Cowper.
Mr. Bryant explains this passage in Homer by the traditionary reverence paid to caverns: which in the first ages were deemed oracular temples: whence persons entered into compacts under rocks and oaks as places of security. But surely there is no need to go back to the first ages, or to dive into traditional superstitions for the solution of a circumstance so extremely obvious, as that of two lovers conversing in the shade. Harmer in his “Illustrations of the Classics,” vol. iii. of his “Observations on Scripture,” renders απο δρυος, on account of an oak: instead of from an oak: “when people meet each other on account of some rock or some tree which they happen upon in travelling.” But the alteration is quite unnecessary: the word from perhaps indicates that one is resting under the tree, while the other is passing by. The adage in Hesiod is expressed “around an oak:” which implies a number of persons. The rock associated with the oak marks the peculiar climate of Greece and the East. The shade cast by a rock is described by Eastern travellers as singularly cool.
[149] Pieria’s groves.] The Pierians were celebrated for their skill in music and poetry. Hence Pieria came to be regarded as the birth place of the Muses. Bryant.
[150] Bare the nine maids.] The origin of verse itself, which is to be sought in the necessity of some mechanical help for the memory at an æra when letters were not invented, and every thing depended on oral tradition, obviously accounts for the fiction of memory being the mother of the Muses. But there is a farther reason. The ancient temples were the depositaries of all traditionary knowledge. We are told by Homer that the voice of the Syrens was enchanting, but their knowledge of the past equally so. The Syrens appear to have been merely priestesses of one of this description of temples, which stood in Sicily, and was erected on the sea-shore, answering also the purpose of a lighthouse. The rites of the temple consisted partly of hymns chanted by young and beautiful women to the sound of harps and flutes: and it was their office to entangle by their allurements such strangers as touched upon the coast: who were instantly seized by the priests and sacrificed to the solar god. The Syrens are described as the daughters of Calliope, Melpomene, and Terpsichore; three of the Muses: they were in fact the same with the Muses. These temples were sacred colleges: sciences were taught there: in particular music and astronomy. The transition was easy from the young priestesses of these temples, to blooming goddesses who presided over history, poetry, &c. See the “Analysis of Ancient Mythology.”
[151] Soothing eloquence.] This passage is exactly similar to one in the Odyssey, b. viii.:
Jove
Crowns him with eloquence: his hearers charm’d
Behold him, while with unassuming tone
He bears the prize of fluent speech from all;
And when he walks the city, as they pass,