Illustrative. John Gay, Song of Polypheme (in Acis and Galatea); A. Dobson, A Tale of Polypheme; R. Buchanan, Polypheme's Passion; Shelley, The Cyclops of Euripides; Translations of Theocritus by Mrs. Browning and by Calverley; J. S. Blackie, Galatea; B. W. Procter, The Death of Acis. See also on the Cyclops, Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, IV, iii; Hamlet, II, ii.
In Art. Fig. 112, text; Carracci's frescoes in the Farnese Palace, Rome, of Polyphemus, Acis and Galatea; Claude Lorrain's painting, Evening, Acis and Galatea; Raphael's Triumph of Galatea.
142. Textual. For descent of Glaucus, see Tables G and I. For Scylla's descent, see Table C. See Keats, Endymion, Bk. 3.
Interpretative. Glaucus is explained by some as the calm gleaming sea; by others, as the angry sea that reflects the lowering heavens (see Roscher, p. 1690). Scylla is a personification of treacherous currents and shallows among jagged cliffs and hidden rocks.
144. For genealogy of Ino, see Table E. "Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed The Earth" (Milton, Paradise Lost, 11, 135).
145. Cyrene was sister to Daphne. Honey must first have been known as a wild product, the bees building their structures in hollow trees, or holes in the rocks, or any similar cavity that chance offered. Thus occasionally the carcass of a dead animal would be occupied by the bees for that purpose. It was no doubt from some such incident that the superstition arose that bees were engendered by the decaying flesh of the animal. Virgil assigns to Proteus the isle of Carpathus, between Crete and Rhodes; Homer, the isle of Pharus, near the river Nile.
Illustrative. See C. 50. Proteus, a poem by R. Buchanan. On Aristæus, Cowper's Task, comparison of the ice-palace of Empress Anne of Russia with Cyrene's palace. Milton probably thought of Cyrene in describing Sabrina (Comus). He calls Proteus "the Carpathian Wizard."
146-147. Textual. Acheloüs: the largest river in Greece, rose in Mount Lacmon, flowed between Acarnania and Ætolia, and emptied into the Ionian Sea. It was honored over all Greece. Calydon: a city of Ætolia, famed for the Calydonian Hunt. Parthenope, see 238. Ligea (Ligeia): the shrill-sounding maiden; here a Siren; sometimes a Dryad.
Interpretative. Even among the ancients such stories as this were explained on a physical basis: the river Acheloüs flows through the realm of Dejanira, hence Acheloüs loves Dejanira. When the river winds it is a snake, when it roars it is a bull, when it overflows its banks it puts forth new horns. Hercules is supposed to have regulated the course of the stream by confining it within a new and suitable channel. At the same time the old channel, redeemed from the stream, subjected to cultivation, and blossoming with flowers, might well be called a horn of plenty. There is another account of the origin of the Cornucopia. Jupiter at his birth was committed by his mother Rhea to the care of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the infant deity with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter, breaking off one of the horns of the goat, gave it to his nurses, and endowed it with the power of becoming filled with whatever the possessor might wish.