1617 (return) [ Van Lennep explains that Hecate, having no brothers to
support her claim, might have been slighted.]
1618 (return) [ The goddess of the _hearth_ (the Roman _Vesta_), and so
of the house. Cp. _Homeric Hymns_ v.22 ff.; xxxix.1 ff.]
1619 (return) [ 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.]
1620 (return) [ 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.]
1621 (return) [ 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.]
1622 (return) [ _sc_. Atlas, the Shu of Egyptian mythology: cp. note on
line 177.]
1623 (return) [ Oceanus is here regarded as a continuous stream
enclosing the earth and the seas, and so as flowing back upon himself.]
1624 (return) [ The conception of Oceanus is here different: he has
nine streams which encircle the earth and then 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.]
1625 (return) [ _i.e._ the threshold is of ‘native’ metal, and not
artificial.]
1626 (return) [ 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.]
1627 (return) [ The epithet (which means literally _well-bored_) seems
to refer to the spout of the crucible.]
1628 (return) [ The fire god. There is no reference to volcanic action:
iron was smelted on Mount Ida; cp. _Epigrams of Homer_, ix. 2-4.]
1629 (return) [ _i.e._ Athena, who was born ‘on the banks of the river
Trito’ (cp. l. 929l)]
1630 (return) [ Restored by Peppmuller. The nineteen following lines
from another recension of lines 889-900, 924-9 are quoted by Chrysippus
(in Galen).]
1631 (return) [ _sc_. the aegis. Line 929s is probably spurious, since
it disagrees with l. 929q and contains a suspicious reference to
Athens.]
1701 (return) [ A catalogue of heroines each of whom was introduced
with the words E OIE, ‘Or like her’.]