[{121a}] A famous musician. Clemens Alexandrinus gives us a full account of him, to whom I refer the curious reader.
[{121b}] This poet, we are told, wrote some severe verses on Helen, for which he was punished by Castor and Pollux with loss of sight, but on making his recantation in a palinodia, his eyes were graciously restored to him. Lucian has affronted her still more grossly by making her run away with Cinyrus; but he, we are to suppose, being not over superstitious, defied the power of Castor and Pollux.
[{122a}] Nothing appears more ridiculous to a modern reader than the perpetual encomiums on the musical merit of swans and swallows, which we meet with in all the writers of antiquity. A proper account and explanation of this is, I think, amongst the desiderata of literature. There is an entertaining tract on this subject in the “Hist. de l’Acad.” tom. v., by M. Morin.
[{122b}] Who ravished Cassandra, the daughter of Priam and priestess of Minerva, who sent a tempest, dispersed the Grecian navy in their return home, and sunk Ajax with a thunder-bolt.
[{123a}] A scholar of Pythagoras.
[{123b}] The second king of Rome.
[{123c}] One of the seven sages, but excepted against by Lucian, because he was king of Corinth and a tyrant.
[{123d}] See his Treatise “de Republica.” His quitting Elysium, to live in his own republic, is a stroke of true humour.
[{124a}] Alluding to a passage in Hesiod already quoted.
[{124b}] Lucian laughs at the sceptics, though he was himself one of them.