Apollodorus Epitome 3

1. As to the judgment of Paris (Alexander), see Hom. Il. 24.25ff. ; Cypria, in Proclus, Chrestom. i. (Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 16ff.) ; Eur. Tro. 924ff. ; Eur. IA 1290ff. ; Eur. Hel. 23ff. ; Eur. And. 274ff. ; Isoc. 10.41 ; Lucian, Dial. Deorum 20, Dial. marin. 5 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 93 ; Hyginus, Fab. 92 ; Serv. Verg. A. 1.27 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 65ff., 142ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 208; Second Vatican Mythographer 205) . The story ran that all the gods and goddesses, except Strife, were invited to attend the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and that Strife, out of spite at being overlooked, threw among the wedding guests a golden apple inscribed with the words, “Let the fair one take it,” or “The apple for the fair.” Three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, contended for this prize of beauty, and Zeus referred the disputants to the judgment of Paris. The intervention of Strife was mentioned in the Cypria according to Proclus, but without mention of the golden apple, which first appears in late writers, such as Lucian and Hyginus. The offers made by the three divine competitors to Paris are recorded with substantial agreement by Eur. Tro. 924ff. , Isocrates, Lucian, and Apollodorus. Hyginus is also in harmony with them, if in his text we read fortissimum for the formissimum of the MSS., for which some editors wrongly read formosissimum. The scene of the judgment of Paris was represented on the throne of Apollo at Amyclae and on the chest of Cypselus at Olympia ( Paus. 3.8.12 ; Paus. 5.19.5 ).

2. Compare Hom. Il. 5.59ff. , from which we learn that the shipbuilder was a son of Tecton, who was a son of Harmon. The names of his father and grandfather indicate, as Dr. Leaf observes, that the business had been carried on in the family for three generations. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 97 .

3. The Greek for “to go off” is ἀπαγαγεῖν, a rare use of ἀπάγειν, which, however, occurs in the common phrase, ἄπαγε,“Be off with you!”

4. With this account of the hospitable reception of Paris in Sparta, the departure of Menelaus for Crete, and the flight of the guilty pair, compare Proclus, Chrestom. i., in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 17 ; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 96-134 . As to the death of Catreus, the maternal grandfather of Menelaus, see above, Apollod. 3.2.1ff.

5. The voyage of Paris and Helen to Sidon was known to Hom. Il. 6.289ff. , with the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 6.291 . It was also recorded in the epic Cypria, according to Proclus, who says that Paris captured the city ( Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18 ). Yet according to Hdt. 2.117 , the author of the Cypria described how Paris and Helen sailed in three days from Sparta to Ilium with a fair wind and a smooth sea. It seems therefore that Herodotus and Proclus had different texts of the Cypria before them. Dictys Cretensis tells how, driven by the winds to Cyprus, Paris sailed with some ships to Sidon, where he was hospitably entertained by the king, but basely requited his hospitality by treacherously murdering his host and plundering the palace. In embarking with his booty on his ships, he was attacked by the Sidonians, but, after a bloody fight and the loss of two ships, he succeeded in beating off his assailants and putting to sea with the rest of his vessels. See Dictys Cretensis i.5 .

6. Compare Eur. Hel. 31-51 ; Eur. Hel. 582ff. ; Eur. Hel. 669ff. ; Eur. El. 1280ff. In the Helen the dramatist says that Hera, angry with Paris for preferring Aphrodite to her, fashioned a phantom Helen which he wedded, while the real Helen was transported by Hermes to Egypt and committed to the care of Proteus. In the Electra the poet says that it was Zeus who sent a phantom Helen to Troy, in order to stir up strife and provoke bloodshed among men. A different account is given by Hdt. 2.112-120 . According to him, Paris carried the real Helen to Egypt, but there king Proteus, indignant at the crime of which Paris had been guilty, banished him from Egypt and detained Helen in safekeeping until her true husband, Menelaus, came and fetched her away. Compare Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. iv.16 ; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 147ff. Later writers accepted this view, adding that instead of the real Helen, whom he kept, Proteus conjured up by magic art a phantom Helen, which he gave to Paris to carry away with him to Troy. See Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 113 ; Serv. Verg. A. 1.651 and ii.592 . So far as we know, the poet Stesichorus in the sixth century before our era was the first to broach the theory that Helen at Troy, for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought and died, was a mere wraith, while her true self was far away, whether at home in Sparta or with Proteus in Egypt; for there is nothing to show whether Stesichorus shared the opinion that Paris had spirited her away to the East before he returned, with or without her, to Troy. This view the poet propounded by way of an apology to Helen for the evil he had spoken of her in a former poem; for having lost the sight of his eyes he ascribed the loss to the vengeance of the heroine, and sought to propitiate her by formally retracting all the scandals he had bruited about concerning her. See Plat. Phaedrus 243a-b ; Plat. Rep. 9.586c ; Isoc. 10.64 ; Paus. 3.19.13 ; Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ed. Th. Bergk, iii.980ff.

7. As to these oaths, see above, Apollod. 3.10.9 .

8. As to the madness which Ulysses feigned in order to escape going to the Trojan war, see Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18 ; Lucian, De domo 30 ; Philostratus, Her. xi.2 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 818 ; Cicero, De officiis iii.26.97 ; Hyginus, Fab. 95 ; Serv. Verg. A. 2.81 ; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Achill. i.93 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 12, 140ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 35; Second Vatican Mythographer 200) . The usual story seems to have been that to support his pretence of insanity Ulysses yoked an ox and a horse or an ass to the plough and sowed salt. While he was busy fertilizing the fields in this fashion, the Greek envoys arrived, and Palamedes, seeing through the deception, laid the infant son of Ulysses in front of the plough, whereupon the father at once checked the plough and betrayed his sanity. However, Lucian agrees with Apollodorus in saying that Palamedes threatened the child with his sword, though at the same time, by mentioning the unlike animals yoked together, he shows that he had the scene of the ploughing in his mind. His description purports to be based on a picture, probably a famous picture of the scene which was still exhibited at Ephesus in the time of Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv.129 . Sophocles wrote a play on the subject, called The Mad Ulysses. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 115ff.

9. The Machiavellian device by which the crafty Ulysses revenged himself on Palamedes for forcing him to go to the war is related more fully by a Scholiast on Eur. Or. 432 and Hyginus, Fab. 105 . According to the Scholiast, a servant of Palamedes was bribed to secrete the forged letter and the gold under his master's bed, where they were discovered and treated as damning evidence of treason. According to Hyginus, Ulysses had recourse to a still more elaborate stratagem in order to bury the gold in the earth under the tent of Palamedes. Compare Serv. Verg. A. 2.81 ; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Achill. i.93 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 12, 140ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 35; Second Vatican Mythographer 200) . An entirely different account of the plot against Palamedes is told by Dictys Cretensis ii.15 . He says that Ulysses and Diomede induced him to descend into a well, and then buried him under rocks which they hurled down on the top of him.

10. Compare Hom. Il. 11.19ff. , who describes only one richly decorated breastplate.

11. Compare Eustathius on Hom. Il. 11.20, p. 827 , who says that, according to some people, Cinyras “swore to Menelaus at Paphos that he would send fifty ships, but he despatched only one, and the rest he fashioned of earth and sent them with earthen men in them; thus he cunningly evaded his oath by keeping it with an earthenware fleet.” Compare the Townley Scholiast on Hom. Il. 11.20, ed. E. Maass (Oxford, 1887), vol. i. p. 378 . Wagner may be right in supposing that this ruse of the Cyprian king was recorded in the epic Cypria, though it is not mentioned in the brief summary of the poem compiled by Proclus. See R. Wagner, Epitoma Vaticana ex Apollodori Bibliotheca, pp. 181ff. A different account of the Greek embassy to Cinyras is given by Alcidamas, Od. 20ff., pp. 181ff., ed. Blass . He says that Cinyras bribed the Greek envoy Palamedes to relieve him from military service, and that, though he promised to send a hundred ships, he sent none at all.

12. As to these three women, the Winegrowers (Oinotrophoi, or Oinotropoi) see Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 29ff. ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 570, 581 ; Scholiast on Hom. Od. vi.164 ; Ov. Met. 13.632-674 ; Serv. Verg. A. 3.80 ; Dictys Cretensis i.23 . Each of the Winegrowers received from Dionysus the power of producing the thing from which she derived her name; thus Elais, who took her name from ἐλαία, “an olive,” could produce olive oil; Spermo, who took her name from σπέρμα, “seed,” could produce corn; and Oeno, who took her name from οἶνος, “wine,” could produce wine. According to Apollodorus, the women elicited these products from the ground; but according to Ovid and Servius, whatever they touched was turned into olive-oil, corn, or wine, as the case might be. Possessing these valuable powers, the daughters of Anius were naturally much sought after. Their father, a son of Apollo, was king of Delos and at the same time priest of his father Apollo ( Verg. A. 3.80 ), and when Aeneas visited the island on his way from Troy, the king, with pardonable pride, dwelt on his daughters' accomplishments and on the income they had brought him in ( Ov. Met. 13.650ff. ) It is said by Tzetzes that when the Greeks sailed for Troy and landed in Delos, the king, who had received the gift of prophecy from his divine sire ( Diod. 5.62.2 ), foretold that Troy would not be taken for ten years, and invited them to stay with him for nine years, promising that his daughters would find them in food all the time. This hospitable offer was apparently not accepted at the moment; but afterwards, when the Greeks were encamped before Troy, Agamemnon sent for the young women and ordered them peremptorily to feed his army. This they did successfully, if we may believe Tzetzes; but, to judge by Ovid's account, they found the work of the commissariat too exacting, for he says that they took to flight. Being overtaken by their pursuers, they prayed to Dionysus, who turned them into white doves. And that, says Servius, is why down to this day it is deemed a sin to harm a dove in Delos. From Tzetzes we learn that the story of these prolific damsels was told by Pherecydes and by the author of the epic Cypria, from whom Pherecydes may have borrowed it. Stesichorus related how Menelaus and Ulysses went to Delos to fetch the daughters of Anius ( Scholiast on Hom. Od. vi.164 ). If we may judge from the place which the brief mention of these women occupies in the Epitome of Apollodorus, we may conjecture that in his full text he described how their services were requisitioned to victual the fleet and army assembling at Aulis. The conjecture is confirmed by the statement of Dictys Cretensis, that before the Greek army set sail from Aulis, it had received a supply of corn, wine, and other provisions from Anius and his daughters. It may have been in order to ensure these supplies that Menelaus and Ulysses repaired to Delos for the purpose of securing the persons of the women.

13. As to list of the Greek forces which mustered at Aulis, see Hom. Il. 2.494-759 ; Eur. IA 253ff. ; Hyginus, Fab. 97 ; Dictys Cretensis i.17 . The numbers of the ships and leaders recorded by Apollodorus do not always tally with those of Homer. For example, he gives the Boeotians forty ships, while Homer ( Hom. Il. 5.509 ) gives them fifty; and he says that the Phocians had four leaders, whereas Homer ( Hom. Il. 5.517 ) mentions only two. The question of the catalogue of the Greek forces, and its relation to Homer and history, are fully discussed by Dr. Walter Leaf in his Homer and History (London, 1915) . He concludes that the catalogue forms no part of the original but was added to it at a later time by a patriotic Boeotian for the purpose of glorifying his people by claiming that they played a very important part in the Trojan war, although this claim is inconsistent with the statement of Thuc. 1.12 that the Boeotians did not migrate into the country henceforth known as Boeotia until sixty years after the capture of Troy. I agree with Dr. Leaf in the belief, which he energetically maintains in this book, that the Trojan war was not a myth, but a real war, “fought out in the place, and at least generally in the manner, described in Homer,” and that the principal heroes and heroines recorded by Homer were not “faded gods” but men and women of flesh and blood, of whose families and fortunes the memory survived in Greek tradition, though no doubt in course of time many mythical traits and incidents gathered round them, as they have gathered round the memories of the Hebrew patriarchs, of Alexander the Great, of Virgil, and of Charlemagne.

14. Compare Hom. Il. 2.299-330 ; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18 ; Cicero, De divinatione ii.30.63-65 ; Ov. Met. 12.11-23 .

15. No other ancient writer mentions that Achilles was high admiral of the fleet, though as son of a sea-goddess he was obviously fitted for the post. Dictys Cretensis, however, tells us ( Dictys Cretensis i.16 ) that Achilles shared the command of the ships with Ajax and Phoenix, while that of the land forces was divided between Palamedes, Diomedes, and Ulysses.

16. With the following account of the landing of the Greeks in Mysia and their encounter with Telephus, compare Proclus, in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 18ff. ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.59 . The accounts of both these writers agree, to some extent verbally, with that of Apollodorus and are probably drawn from the same source, which may have been the epic Cypria summarized by Proclus. The Scholiast tells us that it was Dionysus who caused Telephus to trip over a vine-branch, because Telephus had robbed the god of the honours that were his due. The incident is alluded to by Pind. I. 8.48(106)ff. The war in Mysia is narrated in more detail by Philostratus, Her. iii.28-36 and Dictys Cretensis ii.1-7 . Philostratus, Her. 35 says that the wounded were washed in the waters of the hot Ionian springs, which the people of Smyrna called the springs of Agamemnon.

17. Compare Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 , according to whom Achilles, on this return voyage, landed in Scyros and married his youthful love Deidamia, daughter of Lycomedes. See above, Apollod. 3.13.8 .

18. Compare Hom. Il. 24.765ff. , where Helen at Troy says that it was now the twentieth year since she had quitted her native land. The words have puzzled the Scholiasts and commentators, but are explained by the present passage of Apollodorus.

19. This account of how Telephus steered the Greek fleet to Troy after being healed of his grievous wound by Achilles, is probably derived from the epic Cypria; since it agrees on these points with the brief summary of Proclus. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 . Compare Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.59 ; Dictys Cretensis ii.10 . As to the cure of Telephus's wound by means of the rust of the spear, see also Hyginus, Fab. 101 ; Prop. ii.1.63ff. ; Ovid, Ex Ponto ii.2.6 . Pliny describes a painting in which Achilles was represented scraping the rust from the blade of his spear with a sword into the wound of Telephus ( Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxv.42, xxxiv.152 ). The spear was the famous one which Chiron had bestowed on Peleus, the father of Achilles; the shaft was cut from an ash-tree on Mount Pelion, and none of the Greeks at Troy, except Achilles, could wield it. See Hom. Il. 16.140-144 ; Hom. Il. 19.387-391 ; Hom. Il. 22.133ff. The healing of Telephus's wound by Achilles is also reported, though without mention of the spear, by Dictys Cretensis ii.10 , a Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.59 and a Scholiast on Aristoph. Cl. 919 . The subject was treated by Sophocles in a play called The Assembly of the Achaeans, and by Euripides in a play called Telephus. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, i.94ff. ; Griechische Dichterfragmente. ii. Lyrische und dramatische Fragmente, ed. W. Schubart und U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Berlin, 1907), pp. 64ff. ; TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 161ff., 579ff. Aristophanes ridiculed the rags and tatters in which Telephus appeared on the stage in Euripides's play ( Aristoph. Acharn. 430ff. ). Apollodorus may have had the passage of Euripides or the parody of Aristophanes in mind when he describes Telephus as clad in rags. The cure of a wound by an application to it of rust from the weapon which inflicted the hurt is not to be explained, as Pliny supposed, by any medicinal property inherent in rust as such, else the rust from any weapon would serve the purpose. It is clearly a folklore remedy based on the principle of sympathetic magic. Similarly Iphiclus was cured of impotence by the rust of the same knife which had caused the infirmity. See Apollod. 1.9.12 . The proverbial remedy for the bite of a dog “the hair of the dog that bit you,” is strictly analogous in principle; for it is not the hair of any dog that will work the cure, but only the hair of the particular dog that inflicted the bite. Thus we read of a beggar who was bitten by a dog, at the vicarage of Heversham, in Westmoreland, and went back to the house to ask for some of the animal's hair to put on the wound. See W. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England (London, 1879), p. 160, note 1 . A precisely similar remedy for similar hurts appears to be popular in China; for we hear of a missionary who travelled about the province of Canton accompanied by a powerful dog, which bit children in the villages through which his master passed; and when a child was bitten, its mother used to run after the missionary and beg for a hair from the dog's tail to lay on the child's wound as a remedy. See N. B. Dennys, The Folklore of China (London and Hongkong, 1876), p. 52 . For more examples of supposed cures based on the principle of sympathy between the animal who bites and the person who is bitten, see W. Henderson, l.c. ; W. G. Black, Folk-Medicine (London, 1883), pp. 50ff. ; W. Gregor, Notes on the Folklore of the North-East of Scotland (London, 1881), p. 127 .

20. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 183 . The full expression is reported by the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 1.108 , οὐδὲ ἡ Ἄρτεμις οὕτως ἂν ἐτόξευσε, “Not even Artemis could have shot like that.” The elliptical phrase is wrongly interpreted by the Sabbaitic scribe. See the Critical Note.

21. This account of the attempted sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis and the substitution of a doe agrees with the narrative of the same events in the epic Cypria as summarized by Proclus ( Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 ). It is also in harmony with the tragedy of Euripides on the same subject. See Eur. IA 87ff. ; Eur. IA 358ff. ; Eur. IA 1541ff. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 183 ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 1.108 ; Hyginus, Fab. 98 ; Ov. Met. 12.24-38 ; Dictys Cretensis i.19-22 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 6ff., 141 (First Vatican Mythographer 20; Second Vatican Mythographer 202) . Some said that Iphigenia was turned by the goddess into a bear or a bull ( Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 183 ). Dictys Cretensis dispenses with the intervention of Artemis to save Iphigenia; according to him it was Achilles who rescued the maiden from the altar and conveyed her away to the Scythian king.

22. The following story of Tenes, his stepmother's calumny, his banishment, and his elevation to the throne of Tenedos, is similarly told by Paus. 10.14.2-4 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 232 ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 1.38 ; Eustathius on Hom. Il. i.38, p. 33 . Eustathius and the Scholiast on Homer call Tenes's sister Leucothea, and give Polyboea as an alternative name of their stepmother. According to Pausanias, the first wife of Cycnus was a daughter of Clytius, not of Laomedon. As to the names, Tzetzes agrees with Apollodorus, whom he probably copied. A rationalized version of the story is told by Diod. 5.83 . According to him, Tenes was worshipped after his death as a god by the people of Tenedos, who made a precinct for him and offered sacrifices to him down to late times. No flute-player was allowed to enter the precinct, because a flute-player had borne false witness against Tenes; and the name of Achilles might not be mentioned within it, because Achilles had killed Tenes. Compare Plut. Quaest. Graec. 28 .

23. Compare Plut. Quaest. Graec. 28 . Plutarch mentions the warning given by Thetis to Achilles not to kill Tenes, and says that the goddess specially charged one of Achilles's servants to remind her son of the warning. But in scouring the island Achilles fell in with the beautiful sister of Tenes and made love to her; Tenes defended his sister against her seducer, and in the brawl was slain by Achilles. When the slayer discovered whom he had slain, he killed the servant who ought to have warned him in time, and he buried Tenes on the spot where the sanctuary was afterwards dedicated to his worship. This version of the story clearly differs from the one followed by Apollodorus.

24. This story of the exposure and desertion of Philoctetes in Lemnos appears to have been told in the epic Cypria, as we may judge by the brief summary of Proclus. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 . According to Proclus, the Greeks were feasting in Tenedos when Philoctetes was bitten by a water-snake. This is not necessarily inconsistent with the statement of Apollodorus that the accident happened while the Greeks were sacrificing to Apollo, for the feast mentioned by Proclus may have been sacrificial. According to another version of the story, which Sophocles followed in his Philoctetes, the accident to Philoctetes happened, not in Tenedos, but in the small island of Chryse, where a goddess of that name was worshipped, and the serpent which bit Philoctetes was the guardian of her shrine. See Soph. Phil. 263-270 ; Soph. Phil. 1326-1328 . Later writers identified Chryse with Athena, and said that Philoctetes was stung while he was cleansing her altar or clearing it of the soil under which it was buried, as Tzetzes has it. See Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.722 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 911 ; Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.724, p. 330 . But this identification is not supported by Sophocles nor by the evidence of a vase painting, which represents the shrine of Chryse with her name attached to her image. See Jebb's Soph. Ph., p. xxxviii, section 21. ; Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, iii.1326, fig. 1325 . The island of Chryse is no doubt the “desert island near Lemnos” in which down to the first century B.C. were to be seen “an altar of Philoctetes, a bronze serpent, a bow, and a breastplate bound with fillets, the memorial of his sufferings” ( Appian, Mithridat. 77 ). The island had sunk in the sea before the time of Pausanias in the second century of our era ( Paus. 8.33.4 ). According to a different account, the unfortunate encounter of Philoctetes with the snake took place in Lemnos itself, the island where he was abandoned by his comrades. See Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.724, p. 330 and Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.724, p. 330 ; Scholiast on Soph. Ph. 270 ; Hyginus, Fab. 102 . Philoctetes was commonly supposed to have received the bow and arrows of Hercules from that hero as a reward for his service in kindling the pyre on Mount Oeta. See Soph. Phil. 801-803 ; Diod. 4.38.4 ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.724 ; Hyginus, Fab. 102 ; Ov. Met. 9.229-234 . According to one account, which Servius has preserved, it was from these arrows, envenomed with the poison of the hydra, and not from a serpent, that Philoctetes received his grievous hurt. It is said that Hercules on the pyre solemnly charged his friend never to reveal the spot where his ashes should repose. Philoctetes promised with an oath to observe the wish of his dying friend, but afterwards he betrayed the secret by stamping with his foot on the grave. Hence on his way to the war one of the poisoned arrows fell upon and wounded the traitor foot. See Serv. Verg. A. 3.402 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 21, 132 (First Vatican Mythographer 59; Second Vatican Mythographer 165) . Homer speaks of Philoctetes marooned by the Greeks in Lemnos and suffering agonies from the bite of the deadly water-snake ( Hom. Il. 2.721-725 ), but he does not say how or where the sufferer was bitten. Sophocles represents Lemnos as a desert island ( Soph. Phil. 1ff. ). The fate of the forlorn hero, the ancient Robinson Crusoe, dwelling for ten years in utter solitude on his lonely isle, was a favourite theme of tragedy. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all composed plays on the subject under the title of Philoctetes. See Dio Chrysostom lii ; Jebb's Introduction to Soph. Ph., pp. xiiiff. ; TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 79ff., 613ff.

25. As to the embassy of Ulysses and Menelaus to Troy to demand the surrender of Helen, see Hom. Il. 3.205ff. ; Hom. Il. 11.138ff. ; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 ; Bacch. 14(15), ed. Jebb ; Hdt. 2.118 ; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 154ff. ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.206 . According to the author of the epic Cypria, as reported by Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 , the embassy was sent before the first battle, in which Protesilaus fell (see below); according to Tzetzes, it was sent before the Greek army assembled at Aulis; according to the Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.206 , it was despatched from Tenedos. Herodotus says that the envoys were sent after the landing of the army in the Troad. Sophocles wrote a play on the subject of the embassy, called The Demand for the Surrender of Helen. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 171ff. ; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 121ff. Libanius has bequeathed to us two imaginary speeches, which are supposed to have been delivered by the Greek ambassadors, Menelaus and Ulysses, to the Trojan assembly before the opening of hostilities, while the Greek army was encamped within sight of the walls of Troy. See Libanius, Declam. iii. and iv. (vol. v. pp. 199ff., ed. R. Foerster) .

26. Compare Hom. Il. 2.698-702 ; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 245 ; Tzetzes, Chiliades ii.759ff. ; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 221ff. ; Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.701, p. 325, and on Od. xi.521, p. 1697 ; Paus. 4.2.5 ; Hyginus, Fab. 103 ; Dictys Cretensis ii.11 . The common tradition, followed by Apollodorus, was that Protesilaus fell by the hand of Hector; but according to others, his slayer was Aeneas, or Achates, or Euphorbus. See Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.701, p. 325, and on Od. xi.521, p. 1697 ; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 230ff. The Greeks had received an oracle that the first of their number to leap from the ships would be the first to perish. See Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 245 ; Hyginus, Fab. 113 ; Ovid, Her. xiii.93ff. Protesilaus was reckoned by Paus. 1.34.2 among the men who after death received divine honours from the Greeks. He was buried in the Thracian Chersonese, opposite the Troad, and was there worshipped as a god ( Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 532 ). His grave at Elaeus, or Eleus, in the peninsula was enclosed in a sacred precinct, and his worshippers testified their devotion by dedicating to him many vessels of gold and silver and bronze, together with raiment and other offerings; but when Xerxes invaded Greece, these treasures were carried off by the Persians, who desecrated the holy ground by sowing it with corn and turning cattle loose on it to graze ( Hdt. 9.116 ). Tall elms grew within the sacred precinct and overshadowed the grave; and it is said that the leaves of the trees that looked across the narrow sea to Troy, where Protesilaus perished, burgeoned early but soon faded and fell, like the hero himself, while the trees that looked away from Troy still kept their foliage fresh and fair. See Philostratus, Her. iii.1 . Others said that when the elms had shot up so high that Troy could be seen from them away across the water, the topmost boughs immediately withered. See Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica vii.408ff. ; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi.238 .

27. According to the author of the epic Cypria the name of Protesilaus's wife was Polydora, daughter of Meleager ( Paus. 4.2.7 ). Later writers, like Apollodorus, called her Laodamia. As to her tragic tale, see Lucian, Dial. Mort. xxiii. (who does not name her); Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.701, p. 325 ; Scholiast on Aristides, vol. iii. pp. 671ff., ed. Dindorf ; Tzetzes, Chiliades ii.763ff. ; Prop. i.19.7-10 ; Hyginus, Fab. 103, 104 ; Ovid, Her. xiii ; Serv. Verg. A. 6.447 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 51, 147 (First Vatican Mythographer 158; Second Vatican Mythographer 215) . According to Hyginus, Fab. 103 , Laodamia had prayed that Protesilaus might be restored to her for only three hours; her prayer was granted, but she could not bear the grief of parting with him, and died in his arms ( Servius, l.c. ). A rationalistic version of the story ran that Laodamia had made a waxen image of her dead husband and secretly embraced it, till her father ordered it to be burned, when she threw herself into the fire and perished with the image ( Hyginus, Fab. 104 ). According to Ovid, Laodamia made the waxen image of her absent lord and fondled it even in his lifetime. Her sad story was the theme of a tragedy of Euripides ( TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 563ff. ), as it is of a well-known poem of Wordsworth (Laodameia).

28. Compare Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19 ; Pind. O. 2.82(147) ; Aristot. Rh. 2.1396b 16-18 ; Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica iv.468ff. ; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 257ff. ; Scholiast on Theocritus xvi.49 ; Ov. Met. 12.70-140 ; Dictys Cretensis ii.12 . Cycnus was said to be invulnerable ( Aristot. Rh. 2.1396b 16-18 ): hence neither the spear nor the sword of Achilles could make any impression on his body, and the hero was reduced to the necessity of throttling him with the thongs of his own helmet. So Ovid tells the tale, adding that the seagod, his father Poseidon, changed the dead Cycnus into a swan, whose name (Cygnus, κύκνος) he had borne in life.

29. Compare Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 20 ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xxiv.257 (where for ὀχευθῆναι it has been proposed to read λοχηθῆναι or λογχευθῆναἰ; Eustathius on Hom. Il. xxiv.251,p. 1348 ; Dio Chrysostom xi. vol. i. p. 189, ed. L. Dindorf ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 307-313 ; Verg. A. 1.474ff. ; Serv. Verg. A. 1.474 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 66 (First Vatican Mythographer 210) . Troilus is represented as a youth, but the stories concerning his death are various. According to Eustathius, the lad was exercising his horses in the Thymbraeum or sanctuary of the Thymbraean Apollo, when Achilles killed him with his spear. Tzetzes says that he was a son of Hecuba by Apollo, though nominally by Priam, that he fled from his assailant to the temple of Apollo, and was cut down by Achilles at the altar. There was a prophecy that Troy could not be taken if Troilus should live to the age of twenty (so the First Vatican Mythographer). This may have been the motive of Achilles for slaying the lad. According to Dictys Cretensis iv.9 , Troilus was taken prisoner and publicly slaughtered in cold blood by order of Achilles. The indefatigable Sophocles, as usual, wrote a tragedy on the subject. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 253ff.

30. Compare Hom. Il. 11.34ff. ; Hom. Il. 13.746ff. Lycaon was captured by Achilles when he was cutting sticks in the orchard of his father Priam. After being sold by his captor into slavery in Lemnos he was ransomed and returned to Troy, but meeting Achilles in battle a few days later, he was ruthlessly slain by him. The story seems to have been told also in the epic Cypria. See Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 20 .

31. Compare Hom. Il. 20.90ff. ; Hom. Il. 20.188ff. ; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 20 .

32. Compare Hom. Il. 9.129 ; Dictys Cretensis ii.16 .

33. Compare Hom. Il. 2.691 ; Hom. Il. 6.397 .

34. It was at the sack of Lyrnessus that Achilles captured his concubine Briseis after slaying her husband. See Hom. Il. 2.688ff. , Hom. Il. 19.60 ; Hom. Il. 19. 291ff. ; Hom. Il. 20.92 ; Hom. Il. 20.191ff. Compare Dictys Cretensis ii.17 .

35. With the following list of the Trojans and their allies, compare Hom. Il. 2.816-877 .

36. Compare Hom. Il. 2.842ff. , where the poet describes Hippothous as the son of the Pelasgian Lethus. Apollodorus, misunderstanding the passage, has converted the adjective Pelasgian into a noun Pelasgus.

37. Homer calls him Chromis ( Hom. Il. 2.858 ).