'Et senior Glauci chorus, Inousque Palaemon,
Tritonesque citi, Phoreique exercitus omnis.
Laeua tenent Thetis et Melite, Panopeaque uirgo.'
Here we find Thetis, chorus, Triton; whilst 'and they alle' answers to exercitus omnis. (So also Bech.) Chorus is used for Caurus, the north-east wind, in Chaucer's Boethius, bk. iv. met. 5. 17; but this is not the purpose.
[2423]. Lond, i.e. Thrace. Phyllis, as said above, was the daughter of Sithon, king of Thrace; but both Chaucer and Gower make her father's name to be 'Ligurgus,' i.e. Lycurgus. This substitution may have been suggested by Ovid, Her. ii. 111—'quae tibi subieci latissima regna Lycurgi.' He is the same as the Lycurgus in Statius, Theb. iv. 386; in Ovid, Met. iv. 22, and in Homer, vi. 130; and was king of the Edoni, a people of Thrace. This accounts also for the introduction into the Knight's Tale of 'Ligurge himself, the grete king of Thrace'; l. 1271 (A 2129). Prof. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, ii. 232) has usefully pointed out that the immediate authority for making Lycurgus the father of Phyllis was Boccaccio's De Genealogia Deorum, lib. xi. c. 25, headed—'De Phyllidi Lycurgi filia.'
[2425]. On to sene, to look upon; cf. the parallel line, Kn. Ta., 177 (A 1035).
[2427]. Is y-wonne, is arrived. Cf. Æn. i. 173.
[2434]. Chevisaunce, borrowing; properly an agreement for borrowing money. See C. T. 13259, 13277, 13321 (B 1519, 1537, 1581); P. Plowman, B. 5. 249, and the note; and the Gloss. to Spenser.
[2438]. Rodopeya, the country near Rhodope, which was a mountain-range of Thrace, now a part of the Hæmus range. See l. 2498.
[2448]. 'As Reynard the fox doth, so (doth) the fox's son.' The line is incomplete, but the sense is clear. 'Reynard, which with us is a duplicate for fox, while in the French renard has quite excluded the older volpils, was originally not the name of a kind, but the proper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous beast-epic of the middle ages, Reineke Fuchs; the immense popularity of which we gather from many evidences, from none more clearly than this. Chanticleer is in like manner the name of the cock, and Bruin of the bear in the same poem.'—Trench, Eng. Past and Present. Reynard is from M.H.G. ragin-hart, strong in counsel; from ragin, counsel, and hart, strong.