[25.] Caucasus.]—Ver. 224. This was a mountain chain in Asia, between the Euxine and Caspian Seas.
[26.] Alps.]—Ver. 226. This mountain range divides France from Italy.
[27.] Apennines.]—Ver. 226. This range of mountains runs down the centre of Italy.
[28.] Their black hue.]—Ver. 235. The notion that the blackness of the African tribes was produced by the heat of the sun, is borrowed by the Poet from Hesiod. Hyginus, too, says, ‘the Indians, because, by the proximity of the fire, their blood was turned black by the heat thereof, became of black appearance themselves.’ Notwithstanding the learned and minute investigations of physiologists on the subject, this question is still involved in considerable obscurity.
[29.] Libya.]—Ver. 237. This was a region between Mauritania and Cyrene. The Greek writers, however, often use the word to signify the whole of Africa. Servius gives a trifling derivation for the name, in saying that Libya was so called, because λείπει ὁ ὕετος, ‘it is without rain.’
[30.] Dirce.]—Ver. 239. Dirce was a celebrated fountain of Bœotia, into which it was said that Dirce, the wife of Lycus, king of Thebes, was transformed.
[31.] Amymone.]—Ver. 240. It was a fountain of Argos, near Lerna, into which the Nymph, Amymone, the daughter of Lycus, king of the Argives, was said to have been transformed.
[32.] Ephyre.]—Ver. 240. It was the most ancient name of Corinth, in the citadel of which, or the Acrocorinthus, was the spring Pyrene, of extreme brightness and purity and sacred to the Muses.
[33.] Tanais.]—Ver. 242. This river, now the Don, after a long winding course, discharges itself into the ‘Palus Mæotis,’ now the sea of ‘Azof.’
[34.] Caïcus.]—Ver. 243. This is a river of Mysia, here called ‘Teuthrantian,’ from Mount Teuthras, in its vicinity.