Urban Legends in Ancient Greek and Roman Literature:Some Rare Examples
The four stories to be presented here are rare examples in ancient Greek and Roman literature of a well-attested kind of modern story called the urban legend. The following discussion begins with brief summaries of the four ancient stories, "The Horse and the Girl" (Aeschines and Aristotle), "Trireme" (Athenaeus), "Werewolf" (Petronius), and "Christian Initiation" (Tertullian and Minucius Felix). After the summaries comes a definition of the urban legend with respect to which the four stories are compared and contrasted. The question of interpretation then arises. Scholars who have interpreted "The Horse and the Girl" have usually focused on a single version of the story or on elements found in one or more versions. In conclusion, one such element in this story is discussed, the place itself, from which the story gets its modern name. Archaeological evidence suggests it might have been the burial site of a high-status woman for whom a horse was sacrificed and then interred along with her.
Our first story, "The Horse and the Girl," has already in our earliest sources forgotten any origin in an high-status burial and tells of how an Athenian punished his daughter for premarital sex by shutting her up with a horse in a building in which they both died of starvation. For the two sources for this story, Aeschines and Aristotle, the father's action is an example of [End Page 359] old-time moral severity. In Aeschines, the story is an aition for the place named "At the Horse and the Girl"1 and the father is unnamed. A scholiast on Aeschines, who quotes a phrase from Aristotle, has the girl eaten by the horse. This motif of equine anthropophagy persists in the tradition: Diodorus Siculus, Nicolaus of Damascus, and Ovid.
Another ancient Greek example of an urban legend also happens to explain the name of a house, "Trireme," that was located in Acragas, a city in Sicily.2 The source is the Sicilian historian Timaeus (ca. 350–260 bce), whose account is quoted or paraphrased by Athenaeus. Some young men who were drinking in this house became so intoxicated that they thought they were on a boat that was tossing in a storm at sea. They therefore began to throw all the furniture out of the house in order to lighten the ship and prevent it from sinking or capsizing. Military authorities (στρατηγοί) came to the house to find out what was going on. The young men, still drunk, thought that the strategoi were Tritons, sea gods who had come to rescue them, and promised to rear altars to them when they returned to their country at the end of their voyage. This is why the house is called "Trireme."
An example from Roman Italy turns up in the Satyrica of Petronius (62). At Trimalchio's dinner, a freedman, Niceros, tells how he set out to walk to Tarentum.3 His purpose is to propose marriage to a woman called Melissa. He has an unnamed companion, a soldier, who lives in the same house with him. They pass through a graveyard and the soldier pauses to look at the epitaphs. Then he takes his clothes off, puts them by the roadside, urinates in a circle around them, and turns into a wolf.4 (At this point Niceros insists that he is telling the truth.) The soldier then begins to howl and runs off into the woods. Niceros went to get his clothes, but they had all become stone. When he reaches the farm where Melissa lives, she tells him that a wolf has attacked their sheep. A servant, "our old man," drove him off and, in so doing, made a hole in his neck with a spear. The next day Niceros returns immediately to his master's house. (The proposal to Melissa is forgotten.) When he comes to the place where the petrified stones were, he finds nothing but a pool of blood, but when he reaches his [End Page 360] master's house, he finds a doctor attending to the wound in the soldier's neck. Niceros then realizes that the soldier is a werewolf.
An example of an urban legend from the Roman province of Africa is found in the Apologeticum of Tertullian (160–c. 240 ce) and in the Octavius of Minucius Felix (fl. 200–40 ce). Tertullian presents a grotesque picture of what pagans believe to be true of Christian initiation: infanticide and consumption of the dead child; the overturning of lamps by dogs following the meal; promiscuous intercourse, including incest, in the darkness (7.1, 8.2–3, and 8.7).5 A fuller version of the same story is found in the Octavius of Minucius Felix. The Christian initiate is required to inflict blows on an infant concealed by coarse grain (far), evidently inside a loaf of bread. When blood emerges, everyone present drinks it and they tear the infant limb from limb. Minucius proceeds to give an account of Christian feasting, for which he gives Fronto as his authority. Again, as in Tertullian, there is the drinking of blood. Further, the lights are extinguished and a sexual orgy follows in which incest occurs (9.5–7).
Three of the four stories that have been summarized were, in the first place, oral and are accessible now because they came to be written down for one reason or another. The fourth, in Petronius, is the written, fictional representation of an oral story. All four of these differ from other, more famous kinds of story that were at first transmitted orally and, at a certain point, both orally and in writing.6 They are neither myths nor hero legends.7 Nor are they one of the many kinds of folktale.8 In particular, unlike folktales, they remain within the bounds of reality as known to, or imaginable by, the teller and the listeners.9 Nor are they fables (ainoi).10 Comparison with modern examples suggests that they are urban legends.11 [End Page 361] This kind of story is well-established in the scholarship.12 The urban legend tells of ordinary persons, like those known to the listeners. It is set in the present (Bennett and Smith 2007.xvii). It is short.13 Or if it concerns events that happened in the past, the speaker can point to something that is still there, like the houses in "The Horse and the Girl" and in "Trireme." The story may be humorous or horrifying.14 The teller expects belief; he may refer to his source, a known person, or he may offer another kind of evidence of his veracity, as when Aeschines points out that the foundations of the building are still there (ἔτι καὶ νῦν).15 An urban legend begins as an oral story ("I heard from … that …"), even if it is now immediately put into writing on the internet.16
Three of the four ancient stories conform to this description of the urban legend. Timaeus of Tauromenium is cited at the beginning of what appears to be Athenaeus's retelling of his account. "Timaeus says that a certain house in Acragas is called 'Trireme.'" Drunken young men think that the house that they are in is a ship in a storm.17 These stories conform to the definition of urban legend that has been given, even if they are no longer contemporary but are repeated for a present purpose, which, in the case of "Trireme," is obscure. In any case, both "Trireme" and "The Horse and the Girl" explain the name of a house, an etiological function that they share with some myths and fables.18
Tertullian and Minucius Felix are reporting what non-Christians are saying about Christians. Minucius Felix testifies to the oral currency of what the non-Christians say about Christian initiation: "everyone speaks [End Page 362] of it everywhere," including even "our Cirtensian." (Fronto, born in Cirta in Numidia, now Algeria, is another North African, like Minucius Felix.) As in the case of "The Horse and the Girl," the sources show variation. The coating of the infant in grain followed by dismemberment in Minucius Felix does not appear in Tertullian, who has the initiates using bread to absorb the infant's blood. The details unique to Minucius may have come from Fronto (Beaujeu 1964.88 n. 9.5). Bill Ellis compares this story with the modern urban legends of gang initiation.19
Of the four ancient urban legends, Niceros's is the only one to appear in a work of fiction and the only ancient example of a werewolf story in which lycanthropy is individual and temporary.20 Group transformations of men into wolves are reported. In Herodotus, each of the Neuroi becomes a wolf for a few days once a year and then turns back into the person they were.21 Pliny attributes to a certain Euanthes the report that a member of an Arcadian family is chosen by lot to swim across a lake and go into a desert, where he is changed into a wolf (lupus) for nine years. He then recrosses the lake and regains his original form (NH 8.37). Werewolf stories concerning individuals begin to appear in the Middle Ages and continue into the nineteenth century, taking the form of legends.22 They do not appear as folktales. Nor is a werewolf story found in collections of modern urban legends.23
Despite these peculiarities, Niceros's story has the markings of an urban legend. He refers casually to his master, Melissa, and the soldier, assuming that his listeners already have heard of these persons. His story takes place on a road which his listeners have traveled or at least know. Only his conclusion is surprising:24 the werewolf takes the story outside of [End Page 363] quotidian reality and, to this extent, the story is like a folktale. But Niceros twice insists on his truthfulness.25 This aspect of the urban legend is overdetermined in its fictional setting when Trimalchio himself vouches for Niceros ("scio Niceronem nihil nugarum narrare," "I know that Niceros does not tell nonsense," 63).
To turn to the question of interpretation, the four urban legends cannot be reduced to a common narrative structure by the method of Walter Burkert. He showed that seven Greek myths concerning young women had such a structure, to use his word. These myths, understood in this way, constituted what might be called the sociobiological agenda of a young woman's life, culminating in childbirth. Burkert thought that, both in these myths and in general, the structure of a myth is "founded on basic biological or cultural programs of action" (1979.18). "The Horse and the Girl" and "Trireme" are similar in having a house at their center, but they do not share a story-pattern or narrative structure.
A second approach is the interpretation of one particular version of an urban legend. In an article in progress, Robert Wallace takes this approach, focusing on the version of "The Horse and the Girl" in which the father of the girl is Hippomenes, and showing that he is an example of the typical ruler or tyrant who abuses women. Ezio Pellizer puts "The Horse and the Girl" in the more general category of stories about father-daughter relations.26
A third approach is the interpretation of a single element found in one or more of the four urban legends.27 An element that can be interpreted in this way is the house or the place in Athens in which the events of the story occurred. The relevant sources are the following (for translations, see the Appendix below): [End Page 364]
| Aeschines | Καὶ ἔτι καὶ νῦν τῆς οἰκίας ταύτης ἕστηκε τὰ οἰκόπεδα ἐν τῷ ὑμετέρῳ ἄστει, καὶ ὁ τόπος οὗτος καλεῖται Παρ' ἵππον καὶ κόρην. |
| Nicolaus of Damascus | Μετὰ ταῦτα ἐπισκαφείσης αὐτοῖς τῆς οἰκήσεως, ἀπ' ἐκείνου ὁ χῶρος ἐκαλεῖτο Ἵππου καὶ Κόρης. |
| Ovid schol. P 459 | qui locus Hippokekores dicitur. |
| Dio Chrysostom | καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἐν τῇ πόλει τόπος οὕτω καλούμενος Ἵππου καὶ κόρης ἄβατον. |
| Photius; last sentence repeated by Apostolius | τόπος Ἀθήνησιν οὕτω καλούμενος … ἀφ' οὗ Πάριππος καὶ κόρη ὁ τόπος, ἐν ᾧ τὸ πάθος ὑπέστη, καλεῖται. |
Aeschines' version of the story puts emphasis on the abandoned house in which the horse and the girl were immured. As confirmation of what he has said, he refers to the foundations of the house as still now "in your city" (ἐν τῷ ὑμετέρῳ ἄστει) and to the name of the place, "At the Horse and the Girl" (Παρ' ἵππον καὶ κόρην).28 He could hardly have spoken in this way to an Athenian audience if the place did not exist. Nicolaus of Damascus also refers to the remains of the house but says that it was "dug onto them," apparently meaning torn down over them after they were dead. For him, too, the place has a name, now elliptical, "(The place) of the Horse and the Girl" (Ἵππου καὶ Κόρης). This name carries on in the rest of the later sources (Latinized by one of the scholia on Ovid as "Hippokekores"). Uniquely in Dio Chrysostom, the place is an ἄβατον ("a shrine"), perhaps his own surmise.
Wilamowitz suggested that the name of the place was taken from an inscription on a funerary monument, Λειμώνη Ἱππομένους, "Leimone daughter of Hippomenes" (on the girl's name see below), and if the place29 [End Page 365] was called "At the Horse and the Girl," the reason was that the monument bore a relief depicting a girl and a horse. Before 480 bce, when the monument would have been destroyed, someone identified the Hippomenes of the inscription with the archon of this name.30 Wilamowitz dismisses the story because it has no value for his history of the Athenian kings and the first archons.31 He presupposes that the proper names belonged to the original verson of the story. If so, could Aeschines, speaking before an Athenian audience, have replaced Hippomenes with an anonymous "man from among the citizens"? Furthermore, in Aeschines and in the other sources listed in the above chart, the name "At the Horse and the Girl" or "The Horse and the Girl" has come from the place itself.
The question arises, then, of what in that place would have inspired the name. Aeschines refers to the foundations of a house (οἰκόπεδα), which Nicolaus of Damascus says was "dug onto them." This disturbed site might have been a collapsed tomb of the kind found at Toumba, Lefkandi (on Euboea, in which a man and a woman were buried together with horses; Popham, Calligas, and Sackett 1993). Another such burial (dated between 1400 and 1375 bce) was discovered in the cemetery of Phourni on Crete. The excavators, Ioannis and Efi Sakellarakis, found the remains of a butchered horse piled along the wall in the main chamber of the tholos next to the walled-up entrance to the side chamber.32 When they dismantled the stones at that entrance, they found the remains of a bull sacrifice. The side chamber held an inhumation in a large larnax (clay coffin), numerous bronze vessels, a footstool inlaid with ivory, and jewelry and cosmetic items. The lack of weapons and the presence of jewelry led the excavators to assume that the poorly preserved skeletal remains were those of a woman.33
The sacrifice and burial of horses was a widespread practice.34 The burial of humans with horses, as in the examples given here, is only scantily [End Page 366] attested. But what happened elsewhere was possible in Athens, too. The two Middle Helladic tombs in the Ceramicus at Athens are comparable with the one at Toumba. The rich offerings found in one of these tombs show the same kind of wealth, a reflection of the same social class.35 One only has to imagine the burial of a high-status woman in the same fashion, along with the sacrifice of a horse. At some later period, long after these customs have been forgotten, someone in Athens discovers and reports such a burial. This person or someone else tries to explain how a woman and a horse could have been buried together. The horse must have killed the girl and have been left in the structure, now assumed to be a house, in which the girl's father had shut them up. Why had he done so? He was punishing his daughter for pre-marital sex. At some point, this story is attached to Hippomenes. His name, "Horse-Strength," is opportune.36 If the father is the historical Hippomenes, it is easy to imagine a political motivation for his drastic use of patria potestas. The daughter would not have to have a name, and the story would not suffer without one. But in Aristotle she is Leimone, "Meadowy," which is not otherwise attested as a woman's name but is here an ironic, disturbing "speaking name."37 Horses graze in meadows. (For the variant Leimonis, see schol. Aeschines 1 in the list of sources below #8, p. 373.)
To conclude, four ancient Greek and Roman stories have been identified as urban legends. This kind of story depends for its definition on modern examples and research on those examples. In one case, "Christian Initiation," the same urban legend is found in a modern form in stories of gang initiation. The ancient urban legends are not variants of the same story, although there are some similarities between "The Horse and the Girl" and "Trireme," and cannot be interpreted as such.38 Interpretation necessarily focuses on a particular version of an urban legend when there is more than one, as with "The Horse and the Girl" and "Christian [End Page 367] Initiation," or on a particular element. This last approach was illustrated by the use of archaeological examples to explain how the place in Athens referred to as "At the Horse and the Girl" might have received this name.
APPENDIX
A. "The Horse and the Girl"
1. Aeschines In Timarchum 182 Dilts (1). Date 346/5 bce.
Aeschines reminds the jury of their forefathers' severity toward shameful acts.
Οὕτω γὰρ ἦσαν πρὸς τὰς αἰσχύνας χαλεποί καὶ περὶ πλείστου τῶν τέκνων τὴν σωφροσύνην ἐποιοῦντο, ὥστ' ἀνὴρ εἷς τῶν πολιτῶν, εὑρὼν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ θυγατέρα διεφθαρμένην καὶ τὴν ἡλικίαν οὐ καλῶς διαφυλάξασαν μέχρι γάμου, ἐγκατῳκοδόμησεν αὐτὴν μεθ' ἵππου εἰς ἔρημον οἰκίαν, ὑφ' οὗ προδήλως ἔμελλεν ἀπολεῖσθαι [διὰ λιμὸν] συγκαθειργμένη. Καὶ ἔτι καὶ νῦν τῆς οἰκίας ταύτης ἕστηκε τὰ οἰκόπεδα ἐν τῷ ὑμετέρῳ ἄστει καὶ ὁ τόπος οὗτος καλεῖται Παρ' ἵππον καὶ κόρην.
διὰ λιμὸν del. Dobree (cf. Blass 1908.xiii) and cf. Dio Chr. Or. 32.78–79 (#7 below)
For so severe were they toward shameful acts—and they considered their children's self-restraint of the utmost importance—that a man from among the citizens, having found that his daughter had been corrupted and had not properly preserved her maidenhood until marriage, shut her up with a horse in a desolate building, as a result of which she was clearly going to die from starvation, shut up as she was. And even still the foundations of this house survive in your town, and this place is called "At the Horse and Girl."39
2. Aristotle frag. 611 Rose, from Heraclides Lembus Excerpta Politiarum 371 Dilts (2).
Date 4th c. bce.
ἀπὸ δὲ Κοδριδῶν οὐκέτι βασιλεῖς ᾑροῦντο διὰ τὸ δοκεῖν τρυφᾶν καὶ μαλακοὺς γεγονέναι. Ἱππομένης δὲ εἷς τῶν Κοδριδῶν βουλόμενος ἀπώσασθαι τὴν διαβολήν, λαβὼν ἐπὶ τῇ θυγατρὶ Λειμώνῃ μοιχόν, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἀνεῖλεν ὑποζεύξας [μετὰ τῆς θυγατρὸς] τῷ ἅρματι, τὴν δὲ ἵππῳ συνέκλεισεν ἕως ἀπόληται.
μετὰ τῆς θυγατρὸς del. Koeler
Kings were no longer chosen after the Kodridai, on account of their seeming to have turned luxurious and soft. Hippomenes, one of the Kodridai, wanted to free himself of this charge. When he caught a seducer on his daughter Leimone, he killed him by yoking him to the chariot [with his daughter], and he shut her up with the horse until she died.
3. Callimachus Aetia frags. 94–95 Pf.; Diegeseis
Dates: Aetia (Callim. fl. 285–46 bce); Diegeseis (ca. 100 ce)40
(The very scrappy fragments, not quoted here, refer to "the corpse," presumably of the seducer; maybe [94.1 ends: υβατονιστιναευω] a sanctuary41 [cf. Dio Chrysostom #7 below]; and maybe the name of the place, "The Horse and the Girl," if Pfeiffer's supplement is correct.)
Diegesis III.27–33:
He shut up his child Leimone, who had been secretly corrupted, in a chamber. For this he destroyed her by means of a horse. Whence at Athens a place, "Of the Horse and the Girl." He struck with a spear the man who had consorted with her and bound him to a horse, so as to drag him through the town.
(Cf. schol. Ov. Ibis B 335 below.)
4. Diodorus Siculus 8.22 = Exc. De Virt. 39, Part 1, p. 216 Büttner-Wobst and Roos.
Date Diod. Sic. 1st c. bce. Trans. Oldfather 1939.
Ὅτι Ἱππομένης ὁ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἄρχων, τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ φθαρείσης ὑπό τινος, τιμωρίαν ἔλαβε παρ' αὐτῆς ἀνήκεστον καὶ παρηλλαγμένην· μεθ' ἵππου γὰρ αὐτὴν εἰς οἰκίσκον τινὰ συγκλείσας, καὶ τὴν τροφὴν παρελόμενος ἐπί τινας ἡμέρας, ἠνάγκασε τὸ ζῷον διὰ τὴν ἔνδειαν ἀναλῶσαι τὸ σῶμα τῆς παραβληθείσης.
Hippomenes, the Athenian archon, exacted of his daughter, who had been violated by an unknown person, a punishment which was cruel and extraordinary. He shut her up together with a horse in a small stall, and by keeping the beast without food for some days, he forced it, through hunger, to eat the body of the girl who had been thrown to it.
(Exc. De Virt. = Excerpta De Virtutibus et Vitiis. These are a collection of quotations from fourteen historians, from Herodotus to Malalas. They are in the tenth-century Codex Peirescianus in Tours and were first published by Valesius [Henri de Valois] in 1634. They are sometimes called the Excerpta Valesiana.)
5. Nicolaus of Damascus FGrH 90 F 49 = Exc. De Virt. 20, Part 1, p. 340 Büttner-Wobst and Roos = Suda s.v. Ἱππομένης. Date Nic. Dam. b. ca. 64 bce.
Ὅτι Ἱππομένης, ὁ Ἀθηναίων ἄρχων, ἐξέπεσε τῆς ἀρχῆς δι' αἰτίαν τοιάνδε. Ἦν αὐτῷ θυγάτηρ, ἥντινα τῶν ἀστῶν τινος λάθρα αἰσχύναντος, ὑπ' ὀργῆς (ὑπὸ γῆς schol. berol. ad Lib. ep. 251.13 Foerster) καθεῖρξεν εἰς οἴκημα δήσας σὺν ἵππῳ, καὶ τροφὴν οὐδετέρῳ εἰσέπεμπε. Πιεσθεὶς οὖν λιμῷ ὁ ἵππος, ἐφορμήσας τῇ παιδὶ, ἀναλώσας τε αὐτὴν, καὶ αὐτὸς ὕστερον ἀπέθανε. Μετὰ ταῦτα ἐπισκαφείσης αὐτοῖς τῆς οἰκήσεως, ἀπ' ἐκείνου ὁ χῶρος ἐκαλεῖτο Ἵππου καὶ Κόρης.
Hippomenes, archon of the Athenians, was expelled from his rule for the following reason. He had a daughter whom, when he caught one of the citizens having secretly corrupted her, he angrily bound and shut in a building along with a horse, and he sent in food to neither of them. Driven by hunger, the horse attacked the girl and consumed her; the horse himself died later. Thereafter, the house having been razed, from that event the place was called "The Horse's and the Girl's."
(The phraseology of the next-to-last sentence differs considerably in schol. Berol. ad Lib. ep. 251.13.)
6. Ovid Ibis 335–36 and 459–60 Lenz. Date 10 or 11 ce(?)
utque novum passa est genus Hippomeneia poenae tractus et Actaea fertur adulter humo.
(335–36)
And as the daughter of Hippomenes endured a new kind of punishment and, they say, the adulterer was dragged upon Attic soil.
sola Limone poenam ne senserit illam, et tua dente fero viscera carpat equus.
(459–60)
And lest Limone alone have felt that punishment, may a horse tear your guts, too, with fierce tooth.
Schol. B 335: Limone, Hippomenis filia, cum quodam adultero deprehensa est, qui cum curro Hippomenis tractus dilaceratus est. illa vero cum quodam hippo ferocissimo inclusa ab eo dilacerata est. unde Callimachus:
Limone moritur, sed causa est mortis adulter, altera causa fuit mechus et altera equ<u>s.
Limone, the daughter of Hippomenes, was apprehended with a certain adulterer, who, dragged by the chariot of Hippomenes, was mangled. She, on the other hand, shut up with a certain very wild horse, was mangled by him. Whence Callimachus:
Limone dies, but the cause of her death is an adulterer. One cause was the adulterer, the other was the horse.
Schol. Bb: Haec fabula supra exposita est: ibi causa adulteri lacerati, hic causa ipsius Limones, quae ab equo consumpta est (add. ut dicit Darius CD).
This story is set out above, there as the cause of the mangling of the adulterer, here as the cause (of the death) of Limone herself, who was eaten by the horse.
Schol. G: Limone, filia, in corio equino clausa, ut ab equo stupraretur, ab eodem equo devorata est.
Limone, the daughter, enclosed in a horse hide, in order that she might be violated by a horse, is devoured by the same horse.
Schol. P 459 alterius Hippomenis (here the schol. wants to distinguish the father of Limone from the Hippomenes to whom Ovid has alluded in 457–58) filia, ob stuprum equi inclusa ab eodem equo consumpta est Athenis, qui locus Hippokekores dicitur.
The daughter of the other Hippomenes, shut up because of intercourse with a horse, is eaten by the same horse, in Athens, in a place called Hippokekores (i.e., Of the Horse and the Girl).
(La Penna 1959 reports the scholia on 335–36 much more fully but without any significant differences in content from Lenz 1956. La Penna refers in his apparatus to the scholia on 459–60, but they seem to have been omitted. Conradus [schol. Ov. Ib.] = Konrad von Mure, ca. 1210–81, choir master and cantor in Zurich; man of letters; best known for his Fabularius, a mythological lexicon.)
7. Dio Chrysostom Or. 32.78–79. Date b. ca. 40 bce.
He is addressing the people of Alexandria. One of the vices he castigates is their passion for chariot racing. Dio fears that the passion for horses may go to extremes.
Ἀθήνησι δὲ αὐτὸ τοῦτο τὸ ζῷον ἀγαπηθῆναι τὸ καὶ παρ' ὑμῖν εὐδοκιμοῦν· καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἐν τῇ πόλει τόπος οὕτω καλούμενος Ἵππου καὶ κόρης ἄβατον. ὁ γὰρ πατὴρ συγκαθεῖρξε τὴν παῖδα τῷ ἵππῳ, καί φασιν οὕτω διαφθαρῆναι τὴν κόρην. σκοπεῖτε δὲ μὴ καὶ ὑμεῖς ὑπὸ τῆς τοιαύτης ἐπιθυμίας ἀπόλησθε.
This very creature that you hold in such esteem was prized at Athens. And now there is in the city a place called "Shrine of the Horse and Girl." For the father shut up his daughter with the horse, and they say that, in this way, the girl was destroyed. Beware lest you, too, be destroyed by such desire.
(For the shrine, cf. Callimachus above #3).
8. Schol. Aeschines 1 In Timarchum 182 (5 glosses on particular words and phrases). Date: after Callimachus, to whom the schol. refers.
χαλεποὶ] οὕτω, φησίν, ἐλυποῦντο ἐπὶ τῷ θεωρεῖν τινας αἰσχύνης ἄξια τῆς πόλεως πραττομένους. Vat. Laur. Fgmq.
severe] so pained they were, he says, at seeing persons doing things that deserved the city's shame.
ἀνὴρ εἷς τῶν πολιτῶν] Ἱππομένης ἀπὸ Κόδρου καταγόμενος. ἡ δὲ θυγάτηρ Λειμωνίς. οὕτω Καλλίμαχος. Vat. Laur. Bgmq.
a man from among the citizens] Hippomenes descended from Codrus. His daughter was Leimonis. Thus Callimachus.
ἡλικίαν] πάλιν τὴν νεότητα λέγει ἡλικίαν. Vat. Laur. Fgm.
maidenhead] Again he calls youth "maidenhood."
ἐγκατῳκοδόμησεν] ἀντὶ τοῦ ἐν οἰκήματί τινι ἀπέφραξεν. Vat. Laur. BFgm.
immured] instead of "shut up in a certain house."
Ἱππομένης γὰρ τὸ μὲν γένος τῶν Κοδριδῶν, βασιλεὺς δὲ Ἀθηναίων, λαβὼν ἐπὶ τῇ θυγατρὶ μοιχὸν τοῦτον μὲν αἰκισάμενος ἀπέκτεινε, τὴν δὲ θυγατέρα καθεῖρξεν ἐν οἰκήματι μεθ' ἵππου. ὁ δὲ λιμώττων κατέφαγε τὴν ἄνθρωπον, καὶ ὕστερον καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπὸ λιμοῦ ἀπώλετο. Vat. Laur. Bgm. καλεῖται δ' ἔτι καὶ νῦν ὁ τόπος ἐν ᾧ καθείρχθησαν Παρ› ἵππον καὶ κόραν. Vat. Laur. gm.
For Hippomenes was of the family of the Kodrids and a king of the Athenians. When he caught a seducer on his daughter, he mutilated and killed him, and he shut her up in a house with a horse. Driven by hunger, the horse ate the human, and later he himself died of starvation. Still today the place in which they were shut up is called "At the Horse and the Girl."
παρ' ἵππον καὶ κόραν] ἴσως ἐκαλεῖτο ἱπποκόρειον. B.
at the horse and the girl] probably it was called Hippokoreion ("Horse and Girl").
(Note that one of the phrases, "When he caught a seducer on his daughter," is exactly as in Aristotle [see above p. 369], except that the scholiast leaves out the name of the girl, which he gives elsewhere [second gloss in the list above] as Leimonis, citing Callimachus. Aristotle gives it as Leimone.
9. Ps.-Diogenianus, in von Leutsch and Schneidewin. Date 2nd c. ce.
<Ἀσεβέστερος Ἱππομένους> διὰ τὸ ἐπὶ θυγατρὶ μύσος. Καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴν μοιχευθεῖσαν ἵππῳ συγκατέκλεισεν εἰς θοίνην. Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τὴν Κοδριδῶν ἀρχήν φασι καταλυθῆναι, ἐξ ὧν ἦν ἐκεῖνος.
More sinful than Hippomenes: from the abomination in the case of a daughter. For, to explain, he shut her up, when she had been unchaste, with a horse for its dinner. For this reason, they also say that the regime of the Kodrids, to which family he belonged, was brought to an end.
(For an attestation of the proverb, see Libanius Epist. 251.13 Foerster. The same proverb is listed for Apostolius but with μῖσος, "hatred," for μύσος.)
10. Photius Lexicon 416 παρ' ἵππον καὶ κόρην. Date 9th c.
τόπος Ἀθήνησιν οὕτω καλούμενος· ἐπειδή τις τοῦ γένους τῶν Κοδριδῶν, Ἱππομάνης τοὔνομα, ὃς καὶ τελευταῖος ἐβασίλευσε, τὴν θυγατέρα καθεῖρξεν ἐν χωρίῳ τινὶ μεθ' ἵππου μαινομένου, διότι λαθραίῳ μίξει τὴν παρθενίαν αὐτῆς ἐλυμήνατο. καὶ ὁ ἵππος τὴν κόρην βίαν ἐποιήσατο· ἀφ' οὗ Πάριππος καὶ κόρη ὁ τόπος, ἐν ᾧ τὸ πάθος ὑπέστη, καλεῖται.
At the Horse and the Girl: a place in Athens so named since one of the clan of the Kodrids, Hippomanes by name, who was also the last king, shut his daughter up in a certain place with a wild horse, because he had abused her maidenhood in secret intercourse. And the horse did violence to the girl. Whence the place in which she underwent the misfortune is called "At the Horse and the Girl."
(Repeated in the Suda. For the possibility that the horse is the subject of ἐλυμήνατο, cf. schol. G Ov. above. λαθραίῳ, however, suggests that the subject of the verb is human, i.e., the father. Or could the subject be the girl, despite αὐτῆς, not ἑαυτῆς? Cf. Apostolius below.)
11. Apostolius 14.10 von Leutsch and Schneidewin. Date ca. 1422–80.
Πάθος κόρης ἱππομανοῦς> ἐπὶ τῶν διαφθειρομένων καὶ ἀφόρητα δῆθεν ὑφισταμένων· οὗτος γὰρ τοῦ γένους τῶν Κοδριτῶν ὤν, ὃς καὶ τελευταῖος ἐβασίλευσε, τὴν θυγατέρα καθεῖρξεν ἐν χωρίῳ τινὶ μεθ' ἵππου μαινομένου· διὸ λαθραίῳ μίξει τὴν παρθενίαν αὐτῆς ἐλυμήνατο, καὶ ὁ ἵππος τὴν κόρην βίαν ἐποιήσατο· ἀφ' οὗ Πάριππος καὶ Κόρη ὁ τόπος ἐν ᾧ τὸ πάθος ὑπέστη καλεῖται.
Misfortune of the girl, daughter of Hippomanes. Said of those who are corrupted and therefore endure unbearable things. For this man, one of the clan of the Kodrids, [hereafter exactly like 10].
(Von Leutsch and Schneidewin apparently took ἱππομανοῦς as an adjective.)
B. "Trireme"
Athenaeus 2.37b–e Olson = FGrH 566 Timaeus F 149. Date of Timaeus of Acragas (ca. 350–260 bce).
Τίμαιος δὲ ὁ Ταυρομενίτης ἐν Ἀκράγαντι οἰκίαν τινά φησι καλεῖσθαι Tριήρη ἐξ αἰτίας τοιαύτης· νεανίσκους τινὰς ἐν αὐτῇ μεθυσκομένους ἐς τοσοῦτον ἐλθεῖν μανίας ἐκθερμανθέντας ὑπὸ τῆς μέθης ὡς νομίζειν μὲν ἐπὶ τριήρους πλεῖν, χειμάζεσθαι δὲ χαλεπῶς κατὰ τὴν θάλασσαν· καὶ τοσοῦτον ἔκφρονας γενέσθαι ὡς τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκίας πάντα σκεύη καὶ στρώματα ῥίπτειν ὡς εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, τὴν ναῦν διὰ τὸν χειμῶνα ἀποφορτίζεσθαι δόξαν αὐτοῖς λέγειν τὸν κυβερνήτην. συναθροιζομένων οὖν πολλῶν καὶ τὰ ῥιπτόμενα διαρπαζόντων οὐδ' ὣς παύεσθαι τῆς μανίας τοὺς νεανίσκους. καὶ τῇ ἐπιούσῃ τῶν ἡμερῶν παραγενομένων τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἐγκληθέντες οἱ νεανίσκοι ἔτι ναυτιῶντες ἀπεκρίναντο πυνθανομένων τῶν ἀρχόντων ὑπὸ χειμῶνος ἐνοχλούμενοι ἠναγκάσθαι ἀποφορτίσασθαι < … > τῇ θαλάσσῃ] τὰ περιττὰ τῶν φορτίων. θαυμαζόντων δὲ τῶν στρατηγῶν τὴν ἔκπληξιν τῶν ἀνδρῶν εἷς τῶν νεανίσκων, καίτοι δοκῶν τῶν ἄλλων πρεσβεύειν κατὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν, "ἐγὼ δ'," ἔφη, "ἄνδρες Τρίτωνες, ὑπὸ τοῦ δέους καταβαλὼν ἐμαυτὸν ὑπὸ τοὺς θαλάμους ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα κατωτάτω ἐκείμην." συγγνόντες οὖν τῇ αὐτῶν ἐκστάσει, ἐπιτιμήσαντες μὴ πλείονος οἴνου ἐμφορεῖσθαι ἀφῆκαν. καὶ οἳ χάριν ἔχειν ὁμολογήσαντες "ἂν λιμένος," ἔφησαν, "τύχωμεν ἀπαλλαγέντες τοσούτου κλύδωνος, Σωτῆρας ὑμᾶς ἐπιφανεῖς μετὰ τῶν θαλασσίων δαιμόνων ἐν τῇ πατρίδι ἱδρυσόμεθα ὡς αἰσίως ἡμῖν ἐπιφανέντας." ἐντεῦθεν ἡ οἰκία Tριήρης ἐκλήθη.
Timaeus of Tauromenium says that in Agrigentum there is a house which is called Trireme from the following circumstances. A party of young fellows were drinking in it and became so wild when overheated by the liquor that they imagined they were sailing in a trireme, and that they were in a bad storm on the ocean. Finally, they completely lost their senses and tossed all the furniture and bedding out of the house, as though upon the waters, convinced that the pilot directed them to lighten the ship because of the raging storm. Well, a great crowd gathered and began to carry off the jetsam, but even then the youngsters did not cease from their mad actions. The next day the military authorities appeared at the house and made complaint against the young men when they were still half-seas over. To the questions of the magistrates, they answered that they had been put much to it by a storm and had been compelled to throw into the sea the superfluous cargo. When the authorities expressed surprise at their insanity, one of the young men, though he appeared to be the eldest of the company, said to them, "Ye Tritons, I was so frightened that I threw myself into the lowest possible place in the hold and lay there." The magistrates, therefore, pardoned their delirium, but sentenced them never to drink too much, and let them go. They gratefully said, "If we ever make port after this awful tempest, we shall rear altars in our country to you, as Saviors in visible presence, side by side with the sea gods, because you appeared to us so opportunely." This is why the house was called Trireme.42
C. Werewolf
Petronius Satyrica 62 Konrad
Forte dominus Capuae exierat ad scruta scita expedienda. nactus ego occasionem persuadeo hospitem nostrum ut mecum ad quintum miliarium veniat. erat autem miles, fortis tamquam Orcus. apoculamus nos circa gallicinia, luna lucebat tamquam meridie. venimus inter monimenta: homo meus coepit ad stelas facere; sed ego <pergo> cantabundus et stelas numero. deinde ut respexi ad comitem, ille exuit se et omnia vestimenta secundum viam posuit. Mihi [in] anima in naso esse, stabam tamquam mortuus. at ille circumminxit vestimenta sua, et subito lupus factus est. nolite me iocari putare; ut mentiar, nullius patrimonium tanti facio. sed, quod coeperam dicere, postquam lupus factus est, ululare coepit et in silvas fugit. ego primitus nesciebam ubi essem, deinde accessi, ut vestimenta eius tollerem: illa autem lapidea facta sunt. qui mori timore nisi ego? gladium tamen strinxi et †matauitatau† umbras cecidi, donec ad villam amicae meae pervenirem. in larvam intravi, paene animam ebullivi, sudor mihi per bifurcum volabat, oculi mortui, vix umquam refectus sum. Melissa mea mirari coepit, quod tam sero ambularem, et: "Si ante, inquit, venisses, saltem nobis adiutasses; lupus enim villam intravit et omnia pecora … : tamquam lanius sanguinem illis misit. nec tamen derisit, etiam si fugit; senius enim noster lancea collum eius traiecit." haec ut audivi, operire oculos amplius non potui, sed luce clara †hac nostri† domum fugi tamquam copo compilatus, et postquam veni in illum locum in quo lapidea vestimenta erant facta, nihil inveni nisi sanguinem. ut vero domum veni, iacebat miles meus in lecto tamquam bovis, et collum illius medicus curabat. intellexi illum versipellem esse, nec postea cum illo panem gustare potui, non si me occidisses. viderint alii quid de hoc exopinissent; ego si mentior, genios vestros iratos habeam.
My master happened to have gone to Capua to look after some silly business or other. I seized my opportunity and persuaded a guest in our house to come with me as far as the fifth milestone. He was a soldier, and as brave as Hell. So we trotted off about cockcrow; the moon shone like high noon. We got among the tombstones: my man went aside to look at the epitaphs, I go on singing and begin to count the graves. Then when I looked round at my friend, he stripped himself and put all his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in my nose, I was standing there like a dead man. He urinated around his clothes and suddenly turned into a wolf. Please do not think I am joking; I would not lie about this for any fortune in the world. But as I was saying, after he had turned into a wolf, he began to howl and ran off into the woods. At first I hardly knew where I was, then I went up to take his clothes; but they had turned into stone. No one could be nearer dead with terror than I was. But I drew my sword and … slew shadows till I came to my love's house. I went in like a corpse,43 and nearly gave up the ghost, the sweat ran down my legs, my eyes were dull, I could hardly be revived. My dear Melissa was surprised at my being out so late, and said, "If you had come earlier you might at least have helped us; a wolf got into our farm and … all our sheep, and let their blood like a butcher. But he did not make fools of us, even though he got off; for our slave made a hole in his neck with a spear." When I heard this, I could not keep my eyes shut any longer, but at break of day I rushed home like a defrauded innkeeper, and when I came to the place where the clothes were turned into stone, I found nothing but a pool of blood. But when I reached home, my soldier was lying in bed like an ox, with a doctor looking after his neck. I realized that he was a werewolf, and I never could sit down to a meal with him afterwards, not if you had killed me first. Other people may think what they like about this; but may all your guardian angels punish me if I am lying.
D. Christian Initiation
1. Tertullian Apologeticum 2–3 Glover
(2) Veni, demerge ferrum in infantem nullius inimicum, nullius rerum, omnium filium; vel, si alterius officium est, tu modo adsiste morienti homini, antequam vixit; fugientem animam novam expecta, excipe rudem sanguinem, eo panem tuum satia, vescere libenter! (3) Interea discumbens dinumera loca, ubi mater, ubi soror; nota diligenter, ut, cum tenebrae ceciderint caninae, non erres! Piaculum enim admiseris, nisi incestum feceris.
Come, plunge the sword into an infant who is no one's enemy, guilty of no crime, the child of all; or if such bloodshed is another's duty, do you merely stand by a human being dying before he has really lived; wait for the flight of the new life; catch the scarce-formed blood; with it soak your bread, and enjoy your meal. Meantime, as you recline, count the places and mark where your mother, where your sister is; make a careful note, so that when the dogs have put out the lights, you may not make a mistake. For you will be guilty of sin if you fail to commit incest. Thus initiated and sealed, you live forever.44
2. Minucius Felix, Octavius 9.5–6 Beaujeu
(5) Iam de initiandis tirunculis fabula tam detestanda quam nota est. Infans farre contectus, ut decipiat incautos, adponitur ei qui sacris inbuatur. Is infans a tirunculo farris superficie quasi ad innoxios ictus provocato caecis occultisque vulneribus occiditur. Huius, pro nefas! sitienter sanguinem lambunt, huius certatim membra dispertiunt, hac foederantur hostia, hac conscientia sceleris ad silentium mutuum pignerantur. Haec sacra sacrilegiis omnibus taetriora. (6) Et de convivio notum est, passim omnes locuntur; id etiam Cirtensis nostri testatur oratio.
(5) Now the story about the initiation of novices is as much to be detested as it is well known. An infant, covered over with grain, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before the one who is to be steeped in their rites. This infant is slain by the novice, urged on by the surface of the grain, with dark and hidden wounds. Of this child—O horror!—they thirstily lick up the blood; they zealously divide its limbs; by this victim they are confederated; by this consciousness of wickedness they are pledged to mutual silence. These sacred rites are more foul than any sacrileges. (6) And of their banqueting it is well known, everyone speaks of it everywhere. To this a speech even of our Cirtensian testifies.
(Minucius Felix goes on to describe the banqueting, in which all the Christians, of all ages and both sexes, participate. Inflamed by drink, they darken the room and engage promiscuously in sexual relations, including incestuous ones.)45
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Footnotes
1. Huxley 1973.276: "The original purpose of the story was to explain the place named 'Horse and Maid' (where the house of Hippomenes once stood), but Aristotle characteristically gives a political emphasis to it."
2. I am grateful to William Hansen for calling this story to my attention.
3. From Puteoli, if he lives in the same place as Trimalchio. The distance would be about 156 miles, which seems improbable.
4. Cf. Thompson 1955–58 D562.2 (transformation by urine) and D563 (transformation by encircling an object thrice).
5. Cf. Tertullian Ad Nationes 1.7.23ff., quoted by Beaujeu 1964.88 n. 9.5.
6. Cf. Edmunds 2021 chap. 4 for the mythographers and the writing down of myths. The transcriptions of originally oral archaic poems, when and how, are vexed questions.
7. On the distinction between myth and hero legend, see Edmunds 2016.1–2, where I express doubts about the use of "legend" to refer to a category of Greek myth. It is a question unnecessary to enter into here.
8. The article on the folktale, Bausinger 1999 col. 250, in Ranke 1977– lists thirty (sic) other articles on particular kinds of folktales.
9. Cf. Bausinger 1999 col. 260: "Was in das Spannungsfeld des Märchens gerät, ist aus den Gesetzlichkeiten des Wirklichen … entlassen …"
10. They do not fit any of the descriptions of fable given by Adrados and Holzberg 2012.565 (who say that it is "impossible to give a fixed definition").
11. The first two attestations in the OED s.v. "urban legend" are an article in the magazine Vanity Fair (1931) and a passing reference in Dorson 1968. For comments on the history of this term and of "urban belief tale" in the scholarship on folk-narrative, see Doyle and Knight 2005.
12. For a history of research on the urban or contemporary legend, see Brednich 2004. He does not use "urban" or "contemporary" of this kind of story because he holds that the legends are neither exclusively urban nor contemporary. De Vos 2024.1: "I tend to refer to these stories as 'contemporary legends' …"
13. De Vos 2024.2: "The legends are usually very short, sometimes just a kernel of a story, sometimes just the kernel of a story that can be related in one or two sentences …"
14. Bennett and Smith 2007.xvii: "outrageous content in an everyday setting."
15. Brunvand used the term "urban belief tale" in the first two editions of his textbook The Study of American Folklore (1968 and 1978). Cf. Toselli 1994 and Bennett and Smith 2007.xvii on belief. Hansen 2017.16–18 discusses the urban legend as a kind of belief legend. De Vos 2024.2: "These legends are different from other folktales, because the tellers regularly believe that the legends they are relating are true."
16. As already from the 1990s: Toselli 1994.218, Brednich 2004 col. 1045, and Brunvand 2012.1.xxvi.
17. "Trireme" belongs to what Davidson 1998.45 calls "a rich Greek tradition of marine metaphors for the sympotic community."
18. See Delattre 2005.187–91 on myth and etiology. See Jedrkiewicz 1989.58–59, 230–31, and 371 on Aesop as etiologist.
19. Ellis 2001.47–50. He calls the gang initiation story a "contemporary legend." Cf. Bennett and Smith 2007.20–22 ("Mall Slashers"), 58–59 ("The Castrated Boy"), and 66–68 ("Lights Out!"); Brunvand 2012.1.376–77 ("Lights Out!"), 434–36 ("The Mutilated Boy"), and 441–44 ("National Gang Week").
20. As for the bewitched wolves and lions around the house of Circe, there is no indication that were once humans (Hom. Od. 10.210–13). See de Jong 2001.258 on Od. 10.212–19. Lycaon was turned into a permanent lycanthrope by Zeus. He was not a werewolf. Ogden 2020.9 criticizes "classical scholarship's enthronement of the Lykaon myth and the Lykaia rite as the focal and determinative phenomena of ancient werewolfism."
21. ἔτεος ἑκάστου ἅπαξ τῶν Νευρῶν ἕκαστος λύκος γίνεται ἡμέρας ὀλίγας καὶ αὖτις ὀπίσω ἐς τὠυτὸ κατίσταται, 4.105. See Asheri et al. 2007.656 on 4.105 for a bibliography on lycanthropy.
22. See the history of "Wolfmenschen" in de Blécourt 2013.14. cols. 977–80, who states that wolfmen "sind primär ein Phänomen der Sage" (col. 979).
23. I.e., in Bennett and Smith 2007 and Brunvand 2012.
24. For this definition: Brednich 2004 col. 1044; cf. Hansen 2017.18–19.
25. Baldwin 1992 discusses Niceros's story as an example of "Bulletinstil," a term that he takes from an article by Eduard Fraenkel, who used it to refer to an official Roman style for military reports (object at beginning of sentence or clause; verb at end; much asyndeton).
26. Pellizer 1982 chap. 5 and Pellizer 1994.
27. Some examples of this approach: Ghiron-Bistagne 1985 chooses three sources, Aeschines, Dio Chrysostom, and Diodorus Siculus, which, synthesized, she discusses in three nexuses: the origin of the story in a toponym, the Athenian girl and her father with a sociological perspective, and the broader Greek mythology of the horse. Petrarca 1990 focuses on the girl's sexual relations with the horse (schol. G Ov., see below p. 372), which he compares with the myth of Demeter and Poseidon. Delattre 2015 focuses on the horse's eating of the girl, which he argues is dismemberment and dispersal, not ingestion.
28. On oikopeda, see Fisher 2001.220 on 83–84. As Jordi Pàmias has pointed out to me, in both Aeschines and Nicolaus of Damascus, evidence of the veracity of the story is inscribed in the plot.
29. Oikonomides 1980 restored IG2 13126 (1st c. bce–1st c. ce), found at the Odeion, to be a marker of the house in which the horse and the girl were shut up together. "One might conjecture that the stele was erected for the tourists who flocked at this time from all over Greece and the Mediterranean world to see the great city of Athens" (47–48).
30. Wilamowitz 1898.122–24. Note Wilamowitz's argument on p. 122 that in the passage in Aristotle, Hippomenes is to be understood as an archon, not a king.
31. "Was dann weiter aus der monumentalen Ueberlieferung [his spelling] herausgesponnen ist, hat for die Geschichte keinen Wert" (124).
32. The tholos (round domed) tomb and the chamber tomb are the two main types of Mycenaean tomb; see Cavanagh 2008.328.
33. Sakellarakis and Sakellarakis 1992.76–85. I am grateful to Ruth Palmer for her extensive report on this excavation, from which I have extracted my brief account. D'Agata 2020 gives a survey of the burial and of the objects buried with the woman. She cites I. Sakellarakis 1970 and I. and E. Sakellarakis 1997.
34. Lists: Kosmetatou 1993 and Reese 1995.
35. See Balitsari and Papadopoulos 2019 for the contents of this tomb.
36. The strength is mental: see Chantraine 1968 s.v. μέμονα.
37. The name might have a sexual connotation. Cf. Empedocles frag. 66 DK = L-M D159: σχιστοὺς λειμῶνας … Ἀφροδἰτης ("divided meadows … of Aphrodite"); also Eur. Cyc. 171 λειμών ("meadow"). Cf. Archil. frag. 196a.23–24 W2: σχήσω γὰρ ἐς π̣ο̣η[φόρους/κ]ή̣πους ("For I'll keep to the lush garden"). For this kind of metaphor, see Motte 1973, Index Analytique s.v. pudendum muliebre.
38. An approach widely used in research on Greek myth: for the typology, see Edmunds 2021.126–27 and 131–34.
39. The translations are the author's, except where noted.
40. Cameron 1995.126: "The original version of the Diegeseis may well have been Hellenistic."
41. The Greek is corrupt. The word ἄβατος, "sanctuary," can be discerned.
42. Translation: Gulick 1927.163 and 165, with my revisions. For another translation: Hansen 2017.314–15.
43. Perhaps better "I entered like a ghost" as in Heseltine and Rouse 1987, accepting Buechler's ut larva. The trans. as a whole follows Heseltine 1913, with some revisions.
44. Trans. by Alexander Souter in Oehler, Mayor, and Souter 1917.
45. I gave a paper on "The Horse and the Girl" at the Universities of Milan and of Trieste in 1997 and at a conference organized by Robert Wallace at Northwestern University in 2003. I am grateful for comments received on those occasions and also, in that period, from Ruth Palmer and Adrienne Mayor. I gave a paper on "The Horse and the Girl" and "Trireme" at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2023. The discussion that followed has led to this article, which has benefited also from correspondence with William Hansen, Jordi Pàmias, and Leon Wash.
