Hermion: not in the Hymn, but appropriate because there was said to be a chasm there that communicated with the Underworld (P. 2. 35. 7).

Thesmophoria: an autumn festival celebrated by women in honour of Demeter to ensure fertility of the crops. The jokes were of an obscene nature.

Praxithea: presumably Demophon’s nurse. In the Hymn(242 ff.) Metaneira keeps watch, and the child is not killed; Demeter merely places him on the ground and renounces her plan to make him immortal.

revealed her identity: and promised to teach the Eleusinians her rites (HH Dem. 273–4), which ensured the initiates a better lot in the afterlife.

she gave him wheat: knowledge of agriculture was revealed by Demeter at Eleusis and spread by Triptolemos throughout the inhabited world; a favourite theme in Athenian propaganda.

Kore: ‘the Maiden’, a cultic title for Persephone as worshipped in conjunction with her mother.

a pomegranate seed to eat: a visitor who takes food in the other world is obliged to stay there. Pomegranates were associated with blood and death.

Ascalaphos. . . bore witness against her: not in the Hymn, where Persephone herself tells Demeter that she has eaten in Hades (411 ff.) and the consequences follow necessarily from the action. On Ascalaphos see further p. 84 and note.

a third of every year: cf. HH Dem. 398 ff. The agricultural significance is evident: she departs in autumn and returns in spring. In later sources the year is commonly divided into equal parts (e.g. Hyg. 146, Ov. Met. 5. 564 ff.).

conceived by Ouranos: from the blood that dripped from his severed genitals, see p. 27 and note. Homer and Hesiod never refer to a battle between the gods and Giants; the earliest surviving references are in connection with Heracles’ involvement in it (Pind. Nem. 1. 67 ff., ps.-Hes. Shield28, cf. Theog. 954, part of a later addition to Hesiod’s text). The battle appears in vase-paintings by the end of the seventh century, and it may have been covered in an early epic, the Titanomachy.

thyrsos: a staff with a fir-cone ornament at the head, carried by Dionysos and others who engaged in his rites.

Nisyron: this explains the origin of Nisyros, a small island south of Cos; it was part of Cos until Poseidon broke it off with his trident (cf. Strabo 10. 5. 16).

Gration: probably corrupt, but the proposed corrections are uncertain; perhaps Aigaion.

Typhon: Hesiod offers a rather different account of his struggle with Zeus, in Theog. 820 ff.

a hundred dragons’ heads: following Theog. 824 ff, but in a confused manner, for there ‘a hundred heads of a serpent’ grow from his shoulders in place of a human head. The serpents’ coils beneath his thighs are derived from the standard depiction of him in the visual arts.

took flight to Egypt: the following story, first attested for Pindar (fr. 81 Bowra), explains why the Egyptians had gods in animal form. In the earliest full account (AL 28, following Nicander) Hermes, for example, turns into an ibis, and Artemis into a cat, identifying them with Thoth and Bast respectively.

Aigipan: ‘Goat-Pan’; some saw him as Pan himself in his quality as a goat, others as a separate figure.

ephemeral fruits: nothing further is known of them, but their effect is clearly the opposite of what the Fates suggested.

blood: haimain Greek, hence the name of Mount Haimos.

eruptions of fire: cf. Pind. Pyth. 1. 15 ff., [Aesch.] PV363 ff., and later, Ov. Met. 5. 352 ff; in all these sources Typhon himself is responsible for the eruptions.

fashioned men: not attested before the fourth century; in earlier sources, Prometheus is a benefactor of the human race, but not its creator (Hes. Theog. 510 ff. and WD48 ff., cf. [Aesch.] PV). It was commonly assumed at an early period that the first men sprang directly from the earth, and different areas would have their own ‘first man’, e.g. Phoroneus in Argos, see p. 58 and note.

fennel: the narthex or giant fennel (a relative of the British cow-parsley), whose stalks contain a slow-burning white pith; cf. Hes. Theog. 565 ff., WD50 ff.

as we will show: see p. 83.

Pandora . . . the first woman: described by Hesiod as a ‘beautiful evil’ (Theog. 585), she was moulded by Hephaistos on the orders of Zeus, as the price men would have to pay for having gained possession of fire (Theog. 569 ff. and WD60 ff). Epimetheus (‘Afterthought’), the brother of Prometheus, was foolish enough to accept her (WD83 ff, Theog. 511 ft).

the race of bronze: see Hes. WD143 ff., where the members of this violent primordial race are responsible for their own destruction; there is no mention of the flood there (or in Theog.). This is the best mythographical account; for an imaginative portrayal, see Ov. Met. 1. 260 ff. For another explanation of its cause, see p. 115.

laoi ... a stone: the same etymology is implied in Pind. ol. 9. 44–6; the two words were of separate origin. The story originally accounted for the origin of the local people only (the Locrian Leleges, Hes. Cat. fr. 234; the stone-throwing took place at Opous in east Locris, Pind. ol. 9. 43 ff.; but in Latin sources from Ovid onwards it is often suggested that Deucalion and Pyrrha were the only human beings to survive a universal flood). Here ‘metaphor’ means simply a transference of meaning (as often in Greek usage).

the Graicoi he named Hellenes: here the Hellenes are a Greek people who lived in southern Thessaly, as in the Iliad(2. 683, cf. 9. 395, although their name was later applied to the Greek race as a whole), and the Graicoi, a tribe who lived to the west of them in Epirus. For the present story, cf. Aristotle Meteorology352a32 ff. The Graicoi remained prominent in the west, and the Romans used their name as a general term for the Hellenes.