(ll. 1019-1020) These are the immortal goddesses who lay with mortal men and bare them children like unto gods.

(ll. 1021-1022) But now, sweet-voiced Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus who holds the aegis, sing of the company of women.

ENDNOTES: 

(1) The epithet probably indicates coquettishness.
(2) A proverbial saying meaning, `why enlarge on irrelevant
     topics?’
(3) `She of the noble voice’:  Calliope is queen of Epic poetry.
(4) Earth, in the cosmology of Hesiod, is a disk surrounded by
     the river Oceanus and floating upon a waste of waters.  It
     is called the foundation of all (the qualification `the
     deathless ones...’ etc. is an interpolation), because not
     only trees, men, and animals, but even the hills and seas
     (ll. 129, 131) are supported by it.
(5) Aether is the bright, untainted upper atmosphere, as
     distinguished from Aer, the lower atmosphere of the earth.
(6) Brontes is the Thunderer; Steropes, the Lightener; and
     Arges, the Vivid One.
(7) The myth accounts for the separation of Heaven and Earth. 
     In Egyptian cosmology Nut (the Sky) is thrust and held apart
     from her brother Geb (the Earth) by their father Shu, who
     corresponds to the Greek Atlas.
(8) Nymphs of the ash-trees, as Dryads are nymphs of the oak-
     trees.  Cp. note on “Works and Days”, l. 145.
(9) `Member-loving’:  the title is perhaps only a perversion of
     the regular PHILOMEIDES (laughter-loving).
(10) Cletho (the Spinner) is she who spins the thread of man’s
     life; Lachesis (the Disposer of Lots) assigns to each man
     his destiny; Atropos (She who cannot be turned) is the `Fury
     with the abhorred shears.’
(11) Many of the names which follow express various qualities or
     aspects of the sea:  thus Galene is `Calm’, Cymothoe is the
     `Wave-swift’, Pherusa and Dynamene are `She who speeds
     (ships)’ and `She who has power’.
(12) The `Wave-receiver’ and the `Wave-stiller’.
(13) `The Unerring’ or `Truthful’; cp. l. 235.
(14) i.e.  Poseidon.
(15) Goettling notes that some of these nymphs derive their names
     from lands over which they preside, as Europa, Asia, Doris,
     Ianeira (`Lady of the Ionians’), but that most are called
     after some quality which their streams possessed:  thus
     Xanthe is the `Brown’ or `Turbid’, Amphirho is the
     `Surrounding’ river, Ianthe is `She who delights’, and
     Ocyrrhoe is the `Swift-flowing’.
(16) i.e.  Eos, the `Early-born’.
(17) Van Lennep explains that Hecate, having no brothers to
     support her claim, might have been slighted.
(18) The goddess of the hearth (the Roman “Vesta"), and so of the
     house.  Cp.  “Homeric Hymns” v.22 ff.; xxxix.1 ff.
(19) The variant reading `of his father’ (sc.