Note [453] page 274. Mount Athos (6780 feet high) forms the extremity of the easternmost peninsula of Chalcidice in Macedonia. During the Persian invasion of Xerxes (480 B.C.) it was temporarily converted into an island, and since the Middle Ages has been noted for its monasteries. Both Vitruvius and Plutarch give an account of the project mentioned in the text, and ascribe it to a Macedonian architect who appears under the names, Dinocrates, Cheirocrates, and Stasicrates,—and who also planned the city of Alexandria and was chosen to rebuild the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The statue was to represent Alexander, who is said to have abandoned the idea when he learned that the city to be placed in the hand of the statue would be without territory and could be provisioned only by sea,—saying that such a city would be like a child that cannot grow for failure of its nurse’s milk.

Note [454] page 275. In Athenian legend Procrustes was a cruel robber, who had a bed upon which he tortured his captives by stretching those who were too short and by cutting off the legs of those who were too long. He was finally slain by the hero Theseus.

Sciron was another legendary Attic robber, who compelled his victims to wash his feet on the Scironian rocks near Athens, and then kicked them into the sea where they served to fatten the turtles upon which he fed. He also was slain by Theseus, and in the same manner in which he had slain others.

In Roman myth Cacus was a gigantic son of Vulcan, living near the site of Rome. He robbed Hercules of some of the cattle stolen from the monster Geryon, and dragged them into his cave backwards, so that they could not be tracked; but Hercules discovered them by their lowing, and slew the thief.

Diomed (not the Argive prince of the Iliad, but Ares’s mythical son, who was king over the Bistones in Thrace) was slain by Hercules because he was accustomed to feed his mares on human flesh.

Antæus was a fabulous and gigantic wrestler of Libya, reputed to be the son of Poseidon and Gæa, the Earth goddess. Being held aloft and thus deprived of the miraculous strength derived from contact with his mother earth, he was crushed to death by Hercules. Geryon was the mythical three-headed king of Hesperia, the theft of whose cattle constituted the tenth of the Twelve Labours of Hercules.

Note [455] page 275. “The crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and the members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy. Tyrannicide became honourable; and the proverb, ‘He who gives his own life can take a tyrant’s,’ had worked itself into the popular language.” (Symonds’s “Renaissance in Italy,” i, 154.) “The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this time as also during the French Revolution, fired the imagination of patriots.” (Id., 151, note 2.)

Note [456] page 275. Similar exhortations to a fresh crusade are of frequent occurrence in Italian literature of this period, and were often used by popes and princes as a cover for their selfish designs.

Note [457] page 275. The meaning obviously is that if they had not been exiled, they never would have enjoyed their present prosperity. Plutarch tells the story in four slightly varying forms.

Note [458] page 276. Monseigneur d’Angoulême afterwards became Francis I (see note [111]). Even stronger evidence of the author’s admiration than this and another passage (see page [57]), is afforded by the Proem with which he originally intended to preface the dialogues, but for which he seems to have been led by political considerations to substitute the introduction finally printed.