A manibus reuoces munus, ab aure preces.’
It would seem that the last line should stand as the second.
2902. Avise him, ‘Let him consider.’
flitte, ‘turn aside,’ cp. iv. 214; but also intransitive, v. 7076.
2917 ff. Another often repeated story. The Gesta Romanorum has it (169) with a reference to Trogus Pompeius (that is Justin, Epit. iii. 3). Gower makes the city Athens instead of Sparta (cp. 3089), and the god Mercury instead of Apollo.
3054 ff. This list of legislators is from the Trésor, p. 24, but the text which our author used seems to have been corrupt. The passage runs thus in the printed edition: ‘Moyses fu li premiers qui bailla la loi as Hebreus; et li rois Foroneus fu li premiers qui la bailla as Grezois; Mercures as Egypciens, et Solon à cels de Athenes; Ligurgus as Troyens; Numa Pompilius, qui regna après Romulus en Rome, et puis ses filz, bailla et fist lois as Romains premierement,’ &c. If we suppose ‘Solon’ to have been omitted in the MS., the passage might read (with changes of punctuation) nearly as we have it in Gower.
3092. on the beste Above alle other: cp. iv. 2606, &c.
3137 ff. Cp. Mirour de l’Omme, 13921, and see also ii. 3204 ff. (margin).
3144. Troian: so given in all MSS. for ‘Traian.’ So also in the Mirour, 22168, and in Godfrey of Viterbo, Spec. Reg. ii. 14 (Mon. Germ. Hist. xxii. p. 74).
3181 ff. Valerius Maximus, Mem. v. 6: but he does not mention the Dorians as the enemy against whom Codrus fought. However, the story was a common one: cp. Gesta Romanorum, 41.