Book IV

. l. 285.]

[Footnote 32: _Lake of Æthiopia._--Ver. 320. Possibly these may be the waters of trial, mentioned by Porphyry, as being used among the Indians. He says, that, according to their influence on the person accused, when drunk of by him, he was acquitted or condemned.]

[Footnote 33: _Clitorian spring._--Ver. 322. Clitorium was a town of Arcadia. Pliny the Elder, quoting from Varro, mentions the quality here referred to.]

[Footnote 34: _Son of Amithaon._--Ver. 325. Melampus, the physician, the son of Amithaon, cured Mera, Euryale, Lysippe, and Iphianassa, the daughters of Prœtus, king of Argos, of madness, which Venus was said to have inflicted on them for boasting of their superior beauty. Their derangement consisted in the fancy that they were changed into cows. Melampus afterwards married Iphianassa. He was said to have employed the herb hellebore in the cure, which thence obtained the name of ‘melampodium.’]

[Footnote 35: _Lyncestis._--Ver. 329. The Lyncesti were the people of the town of Lyncus, in Epirus. This stream flowed past that place.]

[Footnote 36: _Pheneos._--Ver. 332. Pheneos was the name of a town of Arcadia, afterwards called ‘Nonacris.’ In its neighbourhood, according to Pausanias, was a rock, from which water oozed drop by drop, which the Greeks called ‘the water of Styx.’ At certain periods it was said to be fatal to men and cattle, to break vessels with which it came in contact, and to melt all metals. Ovid is the only author that mentions the difference in its qualities by day and by night.]

[Footnote 37: _Ortygia._--Ver. 337. Ortygia, or Deloe, was said to have floated till it was made fast by Jupiter as a resting-place for Latona, when pregnant with Apollo and Diana. The Symplegades, or Cyanean Islands, were also said to have formerly floated.]

[Footnote 38: _Far Northern Pallene._--Ver. 356. Pallene was the name of a mountain and a city of Thrace. Tritonis was a lake in the neighbourhood. Vibius Sequester says, ‘When a person has nine times bathed himself in the Tritonian lake, in Thrace, he is changed into a bird.’ The continuous fall of fleecy snow in that neighbourhood is supposed by some to have given rise to the story.]

[Footnote 39: _Give any credit._--Ver. 361. This was a very common notion among the ancients. See the story of Aristæus and the recovery of his bees, in the Fourth Book of Virgil’s Georgics, I. 281-314. It is also told by Ovid in the Fasti,