“From my distant caves cerulean.”
i.e., in the far West, extreme Atlantic, or “ends of the earth,” according to the Homeric phrase.
“To the ends I make my journey of the many-nurturing Earth,
There where Ocean, sire of gods, and ancient mother Tethys dwells,
They who nursed me in their palace, and my infant strength sustained,”
says Hera in the Iliad (XIV. 200).
“Enough my brother Atlas’ miseries grieve me.”
The reader will see by referring to the old editions and to Pot. that the following description of the miseries of Atlas and Typhon is, in the MS., given to Ocean; and, it must be confessed, there seems a peculiar dramatic propriety in making the old sea god hold up the fate of the Cilician Blaster as a warning to the son of Iapetus, whom he saw embarked in a similar career of hopeless rebellion against the Thunderer. But philological considerations, well stated by Schoe., have weighed with that editor, as with his predecessors Blom. and Well., whose authority and arguments I am for the present willing to follow, though not without some lingering doubts. The alteration of the text originally proceeded from Elmsley, and the original order of the dialogue is stoutly defended by Toepel. in his notes.