'Ye sustren nyne eek, that by Elicone
In hil Parnaso listen for tabyde.'
17. _Cirrea_, Cirra. Chaucer was thinking of the adj. _Cirræus_. Cirra was
an ancient town near Delphi, under Parnassus. Dante mentions _Cirra_,
Parad. i. 36; and _Parnaso_ just above, l. 16. Perhaps Chaucer took it from
him.
20. A common simile. So Spenser, F. Q. i. 12. 1, 42; and at the end of the
Thebaid and the Teseide both.
21. _Stace_, Statius; i. e. the Thebaid; whence some of the next stanzas
are more or less borrowed. Chaucer epitomises the general contents of the
Thebaid in his Troilus; v. 1484, &c.
_Corinne_, not Corinna (as some have thought, for she has nothing to do
with the matter), but Corinnus. Corinnus was a disciple of Palamedes, and
is said to have written an account of the Trojan War, and of the war of the
Trojan king Dardanus against the Paphlagonians, in the Dorian dialect.
Suidas asserts that Homer made some use of his writings. See Zedler,
Universal Lexicon; and Biog. Universelle. How Chaucer met with this name,
is not known. Possibly, however, Chaucer was thinking of _Colonna_, i. e.
Guido di Colonna, author of the medieval Bellum Trojanum. But this does not
help us, and it is at least as likely that the name _Corinne_ was merely
introduced by way of flourish; for no source has been discovered for the
latter part of the poem, which may have been entirely of his own invention.
For Palamedes, see Lydgate's Troy-book, bk. v. c. 36.
22. The verses from Statius, preserved in the MSS., are the three lines
following; from Thebais, xii. 519:--
'Jamque domos patrias Scythicæ post aspera gentis
Prælia laurigero subeuntem Thesea curru,
Lætifici plausus missusque ad sidera vulgi,' &c.
The first line and half the second appear also in the MSS. of the
Canterbury Tales, at the head of the Knightes Tale, which commences, so to
speak, at the same point (l. 765 in Lewis's translation of the Thebaid).
Comparing these lines of Statius with the lines in Chaucer, we at once see
how he came by the word _aspre_ and the expression _With laurer crouned_.
The whole of this stanza (ll. 22-28) is expanded from the three lines here
quoted.