³⁶When Telegonos learned from Circe that he was a son of Odysseus, he sailed away in search of him. Arriving at the island of Ithaca, he plundered some of the cattle,* and when Odysseus came to their rescue, Telegonos wounded him with the spear that he was carrying, which was tipped with the needle [from a stingray*]; and Odysseus died. ³⁷When Telegonos discovered his identity, he lamented bitterly, and took his corpse, and Penelope too, to the land of Circe, where he married Penelope;* and Circe sent the pair of them to the Isles of the Blessed.

³⁸It is said by some, however, that Penelope was seduced by Antinoos* and sent away by Odysseus to her father Icarios, and that when she reached Mantineia in Arcadia, she gave birth to Pan, as a son of Hermes.* ³⁹Others say that she was killed by Odysseus himself because of Amphinomos;* for they claim that she had been seduced by him. ⁴⁰And there are some who say that when the relatives of the men killed by Odysseus made accusations against him, he took as his judge Neoptolemos,* who ruled the islands off Epirus; and Neoptolemos, thinking he would gain possession of Cephallenia if Odysseus were out of the way, condemned him to exile. And Odysseus went to Thoas,* son of Andraimon, in Aetolia, where he married the daughter of Thoas, and died at a great age leaving behind a son by her, Leontophonos.

APPENDIX

SOME INTERPOLATIONS AND AN UNRELIABLE PASSAGE FROM THE EPITOME

Indicated by a dagger(†) in the text

1. 2. 4. 2 (p. 65)

Pindar and Hesiod in the Shieldsay of Perseus: ‘The whole of his back was covered by [the head of] a fearsome monster, [the Gorgon,] which was enclosed in a kibisis.’The kibisisbears that name because clothes and food are placed in it.

2. 2. 5. 12 (p. 83)

It was unlawful at that time for foreigners to be initiated, for Heracles was initiated only after he had become the adopted son of Pylios.

3. 3. 1. 4 (p. 97)

He was the first to become master of the sea, and extended his rule to almost all of the islands.

4. 3. 4. 4 (p. 102)

The names of Actaion’s dogs in the . . . were these:

Now surrounding his beautiful body, as though it were that of a beast,

His powerful dogs tore it apart. Beside it, Arcena first,

[. . .] after her, her valiant offspring,

Lynceus, and Balios the finely footed, and Amarynthos [. . .]—

And those that singled out by name are listed thus:

[. . .] and they then killed Actaios, at the instigation of Zeus,

For the first who drank the black blood of their master

Were Spartos, and Omargos, and Bores swift on the scent.

These were the first to devour Actaios and lap his blood.

And after these, the others rushed on him in a frenzy [. . .]

To be a remedy for the grievous sorrows of men.

5. 3. 6. 7 (p. 110)

What was said by Teiresias to Zeus and Hera:

Of the ten parts, a man enjoys only one,

But a woman in her heart enjoys all ten in full.

6. 3. 10. 3 (p. 119)

I have found some who are said to have been raised by him, namely, Capaneus and Lycourgos, according to Stesichoros in the Eriphyle;and Hippolytos, according to the author of the Naupactica, and Tyndareus, according to Panyasis, and Hymenaios, according to the Orphics, and finally, Glaucos, the son of Minos, according to Melesagoras.

7. 3. 15. 8 (p. 138)

And there, after Pasiphae had conceived a passion for the bull of Poseidon, he assisted her by constructing a wooden cow, and he built the Labyrinth, to which the Athenians sent seven boys and as many girls every year to serve as food for the Minotaur.

8. Epitome 5. 2 (p. 154)

Hippolyte was the mother of Hippolytos; she is also called Glauce and Melanippe. When Phaedra’s marriage was being celebrated, Hippolyte arrived under arms with her fellow Amazons and said that she would kill those who were sharing the hospitality of Theseus. So a battle took place, and she was killed, whether accidentally by her ally Penthesileia, or by Theseus, or because the companions of Theseus, seeing the onset of the Amazons, closed the door with all speed catching her inside, and killed her.

Comments

1. A further explanation of the kibisisor wallet referred to in the sentence preceding the interpolation. The verse quotation, from Hes. Shield223–4, is incomplete and has been corrected by two additions from the surviving text of the poem. There is no reference to the kibisisin the surviving works and fragments of Pindar. The Shieldgoes on to say that the kibisiswas wondrous to behold and was made of silver with golden tassels; it would need to be strong to carry the Gorgon’s head and prevent it from exercising its powers of petrifaction. The etymology for kibisis, a weak effort even by the usual standards, seems to appeal to the keiand thesounds in keisthai ekei estheta, ‘clothes placed there’.

2. It is said that Heracles and later the Dioscuri were the first non-citizens to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries (Xenophon Hellenica6. 3. 6); each had to be adopted beforehand by a local citizen, Heracles by Pylios, and the Dioscuri by Aphidnas (Plut. Thes. 33).

3. Although it is present in the Epitome also, this sentence interrupts the narrative. The thought is a commonplace; compare in particular Thucydides 1. 4.

4. This passage contains two verse citations (or possibly three, depending on whether the isolated line at the end forms part of the second), apparently of different origin, for different names are given for the first dogs to attack Actaion’s body. In saying that the attack was instigated by Zeus the second passage follows the tradition reported for Acousilaos in 3. 4. 4 that Zeus was angry with Actaion for courting Semele. It is now known that this was the account offered in the Hesiodic Catalogue(fr. 217a in Hesiod OCT, 1983 edn.), and some have argued that the second passage at least comes from the Catalogue(but it is not included by Merkelbach and West). The more familiar story that Actaion died because he saw Artemis naked was of later origin; see p. 102 and note. The remedy for human sorrows in the final line is presumably wine, as bestowed by Dionysos, Semele’s son by Zeus. The verses are cited for the information that they offer on the names of Actaion’s dogs, a matter of some interest to later authors, as witnessed by the catalogues in Collectanea Alexandrina 71–2, Ov. Met. 3. 155 ff., and Hyg. Fab. 181. (The passage is poorly preserved; Wagner’s text, which is somewhat different from that of Frazer, has been followed in the translation. In the second citation, Actaion’s name appears in an alternative and presumably early form as Actaios.)

5. A citation from the Melampodeia, an early epic devoted primarily to the seer Melampous and his family. The ancients ascribed the poem to Hesiod (other testimonies relating to the present passage can be found under Hes. fr. 275). This is Teiresias’ judgement on the relative pleasure that men and women derive from love-making (see p. 110). It should be noted that Teiresias’ verdict in these lines from the Melampodeiais not the same as that ascribed to him in Apollodorus’ text; for here he says that a man enjoys one part and a woman ten(on the same scale of ten), while in the text he is reported to have said that a man enjoys one part and a woman nine(as if there were ten available ‘points’ to be divided between them). The nine-to-one division can also be found in a collection of Wonders by Phlegon (cited under Hes. fr. 275), an author of the second century AD, whose account of the episode is certainly not derived from Apollodorus. (As it happens, the manuscripts give Apollodorus’ ratio as nine to ten rather than nine to one; but this is improbable in itself, and it is generally accepted that it can be corrected on the evidence of Tzetz. sc. Lycophr. 638 and the passage from Phlegon.)