3525. Claudius II., emperor of Rome, A.D. 268-270. He succeeded Gallienus, as Chaucer says, and was succeeded by Aurelian.
3535. Boccaccio calls them Heremianus and Timolaus, so that Hermanno (as in the MSS.) should probably be Heremanno. Professor Robertson Smith tells me that the right names are Herennianus and Timoleon. The line cannot well be scanned as it stands.
3550. char, chariot. Boccaccio describes this 'currum, quem sibi ex auro gemmisque praeciocissimum Zenobia fabricari fecerat.'
3556. charged, heavily laden. She was so laden with chains of massive gold, and covered with pearls and gems, that she could scarcely support the weight; so says Boccaccio. Gibbon says the same.
3562. vitremyte. I have no doubt this reading (as in Tyrwhitt) is correct. All the six MSS. in the Six-text agree in it. The old printed editions have were autremyte, a mere corruption of were a uĩtremyte; and the Harl. MS. has wyntermyte, which I take to be an attempt to make sense of a part of the word, just as we have turned écrevisse into cray-fish. What the word means, is another question; it is perhaps the greatest 'crux' in Chaucer. As the word occurs nowhere else, the solution I offer is a mere guess. I suppose it to be a coined word, formed on the Latin vitream mitram, expressing, literally, a glass head-dress, in complete contrast to a strong helmet. My reasons for supposing this are as follows.
(1) With regard to mitra. In Low-Latin, its commonest meaning is a woman's head-dress. But it was especially and widely used as a term of mockery, both in Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. The mitra was the cap which criminals were made to wear as a sign of degradation; see Carpenter's Supp. to Ducange, s. v. Mitra; Vocabulario degli Accad. della Crusca, s. v. Mitera; and any large Spanish Dict. s. v. Mitra. Even Cotgrave has—'Mitré, mitred; hooded with a miter, wearing a miter; set on a pillory or scaffold, with a miter of paper on his head.' The chief difficulty in this derivation is the loss of the r, but Godefroy has a quotation (s. v. mite, 2), which would suit the sense—'mites de toile costonnees, et par dessus ung grand chappel de fer ou de cuir bouilli.'
(2) With regard to vitream. This may refer to a proverb, probably rather English than foreign, to which I have never yet seen a reference. But its existence is clear. To give a man 'a glazen hood' meant, in Old English, to mock, delude, cajole. It appears in Piers the Plowman, B. xx. 171, where a story is told of a man who, fearing to die, consulted the physicians, and gave them large sums of money, for which they gave him in return 'a glasen houve,' i. e. a hood of glass, a thing that was no defence at all. Still clearer is the allusion to the same proverb in Chaucer himself, in a passage explained by no previous editor, in Troil. and Cres. v. 469, where Fortune is said to have an intention of deluding Troilus; or, as the poet says,
'Fortune his howve entended bet to glase,'
i. e. literally, Fortune intended to glaze his hood still better for him, i. e. to make a still greater fool of him. In the Aldine edition, howue is printed howen in this passage, but howue occurs elsewhere; Tyrwhitt has hove, a common variation of howue. If this note is unsatisfactory, I may yet claim to have explained in it at least one long-standing difficulty; viz. this line in Troilus. Tyrwhitt long ago explained that, in Chaucer, the phrases to set a man's hood, and to set a man's cap, have a like meaning, viz. to delude him. Chaucer uses verre for glass