Note IX.
And makes Calabrian wool, &c.—P. [225].
The wool of Calabria was of the finest sort in Italy, as Juvenal also tells us. The Tyrian stain is the purple colour dyed at Tyrus; and I suppose, but dare not positively affirm, that the richest of that dye was nearest our crimson, and not scarlet, or that other colour more approaching to the blue. I have not room to justify my conjecture.
Note X.
As maids to Venus offer baby-toys.—P. [225].
Those baby-toys were little babies, or poppets, as we call them; in Latin, pupæ; which the girls, when they came to the age of puberty, or child bearing, offered to Venus; as the boys, at fourteen or fifteen, offered their bullæ, or bosses.
Note XI.
A cake, thus given, is worth a hecatomb.—P. [226].
A cake of barley, or coarse wheat-meal, with the bran in it. The meaning is, that God is pleased with the pure and spotless heart of the offerer, and not with the riches of the offering. Laberius, in the fragments of his "Mimes," has a verse like this—Puras, Deus, non plenas aspicit manus.—What I had forgotten before, in its due place, I must here tell the reader, that the first half of this satire was translated by one of my sons, now in Italy; but I thought so well of it, that I let it pass without any alteration.