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[ The sluggish serpent.—Ver. 13. Macrobius tells us, that the Egyptians accompanied the statue of Serapis with that of an animal with three heads, the middle one that of a lion, the one to the right, of a dog, and that to the left, of a ravenous wolf; and that a serpent was represented encircling it in its folds, with its head below the right hand of the statue of the Deity. To this the Poet possibly alludes, or else to the asp, which was common in the North of Egypt, and perhaps, was looked upon as sacred. If so, it is probable that the word 'pigra,' 'sluggish,' refers to the drowsy effect produced by the sting of the asp, which was generally mortal. This, indeed, seems the more likely, from the fact of the asp being clearly referred to, in company with these Deities, in the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 93; which see, with the Note to the passage.]
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[ The horned Apis.—Ver. 14. See the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 691, and the Note to the passage.]
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[ Thy features.—Ver. 15. Isis is here addressed, as being supposed to be the same Deity as Diana Lucina, who was invoked by pregnant and parturient women. Thus Isis appears to Telethusa, a Cretan woman, in her pregnancy, in the Ninth Book of the Metamorphoses, 1. 665, et seq.]