NOTES TO BOOK NINE
[I.] Iris, the rainbow-goddess, daughter of Thaumas, was the messenger of the gods. Pilumnus was an ancient Latin god, and an ancestor of Turnus.
[XI.] Ida was the mountain in the Troad whence the wood for the fleet was taken. Berecyntia. Cybele, the mother of the gods. Originally a Phrygian goddess, the centre of whose worship was Mount Berecyntus.
[XIV.] The 'brother' is Pluto, god of the lower world. To swear by the Styx was the most dread and binding oath; it was inviolable even by the gods.
[XVIII.] The reference here is to the story of how Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, seized Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, and so caused the Trojan war. Menelaus and Agamemnon were the sons of Atreus.
[XXVIII.] For Acestes see note on [Book V. stanza vi.]
[XXXIII.] Assaracus was an ancestor of the Trojan race, and his household gods would of course be the tutelary spirits of the Trojan royal family.
[LII.] Latonia. The daughter of Leto, and sister of Apollo, Diana, who was identified with the Greek Artemis, the goddess of the woods and of hunting.
[LXXII.] 'Jove's armour-bearer' is the eagle.
[LXXV.] The Symaethus was a river in Sicily.
[LXXVII.] The 'wily-worded Ithacan' is Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey.
[LXXX.] Dindymus was a mountain in Phrygia, the seat of the worship of Cybele.
[LXXXVI.] 'The Kid-star.' The 'kids' are two little stars which first rise in the evening towards the end of September, during the equinoctial gales.
[LXXXVII.] The Athesis is the modern Adige. The Padus is the Po.
[LXXXIX.] Sarpedon was a Lycian prince who had fought for the Trojans at Troy and been slain by Patroclus. 'Theban' here refers to the town of Thebe in Cilicia, mentioned by Homer.
[XCI.] Baiae was a favourite seaside resort of the rich Romans on the bay of Naples.
Prochyta and Arime were two rocky islands close to the bay of Naples.
Typhoeus was a hundred-headed monster slain by Jupiter and buried under Prochyta and Arime.