[240]. i.e., “Unconsecrate,” marked out by no barriers, accessible to all, and therefore seeming to offer but little prospect of a safe asylum. The place described seems to have been an open piece of turf rather than a grove of trees.
[241]. Comp. the narrative as given in Prometheus Bound, vv. 660, et seq.
[242]. Teuthras' fort, or Teuthrania, is described by Strabo (xii. p. 571) as lying between the Hellespont and Mount Sipylos, in Magnesia.
[243]. Kypros, as dedicated to the worship of Aphrodite, and famous for its wine, and oil, and corn.
[244]. The question, what caused the mysterious exceptional inundations of the Nile, occupied, as we see from Herodotos (ii. c. 19-27), the minds of the Greeks. Of the four theories which the historian discusses, Æschylos adopts that which referred it to the melting of the snows on the mountains of central Africa.
[245]. Typhon, the mythical embodiment of the power of evil, was fabled to have wandered over Egypt, seeking the body of Osiris. Isis, to baffle him, placed coffins in all parts of Egypt, all empty but the one which contained the body.
[246]. The fame of the Nile for the purity of its water, after the earthy matter held in solution had been deposited, seems to have been as great in the earliest periods of its history as it is now.
[247]. Io was represented as a woman with a heifer's head, and was probably a symbolic representation of the moon, with her crescent horns. Sometimes the transformation is described (as in v. 294) in words which imply a more thorough change.
[248]. Perhaps—
“For not as subject sitting 'neath the sway