60. Hercules lost his life with the poisoned shirt of Nessus, sent
to him by the jealous Dejanira.
61. Of the secte Saturnine: Of the Saturnine school; so called
because his history of the Jewish wars narrated many horrors,
cruelties, and sufferings, over which Saturn was the presiding
deity. See note 71 to the Knight’s tale.
62. Compare the account of the “bodies seven” given by the
Canon’s Yeoman:
“Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe;
Mars iron, Mercury quicksilver we clepe;
Saturnus lead, and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus copper, by my father’s kin.”
63. Statius is called a “Tholosan,” because by some, among
them Dante, he was believed to have been a native of Tolosa,
now Toulouse. He wrote the “Thebais,” in twelve books, and
the “Achilleis,” of which only two were finished.
64. Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis were the names
attached to histories of the Trojan War pretended to have been
written immediately after the fall of Troy.
65. Lollius: The unrecognisable author whom Chaucer
professes to follow in his “Troilus and Cressida,” and who has
been thought to mean Boccaccio.
66. Guido de Colonna, or de Colempnis, was a native of
Messina, who lived about the end of the thirteenth century, and
wrote in Latin prose a history including the war of Troy.
67. English Gaufrid: Geoffrey of Monmouth, who drew from
Troy the original of the British race. See Spenser’s “Faerie
Queen,” book ii. canto x.
68. Lucan, in his “Pharsalia,” a poem in ten books, recounted
the incidents of the war between Caesar and Pompey.
69. Claudian of Alexandria, “the most modern of the ancient
poets,” lived some three centuries after Christ, and among other
works wrote three books on “The Rape of Proserpine.”
70. Triton was a son of Poseidon or Neptune, and represented
usually as blowing a trumpet made of a conch or shell; he is
therefore introduced by Chaucer as the squire of Aeolus.