IntraText Table of Contents | Words: Alphabetical - Frequency - Inverse - Length - Statistics | Help | IntraText Library |
Name Index | «» |
Ibis:465-540 The city in Thrace. It was publicly purified once a year and one of the burghers set apart for that purpose was stoned to death as a scapegoat. He was excommunicated six days before in order to ‘bear the sins of the people’. (See Frazer: The Golden Bough LVIII: The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece.)
The brother of Medea. Remembered for his death at Jason’s hands during the escape from Colchis. Ovid uses the tale of how Medea dismembered him and scattered his limbs behind their ship. King Aeetes following gathered up the remains. The cutting up (τομή) was a false etymology for Tomis.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 The source of Tomis’s name.
A town at the narrows of the Dardanelles, opposite Sestos.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s route.
Ibis:541-596 Swum by Leander, hence a destructive passage.
A Roman tragic poet, born c170BC in Umbria. He also wrote critical and historical works.
Book TII:313-360 His character unlike his works.
Book EIV.X:1-34 A fierce tribe living near the Pontus.
Ibis:251-310 There was an Acheus son of Dorus and Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, who founded the Achaean race of Greece. The reference is obscure.
A companion of Ulysses left behind in Sicily and rescued by Aeneas. See Aeneid Book III:588.
Book EII.II:1-38 An example of a Greek welcomed by Trojans.
The Greek hero of the Trojan War. The son of Peleus, king of Thessaly, and the sea-goddess Thetis, (See Homer’s Iliad).
Book TI. IX:1-66 Patroclus was his loyal companion.
Book TII:361-420 Aeschylus in the Myrmidons and Sophocles in Achilles’ Lovers represented Achilles as effeminate, and homosexual.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Ibis:597-644 Dolon coveted his horses.
Book TIII.V:1-56 The greatest warrior at Troy.
Book TIV.I:1-48 See Homer’s Iliad IX.186. Achilles playing the lyre. Briseis was taken by Agamemnon leading to Achilles’ anger and the dispute that begins the Iliad.
Book TIV.III:1-48 In this comparison Ovid is Hector, so presumably Augustus is Achilles.
Book TV.I:49-80 Achilles was not offended by Priam’s tears over Hector.
Book TV.VI:1-46 Automedon was his faithful charioteer.
Book EI.III:49-94 Patroclus sought refuge with him.
Book EI.VII:1-70 He wielded his father Peleus’s spear. Given him by Chiron the Centaur it was cut from an ash on the summit of Mount Pelion, Athene polished the shaft and Hephaestus forged the blade.
Book EII.II:1-38 His spear wounded and healed Telephus.
Book EII.III:1-48 A loyal friend to Patroclus, weeping for him after death and carrying out extensive funeral rites. Called scion (grandson) of Aeacus.
Book EII.IV:1-34 His friendship with Antilochus was second only to that with Patroclus. (Odyssey 24.78-9)
Book EIII.III:1-108 Chiron the Centaur was his teacher.
Ibis:251-310 Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) was his son.
Ibis:311-364 Achilles came from Thessaly.
The lover of Cydippe. She was bound to him by oath after picking up an apple on which he had written his pledge to marry her. See Ovid’s Heroides 20-21.
Book TIII. X:41-78 The place devoid of fruit-trees.
The grandson of Cadmus, son of Autonoë, called Hyantius from an ancient name for Boeotia. He saw Diana bathing naked and was turned into a stag. Pursued by his hounds, he was torn to pieces by his own pack. (See the Metope of Temple E at Selinus – the Death of Actaeon – Palermo, National Museum: and Titian’s painting – the Death of Actaeon – National Gallery, London.) See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book III:138.
Book TII:77-120 Ovid chooses this myth to indicate his own punishment for seeing something, a mischief (culpa) by chance. Like Actaeon, that alone seems to have been his error.
Ibis:465-540 Torn apart by the hounds.
The grandson of Actor. See Patroclus.
The husband of Alcestis who agreed to die on his behalf.
Book TII:361-420 Book TV.XIV:1-46 Her love for him.
Book TV.V:27-64 His wife’s response to his fate brought about her fame.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Alcestis, his wife.
Ibis:413-464 Pelias was his father-in-law.
Ibis:465-540 The son of Myrrha by her father Cinyras, born after her transformation into a myrrh-tree. (As such he is a vegetation god born from the heart of the wood.) See Metamorphoses X:681 Venus fell in love with him, but he was killed by a wild boar that gashed his thigh. His blood formed the windflower, the anemone.
Book EI.III:49-94 Welcomed the exiled Tydeus.
Descendants of Aeacus, usually Achilles or his son Pyrrhus.
Book EII.III:1-48 Achilles, grandson of Aeacus.
Ibis:365-412 Probably Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) at the fall of Troy.
Ibis:163-208 The son of Jupiter and Aegina, grandson of Asopus, the river-god of the north-eastern Peloponnese. He named his island, in the Saronic gulf, Aegina after his mother. Jupiter appointed him one of the three judges of the Underworld. The others were Minos and Rhadamanthys.
King of Colchis, son of Sol and the Oceanid Perse, brother of Circe, and father of Medea. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book VII:1. The Argonauts reached his court, and requested the return of the Golden Fleece. The fleece was that of the divine ram on which Phrixus had fled from Orchemonos, to avoid being sacrificed. Iolcus could never prosper until it was brought back to Thessaly. King Aeetes was reluctant and set Jason demanding tasks as a pre-condition for its return. Medea assisted Jason to perform them.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 He pursued the traitorous Medea.
Book EIII.1:105-166 A poisoner and witch.
Ibis:413-464 Medea killed her half-brother Apsyrtus, and scattered his limbs about to delay her father’s pursuit.
Ibis:465-540 The father of Theseus and king of Athens. Theseus forgot to raise a white sail as a signal of success on his return to Athens from Crete and Aegeus leapt to his death in sorrow.
Book TV.IV:1-50 Book EII.VI:1-38 A paragon of friendship.
A Moesian town on the Danube delta. The modern Tulcea it lies about forty miles inland from the southern mouth of the delta and about seventy miles north of Tomis.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Founded by Aegisos the Caspian according to legend, and taken by the Getae.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Re-taken by Vestalis in AD12 after a Getic incursion. The Romans re-captured it with the aid of the Odrysian Thracians of King Rhoemetalces, father of Cotys.
The lover of Clytemnestra who murdered Agamemnon.
Book TII:361-420 Famous because of Clytemnestra’s adultery and the consequent events.
Son of Belus, brother of Danaus. He was King of Egypt and Arabia. His fifty sons married the Danaides, the fifty daughters of Danaus. Learning of his sons’ fate at the hands of the Danaids, he fled to Aroe where he died, and was buried at Patrae in the sanctuary of Serapis (Pausanias VII.21.6)
Book EIII.1:105-166 Ibis:163-208 The Danaids his daughters in law.
Descendants of Aeneas, a name applied to the Julian family, especially Augustus.
The Trojan son of Venus and Anchises. Aeneas escaped from Troy at its fall, and travelled to Latium. The Julian family claimed descent from his son Ascanius (Iulus). See Virgil’s Aeneid.
Book TI.II:1-74 Hated by Juno.
Book TII:253-312 The son of Venus and Anchises.
Book EI.I:1-36 He carried his father Anchises out of Troy on his shoulders.
Book EII.II:1-38 Ibis:413-464 His Trojan fleet.
Book EIII.III:1-108 As the son of Venus he is the half-brother of Amor.
The son of Hippotes, and king of the winds. His cave was on the islands of Lipari (the Aeolian Islands) that include Stromboli, off Sicily.
Book TI.IV:1-28 God of the winds.
Book TI.X:1-50 The grandfather of Helle.
Book EIV.X:1-34 He helped Ulysses with fair winds, however Homer says Odysseus’s crew opened the bag of the winds given him by Aeolus and the resultant storms blew them off course.
The wife of Atreus, she was raped by his brother Thyestes. Atreus killed her together with Thyestes and his children. She had previously born Agamemnon and Menelaus to Pleisthenes son of Atreus.
Book TII:361-420 Raped by her brother-in-law.
The Greek god of medicine, the father of Machaon and Podalirius who inherited his skills. Zeus was supposed to have killed him for restoring the dead to life. His cult was celebrated at Epidaurus and imported to Rome in 293BC (See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book XV) at the urging of the Sibylline books, after a plague there.
A Thessalian prince of Iolchos, son of Cretheus, father of Jason. His half-brother Pelias usurped his throne.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Father of Jason.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Jason, son of Aeson.
Book EII.III:49-100 An adjective applied to Elba.
Ibis:541-596 The daughter of Pittheus King of Troezen who bore Theseus to Aegeus of Athens.
Mount Etna. The Volcano on Sicily.
Book EII.II:75-126 Ibis:251-310 Its caves a haunt of the Cyclopes.
Book EII.X:1-52 Seen erupting by Ovid on his travels.
Ibis:597-644 Fuelled by the anger of the giants beneath it.
The king of Mycenae, son of Atreus, brother of Menelaüs, husband of Clytaemnestra, father of Orestes, Iphigenia, and Electra. The leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War. See Homer’s Iliad, and Aeschylus’s Oresteian tragedies.
Book TII:361-420 He desired Cassandra and took her back to Greece with him.
Book TV.VI:1-46 Book EII.VI:1-38 The father of Orestes, the son being famous for loyalty to his friend Pylades.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Ibis:311-364 Murdered by his wife.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Famous through the poets.
Ibis:465-540 Orestes was his son.
King of Sidon. The father of Phineus, and Cadmus.
Book EI.III:49-94 Father of Cadmus.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Father of Phineus.
Book EI.III:49-94 Cadmus, son of Agenor.
The youngest daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus’s general and friend, and Augustus’s daughter Julia. She married Germanicus. Tiberius ultimately banished her to the island of Panadataria in 29AD where she starved herself to death in 33AD. Caligula was one of her surviving children.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Germanicus fighting alongside Tiberius in Germany in AD10.
The father of Thersites the ugliest man among the Greeks at Troy.
Book EIII.IX:1-56 Father of Thersites.
The Greater, the son of Telamon, and mightiest of the Greeks at Troy save for Achilles.
Book TII:497-546 Represented in his wrath over the armour of Achilles.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Ajax held off the Trojan assault when Hector attempted to fire the Greek ships.
Alban, from Alba Longa, a town on the Alban Mount founded by Ascanius, and not far from Rome.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Severus had an estate there.
Probably the Albinovanus Pedo, a soldier who served with Germanicus in Germany, and a poet known for his epigrams (a fragment survives).
Book TIV.VII:1-26 The friend addressed here might be Pedo, following Seneca’s comment in Controversiae (2.2.12) of Ovid being asked to cut out three lines, disliked by his friends, from his early verse. He agreed if he could retain three he specifically liked. They proved identical. (One of them was the half-man, half-bull line from Ars Amatoria II.24: semibovemque virum, semivirumque bovem, and all three were probably similar verbal tricks). Seneca claimed to have had the story from Pedo, one of the friends, and Ovid may be referring to the incident pointedly here.
Book EIV.X:1-34 Book EIV.X:35-84 This letter addressed to Pedo explicitly.
The son of Pelops, founder of the city of Megara, hence Megara is called urbs Alcathoï.
Book TI.X:1-50 Exiles from Heracleia in Bithynia founded by Megara, also founded Callatis, now Mangalia, on the Minerva’s course.
The daughter of Pelias, and wife of Admetus, who consented to die in place of her husband but was saved by Hercules.
Book TV.V:27-64 His wife’s response to her husband’s fate brought about her fame.
Book TV.XIV:1-46 A paragon of loyalty, bringing help in distress.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Her act of loyalty.
The king of the Phaeacians (Phaeacia is probably Corcyra, =Corfu), on whose coast Ulysses was washed ashore. The father of Nausicaa. One of his ships was turned to stone. His orchards were famous. See Homer, The Odyssey XIII.
Book EII.IX:39-80 His generosity in helping a stranger.
Book EIV.II:1-50 His apple orchards.
Ibis:311-364 The son of Amphiaraus, who killed his mother Eriphyle for causing the death of his father, and was maddened by the Furies. He married Callirhoe daughter of the river-god Achelous.
The daughter of Electryon king of Tiryns, wife of Amphitryon, and mother of Hercules by the god Jupiter. Jupiter caused the night to double in length as he seduced her.
Book TII:361-420 Seduced by Jupiter.
Ibis:465-540 The king and founder of Tegea in Arcadia, and father to Auge, who bore Telephus to Hercules. There was an ancient statue of Alean Athene at Tegea that Augustus moved to Rome after the defeat of Antony, and which was placed in the Forum Augustum (vowed at Philippi in 42BC and consecrated forty years later.)
Ibis:251-310 Scene of Philopoimen’s last defeat.
Alexander III of Macedon (356-323BC) the son of Philip II and conquereor of Greece, and the Persian Empire.
Book TI.II:75-110 His famous city of Alexandria in Egypt.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Showed mercy in victory.
The capital of Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great and the site of his tomb.
Book TI.II:75-110 Founded by Alexander.
A tributary of the Tiber. The Romans were crushed by the Gauls under Brennius in a battle by the river on 18th July 390BC, leading to the capture and sacking of Rome. It was a day of national mourning (dies ater) when no public business was transacted.
The mother of Meleager, and wife of Oeneus, king of Calydon. The sister of the Thestiadae, Plexippus and Toxeus. She sought revenge for their deaths at the hands of her own son, Meleager, and threw into the fire the piece of wood that was linked to Meleager’s life, and which she had once rescued from the flames, at the time of the Fates prophecy to her.
Book TI.VII:1-40 Ibis:597-644 She destroyed her own son, and proved a better sister than a mother.
A character in Virgil’s Bucolic poems.
Book TII:497-546 A character in the Eclogues.
Ibis:311-364 A town in Paphlagonia in Asia Minor, on a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea. It was mentioned by Homer (Iliad, II, 853), was a flourishing town in the time of Trajan (98-117), and was of some importance until the seventh century AD. Lenaeus was a title of Bacchus as lord of the wine-press. The reference is obscure.
A race of warlike women living by the River Thermodon, probably based on the Sarmatian warrior princesses of the Black Sea area (See Herodotus). In particular Hippolyte the mother of Hippolytus by Theseus.
Book EIII.1:67-104 Their battle-axes.
Book EIV.X:35-84 Mentioned obliquely.
Ibis:251-310 The region of western Greece in Epirus, round the Gulf of Ambracia.
The god of love, son of Venus (Aphrodite). He is often portrayed as a blind winged child armed with a bow and arrows, and carrying a flaming torch.
Book TII:361-420 Metaphorically he drove Pelops’s chariot, when Pelops snatched Hippodamia.
Book TV.I:1-48 The archer god of love.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Ovid regrets his role as the teacher of Love.
Book EIII.III:1-108 A vision of the god of Love.
A Greek seer, one of the heroes, the Oeclides, at the Calydonian Boar Hunt. The son of Oecleus, father of Alcmaeon, and husband of Eriphyle.
Fighting in the war of the Seven against Thebes he was swallowed up alive by the earth.
Book EIII.1:1-66 Made more famous by his fate.
Ibis:251-310 King of Ormenium, near Mount Pelion. His concubine Phthia accused his son Phoenix of violating her. Amyntor blinded him and cursed him with childlessness.
The Greek elegicac, iambic and lyric poet of Teos, Ionia, born c. 570BC. His patrons included Polycrates of Samos and the Athenian Hipparchos. He was in Thessaly in 514 before returning to Athens.
Book TII:361-420 His lyric eroticism. The Tean bard.
A Sicilian river, the Anapo, converging with the Cyane, now, to the south of Syracuse inland from the Great Harbour.
Book EII.X:1-52 Visited by Ovid and Macer.
A Greek town on the Thracian (west) coast of the Black Sea south of Tomis and subject to Apollonia further north. Modern Pomerie.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s course.
The son of Capys, and father of Aeneas by the goddess Venus. Aeneas rescued him from the fall of Troy. See Virgil’s Aeneid.
Book TII:253-312 The lover of Venus.
Book EI.I:1-36 Rescued from Troy by his son Aeneas.
The wife of Hector, daughter of Eetion King of Cilician Thebes. See Euripides’ The Trojan Women and Racine’s Andromache.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Book TV.V:27-64 Book TV.XIV:1-46
Ovid compares his wife to her for probity and strength of character.
Book TIV.III:1-48 Another comparison of his wife’s sorrow to hers.
The daughter of Cepheus, the Ethiopian King, and Cassiope, who was chained to a rock and exposed to a sea-monster Cetus because of her mother’s sin. She is represented by the constellation Andromeda which contains the Andromeda galaxy M31 a spiral like our own, the most distant object visible to the naked eye. Cetus is represented by the constellation of Cetus, the Whale, between Pisces and Eridanus that contains the variable star, Mira. She was chained to a rock for her mother’s fault and Perseus offered to rescue her. (See Burne-Jones’s oil paintings and gouaches in the Perseus series, particularly The Rock of Doom). He killed the sea serpent and claimed her as his bride. He is represented by the nearby constellation with his name.
Book TII:361-420 Danae’s daughter-in-law.
An Augustan erotic poet, a friend of Mark Antony and critic of Virgil.
Book TII:421-470 His dubious erotic verse.
Ibis:365-412 The King of Lybia, son of Neptune and Earth, whom Hercules defeated by lifting him off the ground in a wrestling match. He gained strength from touching the ground. Busiris was his brother.
A Trojan noble, the reputed founder of Padua.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Mentioned, as the aged Trojan.
Book EIV.III:1-58 The mountains there produced white and black hellebore used as purgatives. Common hellebore (helleborus cyclophyllus) is a spring wildflower on nearby Parnassus. The black hellebore helleborus niger also possibly flourished there. Dioskorides (Materia Medica 4.148) says the best black and white hellebore grew there. Strabo (9.3.3) says that people went to Anticyra to be purged. See Pausanias (10.36.3).
The daughter of Oedipus, King of Thebes. She performed the burial rites for her brother Polynices, though King Creon had forbidden it because of her brother’s role in the war of the Seven against Thebes. See Sophocles’ Antigone.
Book TIII.III:47-88 She buried her brother despite the King’s ruling.
Ibis:251-310 She acted as guide to her blinded father Oedipus.
The son of Nestor and close friend of Achilles.
Book EII.IV:1-34 His great friendship with Achilles.
An epic and elegiac poet of Colophon (or Claros) fl.c.400BC. His most famous work the Lyde was written to console himself for the loss of his wife.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Mirrors Ovid’s love for his wife.
The king of the Laestrygonians. He incited his people, who were cannibals, to attack Ulysses and his crew.
Book EII.II:75-126 A hostile savage.
Book EII.IX:39-80 Cursed for his inhumanity and abuse of strangers.
Mark Antony, the Roman general and triumvir, who seized the inheritance at Julius Caesar’s death, despite his will, and who was defeated by Octavian at Mutina in Cisalpine Gaul, and Octavian’s naval commander, Vispanius Agrippa, at the naval battle of Actium in 31BC. Lover of Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt.
Book EI.I:1-36 A writer of political pamphlets against his opponents.
Book TV.XII:1-68 Ibis:541-596 An Athenian democrat, one of the accusers of Socrates. See Plato’s Apology.
Originally a district of Boeotia near Phocis, containing Mount Helicon, then a poetic term for all of Boeotia. Helicon and the Muses are often called Aonian.
Book TIV.X:1-40 Book EIV.II:1-50 An epithet for the Muses.
The painter of Cos and Ephesus, 4th century BC, and court painter to Alexander the Great, who depicted Venus Aphrodite, rising from the waves, wringing the sea-water from her hair. He seems to have specialised in portraits and allegories, aiming at realistic representation. He also painted Alexander as Zeus, and his style of portraiture was a major influence for two centuries.
Book EIV.I:1-36 The painter of Cos, and creator of the Venus (Aphrodite) Anadyomene, brought to Rome from Cos by Augustus and dedicated to the deified Caesar.
Son of Jupiter and Latona (Leto), brother of Diana (Artemis), born on Delos. God of poetry, art, medicine, prophecy, archery, herds and flocks, and of the sun.
Book TI.II:1-74 He supported the Trojans.
Book TI.X:1-50 Apollonia, named for him, a town on the west coast of the Black Sea, and on the Minerva’s course. A Milesian foundation it was famous for a giant statue of the god that Lucullus had transported to Rome.
Book TII.I:1 Patron of the Secular Games, the Ludi Saeculares. They were held to inaugurate the pax Augusta, in 17BC, with a hymn by Horace sung by a mixed choir of boys and girls on the Palatine.
Book TII:361-420 Cassandra was his prophetic priestess at Troy.
Book TIII.I:1-46 Augustus dedicated his victory at Actium to Apollo, since there was a temple to the god at Leucadia nearby. The laurel was sacred to Apollo: see the myth of Daphne in Metamorphoses BookI:525
Book TIII.I:47-82 The figures of Danaus and his daughters in the temple of Apollo built by Augustus on the Palatine, in which he also established a library.
Book TIII.II:1-30 The god of the arts, including poetry.
Book TIII.III:1-46 Book TIV.III:49-84 The god of medicine.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Phoebus Apollo’s sacred laurel wreathed the heads of victorious soldiers.
Book TV.III:1-58 The god of poetry, who empowers poetic achievement.
Book TV.XII:1-68 Apollo’s oracle at Delphi proclaimed Socrates as wiser than others: he concluded, ironically, that it was because he knew his own ignorance. (Plato, Apol. 21A)
Book EII.II:75-126 The laurel was sacred to Apollo: see the myth of Daphne in Metamorphoses BookI:525
Book EII.V:41-76 Laurel was chewed to induce prophetic trance in the rites of Diana, and was sacred to Apollo the god of the Arts.
Book EIII.II:1-110 His sister was Diana.
Ibis:105-134 The god of prophecy.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 The god of both strings, those of the bow and the lyre.
Ibis:251-310 Tiresias was gifted with prophecy, Apollo’s art.
Ibis:465-540 Sacrificed to at the altars.
Ibis:541-596 The father of Linus.
Appia (Via)
The first great Roman Road from Rome to Capua (132miles) built c. 312 BC by Appius Claudius Caecus and later extended by way of Beneventum, and Tarentum to Brundisium (Brindisi) by the middle of the 3rd century. It was later fully paved.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 The route to Alba Longa.
Book EII.VII:1-46 Hollowed by the passage of wheels.
The north wind. As a god he is Boreas.
Book TI.XI:1-44 Book TIII. X:1-40 Ibis:163-208 A storm wind in winter.
The twin constellations of the Great and Little Bear, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, individually or together. They never set.
Book TI.II:1-74 The circum-polar stars.
Book TI.III:47-102 The Great Bear is Parrhasian, from the Callisto myth.
Book TIII. X:1-40 Book TV.V:27-64 Northern constellations.
Book TV.III:1-58 The Cynosurian or Little Bear. Ursa Minor.
The Bearkeeper, a star in the constellation Bootes, the fourth brightest star in the sky. Its rising signifies the stormy seasons of autumn and winter.
Book EII.VII:47-84 An autumn and winter star.
A nymph of Elis and attendant of Diana-Artemis. She was loved by the river god Alpheus and pursued beneath the sea to Sicily. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book V:572.
Book EII.X:1-52 The fountain visited by Ovid and Macer.
The ship of Jason and the Argonauts, built with the aid of Athene. The Argonauts sailed her to the Black Sea to find the Golden Fleece.
Book TII:421-470 In the Argonautica of Varro.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 Built under the protection of Minerva. The first Greek ship to enter the Black Sea. Its arrival at Tomis on its way back to Greece.
Ibis:251-310 Athene-Minerva protected the Argo, and her sacred dove was sent ahead through the clashing rocks to guide the ship.
A daughter of Minos. Half-sister of the Minotaur, and sister of Phaedra who helped Theseus escape the Cretan Labyrinth. She fled to Dia with Theseus and he abandoned her there, but she was rescued by Bacchus, and her crown was set among the stars as the Corona Borealis. (See Titian’s painting – Bacchus and Ariadne – National Gallery, London: and Annibale Carracci’s fresco – The triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne – Farnese Palace, Rome)). The Northern Crown, the Corona Borealis, is a constellation between Hercules and Serpens Caput, consisting of an arc of seven stars, its central jewel being the blue-white star Gemma.
Book TV.III:1-58 Her crown of stars, the Corona Borealis, set in the sky by Bacchus.
Ibis:251-310 This a variant of her fate.
The son of Apollo, the patron of dairy-farming, apiculture etc.
The Homeric scholar and critic of second century BC Alexandria, born on Samothrace. He was the tutor of Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator and Director of the great library. He retired to Cyprus in 145BC. He also made critical recensions of Hesiod and Pindar.
Book EIII.IX:1-56 Inferior to those he criticised.
The Athenian statesman, exiled in 482BC.
Book EI.III:49-94 He fled to Sparta.
The author (2nd century BC) of the Milesian Tales, a sort of Decameron, of which some fragments survive in Sisenna’s Latin translation.
Book TII:361-420 Not exiled for his risqué tales.
Book TII:421-470 Translated by Sisenna.
Ovid’s poem Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) a contributory reason for his exile to Tomis.
The daughter of Zeus and Leto and the sister of Apollo. Associated with childbirth, virginity, hunting, wild creatures, and the moon. At Brauron in Attica young girls were involved in her bear-cult. At Ephesus she had a famous temple (as Diana). In the Tauric Chersonese she was associated with human sacrifice. See Frazer’s The Golden Bough.
The son of Coronis and Apollo, hence great grandson of Saturn, and named Coronides. He was saved by Apollo from his mother’s body and given to Chiron the Centaur to rear. He is represented in the sky by the constellation Ophiucus near Scorpius, depicting a man entwined in the coils of a serpent, consisting of the split constellation, Serpens Cauda and Serpens Caput, which contains Barnard’s star, having the greatest proper motion of any star and being the second nearest to the sun. He restored Hippolytus and others to life. He saved Rome from the plague, and becomes a resident god. (His cult centre was Epidaurus where there was a statue of the god with a golden beard. Cicero mentions that Dionysius the Elder, Tyrant of Syracuse wrenched off the gold. (‘On the Nature of the Gods, Bk III 82). Asclepius himself was killed and restored to life by Jupiter-Zeus.
Ibis:365-412 Great grandson of Saturn, via Jupiter and Apollo.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 The Boeotian town where Hesiod was born.
Ibis:465-540 Ibis:541-596 The son of Hector and Andromache, who at the fall of Troy was hurled from the citadel onto the rocks below, or as some sources say leapt to his death.
The daughter of King Schoeneus of Boeotia, famous for her swift running. Warned against marriage by the oracle, her suitors were forced to race against her on penalty of death for losing. She fell in love with Hippomenes. He raced with her, and by use of the golden apples, won the race and her. (See Guido Reni’s painting – Atalanta and Hippomenes – Naples, Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte)
Book TII:361-420 A tale of passion.
Ibis:365-412 The golden apples.
Ibis:311-364 A city in Mysia in Asia Minor, opposite Mytilene the city of Lesbos. Herodotus I.160. The incident described is obscure.
Ibis:311-364 The son of Aeolus, who married Ino, Cadmus’s daughter. He was maddened by Hera (See Metamorphoses IV:512). Ovid also refers to the myth in which Cadmus and his wife Harmonia were turned into serpents. (See Metamorphoses IV:563)
The patron goddess of Athens, born fully grown and armed from the head of Zeus. Associated with virginity, olive-cultivation, domestic arts (spinning, weaving, and pottery etc) wisdom, learning, technology and the mind.
Book EIV.I:1-36 Her statues by Phidias on the Acropolis. The chryselephantine statue on the Parthenon, and the bronze Athena Promachos (‘The Champion’) presented to Athens by the allies after Marathon, which supposedly stood in the great square at Constantinople until 1203 when it was destroyed. Both were more than lifesize.
The chief city of Attica in Greece, sacred to Minerva ( Pallas Athene).
Book TI.II:75-110 Ovid visited the city, as a student, and parts of Asian Minor.
Book TV.IV:1-50 The honey of Mount Hymettos in Attica, near Athens, was famous in ancient times, and sweeter than the honey of Taygetos near Sparta.
Book EI.III:49-94 Diogenes the Cynic was exiled, and lived in Attica.
Book EIV.I:1-36 The Athenian citadel the Acropolis, guarded by Athena.
A high promontory of the Macedonian Chalcidice, on a peninsula in the northern Aegean.
Book EI.V:1-42 Ovid suggests he is being asked to perform the impossible, equivalent to Mount Athos appearing in the distant Alps.
Ibis:163-208 Snow covered in winter.
Augustus’s maternal aunt, and the wife of Lucius Marcius Philippus.
Book EI.II:101-150 Mother of Marcia, Maximus Paullus’s wife, to whom Ovid’s third wife was a companion.
Atlantian is an epithet for the Great Bear, since Callisto represented by the constellation was descended from Atlas.
King of Mycenae, the son of Pelops and Hippodameia, and brother of Thyestes. The father of Agamemnon and Menelaüs. His wife was Aerope.
Book EI.II:101-150 An example of cruelty. The feud between the brothers over the kingship of Mycenae was long and complex, and gave rise to a network of myths. Thyestes committed adultery with Aerope, and Atreus in revenge killed Thyestes’ children, cooked the flesh, and served it to him at a banquet. Later Thyestes’ son Aegisthus killed Atreus, and subsequently Agamemnon.
Book EI.VII:1-70 His sons Agamemnon and Menelaus.
A friend to whom Ovid addresses two of the poems.
Book EII.IV:1-34 Addressed to him explicitly.
Book EII.VII:1-46 The second letter addressed explicitly to him.
Ibis:413-464 A Phrygian shepherd, loved by Cybele. An incarnation of the vegetation god, the consort of the Great Goddess. He castrated himself and became a sexless follower of hers. See Catullus:63.
The Emperor Augustus Caesar (63BC –14AD). (The title was also granted to Tiberius). Augustus was Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew, whom Julius adopted and declared as his heir, Octavius Caesar (Octavian). (The honorary title Augustus was bestowed by the Senate 16th Jan 27BC). He married Scribonia and then Livia. He exiled Ovid to the Black Sea region in 8AD for ‘a poem and a mistake’ (carmen et error). The poem probably the Ars Amatoria, the mistake probably something to do with the notorious Julias’ set (the younger Julia, Augustus’s grandaughter, was banished as was the Elder Julia his daughter), that Ovid knew of and repeated. He may possibly have witnessed ‘an illegal’, that is politically unacceptable, marriage between Julia the Younger and her lover. (She subsequently had an illegitimate child while in exile).
Book TI.I:1-68 Ovid hopes for greater leniency, despite the sparing of his life. A subtle doubtle-entendre as to which Caesar might grant it.
Book TI.I:70-128 He fears further attention from Augustus. Once bitten, twice shy.
Book TI.II:1-74 Augustus’s anger. Augustus did not judge Ovid’s fault (culpa) to be deserving of the death sentence.
Book TI.IV:1-28 Book TIV.III:49-84 Augustus identified with Jupiter (Jove).
Book TI.V:1-44 Book TI. IX:1-66 Augustus noted for his admiration of loyalty even amongst enemies.
Book TII.I:1 His banning of Ars Amatoria (the text is uncertain here).
Perhaps also a reference to Augustus’s re-dedication of the temple of Cybele (Ops) on the Palatine, after it burnt down in AD3. Augustus was granted the title pater patriae: Father of the Country on 2nd February 2BC.
Book TII:361-420 Augustus attached a library to the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and built one in the Portico of Octavia in memory of her son Marcellus.
Book TII:421-470 Augustus’s accession was 26BC.
Book TII:547-578 See the close of the Metamorphoses Book XV:745-870 where Ovid celebrates Julius Caesar and Augustus.
Book TIII.I:1-46 The doorposts of his house on the Palatine were hung with wreaths of laurel and oak, triumphal insignia. The wreath of oak, the civic crown (civica corona) was awarded to Romans who saved others’ lives in battle, and Augustus was treated as the saviour of the country. The oak was sacred to Jupiter of Dodona, and Ovid continually identifies Augustus with Jupiter in the convential way.
Book TIII.VI:1-38 ‘The man’ is Augustus.
Book EI.I:1-36 Augustus was said to be (spuriously) descended from Aeneas.
Book EI.I:37-80 Ovid celebrates the Julian succession, with its divine characteristics. The problem of Ovid’s past double-entendres in his works concerning Augustus is that one is inevitably tempted to read them into the later works too, but Ovid may in fact be ‘playing it straight’ here.
Book EII.I:68 Book EIII.VI:1-60 Augustus’s Justice was personified as a goddess, Justitia Augusta and awarded a marble temple on the 8th January AD13.
Book EII.II:39-74 Augustus is also Jupiter Capitolinus, the Tarpeian Thunderer.
Book EII.II:39-74 Augustus was embarrassed by the fragility of the succession, and his own lack of direct heirs through Livia. Here the younger women of the house, and granddaughters include Livilla wife of Drusus the Younger: Agrippina the Elder wife of Germanicus: Antonia the widow of the Elder Drusus: and the Younger Julia.The great-grandsons
are Germanicus’s three sons by Agrippina (Caligula, Drusus Caesar and Nero Caesar, the latter not the Emperor Nero.)
Book EII.V:1-40 The pax Augusta, the tranquillity of the Empire within established borders.
Book EII.VIII:1-36 Cotta Maximus sent Ovid portraits of Augustus, Tiberius and Livia. The Livia-Augustus relationship is mocked in The Metamorphoses by potraying them as Juno and Jupiter. Here Ovid lightly and ironically highlights the relationships, Tiberius being only his son by adoption, and Germanicus in turn an adopted son of Tiberius.
Book EII.VIII:37-76 The implication is that gladiators were not allowed to fight to the death in Augustus’s presence. (Suetonius Divus Augustus:45)
Book EIII.III:1-108 His (mythical) descent from Aeneas stressed.
Ibis:1-40 He allowed Ovid to retain his possessions.
Book EIV.V:1-46 Book EIV.XV:1-42 The Forum of Augustus was north-east of the Capitol at the foot of the Quirinal Hill. Augustus dedicated it in May 2BC. The Julian Temple was the Curia Julia begun by Caesar in 45BC flanking the Forum Romanum and dedicated by Augustus in 29BC.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Book EIV.IX:89-134 Book EIV.XII:1-50 Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Augustus had died on 19th August AD14, and was deified on 17th September.
Book EIV.IX:55-88 The consuls receive extra authority from the deified Augustus.
Book EII.III:49-100 The wife of Marcus Valerius Corvinus Messalla.
The goddess of the dawn (Greek Eos) the daughter of Hyperion, spouse of Tithonus, and mother of Memnon.
Book EI.IV:1-58 The Dawn, mother of Memnon.
A Greek name for the land of the Aurunci, later a poetic term for Latium and Italy.
Book TI.II:75-110 Book TII.I:1 Book EIII.II:1-110
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 Ovid’s Italy.
Book TIV.X:41-92 The Italian lyre.
Book TV.II:45-79 The Roman people.
Book EI.II:53-100 The Roman military machine.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Rome, the Ausonian city.
The South Wind. Eurus is the East Wind, Zephyrus the West Wind, and Boreas is the North Wind. A storm-wind.
Book TI.X:1-50 A favourable wind for navigating the Bosporus from south-west to north-east.
Book TI.XI:1-44 A rain-bearing wind in winter.
Book EII.1:68 A cloudy southerly bringing rain.
Book EII.III:49-100 A late winter rain, melting the snow.
Book EIV.XII:1-50 A warm wind.
The charioteer of Achilles, who according to Virgil (Aeneid II.476) later fought alongside Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) Achilles’ son.
Book TV.VI:1-46 Loyal to Achilles.
‘Inhospitable’ an adjective applied to Pontus (The Black Sea).
Book TIV.IV:43-88 His place of exile.
The ancient Mesopotamian capital of the Babylonians, in modern Iraq.
A Bacchante, one of the female followers of Bacchus-Dionysus, noted for their ecstatic worship of the god.
Book TIV.I:1-48 They celebrated the rites on Mount Ida, ululating, shrieking wildly, in ecstatic dances.
Book TV.III:1-58 The female followers of Bacchus.
The god Dionysus, the ‘twice-born’, the god of the vine. The son of Jupiter-Zeus and Semele. His worship was celebrated with orgiastic rites borrowed from Phrygia. His female followers are the Maenades. He carries the thyrsus, a wand tipped with a pine-cone, the Maenads and Satyrs following him carrying ivy-twined fir branches as thyrsi. (See Caravaggio’s painting – Bacchus – Uffizi, Florence) He was equated by the Romans with Liber the fertility god. See Euripides’ Bacchae. Also called Lenaeus, ‘of the winepress’.
Book TI.VII:1-40 The ivy-crowned god.
Book TI.X:1-50 Dionysopolis named for him.
Book TII:361-420 Son of Semele.
Book TIV.I:1-48 His thyrsus wand. A god of inspiration.
Book TV.III:1-58 His feast of the Liberalia on March 17th is the occasion for this poem. He was born prematurely, and then a second time after being nourished sewn into Jupiter-Zeus’s thigh. The evergreen ivy was sacred to Bacchus-Dionysus. Ovid mentions elements of his myth, his mother Semele, the antipathetic Lycurgus and Pentheus punished for denying his worship, his rescue of Ariadne, and his identification with Liber.
Book EII.V:41-76 The thyrsus as a symbol of inspiration from the god. Here apparently poetic inspiration.
Book EII.IX:1-38 Book EIV.II:1-50 God of the grape, and the vine. Falernian wine was prized.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 He was celebrated in India through which he conducted a triumphal procession.
Ibis:465-540 Nursed by Persephone and by the nymphs of Mount Nysa.
An iambic poet and member of Ovid’s circle, otherwise unknown, though he could be the Bassus of Propertius I.4.
A Germanic or Celtic people living along the Danube from the Carpathians to the Black Sea.
Book TII:155-206 They held the land on the border of the Roman area.
A Dalmatian, chieftain of the Daesitiatae, who fought against Rome AD 6-9. He obtained immunity and was allowed to live in Ravenna.
Book EII.I:68 A captive in Tiberius’s Pannonian triumph.
Callimachus the poet, a descendant of Battus.
Book TII:361-420 His love poetry.
Book TV.V:27-64 A lost reference in his works.
Ibis:41-104 Ovid used a poem of Callimachus as a model and adopted the name of Ibis for his enemy.
Ibis:541-596 A countryman changed by Mercury into a flint (touchstone, the ‘informer’) See Metamorphoses II:676
He was entertained by Proetus King of Argos and rejected the advances of Stheneboea his hostess who falsely denounced him in revenge. The King gave him to Iobates to be killed, but Iobates not daring to kill him forced him to fight the fire-breathing Chimaera which he destroyed.
Book TII:361-420 Brought near to death by Stheneboea.
A Thracian people living on the upper Hebrus. Distributed according to Strabo (7.5.12, C.318) along the southern slopes of the Haemus range, from the Black Sea as far as the Dardani north of Macedonia. They had a reputation as brigands.
Book TIII. X:1-40 Book TIV.I:49-107 Ovid living among them.
A Thracian people of the Aegean coast around Abdera and Dicaea, and as far west as the Nestos. Used by Ovid and others as a term for the Thracians generally.
Book TI.X:1-50 Ibis:365-412 Thrace. Ovid sailed from Samothrace to the Bistonian shore to continue his journey.
Book EI.II:101-150 Thracian horses.
Book EI.III:49-94 Thracian spears.
Book EII.IX:39-80 Cotys king of Thrace.
Book EIV.V:1-46 Thracian swords a threat.
‘The Beloved.’ The wife of Philetas the poet.
Book EIII.1:1-66 Ovid’s wife will be as famous as she is.
The constellation of the Waggoner, or Herdsman, or Bear Herd. The nearby constellation of Ursa Major is the Waggon, or Plough, or Great Bear. He holds the leash of the constellation of the hunting dogs, Canes Venatici. He is sometimes identified with Arcas son of Jupiter and Callisto. Arcas may alternatively be the Little Bear. Contains the star Arcturus.
Book TI.IV:1-28 The constellation sets in the stormy winter waters.
The North Wind. Eurus is the East Wind, Zephyrus is the West Wind, and Auster is the South Wind. He was identified with Thrace and the north.
Book TI.II:1-74 The warring of the winds.
Book TIII. X:1-40 Book TIII. X:41-78 Book EIV.XII:1-50 The wintry north wind.
Book TIII. XI:1-38 Book TIV.VIII:1-52 Book EIV.X:35-84 Associated with the Great Bear and the north.
Book EI.V:43- 86 The North wind is less powerful by the time it reaches Rome.
The Dneiper.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
The strait separating Europe and Asia Minor, connecting the Black Sea (Euxine) with the Propontis (Sea of Marmara). Byzantium on its west bank, Chalcedon on its east. It is distinguished as the Thracian Bosporus from the Cimmerian Bosporus in the Crimea the passage between the Black Sea (Euxine) and the Maeotic Lake (Sea of Azov).
Book TII:253-312 Juno drove Io over the sea.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 The southern limit for Ovid of the region round Tomis.
Hippodameia, the daughter of Briseus of Lyrnesus, and the favourite slave of Achilles, whom Agamemnon forced him to relinquish, initiating the famous quarrel described in the Iliad.
Book TII:361-420 The quarrel described in the Iliad.
Book TIV.I:1-48 Achilles saddened.
Ibis:465-540 A son of Tantalus. He committed suicide in the flames because of his ugliness, or as some say on being driven mad by Artemis.
Marcus Junius Brutus co-leader of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, and a writer on philosophy and rhetoric.
Book EI.I:1-36 A moralist and essayist on various subjects.
A friend addressed by Ovid who acted as his editor, otherwise unknown.
Book TI.VII:1-40 Probably TI:VII is addressed to him. He acted as Ovid’s editor and took responsibility for his works. Brutus issued the first three books of the Tristia on their completion.
Book EI.I:1-36 This letter addressed to him explicitly.
Book EIII.IX:1-56 This letter addressed to him explicitly.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 This letter addressed to him explicitly.
A king of Egypt who sacrificed strangers to Jupiter, killed by Hercules. He was the brother of Antaeus of Libya.
Book TIII. XI:39-74 Book EIII.VI:1-60 Ibis:365-412 An example of cruelty.
Ibis:311-364 The daughter of Miletus, and Cyanee, twin sister of Caunus.The twins were noted for their beauty. Byblis fell in love with Caunus and wooed him incestuously. See Metamorphoses IX:439.
The city founded on the west side of the Bosporus in the mid 7th century BC. Renamed Constantinople (330AD by Constantine), and now named Istanbul (1457AD by the Ottoman Empire). The city now lies on both sides of the southern end of the Bosporus.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s route.
Ibis:465-540 The three-headed giant who lived in a cave, stole Hercules’ cattle, and was killed by him. The bellowing of the stolen bulls gave him away.
The son of the Phoenician king Agenor, who searched for his sister Europa stolen by Jupiter. The founder of (Boeotian)Thebes. The father of Semele.
Book TIV.III:49-84 He rescued Semele’s child, Bacchus.
Book EI.III:49-94 The founder of Thebes.
Ibis:413-464 Athene commanded him to sow the teeth of the serpent (from the snake of the Castalian Spring, that he had killed) in the soil of Thebes. The Sparti or sown men were born from the soil, and they fought each other until only five were left.
Ibis:465-540 Grandfather of Pentheus.
Ovid uses Caesares, the Caesars, of two or more members of the Imperial house.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Here Augustus and Tiberius the heir apparent.
Book EII.VI:1-38 Book EIV.XV:1-42 The Imperial House.
An Athenian artist c.460BC famous for metalwork.
Book EIV.I:1-36 Famous for his bronze horses.
Probably a Bithynian river south of Herakleia.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
The scholar and poet of Alexandria (c. 305-240BC) who claimed descent from Battus the founder of Cyrene in North Africa. He was admired by Ovid, Propertius and Catullus. He was a prominent member of the library of Alexandria under Ptolemy II Philadelphos, where he produced a catalogue (the Pinakes) of the library’s holdings. His Hymns and fragments of Aitia etc survive.
Book TII:361-420 Called Battiades. His erotic epigrams?
Book TV.V:27-64 A lost reference in his works.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Imitated by Proculus a poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The Muse of epic poetry. The mother of Orpheus.
Book TII:547-578 Ovid’s Muse. Calliope often represents all the Muses, being the primal Muse.
Ibis:465-540 The mother of Orpheus.
A nymph of Nonacris in Arcadia, a favourite of Phoebe-Diana. The daughter of Lycaon, and descended from Atlas. Jupiter raped her and pregnant by him she was expelled from the band of Diana’s virgin followers by Diana as Cynthia, in her Moon goddess mode. She gave birth to a son Arcas, and was turned into a bear by Juno. Her constellation is the Great Bear.
Book TI.XI:1-44 Her constellation, the Atlantian Bear.
Book TII:155-206 Callisto is the Parrhasian virgin, Parrhasia being a name for Arcadia.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Her constellation, the Erymanthian Bear.
Book TIII. XI:1-38 The Maenalian Bear from Mount Maenalus in Arcadia.
Book TIV.III:1-48 Ursa Major the Great Bear was used by the Greeks for navigation, as Ursa Minor the Little Bear was used by the Phoenicians. Both the circumpolar constellations can be used to find the location of the north celestial pole.
Book EI.V:43- 86 Book EIV.X:35-84 Ursa Major, also called the Wain.
Ibis:465-540 Callisto the daughter of Lycaon.
Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus (82-46?BC) the orator, poet and friend of Catullus. He was a man of small stature with a fierce courtoom manner. As a poet he wrote epigrams, lampoons etc. His oratory was compared with Cicero’s. Catullus called him the salaputium disertum, the ‘eloquent manikin’
Book TII:421-470 His love poetry.
The town in Aetolia, a few miles inland. The site of the Calydonian Boar Hunt.
Book EI.III:49-94 The birthplace of Tydeus.
The goddess who loved Ulysses and detained him on her island for a number of years. Odysseus was impatient to leave her. See Homer’s Odyssey.
Book TII:361-420 Driven by passion for Ulysses. (Odyssey V:13).
Book EIV.X:1-34 An easy time for Ulysses.
An Augustan epic poet, otherwise unknown.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The region of southern Italy consisting of the coastal plain along the Tyrrhenian Sea, and mountains in the interior, and the Sorrento peninsula. It’s modern capital is Naples.
Book EIV.XV:1-42 Sextus Pompey’s land there.
The great recreation ground of ancient Rome, the Field of Mars, just outside the ancient city to the north-west along the Tiber. Originally it was open pasture outside the city boundary (pomerium) in the bend of the Tiber south of the Pincian Hill and east of the Janiculum, used for army musters and political assemblies. It took its name from the altar of Mars located there. It was encroached on by public buildings later including the Portico of Octavia and the Theatre of Pompey, but still retained its function as a park and exercise ground.
Book TV.I:1-48 Book EI.VIII:1-70 An extensive grassy plain. The gardens it faced were those of Agrippa and the Horti Pompeiani.
The daughter of Aeolus, God of the Winds and Enarete. Her ill-fated love for her brother Macareus was the theme of Euripides’ Aeolus.
Book TII:361-420 Ibis:311-364 Her illicit love.
The son of Hipponous and Astynome. One of the seven leaders who attacked Thebes. He was killed by Zeus’s lightning bolt when attempting to scale the walls (or attack the Electra Gate). His wife Evadne threw herself into his funeral pyre.
Book TIV.III:49-84 His wife did not disown him.
Book TV.III:1-58 Driven from the wall by Jupiter-Zeus.
Book TV.V:27-64 His wife’s response to his fate brought about her fame.
Book EIII.1:1-66 Made more famous by his fate.
Ibis:465-540 Blasted by Jove’s lightning.
An Augustan poet who wrote elegiac verse, otherwise unknown.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
A rocky promontory on the northern coast of Euboea where the Greek fleet came to grief while returning from Troy.
Book TI.I:70-128 Book TV.VII:1-68 A peril to the Greek fleet.
The southern summit of the Capitoline Hill of Rome, but used as a name for the whole Hill.
Book TI.III:1-46 Ovid’s house is located near the Capitol.
Book EII.XI:1-28 The Temple of Jupiter there, identified with Augustus.
Book EIV.IX:1-54 The procession to the Capitol at the inauguration of a consul.
A friend of Ovid’s and a poet, who had charge of the education of Germanicus’s sons (Nero and Drusus III). Possibly also a pseudonym for another of his friends.
Book TI.V:1-44 Carus is possibly the addressee of this poem based on the carissime in line 3, and the statement of tokens instead of a name in line 7.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Again possibly addressed to Carus based on the care in line 1.
Book TIII.V:1-56 A third poem addressed to Carus based on this strong hint. The point may well be that Carus, the true name, is itself merely a pseudonym, which is likely considering the caution Ovid displayed in dragging his friends into his misfortunes.
Book TIII.VI:1-38 Carissime here refers as we shall see to an old friend not the recent friend of TIII.V, so clearly every reference of this kind is not to the same pseudonymous Carus. Possibly here the influential Cotta, close supporter of the Emperors, is meant.
Book TV.IV:1-50 The use of carior and the remembrance of the tears shed over his disgrace is reminiscent of TIII.IV, see above, and suggests that TV:IV is addressed to the same friend.
Book TV.VII:1-68 The use of carissime may again be significant, but note the comments above.
Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Carus again addressed and his tutelage of Germanicus’s sons mentioned.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The daughter of Priam and Hecuba, gifted with prophecy by Apollo, but cursed to tell the truth and not be believed. She was raped by Ajax the Lesser in the sanctuary of Athene at the Fall of Troy and then taken back to Greece by Agamemnon and killed there with him by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. (See Aeschylus: The Agamemnon)
Book TII:361-420 Desired by Agamemnon.
Book EII.IX:39-80 Resembling Apollodorus the cruel lord of Cassandreia in Macedonia. Apollodorus was a democratic leader in the city in the Chalcidice peninsula, known in Thucydides’ time as Potidaea. He seized power with the help of a band of Gaullish mercenaries and ruled from c279-276BC.
The son of Tyndareus of Sparta and Leda, and twin brother of Pollux.
The brothers of Helen. Castor was an expert horseman, Pollux a noted boxer. They came to be regarded as the protectors of sailors, and gave their names to the two major stars of the constellation Gemini, The Twins.
Book TI.X:1-50 Worshipped on Samothrace.
Book TIV.V:1-34 His affection for his brother. Note that Ovid’s naming of these gods is consistent with the shipwreck imagery earlier in the poem.
Book EII.II:75-126 Their temple in the Forum was close to that of the deified Julius Caesar. It was rebuilt by Tiberius in AD6 and dedicated in his and his brother Drusus the Elder’s names.
Book EII.XI:1-28 Uncle to Hermione, daughter of his sister Helen.
Gaius Valerius Cato (not the more famous Marcius Portius Cato), the Roman grammarian and poet an older contemporary of Catullus, and influential as a teacher. He was a rhetorician known as ‘the Latin Siren’. He flourished at Rome in the second half of the 1st century BC. Though at one time wealthy he ended his life in poverty.
Book TII:421-470 His light verse.
Caius Valerius Catullus the Roman lyric poet (c.87-c54BC) the lyric and iambic poet and leading exponent of the neoteric movement with its emphasis on technique and allusiveness, following the poetry of Hellenistic Alexandria. His erotic verse was addressed to Lesbia, probably Clodia Metella, the sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher, and wife of Quintus Metellus Celer. Catullus also wrote epithalamia, epigrams and at least one epyllion, the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis.
Book TII:421-470 His erotic and explicit verse.
The major river of Lydia in Asia Minor, with its mouth near Ephesus and its sources in the Tmolus mountains.
Book TV.I:1-48 Noted for its swans, which Homer and many others mention (Iliad II:449). They were said (falsely) to sing their own death song. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses XIV:429.
One of Ovid’s closest friends. Possibly Albinovanus Celsus addressed by Horace (Epistle I.8) as Tiberius’s companion and secretary in 20BC and whom he accuses of plagiarism (Epistle I.13).
Book EI.IX:1-56 Cotta writes to Ovid concerning Celsus’ death.
The eastern port of Corinth on the Saronic Gulf, and the main Asian trade harbour. It was linked with the Gulf of Corinth by the slipway, the diolkos, on which boats could be winched across the Isthmus.
Book TI.IX:1-50 The harbour of Corinth where Ovid embarked for Samothrace.
Creatures, half-man and half-horse living in the mountains of Thessaly, hence called biformes, duplex natura, semihomines, bimembres.
They were the sons of Ixion, and a cloud, in the form of Juno. Invited to the marriage feast of Pirithoüs and Hippodamia, Eurytus the Centaur precipitated a fight with the Lapithae.
Book TIV.VII:1-26 Ovid sceptically lists the ‘unbelievable’ myths that he would have to believe in first before he could believe in this friends disloyalty.
Ibis:365-412 The Centaurs Nessus and Eurytion.
The dangerous headland on the Adriatic Coast of Illyria and Epirus.
Book EII.VI:1-38 A symbolic place of danger.
The three-headed watchdog of Hades.
Book TIV.VII:1-26 Ovid sceptically lists the ‘unbelievable’ myths that he would have to believe in first before he could believe in this friends disloyalty.
Ibis:365-412 A brigand who wrestled with travellers and crushed them to death. He was served in the same way by Theseus, to Ceres great delight.
The Corn Goddess. The daughter of Saturn and Rhea, and Jupiter’s sister. As Demeter she is represented in the sky by the constellation and zodiacal sign of Virgo, holding an ear of wheat, the star Spica. It contains the brightest quasar, 3C 273. (The constellation alternatively depicts Astraea.) The worship of her and her daughter Persephone, as the Mother and the Maiden, was central to the Eleusinian mysteries, where the ritual of the rebirth of the world from winter was enacted. Ceres was there a representation of the Great Goddess of Neolithic times, and her daughter her incarnation, in the underworld and on earth. Her most famous cult in Rome was on the Aventine, and dated from the 5th century BC.
Book TII:253-312 She lay with Iasion in the ‘thrice-ploughed’ field.
Book EII.IX:1-38 Pregnant sows ritually sacrificed to her.
Book EIII.VIII:1-24 Grain and bread are ‘gifts of Ceres’.
Ibis:251-310 Her rites were the Eleusinian mysteries. The reference is obscure.
Ibis:365-412 Her delight at the death of Cercyon.
Ibis:413-464 The mother of Plutus.
The source and state of the Universe at its creation. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book I.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Known of through the poets.
The whirlpool between Italy and Sicily in the Messenian straits. Charybdis was the voracious daughter of Mother Earth and Neptune, hurled into the sea, and thrice, daily, drawing in and spewing out a huge volume of water.
Book TV.II:45-79 Ovid calls the whirlpool Zanclean, from Zancle the ancient name for the city of Messina.
Book EIV.X:1-34 Not as bad as the threat from Thracian tribes.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 Preferable to Pontus.
Ibis:365-412 Ulysses’ men caught in the whirlpool.
A fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, she-goat’s body and serpent’s tail. Its native country is Lycia (or Caria) in Asia Minor.
Book TII:361-420 Defeated by Bellerephon.
Book TIV.VII:1-26 Ovid sceptically lists the ‘unbelievable’ myths that he would have to believe in first before he could believe in this friends disloyalty.
One of the Centaurs, half-man and half-horse. He was the son of Philyra and Saturn. Phoebus Apollo took his newborn son Aesculapius to his cave for protection since he was skilled in hunting, music, medicine and gymnastics. He is represented in the sky by the constellation Centaurus, which contains the nearest star to the sun, Alpha Centauri. The father of Ocyroë, by Chariclo the water-nymph. He was begotten by Saturn disguised as a horse. His home is on Mount Pelion. Achilles was his pupil.
Book EIII.III:1-108 He taught Achilles.
Ibis:163-208 The southeast coastal region of Asia Minor, incorporated into the Empire from 67BC when Pompey suppressed the endemic piracy of the coastal area. Famous for its saffron, derived from crocus flowers.
The Teutonic horde defeated by Marius.
Book EIV.III:1-58 Marius defeated the Cimbri and Teutones at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae in 102-1BC.
Book EIV.X:1-34 A people living between the Danube and the Don. Ovid calls the region of Tomis ‘Cimmerian’. Also a fabled people who were said to live in caves in perpetual darkness, ‘beyond the north Wind.’ See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book XI:573-649 where their country is the home of Somnus, Sleep.
Gaius Helvius Cinna, the neoteric poet and friend of Catullus and a student of Valerius Cato. His epyllion Zmyrna described the incest between Myrrha and her father Cinyras. He also wrote light verse. Mistaken for one of the conspirators, the praetor Lucius Cornelius Cinna, after Julius Caesar’s assassination, he was killed by the mob. See Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Book TII:421-470 His dubious light verse.
The river Cinyps of North Africa flowing into the sea near the Syrtes. In the Metamorphoses Medea uses one of its water snakes as an ingredient for her magic potion. Ovid also gives it as Juba’s place of origin.
Book EII.VII:1-46 The fertile fields alongside.
The sea-nymph, daughter of Sol and Perse, and the granddaughter of Oceanus. (Kirke or Circe means a small falcon) She was famed for her beauty and magic arts and lived on the ‘island’ of Aeaea, which is the promontory of Circeii. (Cape Circeo between Anzio and Gaeta, on the west coast of Italy, now part of the magnificent Parco Nazionale del Circeo extending to Capo Portiere in the north, and providing a reminder of the ancient Pontine Marshes before they were drained: rich in wildfowl and varied tree species.) Cicero mentions that Circe was worshipped religiously by the colonists at Circei. (‘On the Nature of the Gods’, Bk III 47)
(See John Melhuish Strudwick’s painting – Circe and Scylla – Walker Art Gallery, Sudley, Merseyside, England: See Dosso Dossi’s painting - Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape- National gallery of Art, Washington)
She transformed Ulysses’s men into beasts. Mercury gave him the plant moly to enable him to approach her. He married her and freed his men, staying for a year on her island. (Moly has been variously identified as ‘wild rue’, wild cyclamen, and a sort of garlic, allium moly. John Gerard’s Herbal of 1633 Ch.100 gives seven plants under this heading, of which the third, Moly Homericum, is he suggests the Moly of Theophrastus, Pliny and Homer – Odyssey XX – and he describes it as a wild garlic). Circe was the mother by Ulysses of Telegonus.
Book TII:361-420 Driven by passion for Ulysses. (Odyssey X:133).
Book EIII.1:105-166 Ibis:365-412 A witch able to transform men into beasts.
The huge circus in Rome between the Palatine and Aventine Hills used for pageants races etc.
Book TIV.IX:1-32 Ovid refers to a Circus, not necessarily this one, and describes the preparations for a bullfight.
Book EI.IV:1-58 A horse-racing venue.
A tribe living near the Danube.
Book TII:155-206 A tribe of the Danube region.
The Roman woman, Claudia Quinta, a Vestal Virgin, who was accused of unchastity, but fulfilled the oracle and showed herself a pure woman by freeing the stranded ship containing the image of Cybele that had stuck on the mud when arriving at Ostia in 204BC.
Book EI.II:101-150 She was superior to her reputation.
Clodia (Via)
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Mentioned. The junction with the Via Flaminia near the Milvian Bridge where Ovid had a small estate.
One of the three Fates. Clotho spins the thread. Lachesis measures it. Atropos wields the shears.
Ibis:209-250 She spins Ibis’s fate.
Clytaemnestra, Clytaemestra, Clytemnestra
The wife of Agamemnon, daughter of Tyndareus of Sparta, and Leda. Sister or half-sister of Helen, and of the Dioscuri. Mother of Orestes, Electra (Laodice), and Iphigenia. She conspired with her lover Aegisthus to murder Agamemnon. She was in turn killed by her son Orestes.
Book TII:361-420 Tragedy caused by her adultery and the consequent events.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Conspired to murder her husband.
A tribe living near the Danube.
Book TII:155-206 A tribe of the Danube region.
The region at the eastern end of the Black Sea, south of the Caucasus. Its King was Aeetes, and it was the home of Medea. Its main river the Phasis, was a trade route to central Asia. Medea is called ‘the Phasian’. Colchis was noted for timber, linen, hemp, pitch and gold-dust.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 Home of Aeetes and Medea.
Book EI.III:49-94 Its waters sailed by the Argonauts.
A Moesian tribe living near the Danube.
Book EIV.II:1-50 Book EIV.VIII:49-90 A blonde-haired tribe of the area.
The unknown heroine of Ovid’s Amores.
Book TIV.X:41-92 Ovid claims here that Corinna was sung throughout
the City, and that he did not use her real name, suggesting that she was in fact a real and well-known person. The name Corinna refers back to the ancient Greece poetess (fourth century BC?) who claimed to have rivalled Pindar. This suggests a girl learned in verse. From this and a possible later identification of Julia the Younger and the Muse, I would suggest the speculation, without any evidence, that Corinna was Julia. I don’t suggest any direct affair between Ovid and Julia, merely that she was at least his literary pretext.
The city north of Mycenae, on the Isthmus between Attica and the Argolis. Built on the hill of Acrocorinth, it and Ithome were ‘the horns of the Greek bull’, whoever held them held the Peloponnese. It controlled both land and sea trade between Northern Greece and the Peloponnese and, by means of the famous slipway or diolkos, between the Saronic and Corinthian Gulfs. It sided with Sparta against Athens during the Peloponnesian War. It was destroyed by the Roman general Mummius in 146BC and rebuilt by Julius Caesar in 44BC as a Roman colony.
Book TI.X:1-50 The harbour of Corinth on the Saronic Gulf was Cenchreae.
Book TIII.VIII:1-42 Medea fled from there.
A Roman erotic poet, possibly Quintus Cornificius friend of Catullus and Cicero, proscribed by the second Triumvirate, and killed defending his province of Africa Nova in 42BC.
Book TII:421-470 His light verse.
Ibis:541-596 He destroyed the Harpy, Poene, visited on Argos by Apollo after Crotopus’s crime of killing Linus and Psamathe. A plague then descended on the Argolis, which was ended by Corobeus confessing to his act at Delphi, and being sent out to build a temple to Apollo wherever the sacred tripod he was carrying fell to earth.
Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus (called Maximus or Cotta Maximus, and born not earlier than 24BC, possibly in 14BC) consul 20AD, the younger son of Messalla, brother of Messalinus, and patron and ‘friend’ of Ovid. A poet and orator, condemned by Tacitus (Annals:6.5-6.7) for his extravagant life-style, his shameful behaviour, and his servility, he was a supporter of Tiberius, and was successfully defended by him when prosecuted in 32AD, for accusing Gaius Caligula of homosexuality, ridiculing a banquet to the late Julia Augusta as a funeral feast, and boasting of Tiberius’s protection when he went to law. Pliny (Historia Naturalis:10.52) describes him as an extravagant gourmet. Juvenal (5.109, 7.94) makes him a patron of the arts. (Tacitus apart, he probably behaved no differently than any member of the Caesars’ inner group of supporters, and appears to have been a continuing supporter of Ovid. Those who think he didn’t do enough for the poet probably overestimate his power, and underestimate the distaste for Ovid’s error at court.)
Book TIV.V:1-34 This poem probably addressed to Cotta, given its consistency with other poems to Cotta (Ex Ponto I:V,IX and II:III,VIII and III:II,V), the mention of the blood brother, and the content of the preceding poem, probably addressed to Messalinus.
Book TV.IX:1-38 The imagery of shipwreck again and the perceived high rank of the recipient, who wishes to be strictly anonymous, suggests that as above this poem may be to Cotta.
Book EI.V:1-42 Explicitly addressed to Cotta.
Book EI.VII:1-70 Brother to Messalinus. Ovid stresses the relationship with him.
Book EI.IX:1-56 Explicitly addressed to Cotta. He may have acted as a patron to Celsus in his literary efforts.
Book EII.III:1-48 Explicitly addressed to Cotta. Ovid claims that Cotta accepted he had only made a mistake and not committed a crime.
Book EII.VIII:1-36 Explicitly addressed to Cotta thanking him for sending likenesses of the Imperial family.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Explicitly addressed to Cotta. Iphigenia in Tauris.
Book EIII.V:1-58 Explicitly addressed to Cotta. Compliments on his eloquence.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet and patron of poets in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Several so-named Kings of Thrace. Cotys IV, son of Rhoemetalces I, was ruler at the time of Ovid’s exile. He shared Thrace with his uncle Rhescuporis, when Augustus divided the kingdom in 12AD. He was cultivated and Romanised. He was deposed and killed by his uncle in 19AD after Ovid’s death. (Rhoemetalces had been supported by Augustus, Marcus Lollius providing military help, and Rome later had helped drive the Sarmatians back across the Danube).
Book EII.IX:1-38 This poem addressed to him explicitly.
King of Lydia (c560-546BC), famed for his wealth. He was defeated and captured by Cyrus of Persia at the taking of Sardis.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 An example of wealth.
Book EIV.III:1-58 Rescued by his conqueror from the pyre (Herodotus 1.86)
Ibis:541-596 The Argive father of Psamathe who killed her son Linus.
Book TIV.X:41-92 The love-god and his arrows.
Book EI.IV:1-58 The god of love helped Jason.
A fountain nymph of Sicily whose stream flows into the River Anapis, near Syracuse. She was loved by Anapis and wedded him. She obstructed Dis in his abduction of Proserpine and Dis opened up a way to Tartarus from the depths of her pool.
Book EII.X:1-52 Visited by Ovid and Macer.
The Greek Symplegades, the ‘clashing rocks’. Two rocky islands at the entrance to the Euxine Sea in the Bosporus channel, clashing rocks according to the fable, crushing what attempted to pass between them. The Argo had to avoid them. With Athena’s help the Argonauts passed through after which the rocks ceased to clash.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the route of the Minerva.
The Phrygian great goddess, Magna Mater, the Great Mother, personifying the earth in its savage state, worshipped in caves and on mountaintops. Merged with Rhea, the mother of the gods. Her consort was Attis, slain by a wild boar like Adonis. His festival was celebrated by the followers of Cybele, the Galli, or Corybantes, who were noted for convulsive dances to the music of flutes, drums and cymbals, and self-mutilation in an orgiastic fury. Her worship was introduced at Rome in 204BC. She wore a many-turretted crown, and is often represented with many breasts.
Book TII.I:1 Identified with Ops the Roman goddess of plenty.
Book EI.I:37-80 Worshipped to the sound of flutes, pipes and horns.
Ibis:413-464 Worshipped with ecstatic self-mutilation.
Ibis:251-310 The first king of Salamis, in some versions of myth the grandfather of Telamon. He killed, bred, or was killed by a serpent in various mythological variants. He is said to have appeared to the Greek fleet at the Battle of Salamis as a snake.
The ‘Encircling Isles’ The chain of islands centred on Delos in the Aegean Sea, Naxos, Paros and Andros being the largest.
Book TI.XI:1-44 Ovid passed them on his journey into exile.
A race of giants living on the coast of Sicily of whom Polyphemus, blinded by Ulysses, was one. They had a single eye in the centre of their foreheads. They forged Jupiter’s lightning-bolts, using Etna’s fires.
Book EIV.X:1-34 The encounter with Ulysses.
Ibis:413-464 The son of Apollo and Hyrie, a great hunter of Tempe. He is turned into a swan when he attempts suicide to spite Phylius by diving into a lake, thereafter called the Cycnean Lake. Ovid gives a variant myth here. See Metamorphoses VII:350
Book TIII. X:41-78 The place devoid of fruit-trees.
A river with unknown location.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
The Milesian colony founded in 756 BC situated on the island of Arctonessus in the Propontis (Sea of Marmara) and linked to the mainland by a sandy isthmus. It was famous for its electrum coinage (staters) known as ‘Cyzicenes’. It was held for Rome against Mithridates in 74BC, the siege being raised by Lucullus, had a superb temple of Hadrian, and was ultimately destroyed by earthquakes. The uninhabited site is now known as Bal-Kiz.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s route. According to myth it was founded by the Argonaut Aeneus from Haemonia.
The mythical Athenian architect who built the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete, laid out the ‘dancing floor’ of Cnossos, and created the artifical wooden cow with which Pasiphae wooed the Bull from the Sea. (See Michael Ayrton’s extended series of sculptures, bronzes, and artefacts celebrating Daedalus, Icarus and the Minotaur). He made wings of bee’s-wax and feathers to escape from Crete. Warning Icarus, his son, to follow him in a middle course, they flew towards Ionia. Between Samos and Lebinthos Icarus flew too high, the wax melted, and he drowned in the Icarian Sea and was buried on the island of Icaria. He had previously caused the death of Talos, his nephew, the son of his sister Perdix, through jealousy throwing him from the Athenian citadel, but Pallas Athene changed the boy into the partridge, perdix perdix. He found sanctuary in Sicily (after reaching Cumae, where he built the temple of Apollo), at the court of King Cocalus who defended him from Minos. (He threaded the spiral shell for King Cocalus, a test devised by Minos, and made the golden honeycomb for the goddess at Eryx. See Vincent Cronin’s book on Sicily – The Golden Honeycomb.). His name was synonymous with ingenuity, invention and technical skill. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book VIII.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Book TIII.VIII:1-42 Made the wings of wax and feathers.
A Roman province bordering the eastern shore of the Adriatic.
Book EII.II:75-126 Separated out from Roman Illyricum after the Pannonian War.
Ibis:541-596 Possibly Damasicthon son of Kodros, the Ionian.
The mother of Perseus by Jupiter, and daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. She was raped by Jupiter in the form of a shower of gold, while imprisoned in a brazen tower by Acrisius, who had been warned by an oracle that he would have no sons but that his grandson would kill him. (See Titian’s painting, Museo del Prado, Madrid: See the pedestal of Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus bronze, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, depicting Danaë with the child Perseus: See Jan Gossaert called Mabuse’s panel – Danaë – in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
Book TII:361-420 Raped by Jupiter.
The fifty daughters of Danaüs, granddaughters of Belus, king of Egypt.
They were forced to marry their cousins, the fifty sons of Aegyptus, and, with one exception, Hypermnestra, who saved the life of Lynceus because he preserved her virginity, killed them on their wedding night. The others were punished in Hades by having to fill a bottomless cistern with water carried in leaking sieves.
Book TIII.I:47-82 The figures of Danaus and his daughters in the temple of Apollo built by Augustus on the Palatine, in which he also established a library.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Murderesses.
Ibis:163-208 Ibis:311-364 Their crime and punishment.
A term originally applied to the people of Argos but later a general term meaning Greek. BookEIV.VII:41 etc.
The great river of south-eastern Europe, running from Germany to its mouth on the west coast of the Black Sea some seventy miles north of Tomis. Ovid generally prefers the name Hister rather than Danuvius.
Book TII:155-206 Tomis (Constantza) is south of the Danube estuary.
A town, and region, on the Asian shore of the Hellespont. The Trojans are often referred to as Dardanians.
Book TI.X:1-50 Founded by Dardanus, Zeus’s son by the Pleiad Electra, a native of Arcadian Pheneus. He married Chryse the daughter of Pallas.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Priam, King of Troy is a Dardanian.
Darius III, King of Persia (d 330 BC). He was defeated by Alexander the Great at Issus. Alexander subsequently gave Darius rites of burial after he had been murdered by his own kin.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Alexander showed magnanimity in victory.
Ibis:311-364 Ovid may intend Darius III (not the second, who was not historically significant) Codomannus, defeated by Alexander at the Issus in 333BC and Gaugamela in 331BC, and subsequently murdered by the satrap Bessus. The incident referred to is unclear.
The daughter of Oeneus, king of Calydon, hence called Calydonis, and the sister of Meleager. She was wooed by Hercules and Acheloüs. She married Hercules, and was raped by Nessus, the Centaur. Trying to revive Hercules love for her she unwittingly gave him the shirt of Nessus soaked in the poison of the Hydra. (See Pollaiuolo’s painting – The Rape of Deianira – Yale University Art Gallery) Hyllus was her son by Hercules. (See Sophocles Trachiniae)
Book TII:361-420 Wife of Hercules, and in love with him.
The daughter of Lycomedes, King of the Dolopians, on Scyros. She was the mother of Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) by Achilles, after Achilles was hidden on the island to avoid his being drafted for Troy.
Book TII:361-420 Loved by Achilles.
The Greek island in the Aegean, one of the Cyclades, birthplace of, and sacred to, Apollo (Phoebus) and Diana (Phoebe, Artemis), hence the adjective Delian. Its ancient name was Ortygia. A wandering island it gave sanctuary to Latona (Leto). Having been hounded by jealous Juno (Hera), she gave birth there to the twins Apollo and Diana, between an olive tree and a date-palm on the north side of Mount Cynthus. (Pausanias VIII xlvii, mentions the sacred palm-tree, noted there in Homer’s Odyssey 6, 162, and the ancient olive.) Delos then became fixed in the sea. In a variant she gave birth to Artemis-Diana on the islet of Ortygia nearby.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 Kind to Latona.
Ibis:465-540 Diana’s island. Possibly Ovid is referring obscurely to the Delian league and its sacking of the island of Thasos, which because of its gold mines was a source of riches.
The site of the oracle of Apollo in Phocis, on the lower slopes of Parnassus overlooking the Pleistos valley. Phoebus Apollo is therefore called Delphicus. The navel stone in the precinct at Delphi was taken as the central point of the known world. It continued as a shrine, diminishing in importance, until closed by Theodosius in 390AD.
Book TIV.VIII:1-52 The oracle.
Ibis:251-310 The blind Greek bard who entertains the guests in Alcinous’ palace in Phaeacia in Homer’s Odyssey VIII.
Ibis:365-412 King of Olenus. Hercules rescued his daughter Mnesimache from the Centaur Eurytion, the king’s son-in-law.
Ibis:465-540 The Telchines, mythical craftsmen and wizards living on Ceos, angered the gods by blighting the fruits of the earth. Zeus and Poseidon (or Apollo) destroyed the island and its population, but spared Dexithea and her sisters, daughters of Damon (or Demonax), the chief of the Telkhines, because Macelo, Dexithea’s sister, had entertained the two gods. Macelo’s husband offended the gods, and they were both destroyed.
Daughter of Jupiter and Latona (hence her epithet Latonia) and twin sister of Apollo. She was born on the island of Ortygia which is Delos (hence her epithet Ortygia). Goddess of the moon and the hunt. She carries a bow, quiver and arrows. She and her followers are virgins. She is worshipped as the triple goddess, as Hecate in the underworld, Luna the moon, in the heavens, and Diana the huntress on earth. (Skelton’s ‘Diana in the leaves green, Luna who so bright doth sheen, Persephone in hell’) Callisto is one of her followers. (See Luca Penni’s – Diana Huntress – Louvre, Paris, and Jean Goujon’s sculpture (attributed) – Diana of Anet – Louvre, Paris.) She was worshipped at the sacred grove and lake of Nemi in Aricia, as Diana Nemorensis, and the rites practised there are the starting point for Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ (see Chapter I et seq.) She hid Hippolytus, and set him down at Aricia (Nemi), as her consort Virbius. The Romans identified the original Sabine goddess Diana with the Greek Artemis and established her cult on the Aventine. Strabo mentions the connection of the cult of Aricia with the Tauric Chersonese (5.3.12, C.239)
Book TII:77-120 Ibis:465-540 Actaeon saw her naked, bathing in a pool, and was changed to a stag, and torn to pieces by the hounds for unwittingly being present.
Book TIV.IV:43-88 Book EI.II:53-100 Book EIII.II:1-110 Ibis:365-412 The Diana of the Tauric Chersonese was worshipped with human sacrifice. Strabo (7.4.2) locates her temple at Heracleia Pontica near modern Sevastapol, and Herodotus (4.103) describes the sacrifice.
Book EI.I:37-80 Possibly the Diana of Ephesus is meant. Ovid implies no alms collecting was allowed the priestesses and prophets
of the goddess.
Book EII.III:1-48 This suggests a reference to the ritual prostitution of the followers of Diana at Ephesus and elsewhere.
Ibis:465-540 Delos was her island.
Ibis:541-596 Her pack of hounds. Cerberus was an incarnation of Hecate, a mask of Diana.
The Greek philosopher of Sinope (412-322 BC) who founded the philosophical sect of Cynics. Influenced by Antisthenes he calimed total freedom and self-sufficiency for the individual, and had a disregard for social conventions.
Book EI.III:49-94 Exiled to Attica.
The son of Tydeus King of Argos, and a Greek hero in the Trojan War. He aided Ulysses against Rhesus and Palamades, and with him brought Philoctetes and his bow (that of Hercules) from Lemnos.
Book EII.II:1-38 He wounded Venus and Mars in the Trojan War.
The Thracian King of the Bistones who fed his horses on human flesh. Their capture formed Hercules’s eighth labour.
Book EI.II:101-150 Ibis:365-412 An example of cruelty.
Dionysius II, the Younger, the tyrant of Syracuse (in 367-356, and 347-344 BC) who was a patron of writers and philosophers and was taught briefly by Plato. He opened a school at Corinth after his expulsion.
Book EIV.III:1-58 Ejected from the fortress of Ortygia by Timoleon, and ended as a schoolteacher in Corinth.
A town on the Moesian coast of the Pontus, south of Tomis. Earlier known as Krounoi, ‘the springs’. Now Balchik (40 kilometres north of Varna).
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s course.
Ibis:465-540 The wife of Lycus, King of Thebes, who mistreated her niece Antiope. Antiope was rescued by her sons Amphion and Zethus who tied Dirce to the horns of a wild bull and set it loose.
The town in Epirus in north western Greece, site of the Oracle of Jupiter-Zeus, whose responses were delivered by the rustling of the oak trees in the sacred grove. (After 1200BC the goddess Naia, worshipped there, who continued to be honoured as Dione, was joined by Zeus Naios. The sanctuary was destroyed in 391AD.)
Book TIV.VIII:1-52 The oracle.
The Trojan son of Eumedes. He acted as a spy in the Greek camp and asked for the horses of Achilles as his reward. He was killed by Ulysses and Diomedes during their raid behind the enemy lines. See Iliad Book X.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Ibis:597-644 His desire for Achilles’s horses.
A Celtic chieftain, the ancestor of Vestalis, a Celt who took service with the Romans.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 The grandfather of Vestalis.
Surnamed Germanicus, the younger son of Livia Augusta by her first husband (Tiberius Claudius Nero). The father of Germanicus.
Book TIV.II:1-74 He was rewarded by the Senate with the title Germanicus for his German campaigns from 12BC to AD9. Ovid’s ‘fine son worthy of his father’, may be a dig at Augustus, since Livia was forced to divorce her husband and marry Augustus when six months pregnant with Drusus.
Book EII.VIII:37-76 Killed by illness or a fall from his horse, in Germany, in AD9.
Born 13BC. The son of Tiberius and Vipsania (daughter of Agrippa), and the cousin and brother of Germanicus through Germanicus’s adoption by Tiberius. He married the Elder Livilla.
Book TII:155-206 Ovid offers a prayer for his safety.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Fighting alongside Tiberius in Germany in AD10.
Book EII.II:39-74 Praised with Germanicus.
Book EIV.IX:89-134 As Livia’s grandson worshipped by Ovid as divine.
Ibis:311-364 The son of Mars, and brother of the Thracian Tereus. If this is the Dryas referred to, the incident of his son is obscure.
Ibis:465-540 The father of Theiodamas, who ruled the area below Mount Parnassus, and who was easily defeated by Hercules. The Dryopians were taken to the shrine of Apollo and made slaves.
An unidentified island, like Same, near Ithaca, and belonging to Ulysses. Ulysses (Odysseus) and his comrades are called ‘Dulichian’.
Book TI.V:45-84 Ibis:365-412 Often synonymous with Ithaca.
Book TIV.I:1-48 The Dulichians, Odysseus’s men, were drugged by the food of the Lotus-Eaters, see Homer’s Odyssey IX:82
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Theban, from Echion the son-in-law of Cadmus founder of Thebes.
The king of Thebes, in Mysia, and father of Andromache, Hector’s wife.
Book TV.V:27-64 Father of Andromache.
Ilva the modern Elba, the island lying off the Etrurian coast in the Tyrrhenian Sea, famous for its iron ore mines.
Book EII.III:49-100 Ovid last saw Cotta there in the autumn of AD8.
Ibis:163-208 A region of the underworld for spirits in bliss, rewarding virtue in life.
The daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sister to Chrysothemis, Iphigenia and Orestes. Devoted to Orestes, hostile to Aegisthus and her mother. See Sophocles and Euripides (Electra).
Book TII:361-420 Famous because of Clytemnestra’s adultery and the consequent events.
The region of the north-west Peloponnese famous for its horses. The Elians presided over the Games at Olympia.
Book EII.X:1-52 The Elean river Alpheus.
A comrade of Ulysses. The Odyssey describes his death when he tumbles from the roof of Circe’s house, the morning after a heavy bout of drinking. His ghost begs Ulysses for proper burial, and for the oar that he pulled with his comrades to be set up over his grave. His ashes were entombed on Mount Circeo.
Elysium or the Elysian Fields, identified with the Islands of the Blest, a paradise ruled by Rhadamanthys, apparently distinct from Hades.
A poetic term for Macedonian, originally applied to the Emathian Plain.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Alexander the Great of Macedonia.
One of the giants who stormed heaven, piling Mounts Pelion, Ossa and Olympus on each other. He was overthrown by Pallas Athene (Minerva).
Book EII.II:1-38 Ovid implies he had not joined in any plotting against Augustus.
A beautiful youth from Elis or Caria who was made to sleep for eternity in a cave on Carian Mount Latmos by Zeus for attempting to seduce Hera. He was visited and kissed by the Moon (Selene/Luna/Diana/Artemis).
Book TII:253-312 Visited by the Moon.
Quintus Ennius (239-169BC) from Rudiae in Calabria, the important early Roman poet and tragedian. His chief work was the Annales an epic history of Rome including the Punic and eastern wars.
Book TII:253-312 His Annals are probably referred to here.
Book TII:421-470 A serious poet, talented but primitive.
Book TIV.IX:1-32 Book EII.V:41-76 Book EIV.VI:1-50
Book EIV.IX:89-134 The dawn, ‘eastern’.
A city in Argolis, sacred to Aesculapius. The pre-Greek god Maleas was later equated with Apollo, and he and his son Asklepios were worshipped there. There were games in honour of the god every four years, and from 395BC a drama festival. The impressive ancient theatre has been restored and plays are performed there. From the end of the 5th c. BC the cult of Asklepios spread widely through the ancient world reaching Athens in 420BC and Rome (as Aesculapius) in 293BC.
Book EI.III:1-48 Aesculapius the Epidaurian was famed for his healing arts.
The Underworld (also a god of darkness).
Ibis:209-250 Source of the Furies’ snake venom.
A son of Vulcan (Hephaestus), born without a mother (or born from the Earth after Hephaestus the victim of a deception had been repulsed by Athene). Legendary king of Athens (as Erechtheus) and a skilled charioteer. He is represented by the constellation Auriga the charioteer, containing the star Capella. (Alternatively the constellation represents the she-goat Amaltheia that suckled the infant Jupiter, and the stars ζ (zeta) and η (eta) Aurigae are her Kids. It is a constellation visible in the winter months.)
Book TII:253-312 Pallas-Athene raised him.
Book EII.IX:1-38 Ibis:251-310 Ancestor of Eumolpus and Cotys.
Ibis:597-644 She hung herself on finding him dead.
Arcadian from Mount Erymanthus in Arcadia.
Book TI.IV:1-28 Book TIII.IV:1-46 An epithet for the Great Bear from Callisto the Arcadian girl transformed to that constellation.
Ibis:413-464 The son of the Thessalian king Triopas. His daughter was Mestra. After living off Mestra’s shape-changing skills he ended by consuming himself. See Metamorphoses VIII:725
The elder son of Oedipus and Iocasta, brother of Polynices who fought against him in the war of the Seven against Thebes. The two brothers killed each other. Their sister was Antigone.
Book TII:313-360 Book TV.V:27-64 Their mutual death.
Book TII:361-420 Apparently he wrote a story that involved abortion.
One of the largest of the Aegean islands close to the south-east of Greece and stretching from the Maliac Gulf and the Gulf of Pagasae in the north to the island of Andros in the south. At Chalcis it is less than a hundred yards from the mainland.
Book TI.I:70-128 Book TV.VII:1-68 Ibis:311-364 Caphereus, the site of the shipwreck of the Greek fleet.
Ibis:465-540 Lichas hurled there.
A mythical Thracian singer, the son of Poseidon and Chione (the daughter of Boreas and Oreithiya, making Eumolpus a decendant of Erictheus, king of Athens), and a priest of Ceres-Demeter, who brought the Eleusinian mysteries to Attica. He learned the mysteries from Demeter herself or from Orpheus (see Metamorphoses Book XI:85). The priestly clan of the Eumolpidae claimed descent from him, as the Kerkidae did from his son Keryx. His son Ismarus married a daughter of Tegyrius the King of Thrace, and Eumolpus himself succeeded to the throne on their death. He taught Hercules the lyre.
Book EII.IX:1-38 Ancestor of Cotys, King of Thrace.
Book EIII.III:1-108 A pupil of Orpheus.
Ibis:251-310 His mother Chione hurled him into his father Neptune’s sea to avoid Boreas’s anger. Neptune saved him.
Ibis:465-540 A younger contemporary of Aristophanes, a comic poet and playwright. An Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, he flourished at the time of the Peloponnesian War (c. 446—411BC). Fragments of his plays survive. May be intended here.
The tragic poet c480-406BC, one of the three major writers of Attic tragedy, according to tradition born in Salamis on the day Xerxes’ fleet was destroyed.
Ibis:541-596 Eaten by dogs in the temple according to Hyginus Fabula 247.
The daughter of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, and sister of Cadmus, abducted by Jupiter disguised as a white bull. (See Paolo Veronese’s painting – The Rape of Europa – Palazzo Ducale, Venice).
Book EIV.X:35-84 She gave her name to the continent of Europe.
The East Wind. Auster is the South Wind, Zephyrus the West Wind, and Boreas is the North Wind.
Book TI.II:1-74 The warring of the winds.
The beautiful boy in Virgil’s Aeneid (IX:176) loved by Nisus, son of Hyrtacus, who avenged his death by killing Volcens, before dying himself.
Book TI.V:1-44 Book TI. IX:1-66 Book TV.IV:1-50 A paragon of friendship.
Ibis:597-644 Died with his friend after killing the sleeping Rhamnes.
Ibis:465-540 The wife of Orpheus, who died after being bitten by a snake. Orpheus went to the Underworld to ask for her life, but lost her when he broke the injunction not to look back at her. See Metamorphoses Books X:1 and XI:1. (See also Rilke’s poem, ‘Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes’, and his ‘Sonnets to Orpheus’, and Gluck’s Opera ‘Orphée’).
Ibis:365-412 The Centaur. Hercules rescued Mnesimache the daughter of King Dexamenus of Olenus from him, and apparently killed him, though Eurytion also appears in the myth of Theseus’s fight against the Centaurs.
Ibis:251-310 Supposedly a companion of Odysseus, who expelled Cychreus, son of Neptune and Salamis, daughter of the river god Asopus, from the throne of Salamis. Cychreus had killed a serpent to gain the kingdom, and bred one to defend it, and Ovid has some variant on what is a fragmentary myth whereby he was eaten by serpents.
The Black Sea (Euxine) was called the Pontus Euxinus, the ‘Hospitable Sea’ for purposes of good omen.
Book TII:155-206 Book EIV.VI:1-50 The Danube delta was the Roman boundary on the west coast.
Book TIII.XIII:1-28 Book TIV.IV:43-88 Book TV.X:1-53 Falsely named ‘hospitable’ as far as Ovid is concerned.
Book TIV.I:49-107 Book TIV.VIII:1-52 Book TIV.X:93-132
Book TV.X:1-53 Book EII.II:1-38 The western or left-hand (sinister: unlucky) shore, Pontus on the left.
Book TV.II:45-79 Ovid describes the shoreline as deformia, shapeless, featureless, unlovely.
Book TV.IV:1-50 Book EII.VI:1-38 Book EIII.VI:1-60 Book EIV.III:1-58 Book EIV.IX:1-54 His place of exile, from which he sent letters.
Book TV.X:1-53 The sea frozen in winter.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Bordered by the Tauric Chersonese and Thrace.
Book EIII.VII:1-40 The place he is likely to die in.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Vestalis possibly prefect there.
The daughter of Iphis and wife of Capaneus who had herself burned to death on her husband’s funeral pyre, after he was struck by Zeus’s lightning bolt in the war of the Seven Against Thebes.
Book TIV.III:49-84 She was loyal to her husband.
Book TV.V:27-64 Made famous by her husband.
Book TV.XIV:1-46 Book EIII.1:105-166 The daughter of Iphis, a paragon of loyalty and love.
Ibis:465-540 Son of Mars. He married Alcippe and had a daughter Marpessa. Suitors contended with him for her in a chariot race, the loser being killed. Idas stole her, and Evenus drowned himself in the river Lycormas which became the river Evenus.
Ovid’s third wife was a bride from the House of the Fabii but it is not certain her name was Fabia, or that she was of the family. She was a widow, or divorced, with a daughter Perilla, when Ovid married her. She was loyal to him in exile.
Book TI.II:1-74 She grieves for him, but was sensibly left behind in Rome, probably to work on his behalf for mitigation of his sentence, and to prevent her being exposed to the hardships of life in exile.
Book TI.III:1-46 His leave-taking from her.
Book TV.XI:1-30 One of the many letters to her, as she lived the life of an exile’s wife in Rome, loyally defending his estate.
Book TV.XIV:1-46 Ovid’s guarantee of immortality to her.
Book EI.II:101-150 Book EIII.1:67-104 She was a bride from the house of Paullus Fabius. The lines suggest a close relationship between Ovid and Paullus, of a literary nature. There is no concrete evidence that she was herself a member of the family. She was one of Marcia’s companions, loved by her, and also previously in a similar relationship to her mother Atia Minor, Augustus’s maternal aunt.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 His thoughts of her and her daughter.
Paullus Fabius Maximus. See Maximus.
The Etruscan city on the bank of the Tiber north-west of Rome, beyond Mount Soracte, captured by Rome in 241BC. It was famous for its orchards, pastures and cattle. Ovid’s second wife was from Falerii. Falisca herba is the ‘grass of Falerii’.
Book EIV.IV:1-50 Book EIV.VIII:1-48 Oxen from its rich meadows.
The three Fates, the Moirai, or Parcae, were goddesses born of Erebus and Night. Clothed in white, they spin, measure out, and sever the thread of each human life. Clotho (the Spinner) spins the thread. Lachesis (The Assigner of Destinies) measures it. Atropos (She Who Cannot Be Resisted) wields the shears. The Parcae were originally Roman goddesses of childbearing but were assimilated to the Fates who preside over birth marriage and death.
Book TV.X:1-53 Lachesis measured the thread of life.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Ibis:41-104 Spinners of the thread of life.
Ibis:41-104 Powers invoked by Ovid.
Lucius Pomponius Flaccus the brother of Ovid’s friend Graecinus. He served in Moesia c.12AD and again as governor in 18 or 19AD. He was subsequently Governor of Syria in AD32 (Tacitus Annales 6.27). He was an energetic soldier, close to Tiberius.
Book EI.X:1-44 This poem addressed to him explicitly.
Book EIV.IX:55-88 His command of the Danube shores.
Flaminia Via
The Flaminian Way, the Roman road, ran from Rome to Ariminum (Rimini) on the Adriatic Coast. Gaius Flaminius completed it in 220BC. Augustus himself paid for its repair in 27BC, and statues of him were erected on the arches of the Mulvian Bridge over the Tiber.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Mentioned. The junction with the Via Clodia near the Milvian (Mulvian) Bridge where Ovid had a small estate.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The Roman goddess of Fortune, Chance and Luck, identified with the Greek Tyche, and associated from early times with childbirth, fertility and women generally. Traditionally brought to Rome by Servius Tullius perhaps from Praeneste where she had an oracular shrine. Represented on a wheel or globe.
Book TI.V:1-44 Book TV.XIV:1-46 Book EII.III:49-100
Book EII.IX:1-38 Fortune as chance and fate.
Book TV.VIII:1-38 Book EIV.III:1-58 The Wheel of Fortune.
Book EII.VII:1-46 Fortune’s iniquitous arrows. Fickle by reputation but now constant in seeking his destruction.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Depicted as blind or blindfolded.
Fundanum solum, a town on the Appian Way in southern Latium.
Book EII.XI:1-28 Native town of Rufus.
The Furies, Erinyes, or Eumenides (ironically ‘The Kindly Ones’). The Three Sisters, were Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera, the daughters of Night and Uranus. They were the personified pangs of cruel conscience that pursued the guilty. (See Aeschylus – The Eumenides). Their abode was in Hades by the Styx.
Book TI.V:1-44 Book TIV.IV:43-88 They pursued Orestes for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra.
Ibis:41-104 The Furies sat at the ‘prison’ gate of the city of Dis. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book IV:416
Ibis:163-208 Their whips, snaky hair and smoking torches.
Ibis:209-250 Their ministrations to the newborn Ibis.
Lucius Junius Gallio a rhetorician and friend of Ovid. Also a friend of the elder Seneca, and of Messalla Corvinus. He was removed as a senator and exiled to Lesbos by Tiberius in AD32 but later summoned back to Rome.
Book EIV.XI:1-22 This letter addressed to him explicitly.
Gaius Cornelius Gallus (69-27BC), one of the most brilliant and versatile figures of his time, general, statesman and elegiac poet, friend of Virgil who dedicated his tenth eclogue to him, and initially Augustus who appointed him first Prefect of Egypt (Cassius Dio: The Roman History 51.9 and 17). However his behaviour incurred Augustus’s displeasure, he was recalled, exiled, and committed suicide to avoid prosecution for treason. He had taken up with Antony’s mistress Cytheris, and as Lycoris wrote her four books of love-elegies, of which a single line survives.
Book TII:421-470 His celebration of Lycoris in his verse.
Book TIV.X:41-92 Senior to Tibullus and Propertius.
Book TV.I:1-48 A writer of love poetry.
The sacred river of northern India.
Book TV.III:1-58 Visited by Bacchus.
The son of Tros, brother of Ilus and Assaracus, loved by Jupiter because of his great beauty. Jupiter, in the form of an eagle, abducted him and made him his cup-bearer, against Juno’s will. Ganymede’s name was given to the largest moon of the planet Jupiter.
Book TII:361-420 Loved by Jupiter.
Germanicus (15BC-AD19) was the handsome, brilliant and popular son of the elder Drusus, grandson of Antony, and adopted (4AD) son of Tiberius, and husband of Agrippina (daughter of Agrippa, granddaughter of Augustus). He was consul in AD12 , and commander in chief of campaigns in Germany in AD14-16. In AD17 he was appointed to govern Rome’s eastern provinces and died in Antioch in mysterious circumstances, perhaps, as rumoured, through the effects of poison. He was the father of Caligula. Ovid re-dedicated the Fasti to him after Augustus’s death.
Book TII:155-206 Ovid offers a prayer for his safety.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Fighting alongside Tiberius in Germany in AD10.
Book EII.I:68 Germanicus participated in Tiberius’s Pannonian triumph in October AD12. Ovid prophesies a later triumph for him, which did in fact happen on 26th May 17AD, for victories over the German tribes. Ovid however does not appear to have written a poem about it before his own death sometime in the period lateAD16-AD18. (Last dateable reference in Ex Ponto is Graecinus’s consulship in early AD16. Ovid died in AD16 or 17 according to Saint Jerome’s Chronicle of Eusebius, at the latest AD18 based on Fasti I:223-226 and its reference to the restoration of the temple of Janus, but this may equally refer to an earlier year)
Book EII.II:39-74 Celebrated for his courage and abilities.
Book EII.V:41-76 Salanus, his tutor in oratory.
Book EII.VIII:1-36 Adopted son of Tiberius, the adopted son of Augustus, himself the adopted son of Julius Caesar. Ovid’s irony is subdued.
Germanicus translated the Phaenomena of Aratus, a guide to the constellations.
Book EIV.V:1-46 Still a possible successor to Augustus, in early 14AD, and so mentioned by Ovid as a contact of Pompey’s.
Book EIV.VIII:1-48 Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Book EIV.XIII:1-50 A possible source of help after Augustus’s death.
Book EIV.IX:89-134 As Tiberius’s adopted son worshipped by Ovid as divine.
The monster with three bodies, killed by Hercules. In the Tenth Labour, Hercules brought back Geryon’s famous herd of cattle from the island of Erythia after shooting three arrows through the three bodies. Geryon was the son of Chrysaor and Callirhoë, and King of Tartessus in Spain.
Book TIV.VII:1-26 Ovid sceptically lists the ‘unbelievable’ myths that he would have to believe in first before he could believe in this friends disloyalty.
A Thracian tribe occupying both banks of the lower Danube south and east of the Carpathians, considered of superior intelligence by Herodotus (4.92). Alexander defeated them. They were also called the Daci (Dacians). Strabo ( 7.3.11-12, C.304) considers them a merging of two tribes and aggressive by nature.
Book TI.V:45-84 Book TIII.III:1-46 Book TIII. X:1-40
Book TIII. XI:39-74 Book TIV.I:49-107 Book TIV.VI:1-50
Book TIV.VIII:1-52 Book TV.III:1-58 Book TV.V:27-64
Book TV.XII:1-68 Book TV.XIII:1-34 Book EI.I:1-36
Book EI.VII:1-70 Book EI.IX:1-56 Book EII.I:68 Book EII.X:1-52
Book EIII.VII:1-40 Book EIV.IV:1-50 Book EIV.X:35-84 Ovid exiled among them.
Book TI.X:1-50 Book TV.I:1-48 A term for the shores around Tomis.
Book TII:155-206 A tribe of the Danube region.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 Colonised by the Greeks.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Ovid describes their lands as tree-less and vine-less.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 Book EII.VIII:37-76 A hostile people.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 Book TV.II:45-79 The languages of the region. The rhythms of Getic are different to those of Latin. Latin is relatively unknown, and the original Greek speech of the cities is submerged in Getic pronunciation.
Book TIV.X:93-132 Book EI.VIII:1-70 Book EIV.III:1-58
Ibis:597-644 The Getic bowmen.
Book TV.I:1-48 Book EII.VII:1-46 Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Ovid labels them fierce, stern, of a barbaric nation.
Book TV.VII:1-68 Book TV.X:1-53 Book EIV.X:1-34 The Getae: dominate the Greek admixture, are barely civilised, warlike, with long beards and hair, savage and aggressive. They dress in skins and loose Persian trousers, and are ignorant of Latin.
Book TV.XII:1-68 Book EIII.II:1-110 Ovid learnt something of their language.
Book EI.II:53-100 Tomis not a significant place even to the Getae.
Book EI.II:101-150 His wish not to die at Getan hands.
Book EI.V:1-42 Book EIII.IX:1-56 A harsh place to expect the Muse to visit.
Book EI.V:43- 86 An ironic judgement on their lack of poetry.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 The Getae captured the town of Aegisos. Ovid also mentions the oxen used for ploughing.
Book EI.X:1-44 No abundance of good food among them.
Book EII.II:1-38 Book EII.VII:1-46 Book EIII.IV:57-115 Book EIV.IX:55-88 The Getae not fully conquered and pacified by Rome.
Book EII.II:39-74 He would make a worthless prize for them.
Book EIII.II:1-110 They appreciate the virtues of loyalty and friendship. The Getae are not far from the Tauric Chersonese.
Book EIII.V:1-58 Book EIV.XV:1-42 The uncouth and uncivilised Getae.
Book EIV.II:1-50 The long-haired, unshorn Getae.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Vestalis campaigned against them.
Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Ovid wrote a poem in Getic.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 Ovid praises the people of Tomis but not the warlike tribes.
Monsters, sons of Tartarus and Earth, with many arms and serpent feet, who made war on the gods by piling up the mountains, and overthrown by Jupiter. They were buried under Sicily.
Book TII:43-76 Book TII:313-360 Ovid may have intended to write a poem about the war. He appears to have started such a work and abandoned it.
Book TIV.VII:1-26 Ovid sceptically lists the ‘unbelievable’ myths that he would have to believe in first before he could believe in this friends disloyalty.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Known of through the poets.
Ibis:597-644 Buried beneath Sicily.
Ibis:541-596 The son of Sisyphus and Merope, and father of Bellerephon, who lived at Potniae near Thebes. Aphrodite punished him for feeding his mares on human flesh by causing them to eat him alive.
Ibis:541-596 The Boeotian son of Anthedon or Poseidon who tasted the herb of immortality and leapt into the sea where he became a marine god. See Metamorphoses VII:179
Ibis:541-596 Ovid indicates another Glaucus, who drowned in honey. This was Glaucus son of Minos, who drowned in a jar of honey in the cellars of Cnossos, whom Polyeidus restored to life.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Pegasus, born of Medusa.
Probably Titus Sempronius Graccus, a writer of tragedy and a descendant of the great Gracci.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Publius Pomponius Graecinus brother of Lucius Pomponius Flaccus who was a distinguished soldier and became Governor of Syria. Publius was consul suffectus in May 16 AD. A soldier interested in literature, possibly the Graecinus mentioned in Amores II.10.
Book EI.VI:1-54 This poem addressed to him explicitly.
Book EII.VI:1-38 A second poem explicitly addressed to him.
Book EIV.IX:1-54 Addressed to him and celebrating his consulship in AD16.
An Augustan poet who wrote a poem on hunting Cynegetica, and bucolics.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
One of the Giants, possessing a hundred arms.
Book TIV.VII:1-26 Ovid sceptically lists the ‘unbelievable’ myths that he would have to believe in first before he could believe in this friends disloyalty.
The constellation Auriga represents the she-goat Amaltheia that suckled the infant Jupiter, and the stars ζ (zeta) and η (eta) Aurigae are her Kids. It is a constellation visible in the winter months, and indicative of stormy weather.
Book TI.XI:1-44 Causing winter storms during Ovid’s journey.
The son of Creon, King of Thebes and the nephew of Jocasta. Antigone’s betrothed in the Sophoclean version, he committed suicide at her death.
Book TII:361-420 A victim of passion.
The ancient name for Thessaly, from Haemon father of Thessalos.
Book TI.X:1-50 Cyzicos was founded by the Argonaut Aeneus from Haemonia.
Book TIII. XI:1-38 Here an epithet for the Thessalian horses of Achilles.
Book TIV.I:1-48 Achilles’ Thessalian lyre.
Book EI.III:49-94 Jason’s homeland.
A mountain in Thrace supposed to be a mortal turned into a mountain for assuming the name of a great god.
Book EIV.V:1-46 Ovid is retracing the journey to Rome.
The daughter of Aeolus, granddaughter of Polypemon, and wife of Ceyx, changed into a kingfisher or halcyon. They foolishly compared themselves to Juno and Jupiter, for which the gods drowned Ceyx in a storm. Alcyone leapt into the sea to join him, and both were transformed into kingfishers. In antiquity it was believed that the hen-kingfisher layed her eggs in a floating nest in the Halcyon Days around the winter solstice, when the sea is made calm by Aeolus, Alcyone’s father. (The kingfisher actually lays its eggs in a hole, normally in a riverbank, by freshwater and not by seawater.)
See Metamorphoses Book VII:350
Book TV.I:49-80 Her lament for Ceyx.
A large river, the longest in Asia Minor, flowing through central Asia Minor into the Pontus. The modern Kizil-Irmak flowing into the Black Sea between Sinope and Amisos.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Ibis:251-310 The great Carthaginian commander, son of Hamilcar Barca. Ovid may refer to the incident after Cannae when Hannibal sent ten Roman survivors under oath to discuss ransom terms with the Senate. One of the men sent broke his oath to return, when the Senate refused the plea, and they then sent him back forcibly to Hannibal, to be dealt with. They thereafter established a rule that Roman soldiers must conquer or die in the field. (Polybius The Roman History VI.57)
Ibis:541-596 A Mede in the service of King Astyages, who disobeyed his orders and failed to destroy the infant Cyrus. He was cruelly punished by Astyages who served him his own child at a banquet. The story is told in full in Herodotus I.107-119.
The ‘snatchers’, Aellopus and Ocypete, the fair-haired, loathsome, winged daughters of Thaumas and the ocean nymph Electra, who snatch up criminals for punishment by the Furies. They lived in a cave in Cretan Dicte. They plagued Phineus of Salmydessus, the blind prophet, and were chased away by the winged sons of Boreas. An alternative myth has Phineus drive them away to the Strophades where Ovid has Aeneas meet the harpy Aëllo, and Virgil, Celaeno. They are foul-bellied birds with girls’ faces, and clawed hands, and their faces are pale with hunger. (See Virgil Aeneid III:190-220)
Book TIV.VII:1-26 Ovid sceptically lists the ‘unbelievable’ myths that he would have to believe in first before he could believe in this friends disloyalty.
Book EI.V:1-42 Ovid suggests he is being asked to perform the impossible, equivalent to the distant Lixus running into the Hebrus.
The daughter of Zeus-Jupiter and Hera-Juno, born without a father. She was the wife of Hercules after his deification, and had the power to renew life. She was the cupbearer of the Olympians.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Married Hercules.
Book EI.X:1-44 Cupbearer to the gods.
The Trojan hero, eldest son of Priam and Hecuba, the husband of Andromache and father of Astyanax. After killing Patroclus he was himself killed by Achilles and his body dragged round the walls of Troy. His body was yielded to Priam for burial, and his funeral forms the close of Homer’s Iliad.
Book TI. IX:1-66 He praised the loyalty of Patroclus to Achilles.
Book TI.X:1-50 ‘Hector’s city’ was Ophrynion, the site of his purported grave.
Book TIII. XI:1-38 Book TIV.III:1-48 No longer Hector, dragged behind Achilles’ horses.
Book TIV.III:49-84 He would have been unknown if not for the War.
Book TV.IV:1-50 Priam his father grieving at his death.
Book TV.XIV:1-46 Andromache, his faithful wife.
Book EII.XI:1-28 Uncle to Ascanius the son of his brother Aeneas.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Attempted to destroy the Greek ships with fire.
Ibis:311-364 Book EIV.XVI:1-52 His body was dragged three times round the walls of Troy by Achilles’ chariot.
Ibis:541-596 Father of Astyanax.
The daughter of Leda and Jupiter (Tyndareus was her putative father), sister of Clytemnaestra, and the Dioscuri. The wife of Menelaüs. She was taken, by Paris, to Troy, instigating the Trojan War.
Diomede son of Tydeus was in love with her before her abduction. Ovid treates her as an adulteress, to be blushed for.
The seven daughters of the Sun god and Clymene. They mourned their brother Phaethon. Two of them are named. Lampetia and the eldest Phaethüsa. Turned into poplars beside the River Po as they mourned Phaethon their brother, their tears become drops of amber. See Metamorphoses Book II:329
The highest mountain in Boeotia (5968 ft) near the Gulf of Corinth, was the mountain where the Muses lived. It is a continuation of the Parnassus Range lying between Lake Copais and the Gulf. The sacred springs of Helicon were Aganippe and Hippocrene both giving poetic inspiration. (The Muses’ other favourite haunt was Mount Parnassus in Phocis with its Castalian Spring. They also guarded the oracle at Delphi.) Hesiod’s village of Ascra was on the lower slopes.
Book TIV.I:49-107 The haunt of the Muses.
Book TIV.X:1-40 Book TIV.X:93-132 Book EIV.II:1-50 The symbolic place of poetry.
The daughter of Athamas and Nephele, sister of Phrixus, and granddaughter of Aeolus. Escaping from Ino on the golden ram, she fell into the sea and was drowned, giving her name to the Hellespont, the straits that link the Propontis with the Aegean Sea.
Book TI.X:1-50 Helle’s sea: the Hellespont, and the corner of the north-weast Aegean at its entrance. The Minerva sailed on through it, leaving Ovid to take his alternative route to Tomis from Samothrace.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Carried by the ram, which here signifies the constellation Aries, the constellation of the spring equinox at that time.
The probable author of the Sybaritica, tales of Sybaris.
Book TII:361-420 Classed as containing obscene material.
Book EIV.X:1-34 A Sarmatian people who indulged in piracy.
The town in central Sicily. Scene of the rape of Persephone by Dis. Its lake is the Lago di Pergusa. Also scene of the First Sicilian Slave War (135-132BC)
Book EII.X:1-52 Visited by Ovid and Macer.
(The following material covered by Ovid in the Metamorphoses). The Hero, son of Jupiter. He was set in the sky as the constellation Hercules between Lyra and Corona Borealis. The son of Jupiter and Alcmena, the wife of Amphitryon (so Hercules is of Theban descent, and a Boeotian). Called Alcides from Amphitryon’s father Alceus. Called also Amphitryoniades. Called also Tyrinthius from Tiryns his city in the Argolis. Jupiter predicted at his birth that a scion of Perseus would be born, greater than all other descendants. Juno delayed Hercules’ birth and hastened that of Eurystheus, grandson of Perseus, making Hercules subservient to him. Hercules was set twelve labours by Eurystheus at Juno’s instigation.
The killing of the Nemean lion.
The destruction of the Lernean Hydra. He uses the poison from the Hydra for his arrows.
The capture of the stag with golden antlers.
The capture of the Erymanthian Boar.
The cleansing of the stables of Augeas king of Elis.
The killing of the birds of the Stymphalian Lake in Arcadia.
The capture of the Cretan wild bull.
The capture of the mares of Diomede of Thrace, that ate human flesh.
The taking of the girdle of Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons.
The killing of Geryon and the capture of his oxen.
The securing of the apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. He held up the sky for Atlas in order to deceive him and obtain them.
The bringing of the dog Cerberus from Hades to the upper world.
He fought with Acheloüs for the hand of Deianira. He married Deianira, killed Nessus, fell in love with Iole, daughter of Eurytus who had cheated him, and received the shirt of Nessus from the outraged Deianira. (See Cavalli’s opera with Lully’s dances – Ercole Amante). He was then tormented to death by the shirt of Nessus.
Ibis:365-412 He killed King Antaeus of Libya, brother of Busiris, who was a giant, child of mother Earth, by lifting him from the ground that gave him strength, and, cracking his ribs, held him up until he died. He also killed Busiris, King of Egypt brother of Antaeus, who sacrificed strangers at the altars, to fulfil a prophecy that an eight-year drought and famine would end if he did so.
He killed the servant Lichas who brought the fatal shirt, then built a funeral pyre, and became a constellation and was deified. (See Canova’s sculpture – Hercules and Lichas – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome). He had asked his son Hyllus, by Deianira to marry Iole. His birth is described when the sun is in the tenth sign, Capricorn, i.e. at midwinter, making him a solar god. His mother’s seven night labour would also make his birth at the new year, a week after the winter solstice. He captured Troy and rescued Hesione, with the help of Telamon, and gave her to Telamon in marriage.
Philoctetes received his bow and arrows after his death, destined to be needed at Troy. Ulysses went to fetch Philoctetes and the arrows.
Book TII:361-420 He loved Iole, married and was loved by Deianira.
Book TIII.V:1-56 He was deified and married Hebe.
Book EIII.III:1-108 The bluff, frank and open hero type. The Fabii claimed descent from Hercules.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 He attacked Oechalia when its king Eurytus refused him his daughter Iole. He killed Eurytus and carried off Iole.
Ibis:251-310 Sacrificing at the altars to Jupiter after taking Oechalia, Hercules put on the shirt of Nessus, and the poison of the Hydra tormented him, and corroded his flesh. Philoctetes received his bow. Taught the lyre by Eumolpus whom he defeated in contest. Hercules was the son of Jupiter connected with the shrine of Jupiter Ammon in Libya.
Ibis:311-364 Ibis:597-644 He endured the torment of the shirt of Nessus and built his funeral pyre on Mount Oeta, between Aetolia and Thessaly. (see Metamorphoses IX:159)
Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Noted for his strength.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Persecuted by Juno.
The daughter of Menelaus and Helen, niece of Castor and Pollux, betrothed at Troy to Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) son of Achilles. Returning to Greece he found her married to Orestes, who subsequently killed him when he demanded her back.
Book TII:361-420 A victim of male passion.
Book EII.XI:1-28 Castor was her uncle.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 The Greek poet (c 700 BC) of Ascra in Boeotia, on the slopes of Parnassus. To him are attributed the Theogony, Works and Days, and Shield of Hercules.
Book TIV.IX:1-32 The West, and Italy. Hesperius, ‘of the evening’.
The fountain of the Muses on Mount Helicon.
In one version of myth Hippodamia was the daughter of Oenomaus, King of Pisa. Pelops defeated the king in a chariot race and carried her off. He was assisted by Myrtilus the King’s charioteer, who was cursed by the King and in turn cursed Pelops leading to the feud between Atreus and Thyestes.
Book TII:361-420 The ‘Pisan’ girl carried off by Pelops.
The son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyte. He was admired by Phaedra, his step-mother, and was killed at Troezen, after meeting ‘a bull from the sea’. He was brought to life again by Aesculapius, and hidden by Diana (Cynthia, the moon-goddess) who set him down in the sacred grove at Arician Nemi, where he became Virbius, the consort of the goddess (as Adonis was of Venus, and Attis of Cybele), and the King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). All this is retold and developed in Frazer’s monumental work, on magic and religion, ‘The Golden Bough’ (see Chapter I et seq.). (See also Euripides’s play ‘Hippolytos’, and Racine’s ‘Phaedra’.)
Book TII:361-420 Euripides’ play dealing with illict love.
Ibis:541-596 Venus made him fall in love with Phaedra. He died when his horses stampeded at the vision of a bull from the sea.
Ibis:311-364 The son of Megareus. Great-grandson of Neptune. Falling in love with Atalanta, he determined to race against her, on penalty of death for failure.By means of the golden apples he won the race and claimed Atalanta.He desecrated Cybele’s sacred cave with the sexual act and was turned, with Atalanta, into a lion. The reference to his daughter is obscure, if this is the Hippomenes’ Ovid intended.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 The Danube, also called Danuvius.
Book TII:155-206 Tomis (Constantza) is south of the Danube estuary.
Book TIII. X:1-40 Book EIV.IX:55-88 Book EIV.X:1-34 A barrier against the warring tribes.
Book TIII. X:41-78 Book EI.II:53-100 In winter the tribes attack across the frozen Danube, riding their swift horses.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 The Sarmatians drive their wagons over the frozen river.
Book TIV.X:93-132 Book TV.VII:1-68 Book EIII.III:1-108
Book EIII.IV:57-115 Book EIII.V:1-58 The wide river of his exile.
Book TV.I:1-48 The Scythian Danube.
Book TV.X:1-53 Book EII.IV:1-34 The river frozen in winter.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Its estuary is nearer to Rome by sea, by a few hundred miles, than Colchis at the far end of the Black Sea is to Thessaly.
Book EI.V:43- 86 A region bereft of wit.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Far from Rome.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 The delta is not far north of Tomis.
The Greek epic poet, (fl. c. 8th century BC? born Chios or Smyrna?), supposed main author of the Iliad and Odyssey.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Book TII:361-420 He made Penelope famous as a loyal wife, through the Odyssey.
Book TII:361-420 The story of the Iliad is centred around Helen’s adultery.
He also tells of Mars and Venus trapped by Hephaestus, and of Odysseus seduced by Circe and Calypso. (the last two in Odyssey V:13, X:133)
Book TIV.X:1-40 An example: the greatest poet.
Book EII.X:1-52 Author of the Iliad, an immortal.
Book EIII.IX:1-56 The greatest of epic poets.
Book EIV.II:1-50 Blessed by his location in Greece.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Tuticanus translated part of the Odyssey.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8BC) son of a freedman, and Augustan lyrical poet and satirist. He enjoyed the patronage of Maecenas who granted him his beloved Sabine farm. He was befriended by Augustus who failed to persuade him to become his private