“There where his bird the altar decorates.”
I have here incorporated into the text the natural and unembarrassed meaning of this passage given by Pal. The bird of Jove, of course, is the eagle. What the Scholiast and Stan. say about the cock appears to be pure nonsense, which would never have been invented but for the confused order of the dialogue in the received text.
“Apollo, too, the pure, the exiled once.”
“They invoke Apollo to help them, strangers and fugitives, because that god himself had once been banished from heaven by Jove, and kept the herds of Admetus.
‘Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.’”—Stan.
“Here, Hermes likewise, as Greece knows the god.”
This plainly points out a distinction between the Greek and the famous Egyptian Hermes. So the Scholiast, and Stan. who quotes Cic., Nat. Deor. III. 22.