1. For a recent discussion, see Helen Foley, “Mothers and Daughters” in Jenifer Neils, ed., Coming of Age in Ancient Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 112–37, esp. 122–35.
2. Jennifer Larson offers a recent, thorough, and excellent overview of nymphs in the Greek world. See Larson, Greek Nymphs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. 91–120, for the relationship between nymphs and Olympian gods. The worship of nymphs by mortals is most evident in nympholepsy, or the divinatory powers often ascribed to nymphs. See Larson Greek Nymphs, 11–20.
3. As Mary Lefkowitz puts it, “in the case of myths involving the unions of gods or goddesses with mortal men and women, we should talk about abduction or seduction rather than rape, because the gods see to it that the experience, however transient, is pleasant for mortals. Moreover, the consequences of these unions are usually glorious for the families of the mortals involved, despite and even because of the suffering that individual members of the family may undergo” (M. Lefkowitz, “Seduction and Rape in Greek Myth,” in Angeliki E. Laiou, ed., Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1993), 17 [17–37].
4. Martin West, Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). This episode serves as the featured story of the hymn.
5. Satyrs are by far the most frequent mythological character depicted on the tens of thousands painted vases produced in Athens between the years 600 and 400 BC. See Guy Hedreen, Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1992). Greek vase painters did not shy away from sexually explicit scenes on vases, and it is interesting that nymphs never fall into that group. Unlike foreigners, female entertainers, and prostitutes, it is inappropriate to show nymphs in a sexually explicit context.