Study Questions

1. What was the role of Hercules in the history of Crotona?

2. What was the significance of the founding of Crotona?

3. What were the two main teachings of Pythagoras?

4. What personal testimony did Pythagoras give of metempsychosis?

5. To what episode in the Metamorphoses does “Salmacis” allude to?

6. Identify the allusions to Delos, the Argo, and the Clashing Rocks.

7. How could Pythagoras “remember” what Helenus told Aeneas?

8. What is the intention of Hippolytus in talking to Egeria?

9. Where is Etruria?

10. Why was Venus so interested in the destiny of Caesar?

Answers

1. Hercules predicted that a city would be founded on that spot.

2. Crotona was the first Greek settlement in Italy proper.

3. Pythagoras taught vegetarianism and metempsychosis.

4. Pythagoras claimed to remember his previous life as a Trojan.

5. Ovid relates the story of the pool Salmacis in Book Four.

6. The myth of the Argonauts is told in Books Five and Six.

7. Euphorbus was dead by the time of Helenus’ prophecy; the only way he could “remember” it was through divine revelation by Apollo.

8. Hippolytus tries to console Egeria by suggesting that Numa still lives, though in a different incarnation.

9. Etruria is the present-day Tuscany, in Italy.

10. Julius Caesar traced his descent from Iulus, Aeneas’ son.