unjust withholding of her due.83 Thus afflicted, Alcinoe reached such a state that she left her home and the little children she had borne to Amphilochus, and sailed away with Xanthus; but in the middle of the voyage she came to realise what she had done. She straightway shed many tears, calling often, now upon her young husband and now upon her children, and though Xanthus did his best to comfort her, saying that he would make her his wife, she would not listen to him, but threw herself into the sea.
82. Or Myro, of Byzantium, a poetess of about 250 B.C., daughter of the tragedian Homerus. She wrote epigrams (we have two in the Palatine Anthology), and epic and lyric poetry. Such poems as the Dirae were not uncommon in the Alexandrine period – invective against an enemy illustrated by numerous mythological instances. We have an example surviving in Ovid’s Ibis.
83. Deuteronomy xxiv. 14: “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, . . . at his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee.”
XXVIII. THE STORY OF CLITE
From the Apollodorus of Euphorion84: the latter part from the first book of the Argonautica85 of Apollonius
There are various forms of the story of Cyzicus the son of Aeneus.86 Some have told how he married Larisa the daughter of Piasus, with whom her father had to do before she was married, and afterwards died in battle; others, how when he had but recently married Clite, he met in battle (not knowing who his adversaries were ) the heroes who were sailing with Jason in the Argo; and that his fall in this combat caused the liveliest regret to all, but to Clite beyond all measure. Seeing him lying dead, she flung her arms round him and bewailed him sorely, and then at night she avoided the watch of her serving-maids and hung herself from a tree.
84. See title of No. XIII.
86. Probably corrupt. Aineôs and Ainou have been suggested.
XXIX. THE STORY OF DAPHNIS
From the Sicelica of Timaeus87
In Sicily was born Daphnis the son of Hermes, who was skilled in playing on the pipes and also exceedingly beautiful. He would never frequent the places where men come together, but spent his life in the open, both winter and summer, keeping his herds on the slopes of Etna. The nymph Echenais, so the story runs, fell in love with him, and bade him never have to do with mortal woman; if he disobeyed, his fate would be to lose his eyes. For some considerable time he stood out strongly against all temptation, although not a few women were madly in love with him; but at last one of the Sicilian princesses worked his ruin by plying him with much wine, and so brought him to the desire to consort with her. Thus he, too, like Thamyras88 the Thracian, was thenceforward blind through his own folly.
87. Of Tauromenium or Taormina, the historian of early Sicily, about B.C. 300.
88. Or Thamyris, a mythical poet, who entered into a contest with the Muses, and was blinded on his defeat.
XXX. THE STORY OF CELTINE
Hercules, it is told, after he had taken the kine of Geryones89 from Erythea, was wandering through the country of the Celts and came to the house of Bretannus, who had a daughter called Celtine. Celtine fell in love with Hercules and hid away the kine, refusing to give them back to him unless he would first content her. Hercules was indeed very anxious to bring the kine safe home, but he was far more struck by the girl’s exceeding beauty, and consented to her wishes; and then, when the time had come round, a son called Celtus was born to them, from whom the Celtic race derived their name.
89. Or Geryon, who was supposed to have lived in Spain. This one one of the twelve labours of Hercules.
XXXI. THE STORY OF DIMOETES
Dimoetes is said to have married his brother Troezen’s daughter, Evopis, and afterwards, seeing that she was afflicted with a great love for her own brother, and was consorting with him, he informed Troezen; the girl hung herself for fear and shame, first calling down every manner of curse on him who was the cause of her fate. It was not long before Dimoetes came upon the body of a most beautiful woman thrown up by the sea, and he conceived the most passionate desire for her company; but soon the body, owing to the period of time since her death, began to see corruption, and he piled up a huge barrow for her; and then, as even so his passion was in no wise relieved, he killed himself at her tomb.
90. See title of No. XV.
XXXII. THE STORY OF ANTHIPPE
Among the Chaonians91 a certain youth of most noble birth fell in love with a girl named Anthippe; he addressed her with every art to attempt her virtue, and indeed she too was not untouched by love for the lad, and soon they were taking their fill of their desires unknown to their parents. Now on one occasion a public festival was being celebrated by the Chaonians, and while all the people were feasting, the young pair slipped away and crept under a certain bush. But it so happened that the king’s son, Cichyrus, was hunting a leopard; the beast was driven into the same thicket, and he hurled his javelin at it; he missed it, but hit the girl. Thinking that he had hit his leopard, he rode up; but when he saw the lad trying to staunch the girl’s wound with his hands, he lost his senses, flung away and finally fell off his horse down a precipitous and stony ravine. There he perished; but the Chaonians, to hnoour their king, put a wall round the place and gave the name of Cichyrus to the city so founded. The story is also found in some authorities that the thicket in question was sacred to Epirus, the daughter of Echion; she had left Boeotia and was journeying with Harmonia and Cadmus,92 bearing the remains of Pentheus; dying there, she was buried in this thicket. That is the reason that country was named Epirus, after her.
91. A people in the north-west of Epirus, supposed to be descended from Chaon, the son of Priam.
92. Cadmus = Harmonia – [Agave] = Echion – Pentheus and Epirus. Agave with the rest of the Bacchants had torn Pentheus in pieces as punishment for his blasphemy against the worship of Dionysus.
XXXIII. THE STORY OF ASSAON
From the Lydiaca of Xanthus,93 the second book of Neanthes,94 and Simmias95 of Rhodes
The story of Niobe is differently told by various authorities; some, for instance, say that she was not the daughter of Tantalus, but of Assaon, and the wife of Philottus; and for having had her dispute with Leto about the beauty of their children, her punishment was as follows: Philottus perished while hunting; Assaon, consumed with love for his own daughter, desired to take her to wife; on Niobe refusing to accede to his desires, he asked her children to a banquet, and there burned them all to death. As a result of this calamity, she flung herself from a high rock; Assaon, when he came to ponder upon these his sins, made away with himself.
93. The historican of Lycia, fifth century B.C.
94. Of Cyzicus.
95. An early Alexandrine poet. We possess various techopaegnia by him in the Palatine Anthology – poems written in the shape of a hatchet, an egg, an altar, wings, panpipes, etc.
XXXIV. THE STORY OF CORYTHUS
From the second book of Hellanicus’ 96 Troica, and from Cephalon97 of Gergitha
Of the union of Oenone and Alexander98 was born a boy named Corythus. He came to Troy to help the Trojans, and there fell in love with Helen. She indeed received him with the greatest warmth – he was of extreme beauty – but his father discovered his aims and killed him. Nicander99 however says that he was the son, not of Oenone, but of Helen and Alexander, speaking of him as follows: –
There was the tomb of fallen Corythus,
Whom Helen bare, the fruit of marriage-rape,
In bitter woe, the Herdsman’s100 evil brood.
96. Of Mytilene, an historian contemporary with Herodotus and Thucydides.
97. See title of No. IV.
98. This story is thus a continuation of No. IV. Another version of the legend is that Oenone, to revenge herself on Paris, sent Corythus to guide the Greeks to Troy.
99. See title of No. IV.
XXXV. THE STORY OF EULIMENE
In Crete Lycastus fell in love with Eulimene, the daughter of Cydon, though her father had already betrothed her to Apterus, who was at that time the most famous man among the Cretans; and he used to consort with her without the knowledge of her father and her intended spouse. But when some o the Cretan cities revolted against Cydon, and easily withstood his attacks, he sent ambassadors to inquire of the oracle by what course of action he could get the better of his enemies, and the answer was given him that he must sacrifice a virgin to the heroes worshiped in the country. Cydon, on hearing the oracle’s reply, cast lots upon all the virgins of his people, and, as the gods would have it, the fatal lot fell upon his own daughter. Then Lycastus, in fear for her life, confessed that he had corrupted her and had indeed been her lover for a long time; but the assembly only voted all the more inflexibly101 that she must die. After she had been sacrificed, Cydon told the priest to cut through her belly by the navel, and this done she was found to be with child. Apterus considering himself mortally injured by Lycastus, laid an ambush and murdered him: and for that crime was obliged to go into exile and flee to the court of Xanthus at Termera.102
101. Not, I think, as a punishment for her unchastity: they thought that Lycastus was trying to save her life by a trumped-up-story.
102. In Lycia.
XXXVI. THE STORY OF ARGANTHONE
From the first book of the Bithyniaca of Asclepiades103 of Myrlea
Rhesus, so the story goes, before he went to help Troy, travelled over many countries, subduing tem and imposing contributions; and in the course of his career he came to Cius,104 attracted by the fame of a beautiful woman called Arganthone. She had no taste for indoor life and staying at home, but she got together a great pack of hounds and used to hunt, never admitting anybody to her company. When Rhesus came to this place, he made no attempt to take her by force; he professed to desire to hunt with her, saying that he, like her, hated the company of men; and she was delighted at what he said, believing that he was speaking the truth. After some considerable time had passed, she fell deeply in love with him: at first, restrained by shame, she would not confess her affection; but then, her passion growing stronger, she took courage to tell him, and so by mutual consent he took her to wife. Later on, when the Trojan war broke out, the princes on the Trojan side sent to fetch him as an ally; but Arganthone, either because of her very great love for him, or because she somehow knew the future, would not let him go. But Rhesus could not bear the thought of becoming soft and unwarlike by staying at home. He went to Troy, and there, fighting at the river now called Rhesus after him, was wounded by Diomed and died. Arganthone, when she heard of his death, went once more to the place where they had first come together, and wandering about there called unceasingly “Rhesus, Rhesus”; and at last, refusing all meat and drink for the greatness of her grief, passed away from among mankind.
103. A grammarian, who probably lived at Pergamus in the first century B.C.
104. A town in Bithynia.
105. If he could once have got his horses into Troy, the town would have been impregnable: but he was surprised and killed on the first night of his arrival.
The Scholiast on Pindar’s Isthmians ii. 68.
Parthenius in his Arete uses anneme for anagnôthi “read.”
Hephaestion,1 Enchiridion, p. 6 .9.
Parthenius wrote a dirge on Archelais in elegiacs, but made the last line, in which he had to introduce the name of the his subject, an iambic instead of a pentameter: Holy and undefiled shall the name of Archelais be.
Stephanus2 of Byzantium, p. 56. 10.
Parthenius in his Aphrodite3 calls her4 Acamantis.
Choeroboscus,5 Scholia on the Canons of Theodosius, p. 252. 24.
Parthenius in his poem on Bias shows that the a in hilaos is long, when he says: Do thou graciously accept the funeral pyre. The metre is elegiac.
The Townley Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad 9. 446.
“Stripping off old age”: the lengthening [of the u of apoxusas] is Attic [Ionic, Meineke]. At any rate in his Bias Parthenius wrote: “Who sharpened spears against men,” [with the u in exusen short.]
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 213. 10.
The expression Apollo of Gryni6 is also found, as in the Delos of Parthenius.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 705. 14.
Parthenius of Nicaea in his Delos: With whom [I swear also by] Tethys7 and the water of ancient8 Styx.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 161. 18.
Parthenius in his Delos: Nor the distant lands9 of the far-off Beledonii.10
Etymologicum genuinum,11 s.v. Arpus:
Love. So used by Parthenius in his Crinagoras12: Love, the Spoiler, leaped upon both and plundered them. So called from his spoiling the understanding.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 324. 19.
Parthenius in his Leucadiae13: He shall sail along the Iberian shore.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 381. 16.
The Cranides: a settlement in Pontus. So used by Parthenius in his Anthippe.14
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 409. 15.
Lampeia: a mountain in Arcadia. So used by Parthenius in his Anthippe.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 197. 19.
Gallesium: a town (al. a mountain) near Ephesus. So sued by Parthenius in his Dirge on Auxithemis.
Apollonius15 on Pronouns, p. 92. 20.
The plurals too are ordinarily used in the nominative in Ionic and Attic in the forms hêmeis, humeis, spheis: but he uncontracted form of the nominative is also established in the Ionic writers of the school of Democritus, Pherecydes, Hectaeus. The expression Do all of you (humées) bathe Aeolius16 in the Idolophanes of Parthenius must only be ascribed to poetic licence, and cannot be considered as belying the rule of the language established by the classical writers.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 339. 14.
The feminine adjective Issas is used by Parthenius in his Hercules as en epithet of Lesbos.17
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 486. 18
Oenone: an island in the Cyclades. Those who live there are called Oenomaeans, as found in the Hercules of Parthenius.
Etymologicum genuinum, s.v. auroschas:
The vine: used by Parthenius in his Hercules: The vinecluster of the daughter of Icarius.18
Etymologicum magnum, s.v. erischêlos:
Parthenius in his Hercules speaks of The railing bearers of clubs.19
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 109. 21.
Parthenius in his Iphiclus20: And sea-girt Araphea.
The Scholiast on Dinysius Periegetes,21 l. 420.
As Parthenius says in his Metamorphoses: Minos took Megara by the help of Scylla the daughter of Nisus; she fell in love with him and cut off her father’s fateful lock22 of hair and thus betrayed him; but Minos thought that one who had betrayed her father would certainly have no pity upon anybody else, so he tied her to the rudder of his ship and let her drag after him through the sea, until the maiden was changed into a bird.23
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 401. 18.
Corycus: a city in Cilicia, mentioned by Parthenius in his Propempticon.24
Stephanus of Byzantium quoted by Eustathius on Homer’s Iliad 2. 712.
There is a village in Cilicia called Glaphyrae, thirty furlongs to the west of Tarsus, where there is a spring that rises from a cleft rock and joins the river25 that flows towards Tarsus. Among what Parthenius writes about it are the following lines: . . . A maiden26 who held the lordship among the Cilicians: and she was night to the time of wedlock, and she doted upon pure27 Cydnus, fawning within her a spark from the innermost altar of Cypris’ fane, until Cypris turned her into a spring, and made in love a watery match betwixt Cydnus and the maid.28
Etymologicum genuinum, s.v. Aôos:
A river in Cyprus . . . There was a mountain called Aoïan, from which flowed two rivers, the Setrachus and the Aplieus, and one29 of them Parthenius called the Aous.
Or because its30 flow was towards the East (êôs), as Parthenius says of it: Hurrying from the Corycian31 hills, which were in the East.
Etymologicum genuinum, s.v. drupselon:
Peel, husk. Parthenius uses it in such an expression as Nor would she (?) furnish peelings of Pontic32 root. The derivation is from druptô, to scrape, which is the same as to peel: drupselon is the scraped-off husk.
Parthenius also uses drupselon, a scraping, as a term of contempt for the leaf of the parsley.
Pollianus33 in the Palatine Anthology xi. 130:
I hate the cyclic34 poets, who begin every sentence with “But then in very deed,” plunderers of others’ epics; and that is why I give more time to the elegists, for there is nothing that I could wish to steal from Parthenius, or again from Callimachus.35 May I become like “a beast with long, long ears” if I ever write of "green swallow-wort from out the river-beds”: but the epic writers pillage Homer so shamelessly that they do not scruple to put down “Sing, Muse, Achilles’ wrath.”
Etymologicum genuinum, s.v. Herkunios drumos.
The Hercynian36 forest: that inside Italy. So Apollonius in the fourth book37 of his Argonautica and Parthenius: But when he set forth from that western Hercynian land.
Parthenius, Love Romances xi. 4
Aulus Gellius,38 Noctes Atticae xiii. 22 (al. 26).
Of the lines of Homer and Parthenius which Virgil seems to have imitated. The line To Glaucus and Nereus and the sea-god Melicertes is from the poet Parthenius: this line Virgil copied, and produced a translation, changing two words with the most exquisite taste: “To Glaucus and Nereus and Melicertes, Ino’s son.”
Macrobius,39 Saturnalia v. 18.
The following verse is by Parthenius, who was Virgil’s tutor in Greek: To Glaucus and Nereus and Melicertes, Ino’s son.
The Scholiast on Dionysius Periegetes, l. 456.
There40 are the columns of Hercules; but Parthenius calls them the columns of Briareus41; And he left us a witness of his journey to Gades, taking awy from them their ancient name of old time Briareus.42
Choroeboscus, Scholia on the Canons of Theodosius, p. 252. 21,
Hilaos with the a short, as in Parthenius: Be favourable (hilaos),43 O Hymenaeus.
Etymologicum Gudianum, s.v. argeiphontês:44
An epithet applied to Hermes in Homer and many other writers: in Sophocles to Apollo as well, and in Parthenius to Telephus.45
Apollonius Dyscolus on Adverbs, p. 127. 5.
The full phrase46 is ô emoi, just as we find in Parthenius: Woe is me (ô eme) [that I am suffering] all too much.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 643. 22.
Typhrestus, a city in Trachis,47 so called either from the ashes (tephra) of Hercules or from Typhrestus the son of Spercheius. The gentile adjective is Typhrestius, which Parthenius uses in the neuter: The Typhrestian height.
Etymologicum genuinum, s.v. deikelon:
Also deikêlon, meaning an image or likeness. It is found with an ê, and also as deikelon in Parthenius: The image of Iphigenia.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 176. 19.
When words ending in -ites are derived from words ending in -os, they are one syllable longer than their originals, as topitês from topos, and Adonis48 is called Canopites (of Canopus) by Parthenius.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 202. 7.
Genea: a village in the territory of Corinth; a man who lives there is called Geneates . . . Some call the women of it Geneiades, as does Parthenius. Some write the name of the village with a T, Tenea.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 266. 13.
[Elephantine49: a city of Egypt;] but Parthenius calls it Elephantis.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 273. 3.
Epidamnus: a city of Illyria . . . The gentile derivative is Epidamnius, but it is also found in Parthenius with a diphthong, Epidamneius.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 424. 19.
Magnesia; a city on the Meaender, and the surrounding country . . . The citizen of it is called Magnes . . . the feminine Magnessa in Callimachus, Magnesis in Parthenius, and Megnetis in Sophocles.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 463. 14.
Myrcinus: a place and the city on the river Strymon. The gentile derivatives are Myrcinius and Myrcinia, the latter called Myrcinnia by Parthenius.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 465. 7.
Some [say that Mytilene was so named] from Myton the son of Poseidon and Mytilene. Whence Callimachus in his fourth book calls Lesbos Mytonis and Parthenius calls the women of Lesbos Mytonides.
Etymologicum genuinum, s.v. droitê.
A bathing-tub. The Aetolian poet50 so calls a cradle in which nurses put children: Parthenius and Aeschylus51 use it for a bier.
Choeroboscus on Orthography (Cramer’s Anecdota Oxoniensia, ii. 266. 10).
Taucheira spelt with an ei though it is also found without the i in Parthenius, who uses Taucherius as the gentile derivative.
Cyril’s52 Lexicon (Cramer’s Anecdota Parisiensia iv. 191. 31).
Taucheira: a city of Libya . . . Parthenius at any rate uses the form Taucherius [in the genitive plural].
Etymologicum genuinum, s.v. êlainô.53
To be mad. The expression êlainousa, wandering, is found in Parthenius.
Stephanus of Byzantium, p. 472. 4.
Nemausus, a city of Gaul, so-called from Nemausus, one of the Heraclidae, as Parthenius54 tells us.
[Lucius Caecilius Minutianus Apuleius on Orthography,55 §. 64.
But Phaedra in anger accused Hippolytus to his father of having made an attempt upon her virtue. He cursed his son, and the curses were fulfilled; he was torn to pieces by his own horses which had gone mad. This is the description of the vengeance that overtook him and his sister given by Lupus Anilius. The same description is given (?) in the tragedy called Helen: Parthenius relates it differently.]
1. Of Alexandria, a writer on metre in the age of the Antonines.
2. A geographical writer of the late fifth or early sixth century A.D.
3. Also mentioned by Suidas as among the elegiac poems of Parthenius.
4. i.e. Aphrodite.
5. George Choeroboscus, a professor at the University of Constantinople, of doubtful date: Krumbacher remarks that “he lived nearer to the sixth than the tenth century.” The “Canons of Theodosius” are a collection of commentaries on the school of grammar of Dionysius Thrax – they can hardly be ascribed to Theodosius of Alexandria himself, who lived not long after 400 A.D. To them we owe the non-existent forms (e.g. etupon) of the paradigms of our youth.
6. Stephanus describes this as a little city belonging to the people of Myrina (in Mysia, on the Eleatic gulf). Virgil (Aen. iv. 345) also uses the expression Grynaeus Apollo.
7. A sea-goddess, wife of Oceanus.
8. Stephanus explains Ogenus as an ancient deity. The word is also supposed to be a form of ôkeanos.
9. Or perhaps “the mountain-tops.”
10. Explained by Stephanus as an ethnos par’ ôkeanô. Ihm identifies them with the Belendi, a people of Aquitaine, mentioned by the Elder Pliny in his Natural History iv. 108.
11. The smaller original of our Etymologicum magnum.
12. Perhaps addressed to the elegiac poet Crinagoras of Mitylene, who “lived at Rome as a sort of court poet during the latter part of the reign of Augustus.” (Mackail.)
13. Leucadia is an island, formerly a peninsular, in the Ionian Sea, opposite Acarnania. The plural form of the title is doubtful.
14. Parthenius may possibly have treated in his Anthippe the story he has related in ch. xxxii. of his Romances. But another Anthippe is also known (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca ii. 162).
15. Apollonius Dyscolus of Alexandria, a famous grammarian of the time of Marcus Aurelius.
16. It is not even certain whether this is a proper name. There was an Aeolius among the wooers of Hippodamia.
17. Stephanus explains that Issa was a town in Lesbos called successively Himera, Pelasgia, and Issa.
18. Erigone. For her connexion with Bacchus and wine see Hyginus, Fab. 130.
19. See korunêtês and korunêphoros in Liddel and Scott’s Lexicon.
20. More than one Iphiclus was known to Greek mythology. The most celebrated was one of the Argonauts.
21. A geographer who wrote in verse in the second century A.D. The scholia probably date from the fourth or fifth century.
22. A purple lock: as long as it was intact on his head, no enemy could prevail against him.
23. For a slightly different version of the story, in which Scylla becomes the sea-monster so well known to us in epic poetry, see Hyginus Fab. 198.
24. Properly, a poem written to accompany or escort a person, or to wish him good cheer on his way, like Horace Odes i. 3, Sic te diva potens Cypri.
25. The Cydnus.
26. Her name appears to have been Comaetho.
27. Because of his cold, clear waters.
28. Some have suspected that this fragment comes from Parthenius’ Metamorphoses (cf. frg. 20): but this is quite doubtful, and it is likely that the Metamorphoses were written in hexameters.
29. The Setrachus. This fragment has something to do with Adonis (cf. frg. 37), of whom Aous was another name: the Setrachus was the scene of the loves of Venus and Adonis.
30. This is rather confusing, because Parthenius is now speaking not of Aous in Cyprus, but of another river of the same name in Cilicia.
31. cf. frg. 21
32. The famous poisons of Colchis.
33. Perhaps a grammarian, and of about the time of Hadrian. But nothing is certainly known of him.
34. Strictly, the cyclic poets were the continuers of Homer and the poets of the “cycle” of Troy. But here all the modern epic writers are doubtless included, as in the famous poem (Anth. Pal. xii. 42) in which Callimachus is believed to have attacked Apollonius of Rhodes, Echthainô to poiêma to kuklikon.
35. Lucian also couples Callimachus with our author.
36. The Hercynian forest known to history was in Germany, between the Black Forest and the Hartz. But it appears that in early days all the wooded mountains of central Europe were called Hercynian by the ancients, and that the use of the word was afterwards narrowed down.
37. l. 640.
38. A dilettante scholar of the middle and end of the second century A.D., interested in many points of Latin literary criticism.
39. Macrobius lived at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries, and often (as in this instance) founded his work on that of Aulus Gellius. He has altered the line of Parthenius into closer conformity with the Virgilian imitation, so belying Gellius’ evidence, who tells us that two words were changed.
40. At Cadiz.
41. The famous Titan with an hundred arms.
42. As the quotation is about Hercules, some have wished it to refer to the poem from which frgg. 15-18 are taken.
43. cf. frg. 4. The words in the present passage would probably come from an Epithalamium.
44. An epithet which used to be translated “slayer of Argus,” but now supposed to mean “bright-appearing.”
45. Son of Hercules and king of Mysia. He was wounded before Troy by the spear of Achilles, and afterwards healed by means of the rust of the same weapon.
46. Of which ômoi or oimoi is the shortened form.
47. In central Greece, on the borders of Doris and Locris: it contained Mount Oeta, where Hercules ascended his pyre. It is thus just possible that this fragment, like 15-18, also comes from the Hercules of Parthenius.
48. cf. frg. 23, which also seems to refer to Adonis.
49. The town on the island just north of Syene or Assouan.
50. Alexander Aetolus: see Love Romances xiv.
51. Agamemnon 1540.
52. A lexicon ascribed to St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria.
53. To wander, and so, to be wandering in mind.
54. Meineke thought that this might perhaps refer to the other Parthenius, of Phocaea.
55. This work is a forgery by Caelius Rhodiginus, Professor at Ferrara 1508-1512, so that we need not consider the points raised by the quotation.