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2. 594 ff.

Rhesos. . . at Troy : see
Il
. 10. 435 ff. and [Eur.]
Rhesos
.

Hera . . . by Zeus : Hera calls him a son of Zeus in
Il
. 14. 338 f; but in Hesiod’s account,
Theog
. 924 ff, Hera is so angered when Zeus gives birth to Athene from his head that she decides to have a child of her own without prior intercourse with her spouse, and gives birth to Hephaistos.

Zeus threw him down . . . to his rescue : in
Il
. 1. 590 ff, Hephaistos is said to have been thrown from heaven by Zeus for coming to the aid of Hera (for her suspension, see
Il
. 5. 18 ff), but in
Il
. 18. 394 ff, by Hera, because she was ashamed of his lameness; in the latter account he was rescued by Thetis and Eurynome, daughter of Oceanos, and taken to the cave of the Nereids beneath the sea.

Ge : inserted by Heyne; without this addition, the text would indicate that Metis herself gave the warning (placing her own safety at grave risk). Ge is the prime oracle in early mythical history. In
Theog
. 886 ff, Zeus takes this action on the advice of Ge and Ouranos.

a city. . . called Delos : i.e. the island of Delos; its previous name is also given as Ortygia, after
ortyx
, a quail (e.g. Hyg. 140). In Pind.
Paean
5. 42 (cf. Callimachus
Hymn
4. 36–8), the holy island on which her sister Leto will give birth to Artemis and Apollo is formed from Asteria’s metamorphosed body.

Themis : a personification of law and the right; on the presiding figures at Delphi before Apollo, see also Aesch.
Eumenides
1 ff. and P. 10. 5. 3.

Tityos suffers punishment : cf.
Od
. 11. 576 ff. On his death, cf. Pind.
Pyth
. 4. 90 ff.

blinded him : according to the fuller story in Parthen. 20 and
Catast
. 32, Orion cleared the island of wild beasts, but when Oinopion was reluctant to accept such a being as his son-in-law, he became impatient and raped Merope while he was drunk. This would explain Oinopion’s extreme behaviour.

of Hephaistos : added by Heyne (but Ap. may have assumed that the reader would understand that without explicit statement). It lay on Lemnos; Orion could find his way there by following the sound. In
Catast
. 32 Hephaistos takes pity on him and offers him one of his helpers, Cedalion, as a guide.

shot by Artemis : in
Od
. 5. 121 ff. Artemis killed him because she and the other gods were angry that Dawn had fallen in love with a mortal. The later tradition is complex, but it was commonly said that he tried to rape Artemis herself, and that Artemis either shot him (Hyg.
PA
34, referring to Callimachus) or sent a scorpion against him (Aratus 635 ff. with sc. to 636, thus explaining the origin of the two constellations); or Ge sent the scorpion because he boasted that he would kill all the beasts on earth
(Catast
. 32).

Rhode : a personification of the island of Rhodes, where there was a notable cult of the Sun; also as Rhodos (again a feminine form). See Pind.
ol
. 7. 54 ff.

abducted her : see Ap.’s main source, the
Homeric Hymn to Demeter
, for further details on all the following. There (16 ff.) she is abducted from the Nysian plain (of uncertain location; but in later writers, from Sicily, a land famed for its fertility). The abduction is in accordance with the plans of Zeus, but he plays no active part in it (ibid. 9; 30; and 77 ff.).

Hermion : not in the
Hymn
, but appropriate because there was said to be a chasm there that communicated with the Underworld (P. 2. 35. 7).

Praxithea : presumably Demophon’s nurse. In the
Hymn
(242 ff.) Metaneira keeps watch, and the child is not killed; Demeter merely places him on the ground and renounces her plan to make him immortal.

revealed her identity : and promised to teach the Eleusinians her rites
(HH Dem
. 273–4), which ensured the initiates a better lot in the afterlife.

Ascalaphos. . . bore witness against her : not in the
Hymn
, where Persephone herself tells Demeter that she has eaten in Hades (411 ff.) and the consequences follow necessarily from the action. On Ascalaphos see further p. 84 and