The verge
Of Tartarus.]
The ancients had a notion that the earth was a widely extended plain, which terminated abruptly in a vast clift of immeasurable descent. At the bottom was a chaotic pool, which so far sunk beneath the confines of the world, that, to express the depth and distance, they imagined an anvil of iron, tossed from the top, could not reach it in ten days. This mighty pool was the great Atlantic ocean: and these extreme parts of the earth were Mauritania and Iberia: for in each of these countries the Titans resided. Bryant.
This explains the introduction of Atlas before the gates of Tartarus: Guietus is therefore in error when, not being able to account for this situation of Atlas, he marks the passage as supposititious.
Milton’s classical reading appears in his admeasurement of the distance which the rebel angels passed in their fall from heaven:
Nine days they fell: the tenth the yawning gulf
Received them.
[215] Arise and end.] Seneca, Hercules Frantic:
Rank with corruption’s moss the sterile vast