1621 ([return])
[ A Scholiast explains: ‘Either because they (men) sprang from the Melian nymphs (cp. l. 187); or because, when they were born (?), they cast themselves under the ash-trees, that is, the trees.’ The reference may be to the origin of men from ash-trees: cp. Works and Days, l. 145 and note.]
1622 ([return])
[ sc. Atlas, the Shu of Egyptian mythology: cp. note on line 177.]
1623 ([return])
[ Oceanus is here regarded as a continuous stream enclosing the earth and the seas, and so as flowing back upon himself.]
1624 ([return])
[ The conception of Oceanus is here different: he has nine streams which encircle the earth and then flow out into the ‘main’ which appears to be the waste of waters on which, according to early Greek and Hebrew cosmology, the disk-like earth floated.]
1625 ([return])
[ i.e. the threshold is of ‘native’ metal, and not artificial.]