2160. Amphion. The name apparently is got from ‘Antifon,’ which occurs below in connexion with the incident of the pheasant’s egg.
2182. rampende. The French has ‘mult fierement rampant.’
2199 ff. The transformation into an eagle is found in Valerius and the French romance, and not in the Hist. de Preliis. It may be noted, however, that the picturesque description which we have here of the eagle pruning himself and then shaking his feathers, so that the hall was moved as by an earthquake, is Gower’s own.
2219 ff. The Latin accounts say that a bird, according to Valerius a hen, came and laid an egg in Philip’s lap as he sat in his hall. The Rom. de toute Chevalerie makes the incident take place out in the fields, and the bird, as here, is a pheasant. The expression used, ‘Un oef laissat chaïr sur les curs Phelippun,’ seems to mean that the egg was laid in Philip’s lap. There is nothing about the heat of the sun in the Latin versions.
2250 ff. These lines refer to the precautions taken by Nectanabus to secure that the child shall be born precisely at the right astrological moment: cp. Rom. de toute Chevalerie, 401-425. Gower has chosen to omit the details.
2274. Calistre, i. e. Callisthenes, who was reputed to be the author of the history of Alexander which Valerius translated.
2299 ff. The question of Alexander and the answer of Nectanabus is given as here in the Hist. de Preliis. In Valerius and the French romance Alexander throws Nectanabus down merely in order to surprise him, and the suggestion that Nectanabus knew that he should die by the hands of his son is not made till afterwards.
2368. Zorastes. The statement here about the laughter of Zoroaster at his birth is ultimately derived from Pliny, Hist. Nat. vii. 15. It is repeated by Augustine, with the addition ‘nec ei boni aliquid monstrosus risus ille portendit. Nam magicarum artium fuisse perhibetur inventor; quae quidem illi nec ad praesentis vitae vanam felicitatem contra suos inimicos prodesse potuerunt; a Nino quippe rege Assyriorum, cum esset ipse Bactrianorum, bello superatus est’ (De Civ. Dei, xxi. 14).
2381. ‘Like wool which is ill spun’: cp. i. 10.
2387. Phitonesse, cp. iv. 1937.