[32.] Sipylus.]—Ver. 149. This was the name of both a city and a mountain of Lydia.
[33.] Go all of you.]—Ver. 159. Clarke renders the words ‘Ismenides, ite frequentes,’ ‘Go, ye Theban ladies in general.’
[34.] Sister of the Pleiades.]—Ver. 174. Taygete, one of the Pleiades, was the mother of Niobe.
[35.] As my father-in-law.]—Ver. 176. Because Jupiter was the father of her husband, Amphion.
[36.] Seven daughters.]—Ver. 182. Tzetzes enumerates fourteen daughters of Niobe, and gives their names.
[37.] When in travail.]—Ver. 187. She alludes to the occasion on which Latona fled from the serpent Python, which Juno, in her jealousy, had sent against her; and when Delos, which had hitherto been a floating island, became immovable, for the convenience of Latona, in labor with Apollo and Diana. That island was said to have received its name from the Greek, δῆλος, ‘manifest,’ or ‘appearing,’ from having risen to the surface of the sea on that occasion.
[38.] Like her father’s.]—Ver. 213. Latona alludes to one of the crimes of Tantalus, the father of Niobe, who was accused of having indiscreetly divulged the secrets of the Gods.
[39.] Gives rein.]—Ver. 230. This was done with the intention of making his escape.
[40.] Glowing with oil.]—Ver. 241. Clarke renders this line, ‘Were gone to the juvenile work of neat wrestling.’ It would be hard to say what ‘neat’ wrestling is. He seems not to have known, that the ‘Palæstra’ was called ‘nitida,’ as shining with the oil which the wrestlers used for making their limbs supple, and the more difficult for their antagonist to grasp. Juvenal gives the epithet ‘ceromaticum’ to the neck of the athlete, or wrestler, which word means ‘rubbed with wrestler’s oil.’
[41.] Now had they brought.]—Ver. 243-4. Clarke thus translates ‘Et jam contulerant arcto luctantia nexu Pectora pectoribus;’ ‘And now they had clapped breast to breast, struggling in a close hug.’