[Stanza xli.] line 3.
Leucadia, now Santa Maura. From the promontory (the Lover's Leap) Sappho is said to have thrown herself.
[Strabo (lib. x. cap. 2, ed. Paris, 1853, p. 388) gives Menander as an authority for the legend that Sappho was the first to take the "Lover's Leap" from the promontory of Leucate. Writers, he adds, better versed in antiquities ἀρχαιολογικώτεροι, prefer the claims of one Cephalus. Another legend, which he gives as a fact, perhaps gave birth to the later and more poetical fiction. The Leucadians, he says, once a year, on Apollo's day, were wont to hurl a criminal from the rock into the sea by way of expiation and propitiation. Birds of all kinds were attached to the victim to break his fall, and, if he reached the sea uninjured, there was a fleet of little boats ready to carry him to other shores. It is possible that dim memories of human sacrifice lingered in the islands, that in course of time victims were transformed into "lovers," and it is certain that poets and commentators, "prone to lie," are responsible for names and incidents.]
15.
Many a Roman chief and Asian King.
[Stanza xlv.] line 4.
It is said, that on the day previous to the battle of Actium, Antony had thirteen kings at his levee.
[Plutarch, in his Antonius, gives the names of "six auxiliary kings who fought under his banners," and mentions six other kings who did not attend in person but sent supplies. Shakespeare (Anthony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 6, lines 68-75), quoting Plutarch almost verbatim, enumerates ten kings who were "assembled" in Anthony's train—
"Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus,
Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king
Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;
King Malchus of Arabia; king of Pont;
Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king
Of Comagene; Polemon and Amintas,
The kings of Mede and Lycaonia,
With a more larger list of sceptres."