[8.] Thyoneus.]—Ver. 13. Bacchus was called Thyoneus, either from Semele, his mother, one of whose names was Thyone, or from the Greek, θύειν, ‘to be frantic,’ from which origin the Bacchanals also received their name of Thyades.
[9.] Lenæus.]—Ver. 14. From the Greek word λῆνος, ‘a wine-press.’
[10.] Nyctelius.]—Ver. 15. From the Greek word νὺξ, ‘night,’ because his orgies were celebrated by night. Eleleus is from the shout, or ‘huzza’ of the Greeks, which was ελελεῦ.
[11.] Iacchus.]—Ver. 15. From the Greek ἰαχὴ, ‘clamor,’ or ‘noise.’
[12.] Evan.]—Ver. 15. From the exclamation, Εὐοῖ, or ‘Evoë’ which the Bacchanals used in performing his orgies.
[13.] Lycurgus.]—Ver. 22. He was a king of Thrace, who having slighted the worship of Bacchus, was afflicted with madness, and hewed off his own legs with a hatchet, and, according to Apollodorus, mistaking his own son Dryas for a vine, destroyed him with the same weapon.
[14.] Unseasonable labor.]—Ver. 32. ‘Minerva;’ the name of the Goddess Minerva is here used for the exercise of the art of spinning, of which she was the patroness. The term ‘intempestiva’ is appropriately applied, as the arts of industry and frugality, which were first invented by Minerva, but ill accorded with the idle and vicious mode of celebrating the festival of Bacchus.
[15.] Dercetis.]—Ver. 45. Lucian, speaking of Dercetis, or Derceto, says, ‘I have seen in Phœnicia a statue of this goddess, of a very singular kind. From the middle upwards, it represents a woman, but below it terminates in a fish. The statue of her, which is shown at Hieropolis, represents her wholly as a woman.’ He further says, that the temple of this last city was thought by some to have been built by Semiramis, who consecrated it not to Juno, as is generally believed, but to her own mother, Derceto. Atergatis was another name of this Goddess. She was said, by an illicit amour, to have been the mother of Semiramis, and in despair, to have thrown herself into a lake near Ascalon, on which she was changed into a fish.
[16.] Palestine.]—Ver. 46. Palæstina, or Philistia, in which Ascalon was situate, was a part of Syria, lying in its south-western extremity.
[17.] How a Naiad.]—Ver. 49. The Naiad here mentioned is supposed to have been a Nymph of the Island of the Sun, called also Nosola, between Taprobana (the modern Ceylon) and the coast of Carmania (perhaps Coromandel), who was in the habit of changing such youths as fell into her hands into fishes. As a reward for her cruelty, she herself was changed into a fish by the Sun.