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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 secretary. His lyrics imitate Greek poets (e.g. Sappho and Alcaeus) in matter and metre.
Book TIV.X:41-92 A member of Ovid’s poetic circle.
Quintus Hortensius Hortalus (114-50BC) was a prominent lawyer, but notorious for bribery. He defended Verres against Cicero but lost the case. He turned to a political career, becoming consul in 69 but after the formation of the First Triumvirate (60) he retreated from politics and returned to the law. His enormous wealth was accompanied by personal eccentricity. He also published erotic poetry.
The daughters of Atlas and Aethra, half-sisters of the Pleiades. They lived on Mount Nysa and nurtured the infant Bacchus. The Hyades are the star-cluster forming the ‘face’ of the constellation Taurus the Bull. The cluster is used as the first step in the distance scale of the galaxy. The stars were engraved on Achilles’s shield. As an autumn and winter constellation the Hyades indicated rain.
Book TI.XI:1-44 A sign of rain, when combined with a southerly wind.
Megara Hyblaea, a small town in eastern Sicily, near to and north of Syracuse, famous for its sweet-scented honey. Modern Mellili.
Book TV.VI:1-46 The bees of Hybla.
Book TV.XIII:1-34 Book EII.VII:1-46 Noted for its fragrant thyme on which the bees fed.
Ibis:163-208 Its flowery meadows.
Book EIV.XV:1-42 Its honeycombs.
The son of Theiodamas, King of the Dryopians. Theiodamas attacked Hercules who killed him but spared Hylas for his beauty. They joined the Argonauts voyage and the boy was stolen by Naiads near the River Ascanius.
Book TII:361-420 Loved by Hercules.
The god of marriage who lived on Helicon with the Muses.
Book EI.II:101-150 He was symbolically present at a marriage.
A Sarmatian river, now the River Bug.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Ibis:465-540 The daughter of Thoas, who nursed Lycurgus’s son Opheltes. The boy was attacked and bitten to death by a serpent.
Son of Jupiter and Corythus’s wife Electra. Ceres fell in love with him and lay with him in the thrice-ploughed field. She wished she could obtain a renewal of his youth. She gave birth to Plutus by him.
Book TII:253-312 Lover of Ceres.
A Sarmatian tribe living near the Danube.
Book EI.II:53-100 Ibis:135-162 Book EIV.VII:1-54 Mentioned.
The mysterious enemy of Ovid, subject of his curse-poem Ibis based on a poem of Callimachus’s. TIV.IX has close similarities with Ibis:1-61.
Ibis:41-104 Ovid adopts the name Ibis as a cover for his true enemy.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Penelope daughter of Icarius.
Book TV.V:27-64 The father of Penelope.
Ibis:541-596 Odysseus was the above’s son-in-law.
Ibis:597-644 Also Icarius or Icarus the father of Erigone, killed by drunken shepherds.
The son of Daedalus for whom his father fashioned wings of wax and feathers like his own in order to escape from Crete. Flying too near the sun, despite being warned, the wax melts and he drowns in the Icarian Sea, and is buried on the island of Icaria. ( See W H Auden’s poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ referring to Brueghel’s painting, Icarus, in Brussels) See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book VIII:183
Book TI.I:70-128 Book TV.II:1-44 He gave his name to the Icarian Sea.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 He flew too near the sun.
The extensive range of mountains in western Mysia, the highest peak Gargaros rising to over 4500 feet and commanding a fine view of the Hellespont and Propontis. There is also a Cretan Mount Ida.
Book TIV.I:1-48 The rites of the Bacchantes, celebrated on the Mysian Mount Ida.
Ibis:465-540 The seer, the son of Apollo and Cyrene. He was one of the Argonauts and was killed by a wild boar by the river Lycus on the Black Sea coast.
The daughter of Aeneas (Greek myth) or Numitor (Roman version), the Vestal who bore Romulus and Remus, to the god Mars.
Book TII:253-312 She was impregnated by Mars. See the entry for Romulus.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Used of Macer a poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Illyris, the district along the east coast of the Adriatic.
Book TI.IV:1-28 Ovid sails by on his way to exile.
Book TII:207-252 Tiberius and Germanicus defeated the Pannonian and Illyrian rebels in the second Illyrian war of the summer of 9AD.
Book EII.II:75-126 The Roman Illyricum roughly the Eastern Balkans was divided after the Pannonian War into Dalmatia and Pannonia.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 Pitch obtained from there.
The north Aegean island to the south west of the Thracian Chersonese near Samothrace and Lemnos.
Book TI.X:1-50 Ovid touched port there.
The daughter of Eurytus, king of Oechalia, whom Hercules was enamoured of. He carried her off after killing her father, causing Deianeira to give him the shirt of Nessus drenched in the Centaur’s blood supposedly mixed with a love potion but in fact the Hydra’s venom from Hercules’s own arrow.
Book TII:361-420 Loved by Hercules.
The Ionian Sea, between Greece and southern Italy (not the coast of Ionia).
Book TI.IV:1-28 Book EIV.V:1-46 Ovid crossed the wintry Adriatic on his way to exile.
Book TII:253-312 Juno drove Io over the sea.
The daughter of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and Clytaemnestra. She is called Mycenis. She was sacrificed by her father at Aulis, to gain favourable winds for the passage to Troy but snatched away by Diana to Tauris, a deer being left in her place. Orestes her brother found her there and they fled to Athens with the image of the goddess. She later became priestess of Diana-Artemis at Brauron.
Book TIV.IV:43-88 Book EIII.II:1-110 The priestess of the altar of Diana in the Tauric Chersonese where human sacrifices were offered.
The Ithacan beggar with whom Ulysses had a boxing match on returning to his palace. His nickname Irus was a version of Iris since he was also a messenger, at the beck and call of the suitors.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 Ibis:413-464 An example of poverty.
The Egyptian Goddess, in Greek mythology the deified Io and identified also with Ceres-Demeter. Goddess of the domestic arts. Her cult absorbed the other great goddesses and spread through the Graeco-Roman world as far as the Rhine. Isis was the star of the sea, and the goddess of travellers. Osiris was her husband, whom she searched for, in the great vegetation myth of Egypt. She carries the sacred rattle or sistrum, and on her forehead she carries the horns, moon disc, and ears of corn symbolising her moon, fertility and cow attributes. (In Sulla’s time a college of priests had been founded in Rome and there was a shrine by 48BC. The cult did not receive State approval in Augustus’s time, due to his concern to revive traditional Roman values).
Book TII:253-312 Identified with Io, Daughter of Inachus a river-god of Argolis, who was chased and raped by Jupiter. She was changed to a heifer by Jupiter and conceded as a gift to Juno. She was then guarded by hundred-eyed Argus. After Mercury killed Argus, driven by Juno’s fury Io reached the Nile, and was returned to human form. With her son Epaphus she was worshipped in Egypt as a goddess. Io is therefore synonymous with Isis (or Hathor the cow-headed goddess with whom she was often confused), and Epaphus with Horus. Ovid suggests Juno drove her across the seas east of Greece.
Book EI.I:37-80 The cult of Isis was associated with the island of Pharos near Alexandria. The sacred rattle, the sistrum was a feature of the rites. Isis’s followers dressed in white linen, in imitation of the Egyptian goddess.
The Ionian island off the west coast of Greece between the Acarnian Coast and Cephallenia, the home of Ulysses (Odysseus). At the time of the Odyssey thickly wooded.
Book TI.V:45-84 The site of Ulysses’ palace, synonymous with Dulichium.
Book EI.III:1-48 Ulysses, the Ithacan, also longed for home.
Book EII.VII:47-84 Ulysses the Ithacan met with no stormier seas than Ovid on his journey.
The son of Tereus and Procne, murdered by his mother in revenge for Tereus’s rape of Philomela, and his flesh served to his father at a banquet.
Book TII:361-420 Mourned by Procne.
The son of Aeneas from whom the Julian family claimed descent.
Book EI.I:37-80 Book EII.II:1-38 Book EII.V:41-76 The supposed origin of the Julian clan.
Book EII.XI:1-28 Hector was one of his uncles.
Ibis:163-208 King of the Lapithae, father of Pirithoüs, and of the Centaurs. He attempted to seduce Juno, but Jupiter created a false image of her, caught Ixion in the act with this simulacrum, and bound him to a fiery wheel that turns in the Underworld.
Book EIV.IV:1-50 The Roman two-headed god of doorways and beginnings, equivalent to the Hindu elephant god Ganesh. The Janus mask is often depicted with one melancholy and one smiling face. The first month of the year in the Julian calendar was named for him, January (Ianuarius).
The son of Aeson, leader of the Argonauts, and hero of the adventure of the Golden Fleece. The fleece is represented in the sky by the constellation and zodiacal sign of Aries, the Ram. In ancient times it contained the point of the vernal equinox (The First Point of Aries) that has since moved by precession into Pisces. He reached Colchis and the court of King Aeetes where he accepted Medea’s help to secure the fleece and married her before returning to Iolchos.
He acquired the throne of Corinth, and married a new bride Glauce. Medea in revenge for his disloyalty to her sent Glauce a wedding gift of a golden crown and white robe, that burst into flames when she put them on, and consumed her and the palace. Medea then killed her own sons by Jason, and fled his wrath. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book VII.
Book EI.III:49-94 Exiled from Thessaly to Corinth.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Praised for his efforts in reaching the Black Sea, but Ovid’s journey was longer, since Rome is further from the Danube estuary, than Thessaly is from Colchis.
Book EIII.1:1-66 The first Greek to sail into the Black Sea.
The Numidian King conquered by Marius. He died in prison at Rome in 104BC.
Book EIV.III:1-58 Marius defeated Jugurtha in Numidia, and held a triumph in 104BC.
The only daughter (39BC-14AD) of Augustus and Scribonia. She married Marcellus and then Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa to whom she bore Gaius and Lucius Caesar, Agrippina who married Germanicus, Agrippa Posthumus and Julia the younger (2). She then married Tiberius. Augustus banished her to the island of Pandataria in 2BC for her dissolute lifestyle, and for political intrigue also. She was involved with Iullus Antonius the younger son of Mark Antony and Fulvia, educated at Rome by Augustus’s sister Octavia. Julia and her associates planned to replace Tiberius with Antonius as consort to Augustus. Iullus was allowed to commit suicide when the plans were discovered. Scribonia followed Julia into exile and the plot probably centred on Scribonia’s family faction. Julia was moved to Rhegium (Reggio) on the mainland in 4AD but never released. Tiberius effectively had her starved to death (officially she committed suicide) in AD14.
The daughter (19BC-28AD) of the elder Julia (1) and Agrippa. She was married to Lucius Aemelius Paullus and shared his disgrace when his conspiracy against Augustus (aimed at Tiberius) was discovered in 6AD. He was executed and she was ultimately (8AD) banished to the island of Trimerum off the coast of Apulia (officially for adultery) and died there. Ovid’s crime may well have been linked to her set, and a clandestine and unacceptable marriage (perhaps to Decimus Iunius Silanus her lover, with whom she had been accused of adultery: she had an illegitimate child in exile, not raised or recognised.) that he had witnessed or less likely some aspect of the plotting against Augustus. The date of his relegatio (banishment) is surely more than coincidental.
The daughter of Rhea and Saturn, wife and sister of Jupiter, and the queen of the gods. A representation of the pre-Hellenic Great Goddess. (See the Metope of Temple E at Selinus – The Marriage of Hera and Zeus – Palermo, National Museum.)
Book TII:253-312 Her husband Jupiter noted for his adulteries. See the Metamorphoses. She persecuted Io, who was worshipped as Isis.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Book EIV.XVI:1-52. She persecuted Hercules who ended up married to Hebe her daughter.
Book EI.IV:1-58 She protected Jason and the Argonauts. Ovid implies no deity protected him, which does not rule out his possibly being aided by lesser members of the Augustan or Julian families.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Ovid suggests Livia has the character and ways of Juno, a dubious compliment.
The sky-god, the Greek Zeus, son of Saturn and Rhea, born on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia and nurtured on Mount Ida in Crete. The oak is his sacred tree. His emblems of power are the sceptre and lightning-bolt. His wife and sister is Juno (the Greek Hera). (See the sculpted bust (copy) by Brassides, the Jupiter of Otricoli, Vatican)
Book TI.V:45-84 Book EI.VII:1-70 Equated with Augustus.
Book TII.I:1 Book TII:120-154 Book TII:313-360 Book TIII.V:1-56 Book TIV.VIII:1-52 Book EIII.VI:1-60 His weapon is the lightning-bolt.
Book TII:253-312 Noted for his adulteries. See the Metamorphoses.
Book TIII.I:1-46 The Temple of Jupiter Stator (the Stayer).
Book TIII. XI:39-74 His anger against Ovid is greater than Neptune’s against Ulysses.
Book TIV.IV:1-42 A reference to Augustus as Jupiter, and a dubious use of the verb celebrare which means to frequent as well as celebrate. Possibly Ovid is making one of his traditional jibes at Augustus’s supposed homosexuality in a letter to a man who might just appreciate it, but showing Ovid’s dangerous willingness to tread the fine line. He follows it with a cleverly ambiguous comment on divinity. Is Augustus seen to be a god or only believed to be one?
Book TIV.IX:1-32 Jupiter’s sacred oak-tree and lightning bolt are connected by the occurrence of the natural phenomenon. Oak trees are particularly susceptible to lightning blasts.
Book TV.II:45-79 Augustus as Jupiter, the ruler of the world mirrors the ruler of the heavens and the gods.
Book TV.III:1-58 Jupiter blasted Capaneus with lightning.
Book EII.I:68 Jupiter Pluvius, the rain-bringer.
Book EII.II:39-74 Augustus is also Jupiter Capitolinus, the Tarpeian Thunderer, from Jupiter’s Temples on the Capitoline. The great temple was augmented by the lower temple to Jupiter Tonans, the Thunderer, in 22BC, the first of the two reached on climbing the Capitoline (Cassius Dio The Roman History 54.4)
Book EII.VIII:37-76 The worship of images of Jupiter and other gods.
Book EII.IX:1-38 Ritual sacrifice of animals in front of Jupiter’s temples.
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a beneficent planet, ruling knowledge, travel etc. Jupiter was the father of Mercury, by Maia.
Ibis:251-310 Jupiter’s temple of Ammon in Libya where he was the ram-horned god.
Ibis:311-364 Cambyses sent an army to attack the Ammonians and the temple of Jupiter at Ammon (Siwa Oasis, El Khargeh) but the army vanished in a sandstorm. (Herodotus III.26)
Ibis:541-596 Married his sister Juno, and avenged his grandfather
An ancient Roman goddess later identified with the Greek Hebe.
Book EI.III:49-94 The chief city of Laconia on the River Eurotas, better known as Sparta.
Book TV.X:1-53 She measured the thread of life.
Book TV.V:1-26 The father of Ulysses, and son of Arcesius.
A mythical race of cannibal giants appearing in Odyssey Book X. Under their king Antiphates they captured and ate several of Ulysses’s men. Traditionally located in Magna Graecia, but perhaps from regions further north.
Book EII.IX:39-80 Their savage King Antiphates.
Book EIV.X:1-34 Not as bad as the Thracian tribes.
Ibis:365-412 Attacked Ulysses’ men.
A Greek town on the eastern shore of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) opposire Callipolis (Gallipoli), colonised in the 7th cent BC by Greeks from Phocaea. Artaxerxes I assigned the city to Themistocles. After the battle of Mycale (479) the citizens joined with the Athenians, and the city continued to flourish under the Greeks and the Romans. A good harbour and its position made it prosperous. The region is good for vines. It was a cult centre for the worship of the phallic god Priapus.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s route.
The daughter of the Argonaut Acastus, and granddaughter of Pelias. She married Protesilaus the first Greek ashore at Troy, fated to die on landing. She was granted three hours with him after his death when Hermes escorted him back from Hades. She then had a lifelike statue of him made which she loved in his place. Ordered by her father to burn the figure she threw herself into the flames.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Book TV.XIV:1-46 Ovid compares his wife to her for love and loyalty.
Book TV.V:27-64 Her response to her husband’s fate brought her fame.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Followed her husband to the Shades.
Beneficent spirits watching over the household, fields, public areas etc. Each house had a Lararium where the image of the Lar was kept. The Lares are usually coupled with the Penates the gods of the larder.
Book TI.III:1-46 Ovid’s wife prays before the Lares.
Book TI.X:1-50 Book EI.VII:1-70 Household gods.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Book EI.I:1-36 The household or home, rather than merely a dwelling-place or temporary lodging.
Book TIV.VIII:1-52 Old weapons dedicated to them.
Ibis:41-104 Powers invoked by Ovid.
An Augustan poet, who wrote an epic on the wanderings of Antenor (who founded Padua), sometimes identified with Valerius Largus the accuser of Cornelius Gallus.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Ibis:311-364 Larisa was the daughter of Pelasgos, and two of the cities of Thessaly were named after her. There was an Aleuas of Larissa who organised the Thessalian League in the seventh century BC, and claimed descent from Hercules. The incident described is obscure.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A country in Central Italy, containing Rome. (The modern Lazio region. It originally designated the small area between the mouth of the Tiber and the Alban Hills. With the Roman conquest it was extended south-east to the Gulf of Gaeta, and west to the mountains of Abruzzo, forming the so-called Latium novum or adiectum.)
Daughter of the Titan Coeus, and mother of Apollo and Artemis (Diana) by Jupiter-Zeus. Pursued by a jealous Juno, she was given sanctuary by Delos, a floating island. There between an olive tree and a date-palm she gave birth to Apollo and Diana-Artemis, by Mount Cynthus. Delos became fixed. A variant has Artemis born on the nearby islet of Ortygia.
Book TV.I:49-80 Her children, Apollo and Diana, slew Niobe’s children.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 She found refuge on Delos.
A young man of Abydos on the narrows of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) who fell in love with Hero, the priestess of Aphrodite in Sestos on the opposite bank. He would swim the Hellespont to visit her and eventually was drowned. The subject of a poem by Musaeus (5th century AD) and treated by Ovid in the Heroides.
Book TIII. X:41-78 If he’d been further north in winter he could have walked across!
The north Aegean island south west of Imbros, and the home of Vulcan the blacksmith of the gods. Philoctetes was bitten by a snake there, and on Ulysses advice was abandoned there. He had inherited the bow and arrows of Hercules and Ulysses subsequently sailed for the island to bring them back to be used at Troy. Thoas was once king there when the Lemnian women murdered their menfolk because of their adultery with Thracian girls. His life was spared because his daughter Hypsipyle set him adrift in an oarless boat.
Book TV.I:49-80 Philoctetes abandoned there.
Ibis:365-412 The Lemnian women who killed their husbands.
Catullus’s name for his sweetheart Clodia.
Book TII:421-470 His pseudonym for her.
The island in the eastern Aegean. Among its cities were Mytilene and Methymna. Famous as the home of Sappho the poetess, whose love of women gave rise to the term lesbian.
Book TII:361-420 Sappho, the Lesbian.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 Sappho of Lesbos.
A river of the Underworld, Hades, whose waters bring forgetfulness.
Its stream flows from the depths of the House of Sleep, and induces drowsiness with its murmuring. (Hence the stream of forgetfulness).
Book TI.VIII:1-50 Book TIV.I:1-48 Book TIV.IX:1-32
Book EII.IV:1-34 The waters of oblivion.
Book EIV.I:1-36 The waters of forgetfulness.
A large island near Acharnarnia in the Ionian Sea west of Greece, to the north of Ithaca. Once joined to the mainland. (The Corinthians bored a channel through the isthmus in the 7th century BC, see Ernle Bradford’s ‘Ulysses Found’ Appendix II)
Book TIII.I:1-46 Augustus dedicated his victory at Actium to Apollo, since there was a temple to the god there.
Book TV.II:45-79 Criminals were hurled from the cliffs of the island near Apollo’s temple to avert evil. (Strabo 10.2.9, Ovid Fasti V:630). This was also the mythical site of Sappho’s suicide, presumably because of the presence of Apollo’s sacred site.
Ibis:251-310 There was a Leucon son of Athamas who sickened and died of disease. The reference is obscure.
The White Goddess, the sea-goddess into whom Ino was changed, who as a sea-mew helps Ulysses (See Homer’s Odyssey). She is a manifestation of the Great Goddess in her archetypal form. (See Robert Graves’s ‘The White Goddess’). Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, wife of Athamas, and sister of Semele and Agave fostered the infant Bacchus. She participated in the killing of Pentheus and incurred the hatred of Juno. Maddened by Tisiphone, and the death of her son Learchus, at the hand of his father, she leapt into the sea, and was changed to the sea-goddess Leucothoë by Neptune, at Venus’s request.
Book EIII.VI:1-60 Ibis:251-310 She helped Ulysses. (Speculatively if Neptune is Augustus, and Juno is Livia, then Leucothea, that Ino who incurred Juno’s hatred, is conceivably Scribonia, the elder Julia or one of her set, who aided Ovid after the disaster).
Ibis:465-540 As Ino she nursed the infant Bacchus-Dionysus.
An ancient rural god of Italy who presided over planting and fructification. He became associated (as Liber Pater) with Bacchus-Dionysus.
Book TV.III:1-58 Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Identified with Bacchus.
Liberty. The Atrium Libertatis, north of the Forum, was where Asinius Pollio established a public library.
Book TIII.I:47-82 Ovid’s books banned from the libraries.
The coastal district of North Africa, west of Egypt.
Book TI.III:1-46 Ovid’s daughter by his second wife travelled there with her husband, Cornelius Fidus, the provincial senator.
Ibis:163-208 Extensive coastal waters.
Ibis:465-540 The servant who brought Hercules the gift of Nessus given to Deianira, the envenomed shirt that killed him. Hercules killed Lichas, throwing him from the Euboean heights.
Ibis:465-540 Ibis:541-596 The son of Psamathe daughter of Crotopus of Argos. Linus was torn to pieces by Crotopus’s hounds. Not to be confused with the Poet Linus brother of Orpheus.
Livia Drusilla (58BC-29AD), the daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, who became Empress. Her first husband was Tiberius Claudius Nero (who fought against Octavian-Augustus in the Perusine War) to whom she bore Tiberius, later Emperor and Drusus the father of Germanicus, who was Octavian’s future general in Germany. She married Octavian, the future Augustus, in 38BC, while he was Triumvir, he having forced Claudius to relinquish her. She bore Augustus no children, but exercised great power over him and the succession, helping to secure it for Tiberius. Ovid may have been involved in the anti-Claudian party and so have crossed Livia or her supporters, preventing any chances of reprieve from his exile.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Ovid’s third wife had some acquaintance with Livia, presumably through the household of Paullus Fabius Maximus, and his wife Marcia. She may have been a relative of the Fabian house, and editors have dubbed her Fabia (though on scant evidence).
Book TII:155-206 Livia married Augustus (17 January 38BC) after her enforced divorce from Tiberius Claudius Nero by whom she was already pregnant. Ovid is perhaps alluding to this and Augustus’s bachelor adventures.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Her son Tiberius fighting in Germany.
Book TIV.X:93-132 Livor, Envy, here may possibly be a veiled reference to Livia, but that is highly speculative.
Book EI.IV:1-58 A reference to Livia, possibly barbed.
Book EII.II:39-74 A further mention of her.
Book EII.VIII:1-36 Cotta Maximus sent Ovid portraits of Augustus, Tiberius and Livia.
Book EII.VIII:1-36 Even in this eulogy there is a mischievous sub-text. The relations between Livia and Augustus are lightly touched on.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Ovid suggests his wife approaches Livia on his behalf.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Book EIII.IV:57-115 The mother of Tiberius.
Book EIV.IX:89-134 As the deified Augustus’s widow worshipped by Ovid as divine.
Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Compared to Vesta.
Claudia Livilla Julia the Elder (b. 13BC), sister to Germanicus and the future emperor Claudius, and daughter of Drusus Senior (Nero Claudius Drusus), Livia’s son. She married Gaius Caesar grandson of Augustus, and after his death her first cousin Drusus Junior the son of Tiberius by Vipsania, whom she is said to have poisoned in 23 at the instigation of her lover Sejanus, the ambitious praetorian prefect.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Drusus the younger, fighting alongside Tiberius in Germany in AD10.
A river flowing to the sea on the west coast of Mauretania.
Book EI.V:1-42 Ovid suggests he is being asked to perform the impossible, equivalent to the Lixus running into the Hebrus (Maritza) which flows thrugh Thrace.
The morning star (the planet Venus in dawn aspect).
Book TI.III:47-102 Risen while Ovid was saying his farewells.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Herald of the sun.
Book TIV.X:1-40 The dawn, the day.
Book EII.V:41-76 The morning star.
Titus Lucretius Carus (c95-c54BC) the greatest Roman didactic poet and author of the De Rerum Natura a verse treatise in six books on Epicurean theory.
Book TII:253-312 Ovid quotes the first words of De Rerum Natura, ‘Aeneadum genetrix’.
Book TII:421-470 He dealt scientifically with the elements, and atomic theory, following Epicurus.
The moon goddess. A manifestation of Artemis-Diana-Phoebe, sister of Apollo-Sol-Phoebus.
Book TI.III:1-46 The moon. She drives a chariot pulled by black horses.
Book TII:253-312 She loved Endymion.
An Augustan poet who wrote about the homecoming of Helen and Menelaus.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
An epithet of Bacchus meaning ‘the deliverer from care’.
Book EI.X:1-44 Wine, the gift of Bacchus.
Son of Pelasgus. Lycaon was a king of primitive Arcadia (Parrhasia) who presided over barbarous cannibalistic practises. He was transformed into a wolf by Zeus, angered by human sacrifice. His sons offered Zeus, disguised as a traveller, a banquet containing human remains. They were also changed into wolves and Zeus then precipitated a great flood to cleanse the world. The father of Callisto who was changed into the Great Bear, hence the north pole is ‘Lycaonian’ or ‘Parrhasian’.
Book TI.III:47-102 The Great Bear is Parrhasian.
Book TIII.II:1-30 The northern pole.
Ibis:465-540 His barbaric banquets.
Ibis:465-540 An Alexandrian Greek poet, of the early 3d cent. BC born in Chalcis, one of the Pleiad, a group of seven tragic poets of Alexandria who flourished under Ptolemy II Philadelphus. His only extant poem Cassandra or Alexandra, is an obscure and difficult work in iambic verse. In ancient times his tragedies were highly esteemed. May be intended here.
The mistress of Cornelius Gallus (probably his pseudonym for her).
King of the Edonians (Edoni) of Thrace who opposed Bacchus’ entry into his kingdom at the River Strymon and tried to cut down the god’s vines. Lycurgus was driven mad and killed his own son Dryas with an axe thinking he was a vine, and hewed at his own foot thinking it one. He pruned the corpse, and the Edonians, horrified, instructed by Bacchus, tore Lycurgus to pieces with wild horses on Mount Pangaeum. There are many variants of this myth.
Book TV.III:1-58 His offence against Bacchus.
Ibis:465-540 Ovid appears to give an alternative myth of Dryas’s death if this is the Lycurgus intended.
Ibis:597-644 Ovid may refer to the Athenian orator (c.396-325BC).Pupil of Plato and Isocrates, Lycurgus became a successful financier, statesman and orator in Athens. He increased the wealth of Athens after readministrating its finances, and had several buildings built or refurbished. He was on Demosthenes side in the orator’s opposition to Philip II of Macedon.
Rivers of that name in Bithynia and in Pontus.
Ibis:41-104 Arrows stained in Scythian blood.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Ibis:465-540 The King of Thebes whose wife was Dirce, and niece was Antiope.
The wife of Antimachus.
Ibis:541-596 Son of Aeolus. He slept with his sister Canace, whom Aeolus in horror drove to suicide.
Aemilius Macer, a poet who wrote of birds, serpents and plants, and was an old man in Ovid’s day.
An epic poet who wrote about Troy, who travelled with Ovid in Sicily and was known to his third wife.
Book TI.VIII:1-50 Book EIV.III:1-58 Possibly the faithless friend depicted here.
Book EII.X:1-52 Addressed explicitly to him.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Son of Aesculapius the Greek god of medicine, who inherited his father’s skills along with his brother Podalirius.
Book EI.III:1-48 He cured Philoctetes the archer.
Book EIII.IV:1-56 His medical skill.
The female followers of Bacchus-Dionysus, noted for their ecstatic worship of the god. Dionysus brought terror and joy. The Maenads’ secret female mysteries may indicate older rituals of ecstatic human sacrifice. They dressed in fawn skins, wreathed themselves with ivy, and carried the thyrsus a ritual wand tipped with a pine-cone. See Euripides’ The Bacchae.
Homer, so called from Maeonia a name for Lydia in Asia Minor where he was born according to one legend, or because his father was Maion.
Book TI.I:1-68 Homer too would fail faced with similar troubles.
Book TI.VI:1-36 He made Penelope famous as a loyal wife, through the Odyssey.
Book TIV.X:1-40 Even this greatest of poets died poor.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Book EIV.XII:1-50 The epic poetry of Homer.
The kingdom of Thrace, from the Maeotes who lived near the Sea of Azov, but used as a general term for the Pontus region.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 The Black Sea region.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Thoas the King of Thrace.
The daughter of Atlas, a Pleiad, and mother of Mercury by Jupiter.
Ibis:209-250 Ibis:465-540 The mother of Mercury.
The di manes, the good deities, a generic term for the gods of the lower world and later for the shades of the dead who were regarded as divine.
Book TI. IX:1-66 Visited by Theseus.
The daughter of Lucius Marcius Philippus and wife of Paullus Fabius Maximus. Fabia, Ovid’s third wife, had been a member of the household and was a friend of Marcia.
Book EI.II:101-150 Book EIII.1:67-104 Ovid’s third wife was one of her companions.
Gaius Marius, the consul, conqueror of the Cimbri, Jugurtha etc. When Sulla entered Rome in 88BC, Marius hid in the marshes of Minturnae and later escaped to Africa.
Book EIV.III:1-58 He defeated Jugurtha in Numidia, and held a triumph in 104BC. He defeated the Cimbri and Teutones at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae in 102-1BC, and held a record seven consulships, the last being in 86.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The war god, son of Jupiter, the Roman name for the Greek god Ares. An old name for him is Mavors or Mamers. In his military aspect he became known as Gradivus.
Book TII:253-312 His great temple in Rome was that of Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger, in the Forum Augusti built as a result of Octavian’s vow at Philippi in 42BC to avenge Julius Caesar’s murder. It was dedicated in 2BC. The statues of Mars and Venus were inside the shrine while Vulcan’s was in the lobby. The statues of Venus Genetrix and Mars by Arcesilaus were linked by the descending figure of Cupid. The goddess was depicted fully clothed, perhaps in armour.
Book TII:361-420 Famously caught in the act by Hephaestus (Vulcan) Venus’s husband.
Book TV.II:45-79 A synonym for war.
Book TV.VII:1-68 The warlike Sarmatians and Getae are Mars incarnate.
Book EIII.VI:1-60 The god who determines death in battle.
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a maleficent planet, ruling war, passion, and sexuality.
Domitius Marsus, an Augustan poet, known for his epigrams. He wrote an epitaph on Tibullus and an epic on the Amazons.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
A Satyr of Phrygia who challenged Apollo to a contest in musical skill, and was flayed alive by the God when he was defeated. (An analogue for the method of making primitive flutes, Minerva’s invention, by extracting the core from the outer sheath) (See Perugino’s painting – Apollo and Marsyas – The Louvre, Paris). He taught the famous flute-player, Olympus.
Book EIII.III:1-108 He taught Olympus.
Ibis:541-596 A river named after him in Asia Minor.
Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus. See Cotta.
Paullus Fabius Maximus (born not later than 45BC, died 14AD). His wife was Marcia, the daughter of Lucius Marcius Philippus and a first cousin of Augustus. She was a friend of Ovid’s third wife. Paullus Maximus was of the famous patrician clan of the Fabii, which included Paullus Aemilius and Fabius Cunctator. An orator, he was consul in 11BC and a trusted friend of Augustus. He journeyed with Augustus to the island of Planasia at the end of Augustus’s life in the spring of 14AD, the island where Agrippa Postumus, his grandson, the son of Agrippa and Julia the Elder, was imprisoned. Tacitus has it that mutual affection was expressed between grandfather and grandson, and that Fabius reported as such to his wife Marcia, who in turn told Livia who knew nothing of the journey. When Fabius died not long afterwards Marcia was supposedly heard to reproach herself at her husband’s funeral for inadvertently causing his death. This story led to a suggestion that Fabius committed suicide, and links him to the factions around Julia. The evidence however is flimsy.
Book EI.II:1-52 Addressed to Paullus. Ovid refers to the battle of 18th
July 477BC near the River Cremera, against the Veientes, when more than three hundred of the Fabii clan were said to have fought and only one survived. (Livy II:48)
Book EI.II:53-100 Book EI.II:101-150 He asks Paullus to plead for him with Augustus.
Book EIII.III:1-108 This letter addressed to him explicitly, recounting Ovid’s vision of Love.
Book EIII.VIII:1-24 Probably addressed to Paullus, given the reference to purple robes. He was consul in 11BC. The arrows are perhaps intended for their mutual enemies, those opposed to Julia’s faction.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 Ovid is concerned that pleading his case may have been a reason for Paullus’s death, though playing down his own importance. This letter certainly reiterates the close tie with Paullus, and the Fabian House, and Ovid’s realisation that the Julian hopes are finished with Tiberius’s accession.
The daughter of Aeetes, king of Colchis and the Caucasian nymph Asterodeia. She is called Aeetias. A famous sorceress. She conceived a passion for Jason and agonised over the betrayal of her country for him.( See Gustave Moreau’s painting ‘Jason and Medea’, Louvre, Paris: Frederick Sandys painting ‘Medea’, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, England: and Castiglione’s painting, ‘Medea casting a spell’, Wadsworth Athanaeum, Hartford, Connecticut). She determined to help Jason to win the Golden Fleece and made him swear on the altar of Triple Hecate to marry her. She gave him magic herbs to facilitate his tasks (probably including the Colchian crocus, meadow saffron, colchicum autumnale, that sprang from the blood of the tortured Prometheus. The plant is highly toxic, and the seeds and corms were collected for the extraction of the narcotic drug colchicine, tinctura colchici, used as a specific against gout.) Jason carried out his tasks using the magic herbs, including magic juice (juniper?) to subdue the dragon, and took Medea back with him to Iolchos. When he subsequently abandoned her, she killed Glauce her rival, and then sacrificed her own sons, before fleeing to Athens where she married King Aegeus. She attempted to poison Theseus using aconite, but Aegeus recognised Theseus’s sword as his own, and dashed the cup away in time. Medea vanished in a mist conjured by her magic spells. Ovid tells part of her story in Book VII of the Metamorphoses, and wrote a lost play Medea about her.
Book TII:361-420 Her killing of her own children, driven by anger through slighted love.
Book TII:497-546 Her intention to kill her children.
Book TIII.VIII:1-42 Her chariot drawn by dragons.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 The myth of the Argo at Tomis, and Medea’s dismemberment of her brother Absyrtus.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Caused by Amor to fall in love with Jason.
One of the three Gorgons, daughter of Phorcys the wise old man of the sea. She is represented in the sky by part of the constellation Perseus, who holds her decapitated head. Athene turned her into a monster because she was raped by Neptune in Athene’s temple. The sight of her face turned the onlooker to stone. She was killed by Perseus, who used his shield as a mirror. Her head decorated Athene’s aegis breastplate.
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.II:1-52 Ibis:541-596 Her power to transform those she looked at to stone including many of the Ethiopians, or Cephenes after her death when Perseus wielded her decapitated head.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Her snaky locks.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Pegasus, born of Medusa.
Ibis:413-464 Medusa had various cousins, including the Harpies.
Ibis:465-540 The son of Astacus, the Theban. He helped defend Thebes in the War of the Seven, and was killed by Tydeus who ate his brains.
A river in Pontus or Sarmatia.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Gaius (or Cilnius) Melissus, a freedman of Maecenas, grammarian, poet and librarian. He wrote Trabeatae, comedies of Roman manners among the Equestrian order, developing an Augustan form of the old Togatae. He was a protégé of Maecenas and organised the library in the Portico of Octavia for Augustus. He compiled jokebooks in old age.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Gaius Memmius, governor of Bithynia in 57BC, praetor 58. Lucretius dedicated the De Rerum Natura to him as patron. Catullus travelled to Bithynia with him in 57 and is none too complimentary about the corruption of his ‘court’. He was an orator and himself a poet. He married the dictator Sulla’s daughter, Fausta. Convicted of bribery he went into exile at Mytilene in 54.
Book TII:421-470 His erotic verse.
The son of Tithonus and Aurora, he fought for Troy in the Trojan War with Greece to support his uncle Priam. He was King of Ethiopia, and traditionally was of a black pigmentation. He killed Antilochus in the war, and was himself killed in turn by Achilles, but his mother Aurora, the Dawn, begged Jupiter for funeral honours, and he created the warring flock of birds, the Memnonides, from his ashes. Aurora’s tears for him are the morning dew. See Metamorphoses Book XIII:576
Book EI.IV:1-58 The son of Aurora, the Dawn.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Black-skinned.
The Athenian playwright (c341-c290BC). The most celebrated dramatist of the New Comedy he wrote on romantic and domestic themes. His single surviving complete play is the Dyscolus, recovered from an Egyptian papyrus in 1958, but many of his plays are known in adaptations by the Roman dramatists Terence and Plautus.
Book TII:361-420 His plays contained love scenes but were basically moral with endings involving marriage.
The messenger god, Hermes, son of Jupiter and the Pleiad Maia, the daughter of Atlas. He is therefore called Atlantiades. His birthplace was Mount Cyllene, and he is therefore called Cyllenius. He has winged feet, and a winged cap, carries a scimitar, and has a magic wand, the caduceus, with twin snakes twined around it, that brings sleep and healing. The caduceus is the symbol of medicine. (See Botticelli’s painting Primavera.)
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a beneficent planet of mind and communication.
King of Ethiopia, husband of Clymene. Putative father of Phaethon.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Putative father of Phaethon, and his sisters.
A Graeco-Thracian town on the west coast of the Black Sea, south of Tomis, and about half way between Tomis and Byzantium, at the foot of the Haemus Range, on the frontier of Roman Moesia. Modern Nesebur.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s course.
Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus the elder son of Mesalla Corvinus, born 36BC, consul 3BC, legate of Illyricum in 6AD. He served under Tiberius in the Pannonian campaign of 6-9AD. A talented orator known for his extreme flattery of Augustus, Cotta was his younger brother. On Tiberius’s accession he embraced the new regime, proposing a gold statue of the new Emperor for the temple of Mars Ultor.
Book TIV.IV:1-42 This poem addressed to him. It is unlikely that he was a friend of Ovid, who probably addressed him as the son of his father, brother of his friend Cotta, and a man of influence with the regime.
Book EI.VII:1-70 A second poem addressed to him, playing on Ovid’s relationship with his father, Messalla.
Book EII.II:1-38 A third poem addressed to him, focusing on Messalinus’s close relationship with Augustus and Tiberius. He and his brother Cotta were perhaps Ovid’s best hope of leniency, but equally both were sensitive to the political difficulties of showing any favour to Ovid. I am reminded of the attitude to John Donne after his less crippling disgrace: the disgraced individual is an embarrassment, an object of suspicion, and a source of irritating pleas for remembrance and assistance.
Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus (64BC-8AD) distinguished soldier, statesman and supporter of the arts, a patron of Ovid and Tibullus, Lygdaus, Valgius Rufus and Aemilius Macer. Sulpicia was his niece. He switched sides adroitly during the Civil Wars fighting for Octavian at Actium in 31. He celebrated a triumph as proconsul of Gaul in 27, was city prefect in 25, Rome’s first overseer of aqueducts in 11, and nine years later proposed the title pater patriae: Father of the Country for Augustus. Noted for public works he was with Paullus Fabius Maximus the most influential of Ovid’s patrons. The father of Messalinus and his younger brother Cotta.
Book TIV.IV:1-42 A probable reference to him, assuming this poem is addressed to Messalinus.
Book EI.VII:1-70 Father of Messalinus, and patron of Ovid who wrote his funeral dirge. Ovid stresses the relationship.
Book EII.II:75-126 Ovid again stresses his past relationship with Messalla.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Father of Cotta.
Ibis:413-464 The daughter of Erysichthon who could change her shape at will.
Ticidas’s mistress whom he called Perilla. Probably one of the Caecillii Metellii family. Possibly the wife of Publius Lentulus Spinther who divorced her in 45BC and had affairs with Cicero’s son-in-law Dolabella and Aesopus the actor’s son.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 Metrodorus of Skepsis in Mysia: a philosopher and statesman who served Mithridates Eupator c. 100 BC. He was called the ‘Rome Hater’. He later transferred his allegiance to Tigranes of Armenia.
Or Mettius Fufetius, an Alban commander who was torn apart by horses for treachery in the war with Fidenae, on the orders of Tullus Hostilius.
Book TI.III:47-102 An analogy for Ovid’s feelings at separation.
The Ionian city south west of Samos and across the Latmian Gulf from the River Maeander. A commercial port from the Bronze Age, it helped colonise the Black Sea region (800-600BC). It was the home of leading philosophers including Thales, and Anximander.It declined after the Ionian Revolt in 494, and was crippled by the silting up of its harbour.
Book TI.X:1-50 Book TIII. IX:1-34 It founded a number of cities, in the Black Sea region, including Tomis.
Book TII:361-420 Aristides of Miletus.
The Roman name for Athene the goddess of the mind and women’s arts (also a goddess of war and the goddess of boundaries – see the Stele of Athena, bas-relief, Athens, Acropolis Museum). Originally an Italic goddess of handicrafts and arts, she was early identified with the virgin Pallas Athena.
Book TI.II:1-74 Book TI.V:45-84 She protected Ulysses.
Book TI.X:1-50 The ship Ovid embarked on took its name from Minerva’s painted helmet: the ship’s tutela, or protective emblem, being a figure of armed Minerva on the sternpost. Ovid intends to offer her the sacrifice of a lamb if the ship reaches Tomis safely (after he had disembarked at Samothrace). The ship’s name was fitting since Minerva protected the Argo, the first Greek ship to sail into the Black Sea, and curiously appropriate since Ovid was born during her festival, see below.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 The Argo was built under her protection.
Book TIV.X:1-40 Ovid was born during her festival, the Quinquatrus, on her traditional birthday March 20th.
Ibis:365-412 Ovid seems to refer to a cult of Thracian Minerva, though the detail sounds more like that of Diana at Ephesus, whose veil might not be lifted, and in the Chersonese, where she was the object of human sacrifice.
Ibis:597-644 The reference is possibly to the substitution of a phantom for Iphigenia at Aulis, but that is usually attributed to Artemis-Diana and not Athene-Minerva. Alternatively it may refer to Ajax the Lesser’s rape of Cassandra in Athene’s temple during the sack of Troy which caused Athene to delay the Greek’s return voyage.
The son of Pasiphaë, wife of Minos, and the white bull from the sea. A man-headed bull, imprisoned in the Labyrinth (‘the place of the axe’) built by Daedalus at Cnossos, who was destroyed by Theseus. (See the sculpture and drawings of Michael Ayrton, and Picasso’s variations on the theme in the Vollard Suite)
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 Destroyed by Theseus.
The Minyae, a people named from their king Minyas who ruled Orchomenus in Boeotia. A name for the Argonauts since they sailed from Iolchos in Minyan territory.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 The Argonauts under Jason.
A Roman province covering roughly the area of modern Bulgaria and Serbia, taking its name from the Thracian tribe, the Moesi on the lower Danube. It was subdued fully under Tiberius, but remained a border province. A protective wall was built eastwards from Axiopolis to Tomis, to protect against incursion. It became more civilised after Ovid’s time, with Latin as a lingua franca.
Book EIV.IX:55-88 Flaccus maintained peace there.
Julius Montanus a friend of Tiberius. The elder Seneca considered him an excellent poet.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The ‘Melter’. A name for Vulcan, the smith, as a metal-worker.
(See Milton’s Paradise Lost Book I, as the architect of the towers of Heaven. ‘From Morn to Noon he fell...’). Identified with fire.
Book TI.II:1-74 He opposed the Trojans.
The nine Muses were the virgin daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory). They are the patronesses of the arts. Clio (History), Melpomene (Tragedy), Thalia (Comedy), Euterpe (Lyric Poetry), Terpsichore (Dance), Calliope (Epic Poetry), Erato (Love Poetry), Urania (Astronomy), and Polyhymnia (Sacred Song). Mount Helicon is hence called Virgineus. Their epithets are Aonides, and Thespiades.
Book TI.VII:1-40 Book TII.I:1 His past works (Amores, Ars Amatoria etc) condemned him, such that he came to detest the Muses, poetry, temporarily.
Book TII:120-154 His art pleased the Muses.
Book TII:313-360 Book TII:471-496 Book TIV.I:1-48 Book TIV.X:1-40 Book TIV.X:93-132 Book TV.I:1-48 Book TV.IX:1-38 Book EI.I:1-36
Book EI.V:1-42 Book EI.V:1-42 Book EIII.IV:57-115
Book EIII.V:1-58 Book EIII.IX:1-56 Book EIV.II:1-50
Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Book EIV.XV:1-42 His own artistic skill, his personal ‘Muse’. There is perhaps a hint in TIV:I:1-48, and elsewhere here, that the helpful ‘Muse’ may have been a real ‘learned girl’, perhaps Julia the Younger herself, and so associated with his error. Again TV:1-48, and EIII:V:1-58 hint at the adulterous lightness (why was ‘my Muse’ ‘playful’, iocosa, in Ars Amatoria and why did she ‘play around’) of his ‘Muse’, and his ‘Muse’ as a cause of exile. EIII.IX:1-56 again has a slight hint of a real Muse and witness, behind the poetry.
Book TII:361-420 Anacreon’s ‘Muse’.
Book TIII.II:1-30 Book TIV.IX:1-32 Book EII.IX:39-80
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 The patronesses of poetry.
Book TIV.I:49-107 His companions, the Muses of Helicon. Perhaps also a suggestion of real ‘divine’ women who helped his journey, maybe the two Julias via their friends (Julia the Elder was still in custody but on the mainland). The ‘rest of the gods’ being also the rest of the Imperial family.
Book TV.VII:1-68 His Muse is not eager for applause, he hasn’t written for the theatre.
Book TV.XII:1-68 The Nine Sisters.
Book EII.IV:1-34 A play on the word: poetic work, the personal Muse, and a literary mistress.
Book EIII.VIII:1-24 The Muse of Scythia is a patron of war.
Ibis:1-40 His work harmless to others.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Germanicus a poet also. The suggestion that the Muse is associated with Jupiter, i.e. Tiberius now, in Germanicus’s mind may be an allusion to the fact that Germanicus’s marriage to Agrippina the Elder united the two branches of the Imperial family, those through Livia and Scribonia, as had Tiberius’s marriage to the elder Julia. Ovid is hinting again I think that the younger Julia, now Germanicus’s sister-in-law was his ‘Muse’.
The sculptor of Eleutherae, one of the greatest of the Greek artists (c. 450BC). His sculpted cattle were famous.
Book EIV.I:1-36 His sculptures of cattle. Augustus transferred a statue of a heifer from the Athenian Agora to the temple of Peace in Rome.
Ibis:311-364 The daughter of Cinyras, mother of Adonis, incestuously, by her father.
Ibis:465-540 Subject of a poem by Cinna.
Ibis:365-412 The charioteer of King Oenomaus, who traitorously caused the King’s chariot to crash, killing him and allowing Pelops to claim the king’s daughter Hippodameia. Pelops subsequently threw Myrtilus into the sea. He was set among the stars as the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer, and gave his name to the Myrtoan Sea that stretches from Euboea past Helene to the Aegean.
The people of the country of Mysia in Asia Minor containing the city of Pergamum.
Book EII.II:1-38 Telephus was their leader.
The water nymphs, demi-goddesses of the rivers, streams and fountains.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Mentioned as a subject for verse in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Ovid, who always so names himself.
Book TI.VII:1-40 Distant from his friends.
Book TIII.XIII:1-28 The Genius, the spiritual counterpart of every man that watches over him, worshipped especially on the birthday. The birthday god.
The Goddess of retribution. She punishes mortal pride and arrogance (hubris) on behalf of the gods. Her shrine was at Rhamnous in Attica.
Book TV.VIII:1-38 She punished hubris.
God of the sea, brother of Pluto and Jupiter. The trident is his emblem. (see Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing of Neptune with four sea-horses, Royal Library, Windsor: See the Neptune Fountain by Bartolomeo Ammannati, Piazza della Signoria, Florence.) Identified with the Greek Poseidon.
Book TI.II:1-74 Book TI.V:45-84 Book TIII. XI:39-74 Pursued Ulysses (for his attack on the Cyclops)
Book EII.IX:1-38 The god of the sea, able to bring about calm waters.
Book EIII.VI:1-60 Caused Ulysses to be shipwrecked. Identified with Augustus.
Ibis:251-310 Neptune caused Ceyx to be drowned, and him and his wife Alcyone to be turned into birds, the halycons. Ceyx was son of Lucifer (Phosphorus, the Morning Star), Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. The significance of frater here is not clear to me. Athamas was Alcyone’s brother, as a son of Aeolus, and Ceyx was his brother-in-law (uxoris frater). Athamas too suffered extensively, his wife Ino being turned into the sea-mew, the sea-goddess Leucothea, who is mentioned in the next verses.
Ulysses, so called from Mount Neritus on Ithaca.
Book TI.V:45-84 Ovid compares his troubles to those of Ulysses.
Ibis:365-412 The Centaur killed by Hercules for carrying off Deianira. See Metamorphoses IX:89
Ibis:465-540 The fatal gift of the poisoned shirt steeped in Nessus’s blood, which contained the venom of the Hydra from Hercules’ arrow.
King of Pylos, son of Neleus. The oldest and wisest of the Greek leaders at Troy. He was a companion of Hercules in his youth, and held Messenia in the south-west of Greece. He entertained Telemachus at his palace in Pylos, in the Odyssey.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Book EII.VIII:37-76 His long life.
Book EII.IV:1-34 The father of Antilochus.
The river Nile and its god. The river was noted for its seasonal flooding in ancient times. (See the Hellenistic sculpture, ‘ The Nile’, in the Vatican, from the Temple of Isis in the Campus Martius, Rome)
Book TI.II:75-110 The region was a tourist attraction for the Romans.
The daughter of the Phrygian king Tantalus, and Dione one of the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas. The wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. She rejected Latona and boasted rashly about her fourteen children. Her seven sons were killed by Apollo and Diana, the children of Latona (Leto), and her husband commited suicide. Still unrepentant, her daughters were also killed, and she was turned to stone and set on top of a mountain in her native country of Lydia where she weeps eternally. (A natural stone feature exists above the valley of the Hermus, on Mount Sipylus, which weeps when the sun strikes its winter cap of snow – See Freya Stark ‘Rome on the Euphrates’ p9. Pausanias also lived nearby at one time, and saw the rock.) See Metamorphoses Book VI:146
Book TV.I:49-80 Book TV.XII:1-68 Her children killed by Apollo and Diana.
Book EI.II:1-52 Happy in becoming senseless stone.
Book EIV.XIII:1-50 The most beautiful of the Greek soldiers at Troy (after Achilles). King of the island of Syme, and a former suitor of Helen.
The son of Hyrtacus. He and Euryalus, followers of Aeneas were noted for their friendship. They died together after entering Turnus’s camp and killing Rhamnes the Rutulian who was sleeping, and his followers, see Virgil’s Aeneid (IX:176).
Book TI.V:1-44 Book TI. IX:1-66 An example of true friendship.
Ibis:597-644 Died with his friend, after killing the sleeping Rhamnes.
Ibis:311-364 The King of Megara, besieged by Minos. He had a purple lock of hair on his head, on which his life, and the safety of his kingdom, depended. His daughter was Scylla. Scylla cut off the sacred lock and betrayed the city.
The south wind, that brings rain.
Book TI.II:1-74 A fierce Aegean wind blowing Ovid’s words away.
Book EII.I:68 Book EIV.X:35-84 The south wind from distant Italy.
Book EI.II:53-100 The goddess of Night.
Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome (trad. 715-673BC). He searched for knowledge. Having been instructed by Pythagoras (a fable), he returned to Latium and ruled there, teaching the arts of peace. His wife was Egeria, the nymph.
Book TIII.I:1-46 His palace became the residence of the Pontifex Maximus.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Cotta’s maternal line stretches back to him, perhaps through the Calpurnian clan.
Book EIII.III:1-108 A pupil of Pythagoras (in myth).
An Augustan poet, otherwise unknown.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Ibis:311-364 The daughter of Epopeus king of Lesbos who unknowingly slept with her father. She fled to the woods and was changed by Minerva to her sacred bird the Little Owl, often depicted on ancient Athenian coins. See Metamorphoses II:566
A port on the Thracian coast of the Black Sea about eighty miles south of Tomis. Now Varna.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s course.
A Thracian tribe, friendly to Rome, who spread as far as the Danube delta. Marcus Primus governor of Macedonia (25-24BC) was accused of making war on them and in his defence claimed Augustus had ordered it.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Aegisos was their city, captured by the Getae.
Ibis:465-540 The Thracian king, father of Orpheus by Calliope the Muse.
A city in Euboea. Ruled by King Eurytus who offered his daughter Iole to whoever won an archery contest, but he refused Hercules the prize. Hercules killed his eldest son Iphitus, and fell in love with Iole. He had to appease Jove for this breach of his role as a guest.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Hercules captured it.
King of Thebes, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. See Sophocles great trilogy The Theban Plays.
Ibis:251-310 He blinded himself, and was led around by his daughter Antigone.
Ibis:365-412 King of Pisa in Elis, son of Ares and the father of Hippodameia. He caused her suitors to race against him in their chariots, killing the losers. He was eventually killed by Pelops.
The period of five years covering successive Games at Olympia, celebrated every fifth year inclusive from 776BC, and therefore a useful measure of time.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 Ovid is starting his sixth year in Tomis.
A famous Phrygian flute-player who learned his art from Marsyas.
Book EIII.III:1-108 A disciple of Marsyas.
Ibis:465-540 The son of Lycurgus devoured by a serpent. The Nemean games were founded in his memory.
The goddess of agricultural abundance, goddess of plenty.
Book TII.I:1 Identifed with Cybele by the Romans, who wore a turreted crown. Ovid may refer to Augustus’s re-dedication of her temple on the Palatine after it was destroyed by fire and re-built in 3AD.
The capital of the Opuntian Locrians.
Book EI.III:49-94 The birthplace of Patroclus.
The only son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, brother of Electra, Iphigenia and Chrysothemis. Pylades was his faithful friend. He avenged the murder of his father by killing Clytmenestra and her lover Aegisthus. He brought back his sister Iphigenia from the Tauric Chersonese, and the image of Artemis from her temple there to Athens, or in Roman myth to Aricia. The rites of the sanctuary there, at Nemi, are the starting point for Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ (see Chapter I et seq.)
Book TI.V:1-44 Book TI. IX:1-66 Book EII.III:1-48 His friendship with Pylades stressed. He was pursued by the Furies for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra.
Book TII:361-420 Famous because of Clytemnestra’s adultery and the consequent events.
Book TIV.IV:43-88 Book EIII.II:1-110 He visited the Crimea, and brought Iphigenia home.
Book TV.IV:1-50 A paragon of friendship.
Book TV.VI:1-46 Book EIII.II:1-110 Pylades’ loyalty to him.
Book EI.II:53-100 The Oresteian goddess is Artemis-Diana.
Ibis:311-364 Maddened by the Furies.
Ibis:465-540 There seems to be a variant myth here of Clytemnestra’s dream of a serpent, interpreted as Orestes, who killed her and Aegisthus.
Orestes is killed by a snake according to Apollodorus.
The mythical musician of Thrace, son of Oeagrus and Calliope the Muse. His lyre, given to him by Apollo, and invented by Hermes-Mercury, is the constellation Lyra containing the star Vega. (See John William Waterhouse’s painting – Nymphs finding the head of Orpheus – Private Collection, and Gustave Moreau’s painting – Orpheus – in the Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris: See Peter Vischer the Younger’s Bronze relief – Orpheus and Eurydice – Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg: and the bas-relief – Hermes, Eurydice and Orpheus – a copy of a votive stele attributed to Callimachus or the school of Phidias, Naples, National Archaeological Museum: Note also Rilke’s - Sonnets to Orpheus – and his Poem - Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes.) See Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books X and XI. He summoned Hymen to his wedding with Eurydice. After she was stung by a snake and died he travelled to Hades, to ask for her life to be renewed. Granted it, on condition he does not look back at her till she reaches the upper world, he faltered, and she was lost. He mourned her, and turned from the love of women to that of young men. He was killed by the Maenads of Thrace and dismembered, his head and lyre floating down the river Hebrus to the sea, being washed to Lesbos. (This head had powers of prophetic utterance) His ghost sank to the Fields of the Blessed where he was reunited with Eurydice. He taught Midas and Eumolpus the Bacchic rites.
Book TIV.I:1-48 He drew the trees and rocks to his singing.
Book EII.IX:39-80 The great poet of Thrace.
Book EIII.III:1-108 He taught Eumolpus the mysteries.
Ibis:465-540 Eurydice stung by the snake.
Ibis:597-644 Killed by the Bacchantes.
A mountain in Thessaly in Northern Greece.
Book EII.II:1-38 The Giants piled Pelion on Ossa to attack the heavens. Ovid implies he never thought to attack Augustus.
Ibis:251-310 Thessalus apparently died there.
The author, Publius Ovidius Naso, born March 20th 43BC, at Sulmo (Sulmona), ninety miles or so from Rome.
His Crime, ‘Carmen et error’: references:
Book TI.I:1-68 Book TIV.VIII:1-52 His life is a gift of Augustus’s, the god, who has mitigated his punishment. The implication is that Ovid’s error might have been considered a capital offence. His case is poor, and unlikely to be arguable in a court of law. He still can’t resist a subtle double entendre though, waiting for leniency, ‘lenito Caesare’, from a Caesar who has softened, or equally a more lenient Caesar to come! He acknowledges that his verse (Amores, Ars Amatoria etc) has hurt him, and contributed to his exile.
Book TI.I:70-128 Book TI. IX:1-66 Book TII.I:1The three books of Ars Amatoria again referred to, as texts to be hidden, and texts that have injured him. Ovid maintains that his own life and conduct were other than that described in the Ars, and that they were written in a light vein, as exercises in wit.
Book TI.II:1-74 Book TI.II:75-110 Book TI.III:1-46 Book TIII.I:47-82 Book TIII. XI:1-38 Book TIV.I:1-48 Book TIV.IV:1-42
Book TIV.X:41-92 Book EI.VII:1-70 Book EII.II:1-38 His error is a fault (culpa) rather than a crime (scelus) and not ultimately judged by Augustus to merit death. He accepts guilt but denies criminal intent (facinus). An error has misled him. He was stupid (stultus) not wicked (sceleratus). He stresses his loyalty to ‘Caesar and the Caesars’ who would include Tiberius, Drusus (Tiberius’s son by Vipsania), and Germanicus. Gaius and Lucius (Julia the Elder’s sons by Tiberius) were already dead (4AD and2AD), Agrippa Posthumus (Julia the Elder’s son by Agrippa) was in exile. He characterises himself as unwise and cowardly (non sapiens, timidus) and this suggests foolishness in having become involved in something, and cowardice in not reporting it.
Book TI.II:75-110 He is aware, and presumably Augustus may have indicated this to him, that the location of Tomis for his exile is part of his punishment. The ultra-civilised poet to be sent to the edge of civilisation to see how the Empire was maintained and expanded.
Book TI.V:1-44 Ovid denies fostering any armed opposition to Augustus and claims his error involved naivety, rather than disloyalty.
Book TI.VII:1-40 Book TV.II:45-79 Book TV.IV:1-50
Book TV.XI:1-30 He describes himself as a relegatus (relegated, banished) rather than an exul (exile). Relegatio was milder than exilium, in that property was not confiscated and civic rights were retained. Ovid’s friends were not formally tainted by association, his name was allowed to be mentioned, he could correspond, and publish, he was however confined to Tomis, whereas an exul often merely needed to keep a certain distance from Rome.
Book TII.I:1 Tristia II is in the form of a suasoria or formal argument concerning the charge that Ars Amatoria etc. were corrupting, with an exordium to placate the judge, a propositio outlining the brief, and a tractatio or treatment expounding the case, consisting in turn of a probatio or proof by evidence, and epilogus or first conclusion asking for mitigation, a refutatio rebutting the charge, and a second epilogus asking for mercy.
Book TII:77-120 Ovid claims his ‘error’ was to have seen something, unwittingly. The result was to be punished for that mischance, like Actaeon. He does not suggest that he was punished for failing to tell the authorities about it, but for the mere act of being a witness to it.
Book TII:120-154 He explains that he was upbraded by Augustus personally, his life was spared, he was not brought before Senate or law-court, and was a relegatus, with place of exile specified but retaining his rights and possessions, particularly important for his wife.
Book TII:207-252 The ‘carmen et error’ passage. The specific charge of promoting adultery through the poem (Ars Amatoria) suggests that adulterous behaviour may also have been involved in the error. (This author favours the view that Ovid inadvertently witnessed an unacceptable marriage or a related ceremony, involving the younger Julia and a lover, perhaps Decimus Iunius Silanus, with whom she had been accused of committing adultery while her husband Lucius Aemilius Paullus was alive. His presence would have been regarded by Augustus as a seal of approval, by the ‘doctor of adultery’, to an affair that potentially threatened the future succession to the Imperial throne, remembering the many candidates who had died, and the limited number of possible heirs. Julia was part of the anti-Tiberius faction. ) Ovid claims his book was written to exclude virtuous women and he ‘quotes’ Ars Amatoria I:31-34, but with the sneaky amendment of ‘what is lawful’ for ‘safe love’.
Book TII:253-312 He defends the Ars Amatoria again as written for courtesans and not for noblewomen, and uses the classic defence of eroticism and pornography that it does not corrupt, but attracts the already corrupted, and that everything prompts lewd thoughts in a lewd mind. (Note Euripides, in the Bacchae: ‘In the Bacchic ritual as elsewhere a woman will be safe from corruption if her mind is chaste.’)
Book TIII.I:47-82 His books banned from the libraries.
Book TIII.V:1-56 A key statement again regarding the nature of his offence, that is was something seen, that he had not spoken inadvisedly, that he witnessed a crimen (an ‘offence’ rather than a ‘crime’, i.e. something that offended Augustus rather than something against the law, fine shades of difference?) but that one of his offences was an error.
Book TIII.VI:1-38 Ovid says that what led up to the error which ruined him was a ‘secret’ and that suggests a more conspiratorial involvement than he would have us believe elsewhere. He repeats that the cause of his ruin was an error, that is is a long tale to tell, and not a safe one (presumably others were involved who were not revealed) and that he witnessed a ‘fatal’ evil. The word used funestus might link to its use (as an oxymoron) in Heroides XII:140 where Medea refers to marriage. It would be like Ovid to provide a subtle reference via Medea, the Black Sea witch of tragedy, to a clandestine marriage he had witnessed, a fateful and fatal one for those involved.
Book TIV.IV:43-88 In denying any facinus, that is deed, act or crime, and any consilium, that is plan or stratagem, in his peccatum, sin, Ovid seems to preclude his error having been any kind of active participation in a plot against Augustus or Tiberius. That is consistent with his claim to have seen something whose significance (in a political sense?) escaped him.
Book TIV.IX:1-32 Ovid again stresses that his rights as a citizen remain to him. Is there a hint here in modo sit sospes: if only he (Augustus) is safe/lives/is favourable like an omen, that Ovid was hopeful of Augustus relenting, but not of Tiberius, who was by now his obvious successor? Was the error (for example if it concerned Julia the Younger’s remarrying and bearing a rival successor) specifically harmful to Tiberius’s status as successor, and therefore to Augustus’s wishes for that succession?
Book TIV.X:93-132 A very suggestive and intriguing comment that the cause of his exile was only too well known, and was triggered by the wickedness of friends’ and the harm done him by servants. It is possible that while Julia the Younger’s adultery was given as the ostensible reason for her banishment, and Ovid was perhaps tarnished by association, so that the cause of his exile was known to all, as was hers (and Ars Amatoria was dragged into it as a morally corrupting text), he may have witnessed a clandestine marriage which legitimised the child she was carrying, and would have offered another heir to the throne of Scribonia’s and not Livia’s line, and thus a threat to Tiberius. This comment suggests that his presence (at a marriage?) might have been betrayed by friends and servants. (the servants perhaps under harsh questioning?).
Book TV.VIII:1-38 Ovid goes on hoping for remission of his sentence, based on the nature of his error, and Augustus’s reputation for being merciful to his enemies.
Book EI.II:53-100 A reiteration of the nature of his offence, judged by Augustus not to merit the death penalty.
Book EI.VI:1-54 A repetition again that the history of his offence is long and not safe to write about, that it is a fault and not a crime, but that perhaps every fault involving the gods is a crime.
Book EII.II:39-74 Ovid urges himself to silence over the details of the matter, wishing to bury knowledge of his ruin himself.
Book EII.III:1-48 Ovid claims that Cotta accepted he had only made a mistake and not committed a crime. Cotta initially and instinctively sided with Augustus, but still gave Ovid some support.
Book EII.VII:47-84 Ovid was absent when the blow fell. This is interesting coupled with his last meeting with Cotta on Elba.
Book EII.IX:39-80 The double offence of the Ars Amatoria and something else that is concealed by the banning of the book, not something illegal but something even weightier, and Augustus was lenient. The implication is that the offence was a combination of the morally dubious and the politically disloyal, rather than an explicit criminal action against Augustus.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Ovid defends the Ars Amatoria from the charge of being a corrupting influence, implies that the error was more serious a crime than the banned book, that the error should not be explained, and that the penalty was appropriate.
Dating of the Poems: references
Book TI.IV:1-28 Ovid is ploughing the Adriatic late in the winter months on his way into exile (winter of 8-early 9AD).
Book TI.XI:1-44 Tristia I was written on the journey. He was in the Adriatic in December (8AD) and therefore was in Tomis early the following year (9AD).
Book TII:155-206 Book TII:207-252 Ovid is anticipating victory in Pannonia. Tiberius and Germanicus defeated the Dalmatian and Pannonian rebels in the second Illyrian War of summer AD9. Tristia II therefore dates to this year.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Ovid is anticipating victory in Germany after the defeat of Varus, in late AD9 and the transfer of Tiberius there. Tristia III is therefore dated to AD9-10.
Book TIII.XIII:1-28 Ovid’s Birthday in Tomis. He was 52 years old in the spring of AD10, see previous note. (March 20th, having been born in 43BC).
Book TIV.II:1-74 Tiberius is still campaigning in Germany, with Germanicus and Drusus. Tristia IV dates to AD10-11.
Book TIV.VI:1-50 Ovid has spent two full summers away from Rome, so we are in the autumn of AD10.
Book TIV.VII:1-26 The Sun is in Pisces, in February/March of AD11. The second winter of exile (in Tomis) is completed. (Ignoring the winter of AD9 when he was still travelling, and given the preceding poem that covers two full summers also.).
Book TIV.VIII:1-52 Book TIV.X:93-132 He refers to his age, over fifty.
Book TV.III:1-58 Ovid is celebrating the Liberalia, the feast of Bacchus, on March 17th, in the spring of AD12.
Book TV.X:1-53 The spring of AD12 in Tomis after his third winter.
Book EI.II:1-52 Ovid is in Tomis for the fourth winter, that of AD12/13.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Written in the late autumn of AD12, when the Pleiades have risen. This suggests the poems of Ex Ponto may not be in strict chronological order.
Book EII.I:68 Book EIII.III:1-108 Ovid hears of Tiberius’s Pannonian triumph of October AD12, so we are in late 12 or more likely early AD13.
Book EIV.IV:1-50 After the July AD13 elections to office when Pompey’s consulship of AD14 was known. Presumably we are in the late summer of
AD13.
Book EIV.V:1-46 Pompey is already consul, so we are in AD14, but before Augustus’ death in the August of that year.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Augustus died on the 19th August AD14 and was deified on the 17th September. We are in Ovid’s sixth year in Tomis, AD14, so it is late autumn, early winter.
Book EIV.IX:1-54 Ovid anticipates Graecinus’s consulship. The letter seems intended to reach him by May AD16 when he took office, and therefore allowing for potential delays may have been written early that year.
Book EIV.X:1-34 Written in the sixth summer, early autumn, i.e. AD14.
Friends and Patrons: references
Book TI.III:1-46 Ovid’s faithful friends were probably Brutus, Atticus, Celsus and Carus, of whom little is known.
Book TIII.V:1-56 This and the previous poem probably addressed to ‘Carus’ indicate the loyalty and strength of friendship provided by at least this friend.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 This poem is probably addressed to Gaius Julius Hyginus director of the Palatine library, a patron of poets, and friend of Ovid’s.
Self and Family: references
Book TI.III:1-46 Ovid’s third wife (possibly Fabia). His daughter was his only child, his daughter by his second wife. She was married to a senator Cornelius Fidus and went to Africa with him, a senatorial province. Ovid’s house was situated near the Capitoline Hill.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Ovid’s third wife had some acquaintance with Livia, presumably through the household of Paullus Fabius Maximus, and his wife Marcia. She may have been a relative of the Fabian house, and editors have dubbed her Fabia (though on scant evidence).
Book TI.V:45-84 He suggests that his physique was relatively slight and delicate.
Book TII:77-120 Book EIII.V:1-58 Augustus preserved the custom of granting a horse to member of the equestrian order, and reviewed them, including Ovid, at an annual parade (the equitum transvectio of the equites Romani wearing their special dress, the trabea). An unworthy member could be deprived of his horse. Ovid was a member of the centumviral court, mostly dealing with property cases and probate. As an eques of good standing he was also a private arbiter.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Another tribute by Ovid to his wife’s love and her faithfulness to him in his adversity.
Book TIV.I:49-107 He avoided military matters in his youth, and now has to help defend Tomis as an elderly man.
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. It suggests that the Metamorphoses are retold ‘stories’, and that Ovid gives many or all of them little or no factual credence. That also undermines his exaltation of the Caesars as gods towards the end of Book XV.
Book TIV.X:1-40 Ovid’s autobiography begins. He was born on the second day of the festival of Minerva, Goddess of the Mind, the Quinquatrus (March 19-23), on the first of the days (March 20th) when armed combats took place. The year was 43BC when both the Consuls, namely Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa, died in defeating Mark Antony at Mutina. Ovid mentions his elder brother born on the same day a year earlier who died at age twenty. Ovid was drawn to poetry, and held minor office on one of the boards of tresviri (monetales, overseeing the public mint, or capitales, the prisons and executions) but held back from public office in the Senate. He had adopted the tunica laticlavia for the sons of senators and equites destined for public office, but reverted to the angusticlavia of a plain equites.
Book TIV.X:41-92 Ovid’s autobiography continues. He mentions the poets in his circle of friends, his poems to Corinna, his susceptible heart but blameless life, his three marriages, his daughter by his second marriage, see above, and the deaths of his parents.
Book EIII.VII:1-40 Resignation is creeping over him by this stage of his exile (AD13).
His Other Works: references
Book TI.I:70-128 Book TI.VII:1-40 Book TII:43-76 Book TII:547-578 The fifteen books of the Metamorphoses, ‘saved’ from his ruin. Ovid says he burnt his copy of the work because it represented ‘poetry’ which had condemned him, and/or because it was not completely finished. It survived as he knew in other copies though. Polite references to Augustus will be found in Metamorphoses Book XV:857 et al, but Jupiter and Juno are a gentle parody of Augustus and Livia throughout the work and so Ovid is still being a little cheeky.
Book TI.XI:1-44 A remembrance of his writing in his Roman garden, or on his familiar couch.
Book TII:43-76 Book TII:313-360 Ovid may have intended to write a Gigantomachia, the story of the war between the gods and the giants. If so written it might not have helped his case! He had apparently started, and then abandoned it.
Book TII:547-578 The six surviving books of the Fasti, covering six months of the Roman year, are mentioned here, originally dedicated to Augustus, and partially revised in AD14, at Augustus’s death, to re-dedicate the work to Germanicus. I don’t think the Latin here indicates that a second set of six was drafted for the other months of the year. Six books only, in six rolls, seems clear enough. And the work was broken off, as he states. The tragedy is the lost Medea.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 Compare the last verses of the Metamorphoses.
Book TIII.VIII:1-42 Compare Amores III.6 for a similar wish, concerning both Medea’s and Triptolemus’s (lent him by Ceres) chariots. Ovid uses myths that refer to the Black Sea region in both cases.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 He makes a plea for his books to be kept in the public library. He mentions the baned Ars Amatoria, the Metamorphoses, and the Tristia itself, plus his considering writing in Getic and corrupting his Latin.
Book TIV.X:93-132 He uses the formula here of the closing lines of the Metamorphoses to assert his immortality.
Book TV.VII:1-68 He denies having written anything for the theatre, implying that someone has adapted his verses for the stage.
Book TV.XII:1-68 He wishes the Ars Amatoria had been thrown into the fire since it has ruined its author.
Book TI.X:1-50 He travelled to Tomis by way of the Adratic and the Corinthian Gulf, crossing the Isthmus to reach Cenchreae, the harbour of Corinth on the Saronic Gulf. There he took ship (the Minerva?) to Samothrace in the northern Aegean. The ship continued to Tomis, but he took another ship to Tempyra on the Thracian coast, and then finished the journey to Tomis by land.
Book TV.VII:1-68 A description of life in Tomis among the barbarians. Ovid has learned to speak Sarmatian and his Latin is growing rusty. He stresses the savagery of the people whose Greek admixture is drowned by the Getic semi-nomadic and warlike culture.
Book TV.X:1-53 Ovid portrays the local people as barbaric savages who have lost the culture of the original Greek colony, and apply rough justice. They wear Persian trousers, dress in sheepskins, are unable to understand Latin, and are malicious in their speech about Ovid himself. Not a picture likely to arouse their enthusiasm for him if the contents got back to them, as we shall see later!
An Italian people whose capital, Sulmo, was Ovid’s birthplace.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 The countryside there.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 His homeland.
The Pannonians, a group of Illyrian tribes south and west of the bend of the Danube, organised as a province c. 10AD covering roughly the area between Vienna and Belgrade.
Book TII:207-252 Tiberius and Germanicus defeated the Pannonian and Illyrian rebels in the second Illyrian war of the summer of 9AD.
Book EII.II:75-126 Ovid uses the term Paeonian (Macedonian) loosely to describe the Pannonians further towards the Danube estuary.
A city of Lucania in Italy. The site is near modern Agropoli on the Bay of Salerno, a ruin in a wilderness, with Doric temples that surpassed those of Athens. Originally called Poseidonia, the city of Neptune, it was founded by Greeks from Sybaris in the 6th c. BC. It became Paestum when it passed into the hands of the Lucanians in the 4th century. It was taken by the Romans in 273BC. In antiquity it was famous for its roses, which flowered twice a year, and its violets. Malaria eventually drove away its population.
Ibis:597-644 The son of Nauplius whom Ulysses’ wrongfully had stoned to death, after making it appear that he had been a traitor and received enemy gold.
The most important of Rome’s seven hills and traditionally the site of the earliest settlements adjacent to the Tiber, south-east of the Capitoline and north of the Aventine. It became a highly fashionable residential area, and Augustus lived there in a house that had belonged to the orator Quintus Hortensius. Other residents included Cicero and Mark Antony.
Book TIII.I:1-46 The Porta Mogunia was the way to the Palatine Hill from the Via Sacra.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Book EII.VIII:1-36 The site of Augustus’s palace, decked with garlands for a triumph.
The sons of Jupiter and the nymph Thalia were worshipped in Sicily at Palica, between Syracuse and Enna, where a temple and two lakes were sacred to them. Dis passed through the sulphurous swamps there while abducting Proserpine. The modern Lago di Naftia between Catania and Caltagirone
Book EII.X:1-52 Visited by Ovid and Macer.
Aeneas’s helmsman who fell into the sea while asleep and drowned. See Virgil’s Aeneid.
Book TV.VI:1-46 A metaphor for abandoning any project.
Ibis:541-596 Drowned in sight of land according to Ovid.
Book TI.II:1-74 Hostile to the Trojans.
Book TII:253-312 She raised Erichthonius.
Book TIII.I:1-46 Her sacred image at Troy, which fell from the sky, was the Palladium. Stolen by Ulysses and Diomede, it guaranteed the safety of Troy while the Trojans possessed it. Alternatively, it was eventually taken to Rome by Aeneas, and housed in the Temple of Vesta.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 Pallas was born from the head of Zeus, and released into the world by a blow from Haephaestus’s axe.
Book TIV.V:1-34 The olive and its oil were sacred to her.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Minerva protected the Argo.
Book EIII.VIII:1-24 Goddess of the domestic arts, for example spinning wool.
Ibis:251-310 She protected the Argo, and her sacred dove was sent ahead through the clashing rocks to guide the ship.
A king of Athens, father of Procne and Philomela. He married Procne to Tereus, king of Thrace.
Book EI.III:1-48 His daughters turned into birds.
The Fates.
Book TV.III:1-58 Ovid speculates that a dark Fate was present at his birth.
Book EIII.VII:1-40 He is fated to die in exile.
Book TII:155-206 A term for Callisto the Arcadian.
A river in eastern Bithynia, flowing into the Pontus.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Roughly, Persian. The eastern boundary of the Empire, and a source of trouble during Augustus’s reign.
Book TII:207-252 Ovid recalls the offer of the return of Roman standards captured by the Persians from Crassus at Carrhae (53BC) and from others in 40 and 36. The offer was made by a nervous Phraates IV of Parthia after Armenia had become a friendly state to Rome in 20BC under Tigranes. The capture of the standards was not too clever a subject for Ovid to raise.
The daughter of the Sun and the nymph Crete (Perseis). She was the wife of King Minos of Crete and mother of Phaedra and Ariadne.
She was inspired, by Poseidon, with a mad passion for a white bull from the sea, and Daedalus built for her a wooden frame in the form of a cow, to entice it. From the union she produced the Minotaur, Asterion, with a bull’s head and a man’s body.
Ibis:41-104 Named as a source of an accursed race.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries. Note that the text is corrupt at this point. Passer, a poet, is assumed.
The son of Menoetius, and grandson of Actor. Achilles’ beloved friend whose death, at the hands of Hector, caused Achilles to re-enter the fight against the Trojans. See Iliad Book 16.
Book TI. IX:1-66 His loyalty to Achilles stressed.
Book TV.IV:1-50 Book EII.III:1-48 A paragon of friendship. Called Menoetiades from his father.
Book EI.III:49-94 A fugitive when young he found refuge with Achilles’ father Peleus, after killing Cleitonymus, son of Amphidamas.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The winged horse, created by Neptune’s union with Medusa and sprung from her head when Perseus decapitated her. At the same time his brother Chrysaor the warrior was created. He is represented in the sky by the constellation Pegasus.The sacred fountain of Hippocrene on Mount Helicon, haunt of the Muses, sprang from under his hoof. Pegasus was tamed by Bellerephon.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 Hippocrene.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 His swiftness.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Born of Medusa. Hippocrene created by him.
The Greeks. Originally an ancient Greek people (Pelasgi) and their king Pelasgus, son of Phoroneus the brother of Io. He was the brother of Agenor and Iasus.
Book TII:361-420 The Greeks at Troy.
Ibis:465-540 Possibly Pelasgus is intended here.
The half-brother of Aeson whom he drove from the throne of Iolchos in Thessaly. He sent Aeson’s son Jason in search of the Golden Fleece. Medea pretended to rejuvenate him but instead employed his daughters to help destroy him.
Book TV.V:27-64 His daughter Alcestis.
Book EI.IV:1-58 He sent Jason to Colchis.
Ibis:413-464 Failed rejuvenation.
A mountain in Thessaly in Northern Greece.
Book EII.II:1-38 The Giants piled Pelion on Ossa to attack the heavens. Ovid implies he never thought to attack Augustus.
The son of Tantalus, and brother of Niobe. He was cut in pieces and served to the gods at a banquet by his father to test their divinity. Ceres-Demeter, mourning for Persephone, did not perceive the wickedness and ate a piece of the shoulder. The gods gave him life again and an ivory shoulder. He gave his name to the Peloponnese. He was a famous horseman and charioteer. Later he carried off Hippodamia.
Book TII:361-420 His abduction of Hippodamia.
Ibis:163-208 The son of Tantalus.
Ibis:541-596 Brother of Niobe.
The old Latin household gods, two in number, whose name derives from penus a larder, or storage room for food. They were closely linked to the family and shared its joys and sorrows. Their altar was the hearth, which they shared with Vesta. Their images were placed at the back of the atrium in front of the Genius, the anonymous deity that protected and was the creative force in all groups and families, and, as the Genius of the head of the house and represented as a serpent, was placed between the Lar (Etruscan guardian of the house) and Penates. At meals they were placed between the plates and offered the first food. The Penates moved with a family and became extinct if the family did. See Lares.
Book TI.III:1-46 Ovid’s wife prays to the Penates.
Book TI.III:47-102 The deserted gods he leaves behind.
Book TI.V:45-84 Book TIV.VIII:1-52 Gods of the household, and synonymous with it.
The wife of Ulysses, and daughter of Icarius and the Naiad Periboa.
(See J R Spencer Stanhope’s painting- Penelope – The De Morgan Foundation). See Homer’s Odyssey.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Book TII:361-420 Book TV.XIV:1-46 Homer made Penelope famous as a loyal wife, through the Odyssey.
Book TV.V:27-64 Ovid compares his wife’s character to hers.
Book TV.V:27-64 Made famous by her response to her husband’s fate.
Book EIII.1:105-166 She kept the suitors at bay.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries wrote Ulysses’ letters home to her, presumably imitating Ovid’s Heroides.
Ibis:365-412 Her maids and the suitors killed at the end of the Odyssey.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
The son of Echion and Agave, the grandson of Cadmus through his mother. He was King of Thebes. Tiresias foretold his fate at the hands of the Maenads (Bacchantes). He rejected the worship of Bacchus-Dionysus and ordered the capture of the god. He was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes for his impiety.
Book TV.III:1-58 His offence against Bacchus.
Ibis:465-540 Torn to pieces by his mother and the other Bacchantes.
The pseudonym of Metella the mistress of Ticida.
Ovid’s stepdaughter, the daughter of his third wife. She married Marcus Suillius Rufus not later than AD16, and had a son Marcus Suiliius Nerullinus.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 Ovid talks about his encouragement of her poetic leanings.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 His thoughts of her and her mother.
Book TIII. XI:39-74 The maker of the brazen bull.
Book TV.I:49-80 Book TV.XII:1-68 Ibis:413-464 Tormented by his own invention.
The son of Jupiter and Danaë, grandson of Acrisius, King of Argos. He was conceived as a result of Jupiter’s rape of Danaë, in the form of a shower of gold. He is represented by the constellation Perseus near Cassiopeia. He is depicted holding the head of the Medusa, whose evil eye is the winking star Algol. It contains the radiant of the Perseid meteor shower. His epithets are Abantiades (scion of Abas), Acrisioniades, Agenorides, Danaëius, Inachides, Lyncides. (See Burne-Jones’s oil paintings and gouaches in the Perseus series particularly The Arming of Perseus, The Escape of Perseus, The Rock of Doom, Perseus slaying the Sea-Serpent, and The Baleful Head.)( See Benvenuto Cellini’s bronze Perseus - the Loggia, Florence). He slew the gorgon, Medusa, killed Acrisius accidentally in fulfilment of prophecy, and married Andromeda.
Book TIII.VIII:1-42 His winged sandals.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Mentioned as a subject for verse in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Ibis:413-464 Called Abantiades. The infant Perseus and his mother Danae were cast into the sea in a wooden box by her father Acrisius, son of Abas, King of Argolis.
The daughter of King Minos of Crete and Pasiphaë, sister of Ariadne. She loved Hippolytus her stepson, and brought him to his death. (See Racine’s play – Phaedra, and Euripides’ Hipploytos.).
Book TII:361-420 Her illict love.
Son of Clymene, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys whose husband was the Ethiopian king Merops. His true father is Sol, the sun-god ( Phoebus). He asked his mother for proof of his divine origin and went to the courts of the Sun to see his father who granted him a favour. He asked to drive the Sun chariot, lost control of the chariot and was destroyed by Jupiter in order to save the earth from being consumed by fire. See Metamorphoses Books I and II.
Book TI.I:70-128 He would fear the sky if he still lived.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Merops was his putative father.
Book TIV.III:49-84 Book EI.II:1-52 His sisters remained loyal to him, and grieved for him. They were turned into poplar trees weeping amber by the River Po, happy in losing their sense of feeling.
Ibis:465-540 Struck down by Jupiter’s thunderbolt to avoid the earth being consumed.
The Tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, 571-555BC. He was noted for his cruelty. He had Perillus the sculptor and inventor design a brazen bull for him where victims could be roasted alive and made Perillus himself its first victim. Polybius (Histories XII.25) claims to have seen the bull, which had been taken to Carthage at the time of the Carthaginian conquest in 406/5BC. Diodorus Siculus (History XIII.90.4) reports the same and that subsequently Scipio returned it to Agrigentum after the sack of Carthage in 146BC.
Book TIII. XI:39-74 Book EII.IX:39-80 Book EIII.VI:1-60 An example of cruelty.
Book TV.I:49-80 Allowed Perillus to groan and bellow.
Ibis:413-464 Ovid implies he was also tormented in the bull.
An island near Alexandria in Egypt, site of the lighthouse. Protected by Isis as goddess of the sea. Subsequently silted up and linked to the mainland.
Book EI.I:37-80 Associated with the worship of Isis.
A river in Colchis, famous for its gold. Medea is called the Phasian.
Book TII:421-470 Reached by the Argonauts.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Medea, the Phasian girl.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Ibis:597-644 Of the region of the river, hence Colchian.
Book EII.IX:39-80 Descended from Alexander Tyrant of Pherae in Thessaly.
Ibis:311-364 Alexander d. 358 BC was tyrant of the city of Pherae in Thessaly after 369. He was opposed by other Thessalian cities and by the Thebans. Pelopidas failed (368) in one expedition against him and was briefly imprisoned. Returning in 364, Pelopidas destroyed Alexander's power in the battle of Cynoscephalae, though he himself was killed. Alexander was subsequently murdered by members of his own family, led by his wife Thebe (see Plutarch’s: Life of Pelopidas)
The Athenian sculptor and painter (490?-432?BC) creator of severeal famous works including the Zeus of Olympia, the Athena Parthenos and Athena Promachos, and general director of the Acropolis building project under Pericles.
Book EIV.I:1-36 His statues of Athene.
Philetas of Cos (5th century BC) the Greek grammarian and poet, famed for elegy. His verses to Bittis his wife or sweetheart were especially prized.
Book TI.VI:1-36 Mirrors Ovid’s love for his wife.
Philip I of Macedonia, the father of Alexander.
Book EIV.XV:1-42 His lands, Macedonia.
The son of Poeas. He lit Hercules’ funeral pyre and received from him the bow, quiver and arrows that would enable the Greeks to finally win at Troy, and that had been with Hercules when he rescued Hesione there.
Bitten by a snake on Lemnos, he was abandoned there on Ulysses advice. Ulysses accepted later that Philoctetes and his weapons were essential for the defeat of the Trojans and brought Philoctetes and the weapons to Troy.
Book TV.I:49-80 Book TV.IV:1-50 His laments on Lemnos.
Book TV.II:1-44 Ibis:251-310 His long sickness from the noxious wound.
Book EI.III:1-48 Treated by Machaon. Called Poeantian as the son of Poeas.
Book EIII.1:1-66 Made more famous by his fate.
The daughter of Pandion, sister of Procne, raped by her sister’s husband Tereus. She convinced her father to allow her to visit her sister Procne, unaware of Tereus’s lust for her. Tereus violated her, and she vowed to tell the world of his crime. He severed her tongue and told Procne she was dead. Philomela communicated with Procne by means of a woven message, and was rescued by her during the Bacchic revels. She then helped Procne to murder Itys, the son of Tereus and Procne.
Pursued by Tereus she turned into a swallow or a nightingale. See Metamorphoses Book VI.
Book TII:361-420 Changed to a bird.
Ibis:465-540 Her tongue cut out.
Ibis:251-310 The Arcadian Greek general of Megalopolis (c253-182BC: see the life by Plutarch: a life by Polybius, who carried home the general’s bones after his death, is lost: see also Pausanias VIII.49.3). He fought in various battles for the Achaian League against Laconia. In old age he fought the Messenians, his proud aggressive character leading him to wage war when unfit to do so. He fell from his horse through weakness, and was captured, and ultimately executed by Deinocrates and the Messenians, drinking poison. Ovid perhaps plays here on the fact of his face being ‘no picture’, and the hubris that led to his downfall. Ovid places his final battle near Tegea in the Alean fields, since Aleus was the founder of Tegea, or perhaps uses Alean loosely for Arcadian.
King of Salmydessus in Thrace, and son of Agenor, he was a blind prophet, who had received the gift of prophecy from Apollo. He was blinded by the gods for prophesying the future too accurately, and was plagued by a pair of Harpies. Calais and Zetes, the sons of Boreas, and his brothers-in-law, rid him of their loathsome attentions, in return for advice on how to obtain the Golden Fleece. The two winged sons chased the Harpies to the Strophades islands, where some say their lives were spared. Phineus and his second wife Idaea persecuted his two children by his first wife, Cleopatra, the sister of Calais and Zetes.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Ibis:251-310 He guided the Argonauts.
A name for Diana, as moon-goddess.
The son of Amyntor, hence Amyntorides, blinded by his father and cursed with childlessness, who was cured by Cheiron the Centaur and became guardian to Achilles.
A region in Asia Minor, containing Dardania and Troy, and Mysia and Pergamum. Ovid uses the term for the whole of Asia Minor bordering the Aegean. Phrygius often means Trojan.
Book TII:361-420 Pelops had Phrygian horses.
Book EI.I:37-80 Ibis:413-464 Phrygian boxwood flutes used in the rites of Cybele. The worship of the goddess originated in Asia Minor.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Ibis:541-596 Marsyas was Phrygian.
A character in Virgil’s Bucolic poems.
Book TII:497-546 A character in the Eclogues.
The title of a poem by Tuscus.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Mentioned in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Book EIV.X:1-34 The cruel chieftain of a tribe near Tomis.
An epithet for the Muses from the Pierian district of Mount Olympus.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 Book TIV.IX:1-32 Book TV.I:1-48 Poetry generally.
Book TIV.I:1-48 Poetry has in a sense harmed him, through the banning of the Ars Amatoria and his exile.
Book TV.III:1-58 Book EI.V:43- 86 The choir of poets, belonging to the Muses.
Book TV.VII:1-68 Book EII.V:41-76 Book EIV.II:1-50
The lyric poet of Boeotian Thebes (after 442BC) famous for his odes, many celebrating winning athletes at the Games.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Imitated by Rufus a poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The Pirenian Spring. A famous fountain on the citadel of Corinth sacred to the Muses, where Bellerephon took Pegasus to drink. Pausanias says (II:iii, Corinth) that Peirene was a human being who became a spring, through weeping for her son Cenchrias, killed by accident by Artemis, and that the water is sweet to taste. (It has Byzantine columns, and was once the private garden of the Turkish Bey.). The spring was said never to fail. It was also the name of a fountain outside the city gates, towards Lechaeum, into whose waters the Corinthian bronzes were dipped red-hot on completion.
Book EI.III:49-94 Corinth, where Jason was eventually king.
Son of Ixion. King of the Lapithae in Thessaly and friend of Theseus. He married Hippodamia, and invited the centaurs to the wedding. Eurytus attempted to carry her off, and started a fight in which Theseus was also involved. He assisted Theseus on his journey to Hades to rescue Persephone and was imprisoned there with him. Theseus was rescued by Hercules.
Book TI.V:1-44 Book EII.III:1-48 Book EII.VI:1-38 Famous for his friendship with Theseus.
The district of Elis in which Olympia lay, and often synonymous with Elis. Pisa presided over the Olympic games until c 580BC.
Book TII:361-420 Ibis:365-412 Hippodamia was from Pisa.
Book TIV.X:93-132 Ovid had lived for ten Olympiads, the space between Olympic Games, of five years each.
The Seven Sisters, the daughters, with the Hyades and the Hesperides, of Atlas the Titan. Their mother was Pleione the naiad. They were chased by Orion rousing the anger of Artemis to whom they were dedicated and changed to stars by the gods. The Pleiades are the star cluster M45 in the constellation Taurus. Their names were Maia, the mother of Mercury by Jupiter, Taÿgeta, Electra, Merope, Asterope, Alcyone (the brightest star of the cluster), and Celaeno. Their rising and setting in May and late October signalled the beginning and end of the navigation season and provided farmers with sowing and harvest guidance. (See Hesiod Works and Days:383)
Book TI.XI:1-44 Book EI.VIII:1-70 Book EII.VII:47-84 Autumn and Winter stars. Rising in mid-October.
Book EI.V:43- 86 Remote stars.
The God of the Underworld, elder brother of Jupiter and Neptune, and like them the son of Saturn and Rhea. Identified with Plutus the son of Ceres, god of riches.
Book TI. IX:1-66 God of Tartarus, the Underworld.
Ibis:413-464 Identified with Plutus, wealth.
The son of Asclepius and brother of Machaon. A physician who led a contingent to Troy. He and Machaon were the chief physicians to the Greek camp. He is said to have healed Philoctetes, and settled in Caria after the war.
Book TV.VI:1-46 A reliable physician.
Ibis:541-596 The son of Priam of Troy sent to his uncle Polymestor who murdered him.
The son of King Tyndareus of Sparta (or Zeus), and Leda, and one of the twin Dioscuri, brother of Castor. 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.
Ibis:251-310 Ibis:541-596 King of Thrace, husband of Ilione daughter of Priam. He murdered his own child Deiphilus rather than Polydorus, Iliona’s nephew, sent to him by Priam for safety, whom Agamemnon had bribed him with gold to kill. Polydorus blinded him. Alternatively Polymestor killed Polydorus for the gold sent by Priam for safekeeping, with the boy, and the boy’s mother Hecuba in turn murdered him, and tore out his eyes.
The brother of Eteocles and Antigone, the son of Oedipus and Jocasta. The leader of the Seven against Thebes.
Book TII:313-360 The brothers’ mutual death.
Ibis:1-40 The smoke of their funeral pyre divided by enmity.
One of the Cyclopes, sons of Neptune, one-eyed giants living in Sicily (Trinacria). He was blinded by Ulysses, causing Poseidon/Neptune’s enmity against him, and adding to his long wanderings. The Cyclops were linked to metal-working and the volcano of Mount Etna on Sicily.
Book EII.II:75-126 A hostile monster.
Ibis:251-310 Ibis:365-412 Blinded by Ulysses whose men he had attacked and some of whom he had consumed.
Gnaius Pompeius Magnus, the triumvir.
Book EIV.III:1-58 Defeated at Pharsalus (48BC) he sought refuge in Egypt but was killed on arrival, and his severed head was sent to Caesar. The headless corpse was left on the sand.
Sextus Pompeius a patron of Ovid. He was a descendant of Pompey the Great, was related to Augustus, and was consul in 14AD. He was a friend of Germanicus, and became proconsul of Asia.
Book EIV.I:1-36 This letter addressed to him explicitly. Ovid apologises for his neglect, and is no doubt trying to make contact with friends of Germanicus. The death of Augustus has occurred or is imminent.
Book EIV.IV:1-50 Addressed to him explicitly. His consulship approved.
Book EIV.V:1-46 Addressed to him explicitly, after he had become Consul.
Book EIV.XV:1-42 Addressed to him explicitly.
An epic poet and member of Ovid’s circle, probably the Ponticus of Propertius I:7, and 9. He appears to have written a Thebaid.
The Black Sea, originally called αξειυος:axenus, inhospitable, because of its storms, and the barbarous tribes on its coast, later hospitable, εϋξειυος:euxinus, as a euphemism. Hence Euxene as an epithet. Ovid also calls the region in which Tomis lay, Pontus. The name is extended to the land adjacent to the Sea, along its southern shore as far as Colchis, sometimes the whole Thracian shore.
Book TI.II:75-110 Book EIII.VIII:1-24 Ovid speaks of Pontus-on-the-left, the ill-omened (to him) western shore of the Black Sea, on the left as one exits the Bosphorus.
Book TI.VIII:1-50 The ‘sinister’ Black Sea, both Pontus ‘on the left’ Tomis being on the western coast, and, for Ovid, unlucky, unfavourable Pontus: a play on the word.
Book TI.X:1-50 The ‘gates’ of the Black Sea, that is the Bosphorus (Dardanelles). Guarded by the city of Byzantium.
Book TIII.II:1-30 Ovid complains of its perpetual frost. If so the climate has changed, since the modern summers in Tomis are hot, and the autumns mild. (Constanta is now a holiday resort.)
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Described as Scythian.
Book TIII.VIII:1-42 Book EIV.XII:1-50 His dislike of the location, plagued by insomnia, and weak in body.
Book TIII. X:41-78 Book TV.X:1-53 Book EIV.VII:1-54 The Black Sea frozen in winter. Its dolphin population.
Book TIII. XI:1-38 The inhospitable Black Sea.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 A destination for trading vessels.
Book TIII.XIII:1-28 The ‘hospitable’ Euxine.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 The languages of the region.
Book TIV.I:1-48 Book TV.II:45-79 Book TV.V:27-64 Book EI.IX:1-56
Book EIV.IX:89-134 Book EIV.XV:1-42 His place of exile, decreed by Augustus.
Book TV.II:1-44 His letters home to his wife from there.
Book TV.XIII:1-34 Icy Pontus. The wormwood plant, especially artemisia absinthium, the aromatic herb found in grasslands in the Northern hemisphere and the source of absinthe, grew there abundantly. Up to 80cm high it has deeply divided leaves and small yellow flowers grouped into long loose spikes. The undersides of the leaves are pale.
Book EI.III:49-94 Book EII.VII:47-84 Book EIII.1:1-66 A hostile region for exile.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Jason’s destination, seeking the Golden Fleece.
Book EII.IV:1-34 Book EIV.IX:55-88 It’s frozen climate.
Book EII.V:1-40 His verses sent from there.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Far from Rome.
Book EIII.V:1-58 Metaphorically close to the Styx.
Ibis:1-40 A witness to his ‘gratitude’ to Augustus for being merciful.
Book EIV.IV:1-50 News of Pompey’s consulship reaches him there.
Book EIV.X:35-84 The land-locked sea.
An Indian leader whom Alexander conquered but treated generously.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Displays Alexander’s mercy.
The Greek god of the sea, equated to Neptune.
The King of Troy at the time of the Trojan War, the son of Laomedon, husband of Hecuba, by whom he had many children. In the Metamorphoses Ovid mentions Hector, Helenus, Paris, Polydorus, Deïphobus, Cassandra and Polyxena. Aesacus was his son by Alexiroë. He ransomed the dead body of his son Hector from Achilles, and was killed at the Fall of Troy by Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus, son of Achilles) in front of the altar of Zeus.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Achilles gave up the body of Hector.
Book TV.I:49-80 His weeping did not offend Achilles.
Book TV.IV:1-50 His grief at Hector’s death.
Book TV.XII:1-68 The death of his sons.
The Pan of Mysia in Asia Minor, venerated as Lampsacus, from the town of that name which was his original cult centre, where he was born ot the goddess Aphrodite-Venus. God of gardens and vineyards. His phallic image was placed in orchards and gardens. He presided over the fecundity of fields, flocks, beehives, fishing and vineyards. He became part of the retinue of Dionysus.
Book TI.X:1-50 The local god of Lampsacus.
Two Augustan poets, one of whom was probably Clutorius Priscus, who wrote a lament on the death of Germanicus, and was later put to death in 21AD for having read a poem to ladies lamenting the death of Drusus while Drusus was alive. The other Priscus is unknown.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Poets in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, married to Tereus, king of Thrace. See Metamorphoses Book VI:438. She persuaded Tereus to bring her sister Philomela to stay with her. Tereus raped and mutilated her sister, and told Procne that Philomela was dead. Philomela communicated with her by means of a woven message, and she rescued her during the Bacchic rites. She murdered her son Itys and served the flesh to Tereus. Pursued by Tereus she turned into a nightingale. The bird’s call, mourning Itys, is said to be ‘Itu! Itu!’ which is something like the occasional ‘chooc, chooc’ among its wide range of notes. Alternative versions of the legend make her the swallow, while Philomela becomes the nightingale.
Book TII:361-420 Book EI.III:1-48 Changed to a bird.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Changed to a swallow.
Book TV.I:49-80 Her lament for Itys.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Impious in murdering Itys.
Ibis:365-412 Or Polypemon, the father of Sinis, who used to cut travellers down to the size of his bed or stretch them accordingly. Theseus served him in the same way.
An Augustan erotic poet who imitated Callimachus.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Ibis:251-310 Ibis:465-540 Ibis:541-596 The creator of mankind, son of the Titan Eurymedon, or of Iapetus by the nymph Clymene. He stole fire from the gods. He was tormented by Jupiter, by being chained naked to a pillar in the Caucasus, where a vulture tore at his liver day and night.
Sextus Aurelius Propertius (c.50-c.15BC) the Roman elegiac poet, from Asisium (Assisi) in Umbria. An older poet and a major influence on Ovid, his first volume the Monobiblos gained him entry to Maecenas’s circle. Like Tibullus he died relatively young.
Book TII:421-470 His risqué verse.
Book TIII.III:47-88 Note the echoes of Propertius’s BkIV:7
Book TIII.VII:1-54 Note the echoes of Propertius, for example BkIII:25
Book TIV.X:41-92 A friend of Ovid’s. He came between Tibullus and Ovid in order of seniority.
Book TV.I:1-48 A writer of love poetry.
The landlocked Sea of Marmara lying between the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and the Thracian Bosphorus, linking the Aegean to Pontus, the Black Sea (Euxine).
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s route.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Book EIV.IX:89-134 The entrance to the Black Sea.
A Thessalian chief, the grandson of Phylacus, killed by Hector, the first of the Greeks to be slain in the Trojan War. See Laodemia, his wife. She was granted three hours with him after his death when Hermes escorted him back from Hades. She then had a lifelike statue of him made which she loved in his place. Ordered by her father to burn the figure she threw herself into the flames.
Book TII:361-420 Book TV.XIV:1-46 Loved by his wife. Grandson of Phylacus.
Ibis:541-596 The daughter of Crotopus who bore Linus to Apollo. Her father’s hounds killed the boy.
Ibis:311-364 Son of Taphius (son of Poseidon) and king of Taphos (an island off the coast of Acarnania) at the time when Amphitryon ravaged the islands of the Taphians or Teleboans. Poseidon made him immortal by implanting a golden hair in his head, but his daughter Comaetho, having fallen in love with the besieger Amphitryon, betrayed her father and caused his death by pulling out the golden hair from his head.
Of Phocis, the son of Strophius and close friend of Orestes, whom he accompanied on his return to Mycenae, and whose sister Electra he later married.
Book TI.V:1-44 Book TI. IX:1-66 Book TIV.IV:43-88 Book TV.IV:1-50 Book TV.VI:1-46 Book EII.III:1-48 A paragon of friendship.
Book EIII.II:1-110 His fame lived after him.
Book EIII.II:1-110 With Orestes in Tauris.
The city in Elis in the western Peloponnese, the home of Nestor the wise, in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Book TV.V:27-64 Book EI.IV:1-58 Book EII.VIII:37-76 Nestor’s city.
Ibis:541-596 Wife and cousin to Deucalion, and the only woman to survive the Great Flood. Daughter of the Titan Epimetheus, hence called Titania. Epimetheus was a brother to Prometheus.
The son of Achilles, later called Neoptolemus. He had children by Andromache.
Book TII:361-420 Neoptolemus, son of Achilles and Deidamia.
Ibis:251-310 Pyrrhus killed Priam at Troy on the altar of Apollo, and was in turn killed by Machaereus a Phocian and the priest of Apollo at Delphi on the Pythoness’s orders, for interfering with the sacrifice there. Ovid says his bones were scattered in Ambracia, where he had built a city near Lake Pambrotis and the oracle of Dodona in Epirus.
The famous Greek philosopher of Samos, the Ionian island, who flourished in the second half of the 6th century BC as a religious leader, and mathematician also. He took up residence at Crotona in Italy (c531BC), where Numa (anachronistically in legend, since he lived over a century before Pythagoras) came to be his pupil. His school was later revived at Tarentum and survived as a sect into the 4th century BC.
Book TIII.III:47-88 He taught the immortality of the soul.
Book EIII.III:1-108 He taught Numa.
The name for the deified Romulus. Originally the name of a Sabine god.
Book TI.III:1-46 Book TI.VIII:1-50 Book EI.V:43- 86
An Augustan epic poet who wrote about Mark Antony’s fate.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The district north of Verona from the Alps to Vindelicia on the north, Helvetia on the west and Noricum on the east, i.e. roughly eastern Switzerland, Bavaria and the Tyrol. Raetia became an Imperial province in 15AD.
Book TII:207-252 The Alpine insurgents occupied the area and were defeated by Drusus and Tiberius.
The son of Mars and Ilia, hence Iliades, twin brother of Romulus.
He leapt the fresh walls Romulus was building to found Rome, in derision, and Romulus killed him.
Book TIV.III:1-48 See the entry for Romulus.
Ibis:597-644 He leapt the unfinished walls.
A name for Nemesis from her temple at Rhamnus in Attica.
Book TV.VIII:1-38 She punishes hubris.
The river Rhine in northern Europe.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Stained with the blood of German defeat.
Book EIII.IV:57-115 Ovid anticipates a German Triumph, either of Germanicus or Tiberius.
Ibis:597-644 A Thracian king, famous for his horses, killed by Ulysses and Diomedes in a night raid at Troy.
Ibis:311-364 A mountain in Thrace. Supposed to be a mortal turned into a mountain for assuming the name of a great god. The scene of the triennial festival of Bacchus, the trietericus. Orpheus fled there after losing Eurydice a second time, hence Rhodopeius an epithet of Orpheus.
The city on the Tiber, capital of the Empire. Founded by Romulus in 753BC on the feast of Pales, the Palilia, April 21st.
Book TI.III:47-102 Ovid’s departure from the city.
Book TI.V:45-84 Ovid stresses its importance to him, as the seat of Empire and the gods. He is civilised man going among the barbarians.
Book TI.VIII:1-50 Quirinus’s ‘tranquil’ city.
Book TII:155-206 The Danube delta the furthest Roman region on the west coast of the Black Sea.
Book TIII.I:1-46 The Palatine was the site of the original foundation.
Book TIII.II:1-30 Ovid’s homesickness for the city.
Book TIII.VI:1-38 ‘Suburban’ means ‘near the city’, i.e. close to Rome.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Book EI.VIII:1-70 Ovid refers to the string of spring festivals which included the Megalesia, the Floralia, and the Quinquatrus Maiores (19th March) when the law-courts closed. (Fasti I:297-8). The Campus Martis was an area for exercise. The Aqua Virgo was an aqueduct constructed by Agrippa and opened in 19BC to provide a water supply for the public baths he was building: it entered the city from the north and ran as far as the Campus Martis. The source by the Via Collatina was supposed to have been revealed by a young girl. The opening took place on the 9th June the feast-day of Vesta and the spring may have in fact been dedicated to her.
The three theatres were those of Pompey, Marcellus and Balbus. The three forums were the forum Romanum, Iulium, and Augusti.
Book TV.I:49-80 The highest standard of poetry in the Empire achieved there.
Book TV.II:1-44 Augustus as the source of Rome’s power.
Book TV.VI:1-46 Officials (the curule magistrates, consuls and praetors) wore the toga bordered with a broad purple stripe. The lectors carried the fasces, axes encased in a bundle of rods, the symbols of authority, and demanded reverence for the magistrates as they passed, with cries of animadvertite: take note.
Book EI.II:53-100 The Roman language, Latin, the tongue of the glorious city.
Book EI.III:1-48 The place he loves most.
Book EI.V:43- 86 Rome, as the city of the heart.
Book EII.I:68 The buildings of the Forum bright with reflected light from the gold ornaments of Tiberius’s triumph.
Book EIV.IV:1-50 The Curia or Senate-house.
Book EIV.IX:55-88 The consulship as Rome’s highest honour.
The mythical founder of Rome with his twin brother Remus. They were the children of Ilia/Rhea Silvia, daughter of Aeneas, or in the more common tradition Numitor the deposed king of Alba Longa. Amulius, Numitor’s brother usurped his throne and made Ilia a Vestal Virgin, but she was visited by Mars himself. Thrown into the Tiber the twins cradle caught in a fig tree (the Ficus Ruminalis) and they were rescued by a she-wolf and fed by a woodpecker, creatures sacred to Mars. Brought up by peasants the twins built the first walled settlement on the Palatine. Romulus killed his brother for jumping over the wall. He reigned for forty years and then vanished, becoming the Roman god Quirinus.
A friend of Ovid’s, possibly Gaius Vivius Rufinus who fought in the Illyrian Wars, shared in Tiberius’s triumph of AD12 and later became proconsul in Asia and a legate of Germania Superior. The elder Pliny probably refers to this same Gaius Vivius as an authority on herbs and treatments.
Book EI.III:1-48 This letter addressed to him.
Book EIII.IV:1-56 This letter addressed to him.
An uncle of the poet’s wife and a native of Fundi.
Book EII.XI:1-28 Addressed explicitly to him.
Lucius Varius Rufus, a member of Maecenas’s circle who travelled with him to Brundisium in 38BC, and friend of Horace and Virgil. He wrote tragedies, such as Thyestes performed in 29BC after Actium, and an epic On Death. He edited the Aeneid after Virgil’s death with Plotius Tucca.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Publius Rutilius Rufus, a friend of Scipio Aemilianus, consul 105BC.
Book EI.III:49-94 He opposed extortion by the equites in his province of Asia and was himself condemned to a fine he refused to accept. The alternative was exile, which he underwent in Smyrna.
An Italic people living on the coast of Latium whose chief city was Ardea. Their king Turnus fought against the Trojans in Virgil’s Aeneid, and his people were later absorbed into Rome.
Book TI.V:1-44 The cause of Nisus and Euryalus’s deaths in the war.
An Augustan epic and elegiac poet. He wrote replies to some of Ovid’s Heroides, a poem on the calendar (perhaps) and a Troien (?Troy)
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The Via Sacra, the old street running south-east from the Forum Romanum and the Capitoline in Rome, with the Palatine on its right. It was a smart shopping street in Ovid’s day and probably derived its name from buildings like the Basilica Julia nearby.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
Cassius Salanus, a friend of Ovid, and Germanicus, who apparently coached Germanicus in oratory.
Book EII.V:1-40 Addressed to him. His approval of Ovid’s works.
Book EII.V:41-76 Tutored Germanicus in oratory.
An island off the coast of Asia Minor opposite Ephesus, sacred to Juno, and the birthplace of Pythagoras (at Pythagórion = Tigáni). Samos was famous for its Heraion, the great sanctuary of the goddess Hera-Juno, and for its wine. It was a major naval power in the 6th century BC, under the tyrant Polycrates, and attracted sculptors, scientists and poets, such as Anacreon and Ibycus. Pythagoras migrated to Magna Graecia, perhaps in protest at Polycrates’ rule.
Book TIII.III:47-88 The birthplace of Pythagoras.
Samos (2), Samothrace
Threicia, i.e. Samothrace, the northern Aegean island, north-west of Imbros and north-east of Lemnos.
Book TI.X:1-50 Ovid changed ships there.
Book TI.X:1-50 The Gemini, the twins Castor and Pollux, the patron gods of travellers, were worshipped there, a cult based on a more ancient worship of the Kabeiroi, an archaic Greek equivalent.
The lyric poetess, born c. 618BC on Lesbos, where she spent her life apart from a short period in exile in Sicily. Known as the ‘Tenth Muse.’ Her intense erotic relationships with women led to the term Sapphic, or Lesbian.
Book TII:361-420 Her love poetry.
Book TIII.VII:1-54 The Poetess of Lesbos, the highest standard for a woman’s poetic efforts.
Ibis:311-364 An unidentified, possibly mythical, King of Assyrian Nineveh, who lived in great luxury, and who when besieged by the Medes set fire to his palace killing himself and his court.
Sarmatia, Sarmatians, Sauromatae
A nomadic Indo-European people related to the Scythians, and speaking a similar language. They were noted horse-breeders and horsemen. Their warrior princesses are known from Herodotus and from archaeological remains (burial mounds or kurgans). They may have formed the basis for the Amazons. Sarmatia was used as a general name for Europe east of the Carpathians and north of the Black Sea. Ovid often calls the region of Tomis, Sarmatian. By his day a Sarmatian tribe, the Roxolani, had reached as far west as the Danube basin.
Book TI.II:75-110 Ovid’s destination is a Sarmation territory.
Book TI.V:45-84 Book TIII.III:1-46 Book TIII.III:47-88
Book TIII. X:1-40 Book TIV.I:49-107 Book TIV.VIII:1-52
Book TIV.X:93-132 Book TV.I:1-48 Book TV.III:1-58
Book EI.II:53-100 Book EII.II:75-126 Ovid exiled among them.
Book TI.VIII:1-50 Their wild mountainous locale.
Book TII:155-206 They held the land on the border of the Roman area.
Book TIII. X:1-40 Book TIII. XII:1-54 Their carts pulled by oxen over the frozen Danube.
Book TV.I:49-80 His current poetry talented by comparison with anything the Sarmatian culture produces.
Book TV.VII:1-68 Horse-riding bowmen, warlike and semi-nomadic.
Book TV.XII:1-68 Book EIII.II:1-110 Ovid learnt something of their language.
Book EI.II:1-52 Book EI.III:49-94 The poisoned arrows of the Sarmatians.
Book EI.II:53-100 His wish not to be buried in Sarmatian earth.
Book EI.V:43- 86 Ibis:597-644 Their skills in archery.
Book EII.VII:47-84 The chilly lands of the Sarmatians.
Book EIII.II:1-110 They appreciate the virtues of loyalty and friendship.
Book EIII.VIII:1-24 Book EIV.X:35-84 The Sarmatian Black Sea not a source of murex dyes.
Son of Earth and Heaven (Uranus) ruler of the universe in the Golden Age. Mother Earth persuaded her sons to attack Uranus, and depose him. Saturn the youngest was given a sickle and castrated Uranus. The Furies sprang from the shed blood. Saturn was deposed by his three sons Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto who ruled Heaven, Ocean and the Underworld respectively. He was banished to Tarturus. He was the father also of Juno, Ceres and Vesta by Ops.
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a maleficent planet of old age, duty, grief and cold.
Ibis:251-310 Castrated his father, Uranus.
Ibis:365-412 Great grandfather of Asclepius (the son of Apollo, son of Jupiter-Zeus, son of Saturn).
A name for Juno, daughter of Saturn.
Book TI.II:1-74 She hated Aeneas and supported Turnus.
Demi-gods. Woodland deities of male human form but with goats’ ears, tails, legs and budding horns. Sexually lustful. They were followers of Bacchus-Dionysus.
Book TV.III:1-58 The male followers of Bacchus.
Book EIII.III:1-108 Marsyas, the Satyr.
Ibis:41-104 Powers invoked by Ovid.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Mentioned as a subject of verse in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Ibis:365-412 A brigand of the Isthmus who used to kick travellers into the sea. Theseus served him in the same way.
The daughter of Phorcys and the nymph Crataeis, remarkable for her beauty. Circe or Amphitrite, jealous of Neptune’s love for her changed her into a dog-like sea monster, ‘the Render’, with six heads and twelve feet. Each head had three rows of close-set teeth.Her cry was a muted yelping. She seized sailors and cracked their bones before slowly swallowing them. She threatened Ulysses men and destroyed six of them, and threatened Aeneas’s ships. Finally she was turned into a rock. (The rock projects from the Calabrian coast near the village of Scilla, opposite Cape Peloro on Sicily. See Ernle Bradford ‘Ulysses Found’ Ch.20)
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 EIII.1:105-166 Book EIV.X:1-34 She terrorised Sicilian waters.
Ibis:365-412 She attacked Ulysses’ men.
The daughter of King Nisus of Megara, who loved Minos. She decided to betray the city to him. She cut off the purple lock of Nisus’s hair that guaranteed the safety of his kingdom and his life. Minos rejected her and she was changed into the rock dove, columba livia, with its purple breast and red legs, while her father was changed into the sea eagle, haliaeetus albicilla. Her name Ciris, from κείρω, ‘I cut’, reflects her shearing of Nisus’s hair, as does the purple breast of the bird. But she is also an embodiment of the Cretan Great Goddess, Car, Ker or Q’re, to whom doves were sacred. Pausanias I xxxix says that Kar founded Megara, Nisus’s city and was king there. The acropolis was named Karia, and Kar built a great hall to Demeter (Ceres) there, Pausanias I xxxx. His tumulus was decorated with shell-stone sacred to the goddess at the command of an oracle, Pausanias I xxxxiii. The rock dove no doubt nested on the rocks of the citadel and coastline. Pausanias II xxxiv says that Cape Skyllaion (Skyli) was named after Scylla. Hair cutting reflects ancient ritual and the Curetes were the ‘young men with shaved hair’ the devotees of the moon-goddess Cer, whose weapon clashing drove off evil spirits at eclipses and during the rites. See Metamorphoses Book VIII:1
Book TII:361-420 She did what she did through love of Minos.
Originally a nomadic people occupying the region between the Borysthenes (Dneiper) and the Tanais (Don), later used for all the inhabitants from northern Thrace, across southern Russia to the Caspian Sea, and including the Getae and Sarmatians. They were basically nomadic peoples, skilled in horses and archery, using hit and run fighting tactics. Ovid uses Scythian as a general term for the region of his exile.
Book TI.III:47-102 Book TIV.I:1-48 Ovid’s destination.
Book TI.VIII:1-50 Their wild mountainous locale.
Book TIII.II:1-30 He was destined to see Scythia.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 Book TV.X:1-53 Ovid calls the Black Sea region, Scythian. He talks about the Scythian marshes, though much was also wooded inland.
Book TIII. XI:39-74 Book TIV.VI:1-50 Book TV.X:1-53
Book EII.VIII:1-36 Book EIII.VII:1-40 Ovid is among the hostile Scythian tribes.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 He contemplates Tomis being his home now, rather than a temporary resting place.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 The languages of the region.
Book TV.I:1-48 The Danube is Scythian.
Book TV.II:45-79 The Scythian waters he has sailed.
Book TV.VI:1-46 The Scythian air, unfavourable to him.
Book EI.I:37-80 Book EI.VII:1-70 Book EII.I:68 The Scythians armed with bows.
Book EI.II:101-150 His wish not to be buried in Scythian earth.
Book EI.III:1-48 The place he most detests.
Book EII.II:75-126 A place of savagery.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Tauris considered Scythian by Ovid.
Book EIII.VIII:1-24 He sends a gift of Scythian arrows to Paullus.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 His sixth year there.
Book EIV.IX:55-88 The hostile climate.
Secular Games, Ludi saeculares
The centennial games (17BC) celebrated by Augustus in honour of Apollo and other gods as a symbol of the regeneration of Rome under the new regime. It was promoted as a revival of ancient customs.
The daughter of Cadmus, loved by Jupiter. The mother of Bacchus (Dionysus). (See the painting by Gustave Moreau – Jupiter and Semele – in the Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris) She was consumed by Jupiter’s fire having been deceived by Juno. Her unborn child Bacchus was rescued.
Book TII:361-420 Loved by Jupiter.
Book TIV.III:49-84 Her father rescued the child.
Book TV.III:1-58 The mother of Bacchus, consumed by Jupiter’s fire.
Ibis:465-540 Sister of Autonoe.
An erotic poet, probably of the Republicam period. Pliny the Younger refers to such a poet, as does Horace (Sat. 1.10.86). Speculatively the son or grandson of Servius Sulpicius Rufus, and so the father or brother of Sulpicia the poetess.
The Greek town on the European shore of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) at its narrowest point opposite Abydos. Famous as the crossing point for Xerxes’ invading army in 480BC as it moved from Asia Minor to attack Greece. The city was later controlled by Athens and remained important in Roman times, but declined after the founding of Byzantium (now Istanbul). The home of Hero the priestess who loved Leander of Abydos. He swam across to her, until finally drowning.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s route.
Cornelius Severus an epic poet who wrote on the Sicilian wars between Octavian and Pompey (38-36BC). He was a member of Messalla’s circle, mentioned by Seneca and Quintilian.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 If the Severus addressed here is the same Severus the poet as EIV.II:3-4 it is hard to reconcile with the later poem’s statement that Ovid has not mentioned Severus’s name before. Either the two poems are out of chronological order, or we have here a different Severus.
Book EIV.II:1-50 This poem explicitly addressed to him.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The priestess of Apollo in the temple at Cumae built by Daedalus. She prophesied perched on or over a tripod. She guided Aeneas through the underworld and showed him the golden bough that he must pluck from the tree. She was offered immortality by Phoebus Apollo, but forgot to ask also for lasting youth, dooming her to wither away until she was merely a voice.
Book EII.VIII:37-76 Her long life.
Sicania, Trinacri. The Mediterranean island, west of Italy.
Book TIII. XI:39-74 Phalaris was tyrant at Acragas.
Book EII.X:1-52 Visited by Ovid and Macer.
Book EIII.1:105-166 The straits of Messina terrorised by Scylla.
Ibis:163-208 The flowery meadows of Hybla.
Ibis:413-464 Achaemenides abandoned there.
Ibis:597-644 The giants were imprisoned beneath the island.
A town of the Peloponnese west of Corinth on the Asopus River. (The home of the sculptor Lysippos. It is near modern Vasilikó.)
Ibis:311-364 The incident referred to is obscure.
Book EIV.XV:1-42 Famous for its olives (Pausanias X.32.110)
The city and port of the Phoenicians in the Lebanon, north of Tyre. Home of Europa. Famous like Tyre for its purple dyes, and for blown glass. Referred to by Homer.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Sidonian purple cloth.
Book TIV.III:1-48 Used for the Phoenicians who navigated by the stars, including the constellation of the Little Bear,Ursa Minor.
Book EI.III:49-94 Ibis:413-464 Home city of Cadmus.
Ibis:365-412 A brigand living at the narrowest point of the Isthmus who tied travellers to bent trees and tore them apart. Theseus served him in the same way.
A coastal city of Paphlagonia on the Black Sea.
Book EI.III:49-94 Diogenes the Cynic’s native city.
A Thracian tribe living near the River Strymon.
Book TIV.I:1-48 Only mentioned here by Ovid, perhaps a textual corruption.
The daughters of Acheloüs, the Acheloïdes, companions of Proserpina, turned to woman-headed birds, or women with the legs of birds, and luring the sailors of passing ships with their sweet song. They searched for Proserpine on land, and were turned to birds so that they could search for her by sea. (There are various lists of their names, but Ernle Bradford suggests two triplets: Thelxinoë, the Enchantress; Aglaope, She of the Beautiful Face, and Peisinoë, the Seductress: and his preferred triplet Parthenope, the Virgin Face; Ligeia, the Bright Voice; and Leucosia, the White One – see ‘Ulysses Found’ Ch.17. Robert Graves in the index to the ‘The Greek Myths’ adds Aglaophonos, Molpe, Raidne, Teles, and Thelxepeia.) (See Draper’s painting – Ulysses and the Sirens – Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, England, and Gustave Moreau’s watercolour in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard) Aeneas passed their island, between the Aeolian Islands and Cumae. (This was traditionally Capri, or more likely one of the five Galli islets, the Sirenusae, at the entrance to the Gulf of Salerno). See Homer’s Odyssey, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book V:533 and Book XIV:75
Book EIV.X:1-34 They lured Ulysses’ men with their singing.
Lucius Cornelius Sisenna, praetor in 78BC, and author of a Roman history praised by Varro and Cicero, and also the translator of the Milesian tales of Aristides (2nd Century BC)
Book TII:421-470 His translation contained coarse material.
Ibis:163-208 Founder of Corinth, the son of Aeolus. He was condemned to continually roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades, from which it rolled to the bottom again,
Of the central peninsula of Chalcidice, hence Thracian. A Thracian people, the Sithonians.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Ruled by Rhoemetalces.
A major Greek city on the coast of Lydia.
Book EI.III:49-94 Rutilius exiled there. A desirable Greek colony.
The Athenian Greek philosopher (c469-399BC), Plato’s teacher. An ethical philosopher with an emphasis on logic, and the ‘Socratic method’ of interrogation to reveal inconsistency. He was charged with atheism and corruption of the young and was condemned to die by drinking hemlock. See Plato’s Phaedo, Symposium etc.
Book TV.XII:1-68 Accused by Anytus, he showed resilience under stress.
Ibis:465-540 He died by drinking hemlock.
Ibis:541-596 The Delphic oracle acclaimed him as the wisest of men, which he took to mean that he knew his own ignorance. Anytus was one of his accusers.
The sun-god, Helios, son of Hyperion. Identified with Phoebus Apollo.
Book TI.VIII:1-50 The sun, with his chariot and team of horses.
Book TII:361-420 His horses swerved in horror at Atreus’s revenge on his brother Thyestes (killing and serving his children cooked at a banquet).
Book TIII.V:1-56 The Sun at dawn heralded by Lucifer.
Book TIV.III:49-84 The father of Phaethon.
The mythical hybrid moinster with human head (usually female), and lion’s body. Imported from Egypt, and initially a monster, including that which questioned Oedipus, the Sphinx eventually became a winged, musical, harbinger of justice.
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 Killed those who failed to answer her riddles.
One of the seven stars of the Pleiades constellation.
Book TI.XI:1-44 Ovid uses it for the constellation.
The wife of Proetus of Argos. See Bellerephon.
Book EII.VI:1-38 His son Pylades famous for his loyalty to Orestes.
A river in Thrace and Macedonia.
Book TV.III:1-58 Its snow-covered landscape.
A river of the underworld, with its lakes and pools, used to mean the underworld or the state of death itself. Arethusa passed its streams while journeying through the deep caverns from Elis to Sicily. This is the Arcadian river Styx near Nonacris. It forms the falls of Mavroneri, plunging six hundred feet down the cliffs of the Chelmos ridge to jojn the River Crathis. Pausanias says (VIII xvii), that Hesiod (Theogony 383) makes Styx the daughter of Ocean and the wife of the Titan Pallas. Their children were Victory and Strength. Epimenedes makes her the mother of Echidna. Pausanias says the waters of the river dissolve glass and stone etc.
Book TI.II:1-74 Ibis:541-596 Ibis:597-644 Being sent to the Stygian waters a synonym for being put to death.
Book TIV.V:1-34 Book TV.II:45-79 Book EI.III:1-48 Book EI.VIII:1-70 Book EII.III:1-48 Ibis:135-162 Ibis:209-250 The waters of oblivion, and (spiritual or physical) death.
Book TIV.X:41-92 The forum or courthouse of the dead.
Book EIII.V:1-58 Book EIV.IX:55-88 Pontus is metaphorically close to the Styx.
Ibis:41-104 The gods swore oaths on the waters of Styx.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 The Giants sent there.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 Preferable to the Danube.
Publius Suillius Rufus, the husband of Ovid’s stepdaughter Perilla. He was consul in 41 or 43 AD, and became proconsul in 52 or 53AD. He was accused of corruption and twice banished, by Tiberius in 24AD and again in 58AD. See Tacitus Annals IV:31, XI:4f: XIII:4f. He was quaestor to Germanicus.
Book EIV.VIII:1-48 Book EIV.VIII:49-90 This letter addressed to him, exploring the possibilities of appealing to Germanicus.
The chief town of the Paeligni, and Ovid’s birthplace, about ninety miles from Rome. Modern Sulmona.
Book TIV.X:1-40 Book EIV.XIV:1-62 His birthplace.
A town on the upper reaches of the Nile, modern Aswan, at the confines of the Empire.
Book EI.V:43- 86 A remote part of the Empire.
See Cyaneae. The clashing rocks.
The largest city of Sicily. A seaport in the south-east of the island on the Ionian sea. Founded by Greeks from Corinth in 734BC, it became an important cultural centre in the 5th century BC. Theocritus the poet and Archimedes the scientist and mathematician were born here. It fell to the Romans in 212BC.
Book EIV.III:1-58 Dionysius II its tyrant.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 A dangerous series of sandbanks on the north coast of Africa between Tunis and Cyrene, in the gulfs of Sidra and Gabes. Pirates infested the neighbouring coasts.
Ibis:311-364 There was a Talaus, King of Argos, who married Lysianassa (or alternatively Lysimache). The reference is obscure.
Ibis:465-540 Talus, the son of Perdix, was a pupil of Daedalus and invented the saw. He was killed by Daedalus in a fit of jealousy, and thrown from the Athenian citadel, but Pallas turned him into the partridge, which takes its name from his mother, perdix perdix.
The river and river-god of Scythia. The River Don.
Book TIII.IV:1-46 The border for Ovid of the Roman region round Tomis.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea. The boundary of Asia and Europe.
The king of Phrygia, son of Jupiter, father of Pelops and Niobe. He served his son Pelops to the gods at a banquet and was punished by eternal thirst in Hades. He was the great-grandfather of Menelaus, called Tantalides.
Book TII:361-420 Ibis:413-464 Father of Pelops.
Ibis:163-208 His punishment.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Menelaus was his descendant.
Book EI.V:43- 86 A remote part of the Empire.
The cliff-edge in Rome from which certain criminals (murderers and traitors) were thrown. Ovid calls the whole Capitoline Hill, Tarpeian, but strictly it applied to the western cliff, the Tarpeian Rock, named from Spurius Tarpeius who commanded the citadel in the Sabine War or his daughter Tarpeia who betrayed the citadel to the Sabines or from Lucius Tarpeius whom Romulus caused to be hurled from the rock. Not located it was placed by ancient sources close to the Roman Forum, the Temple of Saturn, or the Temple of Jupiter, which places it south-west of the Capitol.
Book EII.I:68 Climbed by the victor in a triumph.
Book EII.II:39-74 Augustus is also Jupiter Capitolinus, the Tarpeian Thunderer.
Book EIV.IV:1-50 Book EIV.VIII:1-48 The Tarpeian Altars were those of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline.
Book EIV.IX:1-54 Scene of consular inaugurations.
The underworld. The infernal regions ruled by Pluto (Dis) or specifically the region where the wicked were punished.
Book TI.II:1-74 The ocean abysses might touch there.
Book TI. IX:1-66 Ruled by Pluto.
Ibis:541-596 The infernal deep.
A people of the Crimea, the Tauric Chersonese.
Book TIV.IV:43-88 Ibis:365-412 The site of ritual human sacrifice to Diana.
Book EI.II:53-100 The Tauric region and people mentioned.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Called Scythian by Ovid.
The son of Ulysses and Circe, who unwittingly killed his own father Ulysses in one variant of myth.
Ibis:251-310 A soothsayer, son of Eurymus, who prophesied Polyphemus’s blinding by Odysseus. See Homer’s Odyssey IX:506
King of Teuthrantia in Mysia, son of Hercules and the nymph Auge. He was suckled by a deer on Mount Parthenius. He was wounded and healed by the touch of Achilles’s spear at Troy.
Book TI.I:70-128 Augustus like Achilles might heal where he wounded.
Book TII.I:1 Poetry might heal where it too wounded.
Book TV.II:1-44 Needed to be healed by the hand that harmed him.
Book EII.II:1-38 Ibis:251-310 Healed by Achilles’ spear that wounded him. King of the Mysians.
A southern Thracian town near the sea, on the Via Egnatia, the transcontinental road, from where Ovid continued his journey to Tomis overland. He would have disembarked at Salé or Zoné having sailed from Samothrace. Zoné is traditionally where Orpheus enchanted the trees and animals with his lyre.
Book TI.X:1-50 Ovid disembarked there.
Publius Terentius Afer (c195-159BC) an ex-slave from North Africa, born in Carthage, who adapted the plays of Menander and Apollodorus for the Roman stage, often blending material from different plays, in a sophisticated and realistic manner. Six plays are extant.
Book TII:313-360 His character unlike his works.
Book TII:155-206 A tribe of the Danube region.
The king of Thrace, husband of Procne. He brought her sister, Philomela, to stay with her, while conceiving a frenzied desire for the sister. He violated the girl and cut out her tongue, and told Procne she is dead. Procne then served him the flesh of his murdered son Itys at a banquet. Pursuing the sisters in his desire for revenge, he was turned into a bird, the hoopoe, upupa epops, with its distinctive feathered crest and elongated beak. Its rapid, far-carrying, ‘hoo-hoo-hoo’ call is interpreted as ‘pou-pou-pou’ meaning ‘where? where? where?’.
Book TII:361-420 Changed to a bird, through his lust.
Ibis:413-464 The fate of Itys.
The son of Telamon, king of Salamis, and Hesione, half-brother of Ajax the Greater, cousin of Achilles, and one of the greatest of the bowmen at the Trojan war. He was driven into exile by his father for failing to avenge Ajax. Teucer then founded Salamis on Cyprus in memory of his native city.
Book EI.III:49-94 Exiled, he fled to Cyprus, sacred to Venus.
Book TI.II:1-74 The Trojans so called from their first king Teucer, a Cretan.
The Muse of comedy and light verse, used symbolically for poetry in general.
Book TIV.X:41-92 Book TV.IX:1-38 The Muse of Ovid’s early lighter verse.
Ibis:251-310 The poet of Thrace who fell in love with Hyacinthus the Spartan prince. Apollo was a rival for the boy, and hearing Thamyris boast that he rivalled the Muses in song, he told them and Thamyris was blinded by them, and robbed of his voice and memory.
The oldest and most famous city of Boeotia, founded by Cadmus. The seven-gated city suffered as a result of its support for Persia, but gained power over Boeotia in the Peloponnesian War. The Thebans were at their zenith 371-362BC, when they defeated Sparta under Epaminondes, and until he was killed at the battle of Mantinea dominated the mainland. Destroyed by Alexander the Great after a revolt (335) the city was rebuilt but never regained its former glory.
Book TII:313-360 Attacked by the ‘Seven against Thebes’ see Aeschylus’s play. Eteocles fought against his brother Polynices for control of the city.
Book TIII.III:47-88 Antigone buried her brother Polynices despire King Creon’s forbidding him to be buried.
Book TV.III:1-58 Capaneus was one of the attackers in the War of the Seven Against Thebes.
Book EI.III:49-94 Ibis:413-464 Founded by Cadmus.
Book EIV.VIII:49-90 Famous through the poets.
Ibis:465-540 City of Pentheus.
Son of Neocle. He was the great Athenian leader who defeated the Persians at Salamis. He was exiled c474-472BC.
Book EI.III:49-94 He went to Argos after exile from Athens.
A river in Pontus, frequented by Amazons. The modern Terme Tchai east of the Halys.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
A Scythian chieftain, or alternatively a king of Libya, who fed lions on human flesh. Ovid refers to him in Ibis.
Book EI.II:101-150 Ibis:365-412 An example of cruelty.
An ugly abusive Greek at the Trojan War, killed by Achilles for mocking the latter’s grief over the dead warrior princess Penthesilea.
Book EIII.IX:1-56 Book EIV.XIII:1-50 His ugliness.
King of Athens, son of Aegeus, hence Aegides. His mother was Aethra, daughter of Pittheus king of Troezen. Aegeus had lain with her in the temple. His father had hidden a sword, and a pair of sandals, under a stone (The Rock of Theseus) as a trial, which he lifted, and he made his way to Athens, cleansing the Isthmus of robbers along the way (Periphetes, Sinis, Sciron and Procrustes). He killed the Minotaur with help from Ariadne who gave him the clue that he unwound to mark his trail, subsequently abandoning her. His friendship for Pirithous whom he accompanied to the underworld was proverbial.
Book TI.III:47-102 Book TI.V:1-44 Book TI. IX:1-66
Book EII.III:1-48 Book EIV.X:35-84 Proverbial friendship. The visit to the Underworld.
Book TII:361-420 His many love-affairs.
Book TV.IV:1-50 A paragon of friendship. Called Aegides from his father.
Book EIII.II:1-110 His fame lived on.
Book EIV.X:35-84 Albinovanus writing about him.
Ibis:365-412 His cleansing of the brigands from the Isthmus of Corinth.
Ibis:413-464 Possibly Theseus is intended here.
Ibis:465-540 He gave the wrong signal to his father on returning from Crete.
Ibis:251-310 Perhaps Thessalus son of Hercules by Chalciope. Ovid has him leap from Ossa to his death. Alternatively, but less likely given the previous verses concerning Hercules, Thessalus who was a son of Medea, who escaped death after Medea sacrificed her sons on the altar of Jupiter, later reigned over Iolcus, and gave his name to all Thessaly.
The region in northern Greece. Its old name was Haemonia, hence Haemonius, Thessalian.
Book EI.III:49-94 Achilles’ homeland, where Patroclus sought refuge.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Pelias was King of Thessaly.
The king of Lemnos, son of Andraemon, and father of Hypsipyle. Thoas was king when the Lemnian women murdered their menfolk because of their adultery with Thracian girls. His life was spared because his daughter Hypsipyle set him adrift in an oarless boat. He later ruled over the Thracians, when Orestes rescued Iphigenia.
Book TI. IX:1-66 Recognised the loyalty of Pylades to Orestes.
Book TIV.IV:43-88 Book EIII.II:1-110 Ibis:365-412 His kingdom in the Tauric Chersonese.
Roughly the area including north-east Greece, European Turkey as far as the Bosphorus, and the southern part of Romania. In Ovid’s day the western boundary was on the River Nestus, and the northern along the Haemus range, while its coastline ran from the Macedonian Aegean through Propontis to the Black Sea.
Book TII:207-252 A frontier area. A Thracian rebellion was put down by Lucius Piso in 11AD.
Book TIII.XIV:1-52 The languages of the region.
Book EII.IX:39-80 Though flattering its king, Ovid implies the country is too barbarous for good poetry to be expected from it.
Book EIV.V:1-46 Frozen Thrace.
Ibis:365-412 Diomedes the cruel Thracian king.
Ibis:597-644 The River Strymon in Thrace, hence Thracian.
A poetic name for the River Tiber on which Rome is situated, after King Tiberinus who drowned there.
Book TV.I:1-48 Noted for its yellow sands, carried by the waters.
Ibis:465-540 King Tiberinus drowned there.
The son of Pelops and Hippodamia, brother of Atreus, and father of Aesgithus. 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, Atreus’ wife, 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 TII:361-420 He raped his sister-in-law Aerope.
Book EIV.VI:1-50 At the time of the fatal banquet the horses of the sun are supposed to have turned his chariot backwards in its course, in horror.
Ibis:311-364 Pelopia his daughter was a priestess at Sicyon. He raped her, while disguised.
A promontory and small town on a bay of the Black Sea coast of Thrace, about thirty miles north of Salmydessos, and somewhat less than two hundred miles south of Tomis.
Book TI.X:1-50 On the Minerva’s course.
The Emperor, Tiberius Claudius Nero (42BC-37AD), the elder son of Livia by her first husband. Augustus adopted the boy and appointed him as his successor after the early deaths of other candidates. He was also Augustus’s stepson through his marriage to the elder Julia, Augustus’s daughter by Scribonia. Tiberius adopted Germanicus as his son who thus became a brother to the younger Drusus.
Book TII:155-206 Ovid offers a prayer for his safety. Tiberius is still warring in Pannonia.
Book TII:207-252 Tiberius and Germanicus defeated the Pannonian and Illyrian rebels in the second Illyrian war of the summer of 9AD.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Ovid hopes for Tiberius’s success on the Rhine. After the loss of Varus and his legions in the Teutoberger Forest defeat of AD9, Tiberius was transferred to Germany and remained there AD10-12 with limited success. His eventual triumph was for the Pannonian campaign and was celebrated 23rd October AD12.
Book TIV.II:1-74 Ovid hopes for his success in Germany, and anticipates the triumph of Germanicus’s war, and Augustus’s strategy.
Book EII.I:68 The delayed celebration of Tiberius’s Pannonian triumph see above. Tiberius’s offerings were to the goddess ‘Justitia Augusta: Augustus’s Justice’.
Book EII.II:39-74 Book EII.VIII:37-76 Tiberius, Augustus’s adopted son and heir apparent.
Book EII.II:75-126 Tiberius’s sons Germanicus (adopted) and Drusus were involved in the pannonian Triumph, attended by the brothers Messalinus and Cotta.
Book EII.VIII:1-36 Cotta Maximus sent Ovid portraits of Augustus, Tiberius and Livia. Even in this eulogy of the Imperial family there is a mischievous sub-text. Tiberius’s character and paternity are touched on.
Book EIII.IV:57-115 Ovid anticipates a second German triumph for Tiberius.
Book EIV.IX:89-134 Tiberius as Augustus’s adopted son worshipped by Ovid as divine.
Albius Tibullus (c.54- 19BC) the elegiac poet and friend of Ovid, whose patron was Messalla Corvinus. He accompanied Messalla on a campaign in Gaul in 31 for which Messalla celebrated a triumph in 27. His lovers were named Delia (her real name was possibly Plania) and Nemesis in his poems.
Book TII:421-470 Ovid paraphrases parts of Tibullus I:2, I:5 and I:6 in which the poet becomes the victim of the very deceits he had taught his mistress Delia.
Book TIV.X:41-92 Briefly a member of the same poetic circles as Ovid. He followed Gallus in order of seniority.
Book TV.I:1-48 A writer of love poetry.
The modern Tivoli, a fashionable resort eighteen miles east-north-east of Rome in a bend of the River Anio as it cascaded into the valley below. It was noted for the beauty of its countryside and its orchards.
Book EI.III:49-94 A pleasant place of exile for ancient Romans.
A Roman elegiac poet, contemporary with Catullus, referred to by Messalla in a letter but not under his patronage. He wrote an epithalamium in Catullus’s style as well as epigrams and love poems in which he celebrated his mistress Metella under the pseudonym Perilla.
Book TII:421-470 His love poetry.
The son of Phorbas, a Boeotian and the mythical helmsman of the Argo on the voyage to win the Golden Fleece.
Book TIV.III:49-84 His skill is displayed in rough seas.
Book EI.IV:1-58 Steersman of the Argo.
The Theban sage who spent seven years as a woman and decided the dispute between Juno and Jupiter as to which partner gained more enjoyment in love-making. He was blinded by Juno but given the power of prophecy by Jupiter.
One of the Furies, a symbol of madness.
A shepherd’s name, a symbol of pastoral poetry.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Written of by Passer(?) a poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
A giant, son of Ge (Earth) whose home was traditionally located in Euboea, and who attempted violence to Latona (Leto), and suffered in Hades. Vultures fed on his liver, which was continually renewed.
Book EI.II:1-52 Ibis:163-208 His torment.
The Moesian town, on the west (or ‘left’) coast of the Black Sea, to which Ovid was banished, an ancient colony of Miletus (6th century BC). The modern Constantza, Romania’s major port, it is on an elevated and rocky part of the coast, about sixty-five miles southwest of the nearest mouth of the Danube, in that part of Romania called the Dobrudja. The townspeople were a mix of half-breed Greeks and barbarians chiefly of Getic, Indo-European stock. They dressed in skins, wore hair and beard long, and went about armed. They were expert horsemen and archers. The languages spoken were Greek, Getic and Sarmatian. Ovid learnt the language and wrote a poem in Getic. The country round Tomis is flat and marshy. The winters are severe with below zero temperatures (-20 to -30 deg. Fahrenheit). Tomis was a border garrison and subject to constant attack, and Ovid had to play his minor part in its defence.
Book TI.II:75-110 Book TIV.X:93-132 Ovid’s destination is Tomis and its people, in their ‘unknown world’.
Book TI.X:1-50 The Minerva’s destination, and his place of exile.
Book TIII. IX:1-34 The source of Tomis’s name. Ovid uses the tale of how Medea dismembered Absyrtus her brother and scattered his limbs behind their ship. King Aeetes following gathered up the remains. The cutting up (τομή) was a false etymology for the name.
Book TV.VII:1-68 A description of the Getae and the cheerless environment. All things are relative. The contrast in Ovid’s mind is between barbarism and civilisation and that leads him to see the worst side of the region, through his antipathy to its people and culture.
Book TV.X:1-53 Ovid portrays the local people as barbaric savages who have lost the culture of the original Greek colony, and apply rough justice. They wear Persian trousers, dress in sheepskins, are unable to understand Latin, and are malicious in their speech about Ovid himself. Not a picture likely to arouse their enthusiasm for him if the contents got back to them, as we shall see later!
Book EI.I:1-36 Book EIII.IV:1-56 Book EIII.VIII:1-24 His established place of exile.
Book EI.II:53-100 Limited knowledge of the region, in Rome.
Book EI.VI:1-54 Book EIII.1:1-66 He fears being entombed there.
Book EIII.VIII:1-24 The women there have not learnt the art of spinning wool.
Book EIV.IX:89-134 Book EIV.XIV:1-62 The inhabitants of Tomis, whom Ovid here treats with respect.
Book EII.II:39-74 The Thunderer, an epithet of Jupiter.
Book TV.XIII:1-34 Book EIV.XV:1-42 Sicily, the three cornered island.
An Augustan poet who wrote a Perseis.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The son of Celeus, king of Eleusis in Attica. Ceres sent him to take the gift of her crops to Lyncus king of the Scythian barbarians. He was attacked, but saved by Ceres. See Metamorphoses Book V:642
Book TIII.VIII:1-42 His chariot.
Book EIV.II:1-50 Patron of the harvest.
An epithet of Diana, worshipped at the meeting of three ways, ‘Diana of the crossroads’.
Book EIII.II:1-110 The Tauric Diana.
A Moesian town (modern Iglita) near the Danube just above the delta, and possibly a poem by Sabinus on its capture by Flaccus.
Book EIV.IX:55-88 Re-taken by Flaccus.
The ancient city destroyed in the ten-war year with the Greeks, and identified by Schliemann with Hissarlik four miles inland from the Aegean end of the Hellespont. The archaeological evidence would indicate destruction by fire between 1300 and 1200BC. The story of the War is told in Homer’s Iliad, and the aftermath of it and the Greek return in the Odyssey. The Troad is the rocky north-west area of Asia Minor along the Hellespont, dominated by the Ida range, traditionally believed to have been ruled by Troy.
Book TI.II:1-74 Supported and opposed by various gods in the war.
Book TI.III:1-46 Her appearance in defeat.
Book TI.V:45-84 Called Ilium from the citadel of Troy.
Book TII:313-360 Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A suitable subject for epic poetry.
Book TII:361-420 Ganymede of Troy.
Book TIII.V:1-56 Achilles the greatest warrior there.
Book TIV.III:49-84 Hector’s unhappy city.
Book TV.V:27-64 Book TV.XIV:1-46 Protesilaus the first Greek to touch its shore in the Trojan War.
Book TV.X:1-53 The siege and war lasted ten years.
Book EII.II:1-38 Aeneas’s Trojan fleet.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Ajax at Troy.
Ibis:251-310 A troubled people.
King of the Rutuli in Italy, who opposed Aeneas. His capital was at Ardea, south of Rome, near modern Anzio. See Virgil’s Aeneid, where he loses Lavinia his betrothed to Aeneas and is ultimately killed by him.
Book TI.II:1-74 Supported by Juno.
Book TI. IX:1-66 Euryalus and Nisus died after entering his camp, and he is said to have wept at this death of loyal friends.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
An Augustan poet who wrote a Phyllis. See Propertius II 22.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
A friend of Ovid, and an epic poet. He apparently reworked part of the Odyssey in his Phaeacid.
Book EIV.XII:1-50 This letter addressed to him, a childhood friend. Ovid plays with the difficulty of handling the name Tūtĭcānus in elegiac verse. It can only be done by splitting the name or scanning it in ridiculous ways.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 A second letter addressed to him.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
The King of Calydon and father of Diomedes, and one of the Seven against Thebes. Mortally wounded he gnawed on the skull and ate the brains of his opponent, incurring Athene’s anger. She allowed him to die for his barbarity, having been prepared to save him and render him immortal.
Book EI.III:49-94 Exiled, he fled to Adrastus at Argos.
Book EII.II:1-38 Diomedes the Greek hero, who wounded Venus and Mars in the Trojan War, was his son.
Ibis:311-364 Diomedes loved Helen whom Tydeus would have blushed to have as a daughter in law.
The husband of Leda, hence her children are the Tyndaridae. (Castor and Pollux, Helen, Clytemnestra)
Book TI.X:1-50 Book EI.VII:1-70 The Gemini, Castor and Pollux, worshipped at Samothrace.
Book TII:361-420 Clytemnestra, a daughter of Tyndareus.
Ibis:311-364 Agamemnon, husband of Clytemnestra was his son-in-law.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 Subject of a poem by one of Ovid’s lesser contemporaries.
One of the Giants who attacked the gods, who was buried beneath Sicily by Jupiter.
Book EII.X:1-52 Buried beneath Sicily.
A Sarmatian river, the Dniester.
Book EIV.X:35-84 A river running into the Black Sea.
The city of the Phoenicians in the Lebanon famed for its purple dyes used on clothing, obtained from the murex shell-fish. Once an island harbour, subsequently linked to the mainland.
Book TII:497-546 Carthage was a Phoenician colony, and Dido its mythical queen was from Tyre.
Ulixes, the Greek Odysseus, the son of Laertes, and King of Ithaca. Present at the Trojan War, and most cunning and resilient of the Greek leaders, the tale of his return home is told in Homer’s Odyssey. His wife was the faithful Penelope, and his son Telemachus.
Book TI.II:1-74 Pursued by Neptune-Poseidon.
Book TI.V:45-84 Book TIII. XI:39-74 Book EIV.X:1-34 Ovid compares his troubles to those of Ulysses.
Book TV.V:1-26 Likewise separated from his wife, Penelope.
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.
Book EIII.VI:1-60 Ibis:251-310 Helped by Leucothea.
Book EIV.XIV:1-62 He delighted in his native Ithaca but had a difficult return home.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 His letters home written by poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries, presumably in imitation of Ovid’s Heroides.
Ibis:541-596 He was reputedly killed, by Telegonus, with a spear armed with the spine of a sting-ray.
The district of Italy north of Rome, extending from Etruria to the Adriatic and north to the Po valley.
Book EI.VIII:1-70 Severus’s homeland.
Lucius Varius Rufus, an Augustan poet known for tragedy and epic.
Book EIV.XVI:1-52 A poet in Ovid’s list of his lesser contemporaries.
Publius Terentius Varro Atacinus born 82BC in Gallia Narbonensis near the modern Carcassone. He translated or adapted Apollonius Rhodius’s Argonautica. He wrote an epic dealing with Caesar’s campaign against the Sequani in 58. He also wrote erotic elegies addressed to Leucadia.
Book TII:421-470 His tale of the Argo.
The Goddess of Love. The daughter of Jupiter and Dione. She is Aphrodite, born from the waves, an incarnation of Astarte, Goddess of the Phoenicians. The mother of Cupid by Mars. (See Botticelli’s painting – Venus and Mars – National Gallery, London). Through her union with Anchises she was the mother of Aeneas and therefore putative ancestress to the Julian House.
Book TI.II:1-74 Friendly to the Trojans. Protected Aeneas, her son.
Book TII:253-312 Mother of Aeneas by Anchises. Her statue in the temple of Mars.
Book TII:361-420 Famously caught in the act with Mars, by Hephaestus (Vulcan) her husband.
Book TII:497-546 Book EIV.I:1-36 Shown rising from the waves, as in the famous painting by Apelles. There is also a sexual double entendre here.
Book EI.III:49-94 The island of Cyprus was sacred to her.
Book EI.X:1-44 Synonymous with sexual activity.
Book EIII.1:105-166 Ovid suggests the now aged Livia had the beauty of Venus.
Ibis:209-250 In astrology a beneficent planet, ruling wealth, love etc.
Ibis:541-596 Insulted, she made Hippolytus fall in love with Phaedra.
Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19BC), bucolic and epic poet, author of the Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aeneid, the story of Aeneas’s flight from Troy and the origins of Rome. Virgil was born near Mantua and educated at Cremona and Rome. He became Augustus’s ‘offical’ poet, and supported Augustus’s ideas of national regeneration and agricultural reform. He was a close friend of Maecenas and introduced Horace to the Imperial circle.
Book TII:497-546 Ovid plays with the opening words of the Aeneid, ‘Arma virumque cano: I sing of arms and the man’. He refers to Aeneas’s love affair with the Tyrian Queen of Carthage, Dido.
Book TIV.X:41-92 Ovid saw him but did not meet him.
Book EIII.IV:57-115 The type of the epic poet.
The daughter of Saturn, the Greek Hestia. The goddess of fire. The ‘shining one’. Every hearth had its Vesta, and she presided over the preparation of meals and was offered first food and drink. Her priestesses were the six Vestal Virgins. Her chief festival was the Vestalia on 9th June. The Virgins took a strict vow of chastity and served for thirty years. They enjoyed enormous prestige, and were preceded by a lictor when in public. Breaking of their vow resulted in whipping and death. There were twenty recorded instances in eleven centuries. A name also for the Tauric Diana at Nemi who ‘married’ her high priest the ‘king of Rome’, e.g. Julius Caesar. See Fraser’s ‘The Golden Bough’ Ch1 et seq.
Book TIII.I:1-46 Vesta’s Temple contained the Palladium, the image of Pallas, sacred to the Trojans. The Vestal Virgins tended the sacred flame within the temple, which was not supposed to be quenched.
Book TIV.II:1-74 The Vestal Virgins, living in ‘perpetual’ chastity.
Book EIV.XIII:1-50 Livia compared to Vesta.
The grandson of Gaius Iulius Donnus a Celtic chieftain reigning over Ligurian tribes. The son of Marcus Julius Cottius a native prince. He took service with the Romans and probably served with Publius Vitellius, (praetor in AD14, close friend of Germanicus, and his legate on the Rhine, present at Germanicus’s death in Antioch, and prosecutor of Gnaeus Piso), at the capture of Aegisos (Tulcea) in 12AD. He was later sent to Thrace on an Imperial mission, and was possibly prefect of the Pontus coast.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 A figure with authority and local knowledge.
The goddess of victory. After the battle of Actium, and the subsequent death of Cleopatra, Octavian (Augustus) erected a statue of Victory in the Curia Julia (built in honour of Julius Caesar), a statue that had belonged to the people of Tarentum. He decorated it with spoils from Egypt.
Book TII:155-206 Ovid prays for her attendance on Tiberius’s campaign in Pannonia.
The Aqua Virgo was an aqueduct constructed by Agrippa and opened in 19BC to provide a water supply for the public baths he was building: it entered the city from the north and ran as far as the Campus Martis. The source by the Via Collatina was supposed to have been revealed by a young girl. The opening took place on the 9th June the feast-day of Vesta and the spring may have in fact been dedicated to her. Agrippa dubbed it Augusta, which pleased Augustus. (Cassius Dio, The Roman History 54.11)
Book TIII. XII:1-54 Book EI.VIII:1-70 Mentioned.
Publius Vitellius, praetor in AD14, a friend of Germanicus, proconsul of Bithynia in 18 or 19AD. He may be the Vitellius who regained Aegisos. Present at Germanicus’s death in Antioch he helped to prosecute Gnaius Piso over that suspicious event. He later attempted suicide after being implicated in Sejanus’s conspiracy.
Book EIV.VII:1-54 Victor at Aegisos.
The companion of Titus Tatius and founder of the Valerian family to which Messalla Corvinus belonged. Volesus may be the Sabine form of Valerius.
Book EIII.II:1-110 Cotta’s ancestry.
The West Wind. Eurus is the East Wind, Auster is the South Wind, and Boreas is the North Wind.
Book TI.II:1-74 The warring of the winds.
Book TIII. XII:1-54 The spring wind.
The Zerynthian cave of Hecate was on the northern coast of Samothrace, and gave its name to that shoreline.
Book TI.X:1-50 Ovid changed ships there.
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