Notes to Book Two
XXII. An oracle said that the citadel of Troy would never be taken as long as the Palladium, or image of Pallas, remained in it. So Diomedes and Ulysses stole the image.
XXXII. Apollo had conferred on Cassandra the gift of prophecy. But she deceived him, and as he could not take away his former gift, he added as a curse that no one should ever believe her.
XXXV. Neoptolemus was the son of Achilles and grandson of Peleus.
XLII. Sigeum is the name of the promontory which juts out into the Hellespont from the Troad.
LV. The ‘Atridan pair’ were Agamemnon, king of Argos, and Menelaus, king of Sparta, the sons of Atreus.
LVI. Nereus was one of the chief sea-gods.
LXI. Andromache was the wife of Hector.
LXIII. Pyrrhus is the same as Neoptolemus in stanza xxxv.
LXXVI. Creusa and Iulus were the wife and son of Aeneas.
LXXVII. Helen is called ‘Tyndarean’ because she was the daughter of Tyndarus. Paris, son of Priam, had carried her off from her husband Menelaus, and so caused the Trojan war.
LXXXIII. The goddess Pallas (Athena) wore on her shield the head of the snaky-haired monster Medusa, one of the Gorgons.
LXXXIV. The walls of Troy were said to have been built by Apollo and Neptune.
CV. Hesperia, ‘the western land,’ here means Italy. The Tiber is called Lydian from a tradition that the Lydians had colonised Etruria.