B00ARI2G5C EBOK (54 page)

Lethe
(
3
,
68
,
250
): in Virgil’s
Aeneid
, one of the rivers of the underworld, whose water when drunk by the dead caused them to forget their earthly lives (Gk. ληθη, oblivion); hence, death or forgetfulness generally.

Leto
(
94
): a goddess loved by Zeus, who became the mother of Apollo and Artemis (Diana); see Delos.

Leuce
(
250
): an island in the western Black Sea on which the shade of Helen was allowed to meet that of Achilles, on condition that she did not leave Leuce (see
Euphorion, Pherae
).

Luna
(
61
,
105
): the moon-goddess (Gk. Σεληνη; see
Diana
). She was said to have loved the beautiful youth Endymion and descended to him as he lay asleep in a cave.

Lynceus
(
90
,
147
-51,
210
f.,
214
f.): one of the Argonaut heroes, gifted with far sight; his name (Λυγκηιως) is evidently derived from ‘lynx’ (λυγξ).

Maia
(
161
): a goddess, the daughter of the Titan Atlas, who became the mother of Hermes by Zeus.

Manto
(
92
f.,
249
f.): an aged prophetess or sibyl, also seen as a Thessalian sorceress paralleling Erichtho in her ability to raise the dead. According to the received mythological tradition her father was the blind seer Tiresias; but in his final version of Act II Goethe makes her a daughter of
Aesculapius
(q.v.), the god of healing, in order to emphasize her therapeutic role towards Faust (7446-51, 7487). He also invents her story of having guided Orpheus to the underworld (7493), as the Cumaean sibyl guided Virgil’s Aeneas (
Aeneid
, book vi). (See Introd., pp. xxii, xxxv, xxxvii.)

Marsi
(
119
): see
Psylli
.

Menelaus
(
124
,
135
,
140
,
153
): younger brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae; as husband of Helen he succeeded her putative father Tyndareus as king of Sparta. The elopement of Helen with the Trojan prince Paris provoked the expedition of the Greeks against Troy, which Agamemnon commanded.

Muses
(Gk. Moυσαι, Lat. Musae) (
95
): the goddesses who inspired men to poetry, music (μουσικη τεξνη, the art named after them), and other intellectual achievements. They were associated with
Apollo
(q.v.) and
Parnassus
(q.v.), but their number, names, and attributes varied.

Neptune
(
114
,
117
,
222
): see
Poseidon
.

Nereids
(
44
,
110
,
113
f.,
247
): sea-nymphs, daughters of
Nereus
(q.v.).

Nereus
(in ff.,
119
-22): an ancient sea-god, whose cult probably preceded that of Poseidon in this role. Being benevolent and gifted with prophecy, he was said to have warned Paris of the disastrous consequences of his abduction of Helen (8109 ff.).

Nestor
(
154
): the king of Pylos in Messenia, who took part as an old man in the Trojan War.

Oedipus
(
84
): son of Laius, king of Thebes, who exposed him on a mountainside as an infant because a prophecy foretold that he would kill his father and many his mother; he survived and was brought up by foster-parents in Corinth, but returned to Thebes, was welcomed as a hero after killing a monstrous sphinx by guessing its riddle, and unwittingly fulfilled both parts of the prophecy.

Olympus
(
92
f,
112
): the highest mountain in Greece, at the eastern end of the range dividing Thessaly from Macedonia (see map). Its summit (2985m) or the sky above it was believed to be the dwelling of Zeus and the other gods (the ‘Olympians’ as distinct from the
Titans
(q.v.) who preceded them).

Ops
(
108
): see
Rhea
.

Oread
(
102
): a mountain-nymph (Gk.
ớ
ρος, mountain); cf. the chorus of mountain-nymphs, 9999-10004.

Orion
(
133
): a giant renowned as a huntsman, who had already been exalted to heaven as a constellation in Homer’s time. Since he belonged to the very remote past, the Chorus’s suggestion that his nurse must have been Phorcyas’s great-great-granddaughter implies that Phorcyas herself is a hag of even more repulsive antiquity.

Orpheus
(
90
,
93
,
249
): the legendary pre-Homeric poet and inventor of poetry, supposed to have taken part in the expedition of the Argonauts and to have been gifted with magical powers of song which could move animals, trees, and rocks. Seeking to recover his wife Eurydice from the dead, he descended to the underworld (7493), and by his music persuaded its queen, Persephone, to allow her to follow him to the world of the living, but on condition that he should not look back at her until they reached it; this condition he broke at the last moment, losing her for ever.

Pan
(
38
-42,
46
,
157
,
172
): god of forests and pastures, responsible for the fertility of flocks and herds and said to be native to Arcadia. He was represented with a human face, torso, and arms but the legs, ears, and horns of a goat, and is thus akin to the
Satyrs
(q.v.) (fauns) and sileni (see
Silenus
). As a symbol of the wildness and phallic potency of life, he was reputedly a lustful pursuer of nymphs, one of whom was Echo (cf. 10002 ff.); destroyed for resisting his advances, she survived only as a voice repeating the last words of what she hears. Pan was said to haunt woods and mountains and caves and to cause sudden groundless ‘panic’ fear (‘Pan’s dread voice’, 10002). He was frequently called ‘the Great Pan’, and in later times, by confusion of his name (Π
ν) with the Greek word for
‘all’ (π
ν), he was sometimes understood as some kind of universal god. The Emperor is disguised as ‘Great Pan’ in the Carnival (Sc. 3).

Paphos
(
113
): see
Aphrodite
.

Paris
(
50
,
59
f.,
112
,
142
): a son of Priam, king of Troy, to whom it was prophesied that the child would bring destruction on the city; he was exposed in the mountains but rescued, and spent his youth as a shepherd (6459). In the story known as the ‘judgement of Paris’ he was called upon, as the most beautiful of mortal men, to settle a beauty contest between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, and awarded the prize to Aphrodite who had promised him the love of the most beautiful of mortal women. Restored later to his family, he was sent on an embassy to Sparta, where King Menelaus’s wife
Helen
(q.v.) fell in love with him and fled with him to Troy. This brought about the Trojan War, at the end of which Paris was fatally wounded by a poisoned arrow.

Parnassus
(
95
): the high mountain near Delphi, the site of the famous ‘Delphic oracle’ of Apollo; the whole mountain was sacred to Apollo and the Muses, as was the spring named after the nymph Castalia, who threw herself into it when fleeing from the god. The stream runs between two peaks which were sometimes thought of as the mountain’s twin summits (to which Goethe here refers), though the real summit (2460m) is in fact high above them.

Patroclus
(
135
): in Homer’s
Iliad
, the beloved friend and companion-in-arms of
Achilles
(q.v.). While the latter, having quarrelled with Agamemnon, remains in his tent refusing to fight, the Greeks come close to defeat, and Patroclus begs his friend to allow him to rejoin the war on his behalf. Achilles lends him his own armour to terrify the Trojans (hence ‘lookalike’, 8855), but Patroclus is killed by the Trojan leader Hector. The grief-stricken Achilles turns his rage against Troy, and fights and kills Hector, which seals the fate of the city.

Peleus
(
44
): a mortal descended from Zeus who became king of Phthia in Thessaly and married the sea-nymph Thetis, daughter of the old sea-god Nereus; their only child was Achilles, who is frequently referred to as ‘the Peleid’.

Pelion
and
Ossa
(
95
): two high mountains south-east of Olympus; giants rebelling against Zeus piled the one on top of the other and both on Olympus, in an attempt to scale the heavens.

Pelops
(
166
): a descendant of Zeus who became the ruler of the whole southern peninsula of Greece, thereafter known as the Peloponnese (Π
λοπος ν
σος, ‘island of Pelops’); see map.

Peneus
(
76
,
86
,
93
): as the principal river of Thessaly (see map), the Peneus becomes a symbolic point of reference for the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ scenes, eventually leading down to its outflow into the Aegean for the last of these (cf. note to p. 78, ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’). It is personified
as a god (7249-56) and attended by nymphs and sirens. Faust’s lines 7271-306 associate it in a dream-like way with the begetting of Helen and thus with the river
Eurotas
(q.v.).

Persephone
(Lat. Proserpina) (
93
,
170
f.,
249
): daughter of the earth-mother Demeter; Hades (Pluto) carried her off and made her queen of the underworld. She was allowed to return to her mother during part of every year, her story thus symbolizing the annual growth of corn and the cycle of death and life.

Perseus
(xxxix): a son of Zeus by Danae, a princess imprisoned in a tower to whom the god descended in the form of golden rain. His most famous exploit was the killing of the monstrous
Gorgon
(q.v.) Medusa; Goethe seems to have liked this story, to which Mephistopheles alludes twice in Part One (4194, 4208).