496. 'Across the arch which usually divides the chancel from the nave in
English churches was stretched a _beam_, on which was placed a _rood_,
i. e. a figure of our Lord on the cross.'--Bell.
498. In the margin of E. is the note:--'Appelles fecit mirabile opus [304]
in tumulo Darij: vnde in Alexandro, libro sexto.' There is a similar
sidenote at C. 16; see note to that line. This tomb of Darius is due to
fiction. The description of it occurs (as said) in the sixth book of the
Alexandreid, a vast poem in Latin, by one Philippe Gualtier de Chatillon, a
native of Lille and a canon of Tournay, who flourished about A. D. 1200.
According to this poet, the tomb was the work of a Jewish artist named
Apelles. See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 353-5, and G. Douglas, ed.
Small, i. 134.