[f1]
Welcker, in the introductory remarks to his _Epischer Cyclus_ (§ 1), has
given what appear to me sufficient reasons for not confounding this
Proclus with the famous Platonist of the same name.
[f2]
This and other curious fragments from the wreck of the old Hellenic epos,
will be found in Becker's Scholia to Homer (Berlin, 1825), or in the
second volume of Welcker's Epic Cycle (Bonn, 1849), in the Appendix.
[f3]
See Thucydides, I. 9.
[f4]
See Welcker's _Trilogie_, Darmstadt, 1824, p. 408, who, however, here,
as in other parts of the same learned work, expends much superfluity of
ingenious conjecture on subjects which, from their very nature, are
necessarily barren of any certain result.
[f5]
Jove to Priam sent the eagle, of all flying things that be
Noblest made, his dark-winged hunter.
[f6]
_i.e._ The right hand--the hand which brandishes the spear, χερὸς ἐκ
δοριπάλτου; right being the lucky side in Greek augury.--ILIAD,
xxiv. 320.
[f7]
Calchas, the famous soothsayer of the Iliad.
[f8]
Diana.
[f9]
This excellent version I took from an article in the _Quarterly
Review_.--Vol. lxx. p. 340.
[f10]
The sacrifice of Iphigenia displeasing to Clytemnestra.
[f11]
Chalcis, a city in Eubœa, opposite Aulis.
[f12]
A river in Macedonia.
[f13]
The epithet καλλιπρώρου, _beautiful fronted_, applied to στόματος being
contrary to the genius of the English language, the translator must
content himself with the simple epithet.
[f14]
An old name for the Peloponnesus.
[f15]
Vulcan.
[f16]
Venus.
[f17]
The Furies.
[f18]
Mars.
[f19]
"My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne."--SHAKESPEARE, quoted by
Symmons.
[f20]
Æsculapius.
[f21]
_Swallow jabber_.--"Barbarians are called swallows because their speech
cannot be understood any more than the twitter of swallows."--_Stanley,
from Hesychius_.
[f22]
An epithet of Apollo from λοξὸς oblique, for which Macrobius (Sat. I. 17)
gives astronomical reasons; but it seems more obvious to say that the god
is so called from the obliqueness or obscurity of his oracles.
[f23]
From the looseness of the laws of quantity in English versification, it
may be as well to state here that I wish these lines of seven syllables
to be read as vv--', v--', v--'. not --' v, --' v , --' v, --'.
[f24]
The Furies.
[f25]
Dun-plumed. ξουθὰ.
"Because the poor brown bird, alas!
Sings in the garden sweet and true."
MISS BARRETT.
[f26]
"Most musical, most melancholy bird!
A melancholy bird? O idle thought!
In Nature there is nothing melancholy."
COLERIDGE
[f27]
See Introductory Remarks.
[f28]
The banquet of his own children, which Atreus offered to Thyestes.--See
Introductory Remarks.
[f29]
Apollo.
[f30]
πόρθμευμ ἀχέων, whence Acheron, so familiar to English ears; as in the
same way _Cocytus_, from κωκυω, to avail, and the other infernal streams,
with a like appropriateness.
[f31]
The house of Atreus, so called from Pleisthenes, one of the ancestry of
Agamemnon.