The Complete Plays (103 page)

Jupiter
most powerful of all the gods. The son of Saturn, who attempted to eat him in his infancy, he was protected by his mother Ops, and overthrew his father; famed for his use of thunderbolts to resolve disputes both human and divine, and his wide-ranging and insatiable sexual appetites; also frequently called Jove.

Justinian
Flavius Petrus Justinianus (
c
.
AD
482–565), Roman emperor at Constantinople who codified Roman law in his
Corpus juris civilis
.

Lacedaemon
Sparta.

Lantchidol
the Indian Ocean.

Laocoön
Trojan priest who tried to prevent his countrymen from accepting the Trojan Horse, but who was killed with his sons by a monstrous sea-snake.

Larissa
coastal town on the border between Syria and Egypt.

Latona
beloved of Jupiter, mother to both Diana and Apollo.

Lavinia
princess of Latium in Virgil's
Aeneid
; she was destined to marry Aeneas, the destroyer of her betrothed, Turnus.

Leander
the hero of Marlowe's poem
Hero and Leander
, he swam the Hellespont to meet his beloved Hero, but died trying to swim home.

Lerna
site of a swamp in Greece, home of the monstrous Hydra which Hercules killed.

Lesbia
the woman addressed in the erotic poetry of Catullus.

Lethe
one of the three rivers of the underworld; its waters induced forgetfulness.

Limnasphaltis
bituminous lake near Babylon; its fumes supposedly killed birds which flew over it.

Lopus, Doctor
Dr Roderigo Lopez, Elizabeth I's physician, who was hanged in 1594 for his alleged involvement in a plot to poison the queen.

Machda
Abyssinian town, capital of the legendary Christian king of Ethiopia, Prester John.

Machevil
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Italian historian and political thinker; reviled in Elizabethan England for supposed atheism and for the advocacy of ruthlessness in his manual for rulers,
The Prince
.

Manico
Manicongo, an African province.

Mare Maggiore
the Black Sea.

Mare Rosso
the Red Sea.

Maro
see Virgil.

Mars
god of war and lover of Venus.

Mauritania
province of north-west Africa.

Mausolus
4th-century
BC
king of Caria in Asia Minor, whose tomb, the Mausoleum, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Media
province of the Persian empire.

Megaera
one of the Furies.

Meleager
a prince of Calydon, who heroically killed the wild boar Diana sent to ravage his land.

Memphis
former capital of Egypt and site of the Pyramids.

Menelaus
the king of Sparta, married to Helen, who was carried off by the Trojan prince Paris, thus precipitating the Trojan War. In Elizabethan literature he was commonly associated with ineffectualness and cuckoldry.

Mercury
messenger of the gods, and god of travellers, lawyers and thieves.

Midas
king of Phrygia, whose touch turned all things to gold (including, unfortunately, his food). He judged the music of the satyr Marsyas superior to that of Apollo, for which misjudgement the god made asses' ears grow on his head.

Minerva
goddess of war, wisdom and handicrafts; her shield bore the head of the gorgon Medusa, who was killed by Perseus with her assistance.

Morpheus
god of dreams.

Musaeus
legendary poet whom Aeneas meets in his journey through the underworld in Virgil's
Aeneid
(VI, 666–7).

Myrmidons
the bodyguard of Achilles.

Natolia
Anatolia, the entire promontory of Asia Minor. Marlowe sometimes uses it as the name of a town in the region.

Neoptolemus
the son of Achilles; also called Pyrrhus.

Neptune
god of all waters, including the sea; he shared the dominion of the world with Jupiter and Pluto.

Nigra Silva
the ‘Black Forest' of Hercynia, held to be highly dangerous in the 16th century.

Nilus
the river Nile.

Ninus
the first Assyrian king, founder of Nineveh; his queen was Semiramis.

Niobe
in Greek myth, she boasted that her seven children made her superior to Leto (Latona), the mother of Apollo and Artemis; in revenge, these two killed all her children with their arrows. Niobe wept until she was turned to a pillar of stone, which continued to weep.

Nubia
north African province between the Red Sea and the Nile.

Oblia
Olbia, area near the Black Forest.

Oceanus
god of the ocean.

Octavius
(63
BC–AD
14), nephew of Julius Caesar; later known as Augustus; ruler of Rome.

Oenone
a nymph of Mount Ida, who stabbed herself when her former lover, Paris, died at her feet during the Trojan War.

Olympus
the highest mountain in Greece, reputedly the habitation of the twelve gods, as well as the birthplace and home of the Muses.

O'Neill
Irish clan leader in the reign of Edward II.

Ops
goddess of the earth, fecundity and riches, wife of Saturn, and mother of Jupiter, who eventually usurped Saturn's throne.

Orcus
Roman name for Hades, god of the underworld.

Orestes
son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; he killed his mother in revenge for her murder of his father, and was subsequently pursued by the Eumenides (the Furies) but aided by his loyal friend Pylades and his sister Electra.

Orion
a giant blind huntsman, transformed after his death into the constellation bearing his name, which is predominant in winter.

Orminius
Mount Horminius, in Natolia (Asia Minor).

Ormus
prosperous trading city in the Persian Gulf.

Padua
north Italian town, famous for its university.

Paean
cult-name of Apollo as god of healing.

Pampelonia
Pamplona, capital of Navarre.

Paphos
town in Cyprus.

Paris
son of Priam and Hecuba. The most beautiful man in the world, he was chosen to decide which goddess should be awarded a golden apple inscribed ‘for the most beautiful'. Offered greatness by Juno, conquest by Minerva and the gift of the most beautiful woman in the world (Helen, the wife of Menelaus) by Venus, he gave the apple to Venus. He deserted his lover Oenone and abducted Helen, precipitating the Trojan War.

Parma, Prince of
Tyrannical Spanish governor-general of the Netherlands (1579–92), who was a byword for Catholic cruelty.

Parthia
Asian kingdom, south-east of the Caspian Sea.

Patroclus
friend and possibly lover of Achilles.

Pegasus
winged horse, associated with Mount Helicon, home of the Muses.

Penelope
wife of Odysseus and archetype of marital fidelity who frustrated her many suitors by insisting that she would not remarry until she had completed a shroud for her father-in-law. During her husband's absence she spent each night unravelling the shroud to ensure that it would never be finished.

Pergama
(Pergamum) Troy.

Persepolis
capital of Persia.

Phaethon
‘the shining one', son of Apollo, the sun-god, who ignored warnings not to ride his father's chariot. When he lost control, he burnt a scar in the sky (the Milky Way) and plummeted to earth; Jupiter destroyed him with a thunderbolt during his descent, and thus prevented the destruction of the earth.

Phalaris
6th-century
BC
tyrant of Acragas (Agrigento) in Sicily. He roasted his enemies to death in a brazen bull, which was later used to kill him. A series of improbably humane letters were attributed to him.

Pharsalus
site of the most savage battle of the Roman civil wars, at which Julius Caesar defeated Pompey (48
BC
). It gave its title to Lucan's epic poem
Pharsalia
, of which Marlowe translated the opening book.

Philip
Philip II, King of Spain 1556–98, briefly husband to ‘Bloody' Mary Tudor, and the monarch responsible for the almost successful invasion of England by his Armada in 1588.

Phlegethon
a river of fire, a boundary to the underworld.

Phoebe
Diana, goddess of the moon.

Phoebus
Apollo, god of the sun.

Phoenissa
see Dido.

Phrygia
the region of Troy in western Asia Minor.

Phyteus
rare name for Apollo, i.e. the sun.

Pierides
the daughters of King Pierus of Thessaly; they challenged the Muses to a song contest and were turned into magpies for their presumption.

Pliny
Caius Plinius Secundus (
AD
23–79), ‘the Elder'; Roman writer, compiler of an encyclopaedic
Natural History
.

Pluto
the god who ruled the underworld; he abducted Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres, from Sicily, and made her his queen.

Podalia
in the southern part of Russia, close to Romania.

Polony
Poland.

Polyphemus
Cyclops who ate people until his single eye was blinded by Ulysses.

Polyxena
daughter of Priam and Hecuba; she was sacrificed by Neoptolemus on the tomb of Achilles.

Portingale, Bay of
Bay of Biscay.

Priam
king of Troy and father (in Homer) of fifty sons and many daughters.

Procne
wife of the Thracian king Tereus; when he raped her sister Philomela she served up her own son Itys to him in a stew.

Prometheus
Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans.

Proserpina
daughter of Jupiter and Ceres, Proserpina (Greek Persephone) was abducted by Pluto, who made her queen of the underworld; her
distraught mother persuaded Jupiter to allow Proserpina to live half the year with her (summer) and half with Pluto (winter).

Proteus
omniscient sea-god who could change shape.

Pygmalion
a king of Cyprus who created a statue with which he fell in love; at his entreaty Venus brought the statue to life.

Pylades
devoted friend of Orestes.

Pyrrhus
son of Achilles (also called Neoptolemus).

Pythagoras 6th-century
BC
Greek philosopher, ascetic and mathematician, who originated the doctrine of metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls.

Ramus
Pierre de la Ramée (1515–72); French humanist and philosopher who advocated a simplification of Aristotelian logic and rhetoric; killed in the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

Rhadamanthus
son of Zeus, whose just life was posthumously acknowledged by his being made a judge of the dead.

Rhamnus
site of the temple of Nemesis in Attica.

Rhamnusia
Nemesis, goddess of fate and retribution, whose temple stood at Rhamnus in Attica.

Rhesus
Thracian ally of the Greeks at Troy.

Rhode
Stadtroda, in eastern Germany.

Rhodope
(i) mountain in Thrace, famed as the site of Orpheus' dismemberment and for its silver mines; (ii) queen of Thrace; (iii) Greek courtesan.

Riso
town on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor.

Roscius
celebrated actor in 1st-century
BC
Rome.

Rutiles
Italian tribe ruled by Turnus.

Saba
in the Old Testament, Sheba, whose queen challenged Solomon with ‘hard questions' (1 Kings 10:1).

Samarcanda
Samarkand, central Asian town, south-east of the Aral Sea.

Samnites
an ancient people of central Italy.

Sancina
town on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor.

Saturn
god of time and leader of the Titans; father of Pluto, Neptune, Juno and Jupiter, the last of whom overthrew him and ended the Golden Age.

Saturnia
see Juno.

Saul
king of Israel; God ordered him to destroy the Amalekites completely, but he spared King Agag and the best of the flocks, until rebuked by Samuel for his disobedience (1 Samuel 15).

Scalonia
Ascalon, usually called Scalonia on ancient maps, a Philistine city on the coast of Palestine.

Scheckius
Jacob Shegk (1511–87); German logician, opponent of Ramus in a famous philosophical dispute over the value of Aristotle.

Scylla
a monster from whose lower body grew the heads of barking dogs. She menaced ships in the Straits of Messina, opposite the whirlpool Charybdis.

Selinus
Sicilian town, site of a temple to Jupiter.

Semele
one of Jupiter's lovers, who was consumed by lightning when she demanded that he should appear to her in his true form.