[1] The early Greeks supposed the earth to be a flat circle, in the centre of which was Greece. Oceanus, the ocean stream, encircled it; the Mediterranean being supposed to flow into this river on the one side, and the Euxine, or Black Sea, on the other.
[2] Owing to the vagueness of the various accounts of creation, the origin of the primeval gods is variously accounted for. Thus, for instance, Oceanus, with some, becomes the younger brother of Uranus and Gæa.
[3] The myth of Cronus swallowing his children is evidently intended by the poets to express the melancholy truth that time destroys all things.
[4] Nectar was the drink, and ambrosia the food of the gods.
[5] The Cyclops are generally mentioned as the sons of Uranus and Gæa, but Homer speaks of Polyphemus, the chief of the Cyclops, as the son of Poseidon, and states the Cyclops to be his brothers.
[6] Possibly an image of him placed in readiness.
[7] This age was contemporary with the commencement of the dynasty of Zeus.
[8] Hesiod is said to have lived 850 years before the Christian era, consequently about 200 years after King David. He lived in Bœotia, where his tomb is still shown at Orchomenus. This ancient writer left behind him two great poems, one entitled "The Works and Days," in which he gives us some of the earliest Greek legends, and the other, "The Theogony," containing the genealogies of the gods; but, unfortunately, both these poems have been so interpolated by the writers of the Alexandrian school that they have lost their value as reliable sources of information with regard to the early beliefs of the Greek nation.
[9] Epimetheus signifies after-thought, Prometheus fore-thought.
[10] There are various versions of this myth. According to some the jar or vase was full of all "the ills which flesh is heir to."