[9.] shady forms. Departed spirits were called "shades," because they were supposed to be perceptible sometimes to the sight but never to the touch. See "[heroes' armed shades]," below.
[10.] Sisyphus. See note 18, page [147].
Ixion. King of the Lapithæ. As a punishment for ingratitude to Zeus, his hands and feet were chained to a wheel which was always in motion.
Furies. See note 20, page [167].
[11.] hell. The powers of hell—or, as he explains below, Proserpine, the queen of the infernal regions. Styx. The principal river of hell, around which it flows seven—not nine—times.
[12.] See Milton's "L'Allegro," 135:
"Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse, . . .
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto to have quite set free
His half-regain'd Eurydice."
[13.] Orpheus's grief for the loss of Eurydice caused him to treat with contempt the Thracian women among whom he dwelt, and they in revenge tore him to pieces, under the excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies. His head was given by the Hebrus to the sea, and finally carried to the island of Lesbos, where it was buried. See Milton's "Lycidas," 58:
"What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?"
See, also, "Paradise Lost," VII, 32: