by the River Thermodon: in north-eastern Asia Minor.

pressed down: exethlibon: suggesting compression rather than removal. According to the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places, 17, an Amazon mother would apply a hot iron to her daughter’s breast while she was still a child to prevent it from growing; similarly DS 2. 45. 3 (who cites the common etymology that they are called Amazons because they are ‘without a breast’, a-mazos).

the belt of Ares: this zoster—which came from the god of war— would be a heavy warrior’s belt, not a woman’s girdle (zone), although it sometimes seems to have been taken as such in the later tradition (as Admete’s desire to possess it may imply). In AR 2. 966 ff. Heracles captures Melanippe, the queen’s sister, in an ambush and obtains the belt as a ransom; or he captures Melanippe, their commander, after killing many Amazons in battle, and then ransoms her for the belt, DS 4. 16. 1 ff.

Lycos, and when Lycos: added to fill a short gap in the text; his kingdom lay in the north-western corner of Asia Minor, and the land of his enemies the Bebryces (later Bithynia) to the north-west of that. On Amycos, see also p. 51.

undertaken to fortify Pergamon: see Il. 7. 452 ff. and 21. 441 ff. (in the latter Apollo serves as a herdsman). They were acting on the bidding of Zeus, 21. 444, apparently as a punishment for their attempted revolt against Zeus (see Il. 1. 398 ff., where Apollo is not mentioned; cf. sc. Il. 21. 444). In Il. 21. 453 ff, not only does Laomedon refuse to pay, but he threatens to tie them up, sell them into slavery, and cut off their ears.

to Tros: added for clarity, cf. Il. 5. 265 ff; he was Laomedon’s grandfather. On Ganymede see p. 123.

at some future time: for his attack on Troy, see p. 86.

three men joined into one: in Theog. 287 he is merely three-headed; but in Aesch. Agamemnon870 he is three-bodied, and in Stesichorus (mid-sixth century, as reported by sc. Theog. 287) he is six-handed and six-footed (and winged).

killed many savage beasts: the killing of wild beasts, and of foreigners who are hostile to strangers, is an important part of Heracles’ activity as a furtherer of civilization (or as a hero who made the world safe for Greek colonization). Diodorus is much more informative on this aspect of Heracles (see DS 4. 17. 3 ff. for the taming of Crete and Libya).

two pillars: these marked the boundaries of the inhabited world, oikoumene, to the west, as did those of Dionysos, p. 102, to the east; commonly identified with Gibraltar and Ceuta on either side of the entry to the Mediterranean.

a golden cup: the Sun passed from east to west across the sky, from sunrise to sunset, in a fiery chariot, and sailed back again in this golden cup by way of the Ocean (which encircles the earth). We are to imagine that Erytheia, the Red Isle, lies in the Ocean beyond Spain. Hdt. 4. 8 placed it near Cadiz, and it was later identified with Cadiz (Gadeira) as Ap. remarks above.

Rhegion: or Rhegium, now Reggio, at the toe of Italy, was a Greek colony, although its name was not of Greek origin. Here it is said to owe its name to the fact that the bull aporrhegnusi, breaks free there (from amongst Geryon’s cattle). DS 4. 21–4 includes a mass of Italian and Sicilian material which Ap. characteristically ignores.

called the bull italus: Heracles asked the local people if they had seen the calf anywhere, and when he heard them talking about it in their own language, he gave the name Italy to the country that it had passed through, after vitulus, the Latin for a calf (Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. Rom. 1. 35, following Hellanicos).

unless Heracles defeated him: or they fought on the terms that if Heracles was victorious, he would take the land, but if Eryx was, he would take all the cattle of Geryon (DS 4. 23. 2, P. 3. 16. 4 f.). In the early fifth century, Dorieus, a member of the Spartan royal family which was supposedly descended from Heracles, went to Sicily and laid claim to the land on these grounds (P. 3. 16. 4, cf. Hdt. 5. 41 ff.).

the gulf: the Adriatic.

golden apples from the Hesperides: according to Pherecydes, Ge gave apple trees bearing golden fruit to Hera as a wedding present, and Hera ordered that they should be planted in the garden of the gods near Mount Atlas (sc. AR 4. 1396, Hyg. PA3). In Theog. (213 ff.) the Hesperides, the nymphs of the evening who helped guard the fruit, were daughters of Night (but subsequent accounts vary).

in the land of the Hyperboreans: a mythical people who lived in the far north. Although Ap. rejects the tradition that the Hesperides lay in the west, that was certainly their original location; their name alone is sufficient to associate them with the evening, and thus the sunset and the west, and Atlas too was commonly associated with the western end of North Africa. In the present version (cf. DS 4. 26. 2 ff.) Heracles’ journey takes him to all points of the compass; he passes through Italy to Libya and the west, then east again to Egypt, and south to Arabia, and finally north on the eastern Ocean to the Caucasus and beyond.

to avenge him . . . engaged him in single combat: interpreting the phrase Areos de touton ekdikountos kai sunistantos monomachiain a different sense, Frazer translates, ‘Ares championed the cause of Cycnos and marshalled the combat,’ which would allow us to assume that the text is complete, but in the present translation I have followed the example of Carriere, who argues that there is a short gap beforehand and that Ap.’s account originally accorded with that in Hyg. 31; there Heracles kills Cycnos in single combat, but when Ares is about to attack him to avenge the death of his son, Zeus hurls a thunderbolt to separate Heracles and Ares. Frazer’s version raises serious problems; in all other accounts of the story (including Ap.’s second version of it on p. 90), Heracles kills Cycnos (cf. Hes. Shield 416ff. and Stesichorus in sc. Pind. ol. 10. 19), and the story seems altogether pointless if he does not. And it is hard to see why Zeus should intervene to protect Cycnos. (A discussion of the points of language can be found in Carriere’s note.) It should be mentioned, however, that there is some evidence from sixth-century vase-paintings that there may have been a tradition in which Zeus restrained the combatants.

Nereus. . . transformed himself: for Nereus, see p. 29; sea-gods, as inhabitants of a formless medium, are naturally shape-shifters. Nereus appears in no other mythical narrative; the present story was probably suggested by Homer’s account of Menelaos’ encounter with Proteus, another old man of the sea (Od. 4. 382 ff).