Chapter 3: Olympos, the Underworld, and Minor Divinities
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♠ Th 734-43 – Hesiod, Theogony
There Gyes and Cottus and great-souled Obriareus live, trusty warders of Zeus who holds the aegis. And there, all in their order, are the sources and ends of gloomy earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry heaven, loathsome and dank, which even the gods abhor. It is a great gulf, and if once a man were within the gates, he would not reach the floor until a whole year had reached its end, but cruel blast upon blast would carry him this way and that. And this marvel is awful even to the deathless gods. Greek Text
♠ HAp 3.335-36 – Homeric Hymn to Apollo
Hear now, I pray, Earth and wide Heaven above and you Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus Greek Text
♠ Hesiod, Ehoiai fr (The Catalogue of Women) fr 54 MW – Fragmenta Hesiodea, p. 36, ed. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Oxford 1967.
♠ HHerm 4.256-59 – Homeric Hymn to Hermes
For I will take and cast you into dusky Tartarus and awful hopeless darkness, and neither your mother nor your father shall free you or bring you up again to the light, but you will wander under the earth and be the leader amongst little folk. Greek Text
♠ Nostoi fr 4 PEG – Poetae Epici Graeci 1, p. 96, ed. A. Bernabé. Leipzig 1987.
Athen. 7, 281 b The poets also say that the ancient hero Tantalus was fond of pleasure. At any rate, the author of The Return of the Atreidai says that he, when he had arrived among the gods, and had begun to live among them, received from Zeus the permission to ask for whatever he wished. And the poet says that he, being a man insatiably disposed to the enjoyment of his appetites, asked that above all a memory of these be made, and that he may live in the same manner as the gods. And that Zeus being angry over these demands, fulfilled his wish because of his promise; but so that he might not enjoy what was before him, but be incessantly tormented, he suspended a rock over his head, on account of which he might not be able to enjoy any of the things set before him. (Transl. E. Bianchelli)
♠ Paus 9.5.8-9 – Pausanias, Description of Greece
It is also said that Amphion is punished in Hades for being among those who made a mock of Leto and her children. The punishment of Amphion is dealt with in the epic poem Minyad, which treats both of Amphion and also of Thamyris of Thrace. The houses of both Amphion and Zethus were visited by bereavement; Amphion‘s was left desolate by plague, and the son of Zethus was killed through some mistake or other of his mother. Greek Text
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Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, February 2021
