[168] Rose-arm’d Eunice.] ροδοπῃχυς, rosy-elbow’d: this epithet, together with that of ροδοδακτυλος, rosy-fingered, was derived from the artificial custom of staining the elbow and tops of the fingers with rose-colour. In Dallaway’s Constantinople it is remarked of the modern Greek girls “that the nails both of the fingers and the feet are always stained of a rose-colour:” a curious vestige of Grecian antiquity.
[169] Nereid nymphs.] Spenser, in his “Spousals of the Thames and Medway,” b. 4. cant. ii. of the “Faery Queen,” has imposed on himself a task, from which a translator would fain escape: and has transposed into his stanzas the whole fifty Nereids of Hesiod, together with his catalogue of Rivers.
[170] The sister-harpies.] The harpies were priests of the sun: they were denominated from their seat of residence, which was an oracular temple called Harpi. The representation of them as winged animals was only the insigne of the people, as the eagle and vulture were of the Ægyptians. They seem to have been a set of rapacious persons, who for their repeated acts of violence and cruelty were driven out of Bithynia, their country. Bryant.
[171] The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray.] The circumstance of their being gray seems to be explained by a passage of Æschylus, who describes them as half-women, half-swans:
The Gorgonian plains
Of Cisthine, where dwell the Phorcydes
Swan-form’d, three ancient nymphs, one common eye
Their portion.
Prometheus Chained.
“This history relates to an Amonian temple founded in the extreme parts of Africa, in which there were three priestesses of Canaänitish race, who on that account are said to be in the shape of swans: the swan being the insigne under which their country was denoted. The notion of their having but one eye among them took its rise from a hieroglyphic very common in Ægypt and Canaän: this was the representation of an eye, which was engraved on the pediment of their temples.” Bryant.