Apollodorus Library 1.8

ed. Sir James George Frazer

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Library. Apollodorus. ed. Sir James George Frazer. Cambridge, MA. 1921.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Library (English) (Apollodorus. The Library, Vol 1-2. Frazer, James George, Sir, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.)

Editions (1)
Βιβλιοθήκη Perseus (Apollodorus. The Library, Vol 1-2. Frazer, James George, Sir, editor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.) — 1.8 focus

Notes on the current edition

Library

1. Compare Hyginus, Fab. 129 .
2. So Romulus is said to have killed Remus for leaping over the rising wall of Rome ( Livy i.7.2 ).
3. See Apollod. 2.7.5 , with the note.
4. The whole of the following account of the life and death of Meleager is quoted, with a few verbal changes and omissions, by Zenobius, Cent. v.33 . The story is told by Bacch. 5.93ff., ed. Jebb ; and, though without any express mention of the burning brand or of Meleager's death, by Hom. Il. 9.529-599 . Compare Diod. 4.34 ; Ov. Met. 8.270ff. ; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. ii.481 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 46ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 146) . It was made the theme of tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides. See Nauck, TGF, 2nd ed. (Leipsig, 1889), pp. 219ff., 525ff. ; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, ii.64ff.
5. For the story of the burning brand on which the life of Meleager depended, see also Aesch. Lib. 604ff. ; Bacch. 5.136ff., ed. Jebb ; Diod. 4.34.6ff. ; Paus. 10.31.4 ; Ant. Lib. 2 ; Dio Chrysostom lxvii. vol. ii. p. 231, ed. L. Dindorf ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ix.534 ; Ov. Met. 8.445-525 ; Hyginus, Fab. 171, 174 ; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. ii.481 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 47 (First Vatican Mythographer 146) . The story belongs to a widespread class of tales concerned with the “external soul,” or the belief that a person's life is bound up with an animal or object outside of his own body. See Balder the Beautiful, ii.94ff.
6. For lists of the heroes who hunted the Calydonian boar, see Ov. Met. 8.299ff. ; Hyginus, Fab. 173 .
7. The following account of the death of Meleager is substantially that of Hom. Il. 9.529ff.
8. From Calydon, then besieged by the Curetes.
9. The birds called in Greek meleagrides, guinea-fowl (Numida sp.). See Ant. Lib. 2 ; Ael., Nat. Anim. iv.42 ; Ov. Met. 8.533-546 ; Hyginus, Fab. 174 ; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x.74, xxxvii.40 . Worshippers of Artemis strictly abstained from eating the bird; the reason of the abstention was known to the natives of Leros, one of the Sporades ( Ael., Nat. Anim. iv.42 ). The birds were kept in the sanctuary of the Maiden (Artemis?) in that island, and were tended by the priests ( Athenaeus xiv.71, p. 655 C ). It is said that it was Artemis who turned the sisters of Meleager into birds by touching them with a rod, after which she transferred them to the island of Leros ( Ant. Lib. 2 ) On the birds see D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford, 1895), pp. 114ff.
10. Compare Diod. 4.35.1ff. , according to whom Periboea alleged that she was with child by Ares. Sophocles wrote a tragedy on the subject; a few fragments of it remain ( The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, i.216ff. ).
11. Gorge was a daughter of Oeneus. See above, Apollod. 1.8.1 ; Paus. 10.38.5 .
12. Compare Eustathius on Hom. Il. xiv.122, p. 971 ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiv.114, 120 ; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, iii.38, frag. 799 ; Statius, Theb. i.401ff. , with the commentary of Lactantius Placidus, pp. 47ff. ed. R. Jahnke . The accounts differ as to whom Tydeus killed, but they agree that he fled from Calydon to Adrastus at Argos, and that Adrastus purified him from the murder ( Eustathius and Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiv.122, p. 971 ) and gave him his daughter to wife. Compare Apollodorus, iii.6.1.
13. See below, Apollod. 3.6.3ff.
14. With this and what follows compare Paus. 2.25.2 ; Scholiast on Aristoph. Ach. 418 ; Ant. Lib. 37 ; Hyginus, Fab. 175 . The story furnished Euripides with the theme of a tragedy called Oeneus. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 536ff.
15. Compare Paus. 2.25.2 .