Dante.
[8] Page [18]. To him, the chosen of Calliope.
Petrarch was born in exile, of Florentine parents.
[9] Page [19]. And high o’er all, the Fates’ mysterious chant.
Popular rumor related that over the field of Marathon the sailor could hear all night the trampling of horses, and witness the encounter of spectral combatants.
And the proud surge exult, that bore of old
Achilles’ armor to Rhetœum’s shore,
Where Ajax sleeps.
“The shield of Achilles, stained with the blood of Hector, was by an unjust sentence adjudged to Ulysses; but the sea which snatched it from the wreck, caused it to swim, not to Ithaca, but to the tomb of Ajax; thus manifesting the unfair judgment of the Greeks, and restoring to Salamis the honor due.—It is said that the story of the arms borne by the waves to the sepulchre of Telamon was current among the Eolians who afterwards inhabited Troy. The promontory of Rhetœum, in the Thracian Bosphorus, was famous among all the ancients for the tomb of Ajax.”