Book XXIII

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According to the oriental custom. David mourns in the same manner, refusing to wash or take any repast, and lies upon the earth.

[Bacchus having hospitably entertained Vulcan in the island of Naxos, one of the Cyclades, received from him a cup as a present; but being driven afterward by Lycurgus into the sea, and kindly protected by Thetis, he presented her with this work of Vulcan, which she gave to Achilles for a receptacle of his bones after death.]—Tr.

[The funeral pile was a square of a hundred feet on each side.]—Tr.

The ceremony of cutting off the hair in honor of the dead, was practised not only among the Greeks, but among other nations. Ezekiel describing a great lamentation, says, “They shall make themselves utterly bald for thee.” ch. xxvii. 31. If it was the general custom of any country to wear long hair, then the cutting it off was a token of sorrow; but if the custom was to wear it short, then letting it grow, in neglect, was a sign of mourning.

It was the custom of the ancients not only to offer their own hair to the river-gods of their country, but also the hair of their children. In Egypt hair was consecrated to the Nile.

[Westering wheel.—Milton.]

[Himself and the Myrmidons.]

[That the body might be the more speedily consumed. The same end was promoted by the flagons of oil and honey.]—Tr.

Homer here introduces the gods of the winds in person, and as Iris, or the rainbow, is a sign of winds, they are made to come at her bidding.

[Such it appears to have been in the sequel.]—Tr.

[Φιαλη—a vessel, as Athenæus describes it, made for the purpose of warming water. It was formed of brass, and expanded somewhat in the shape of a broad leaf.]—Tr.

The poet omits no opportunity of paying honor to Nestor. His age has disabled him from taking an active part in the games, yet, Antilochus wins, not by the speed of his horses, but by the wisdom of Nestor.

[This could not happen unless the felly of the wheel were nearly horizontal to the eye of the spectator, in which case the chariot must be infallibly overturned.—There is an obscurity in the passage which none of the commentators explain. The Scholiast, as quoted by Clarke, attempts an explanation, but, I think, not successfully.]—Tr.

[Eumelus.]

[Resentful of the attack made on him by Diomede in the fifth Book.]

[The twin monster or double man called the Molions. They were sons of Actor and Molione, and are said to have had two heads with four hands and four feet, and being so formed were invincible both in battle and in athletic exercises. Even Hercules could only slay them by stratagem, which he did when he desolated Elis. See Villoisson.]—Tr.

[The repetition follows the original.]—Tr.

[παρακαββαλε.]

[With which they bound on the cestus.]—Tr.

[τετριγει—It is a circumstance on which the Scholiast observes that it denotes in a wrestler the greatest possible bodily strength and firmness of position.—See Villoisson.]—Tr.

[I have given what seems to me the most probable interpretation, and such a one as to any person who has ever witnessed a wrestling-match, will, I presume, appear intelligible.]—Tr.

[The Sidonians were celebrated not only as the most ingenious artists but as great adepts in science, especially in astronomy and arithmetical calculation.]—Tr.

[King of Lemnos.]

[That is to say, Ulysses; who, from the first intending it, had run close behind him.]—Tr.

The prodigious weight and size of the quoit is described with the simplicity of the orientals, and in the manner of the heroic ages. The poet does not specify the quantity of this enormous piece of iron, but the use it will be to the winner. We see from hence that the ancients in the prizes they proposed, had in view not only the honorable but the useful; a captive for work, a bull for tillage, a quoit for the provision of iron, which in those days was scarce.

[The use of this staff was to separate the cattle. It had a string attached to the lower part of it, which the herdsman wound about his hand, and by the help of it whirled the staff to a prodigious distance.—Villoisson.]—Tr.

[The transition from narrative to dramatic follows the original.]—Tr.

[Apollo; frequently by Homer called the King without any addition.]—Tr.

Teucer is eminent for his archery, yet he is excelled by Meriones, who had not neglected to invoke Apollo the god of archery.

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