e two small neighbouring
islands Myconos and Gyarus.

XII. 'Thymbrean lord.' Apollo, so called from the town of Thymbra
in the Troad, where he was worshipped.

XVI. Crete is called 'Gnosian' from 'Gnossos,' the chief town of the
island.

XVII. _Ortygia_ was the ancient name of Delos.

XXIII. The 'Ausonian shores' means Italy. For the Ausonians, see Book
VII. stanza vi.

XXIX. The Strophades were a small group of islands off the south-west
coast of Greece. The story alluded to is that Phineus, king of Thrace,
unjustly put out the eyes of his sons. As a punishment the gods
blinded him, and sent the Harpies--loathsome monsters with the
bodies of birds and the faces of women--to defile and seize all the
food that was set before him. Phineus was at last freed from them
by Zetes and Calais, the sons of the North Wind, who drove the Harpies
from Thrace to the Strophades.

For Celaeno's prophecy, see note on Book VII. stanza xvi.

XXXVI. Ulysses, the most cunning of the Greek leaders before Troy,
was king of Ithaca, and son of Laertes.

XXXIX. _Phaeacia_ means _Corcyra_, and _Chaonia_ is a district of
Epirus. Its chief harbour was Buthrotum.

XLIII. _Hermione_ was the daughter of Menelaus and Helen. Orestes
was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. He slew his mother on
account of her treacherous murder of Agamemnon when the latter
returned home from Troy, and killed Pyrrhus for having deprived him
of his promised bride, Hermione.

XLVI. _Xanthus_ was a river that flowed near Troy. The 'Scaean Gate'
was the western gate of Troy and looked towards the sea. It was the
best known of the gates because most of the fighting took place before
it.

XLVII. Apollo was called 'Clarian' from Claros (near Ephesus), where
there was a shrine and oracle of the god.

LII. _Narycos_, or more properly _Naryx_, was a town of the Opuntian
Locri in Greece. Virgil follows the tradition that they went and
settled in the south of Italy at the close of the Trojan war.

The 'Sallentinian plain' was the land bordering on the Tarentine Gulf,
and 'Petelia' was on the east coast of Bruttium, and had been founded
by Philoctetes, after he had been expelled from Thessaly.

LV. _Scylla_ and _Charybdis_ are taken from Homer. The former was
a terrible sea-monster with six heads, and the latter a whirlpool.
Tradition fixed their abode as the Straits of Messina. Scylla dwelt
in a cave on the Italian side, Charybdis on the Sicilian.

LX. Dodona,