[1690]. 'St. Augustin, commenting on the story in the milder and more rational spirit of Christian morality, while he admires the purity of Lucrece, blames her folly in committing the crime of self-murder as a punishment on herself for that of which she was really innocent. "Si adultera," he asks, "cur laudata? Si pudica, cur occisa?" See August. De Civitate Dei, c. xix.'—Bell.
[1694]. Here Chaucer begins his close copy of Ovid, Fast. ii. 721:—'Cingitur interea Romanis Ardea signis.' The original should be compared throughout. Ardea, capital of the Rutuli; in Latium.
[1696]. Wroghte, pt. t. 'The siege (or the besiegers) lay before the city long, and accomplished little'; G. L. Kittredge, Harvard Studies, p. 7.
[1698]. 'Tarquinius iuuenis'; i.e. Tarquinius Sextus.
[1705]. Colatyne. Chaucer found the name in Livy (or Augustine). Ovid merely has: 'cui dederat clarum Collatia nomen.' Livy has: 'ubi et Collatinus cenebat Tarquinius, Egerii filius.' Collatinus was the cousin of Sextus, and took his name from Collatia, an ancient town of the Sabines, in the neighbourhood of Rome.
[1707]. From Ovid: 'Non opus est uerbis, credite rebus, ait.'
[1708]. From Livy: 'paucis id quidem horis posse sciri, quantum ceteris praestet Lucretia sua.'
[1711]. 'That pleases me.' Ovid: 'Dicta placent'; l. 736.
[1715]. Cf. 'And knew the estres bet than dide this John'; C. T., A 4295 (Reves Tale); and see Kn. Ta., A 1971; also, in particular, the Romaunt of the Rose, 1448, where the F. text has l'estre (shewing where Ch. found the word); see vol. i. p. 153.
We may explain estres by 'inner premises' of a house or building. Godefroy's O. Fr. Dict. gives numerous examples. Cotgrave gives the verb estre, to be; whence the sb. estre, a being, substance, state; and then cites: 'les estres d'une maison, the inward conveyances, private windings and turnings within, entries into, issues out of, a house.' The word is very common in Old French, and not uncommon in Middle English. Gower even has the sing. estre in the sense of 'state'; C. A. i. 272. Cf. F. 'il sait tous les êtres de cette maison.'