64. The third hour unequal: In the third planetary hour; Palamon had gone forth in the hour of Venus, two hours before daybreak; the hour of Mercury intervened; the third hour was that of Luna, or Diana. “Unequal” refers to the astrological division of day and night, whatever their duration, into twelve parts, which of necessity varied in length with the season.
65. Smoking: draping; hence the word “smock;” “smokless,” in Chaucer, means naked.
66. Cerrial: of the species of oak which Pliny, in his “Natural History,” calls “cerrus.”
67. Stace of Thebes: Statius, the Roman who embodied in the twelve books of his “Thebaid” the ancient legends connected with the war of the seven against Thebes.
68. Diana was Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Hecate in hell; hence the direction of the eyes of her statue to “Pluto’s dark region.” Her statue was set up where three ways met, so that with a different face she looked down each of the three; from which she was called Trivia. See the quotation from Horace, note 54.
69. Las: net; the invisible toils in which Hephaestus caught Ares and the faithless Aphrodite, and exposed them to the “inextinguishable laughter” of Olympus.
70. Saturnus the cold: Here, as in “Mars the Red” we have the person of the deity endowed with the supposed quality of the planet called after his name.
71. The astrologers ascribed great power to Saturn, and predicted “much debate” under his ascendancy; hence it was “against his kind” to compose the heavenly strife.
72. Ayel: grandfather; French “Aieul”.
73. Testers: Helmets; from the French “teste”, “tete”, head.