39. “Round was the shape, in manner of compass,
Full of degrees, the height of sixty pas”
The building was a circle of steps or benches, as in the ancient
amphitheatre. Either the building was sixty paces high; or, more
probably, there were sixty of the steps or benches.
40. Yellow goldes: The sunflower, turnsol, or girasol, which
turns with and seems to watch the sun, as a jealous lover his
mistress.
41. Citheron: The Isle of Venus, Cythera, in the Aegean Sea;
now called Cerigo: not, as Chaucer’s form of the word might
imply, Mount Cithaeron, in the south-west of Boetia, which was
appropriated to other deities than Venus — to Jupiter, to
Bacchus, and the Muses.
42. It need not be said that Chaucer pays slight heed to
chronology in this passage, where the deeds of Turnus, the
glory of King Solomon, and the fate of Croesus are made
memories of the far past in the time of fabulous Theseus, the
Minotaur-slayer.
43. Champartie: divided power or possession; an old law-term,
signifying the maintenance of a person in a law suit on the
condition of receiving part of the property in dispute, if
recovered.