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.

Homer: he gives the essentials of the following story in Il. 24. 602 ff., although the details vary greatly within the subsequent tradition.

Amphion alone survived: presumably the father of the children rather than a Niobid not mentioned above.

Chloris: see P. 2. 21. 10 (where this Chloris is identified with Meliboia below; her name was changed to Chloris, ‘pale’, because she went pale with fear and remained so ever afterwards). Ap. wrongly identifies this Chloris, the daughter of Amphion of Thebes, with the daughter of Amphion of Orchomenos who married Neleus (see Od. 11. 281 ff, P. 10. 29. 2).

transformed into a stone: Homer records that she became a stone ( Il. 24. 614 ff.) without explaining how. The rock, on Mount Sipylos (in Lydia, Asia Minor), bore no resemblance to a woman when viewed close at hand, but if the visitor drew back, he could make out the image of a weeping woman bowed in grief (according to Pausanias, who claims to have seen it, 1. 21. 5, cf. QS 1. 299 ff.).

the death ofAmphion: he is said to have reacted to the death of his children by killing himself (Ov. Met. 6. 271), or by trying to storm the temple of Apollo, provoking the god to shoot him (Hyg. 9). For the death of Zethos, see P. 9. 5. 5.

others Epicaste: as in Od. 11. 271, when Odysseus meets her in Hades; but Iocaste (Jocasta) is general in later writers.

called him Oedipus: the name Oidipous is derived from oidein, to swell, and pous, a foot (a valid etymology); but the familiar Latinized form of his name is used in the translation. For further details on all the following see Ap.’s main sources, Sophocles’ Oedipus the Kingand Oedipus at Colonos.

supposititious child: i.e. as one who was not the child of his supposed parents, but is passed off as being their child.

a certain narrow track: the ‘Cleft Way’, a mountain track leading to Delphi, see P. 10. 5. 1 ff.