[Ll. 97-100.] Hesiod, Theog. 84. De l'Olympe envoyé, ibid. 97.
[L. 98.] Semblent d'un roi. Elliptical for semblent être d'un roi. Être de itself is elliptical for de être celui, ceux. The French idiom has its English equivalent in 'My kingdom is not of this world.'
[L. 100.] Od. xiv. 205; Hesiod, Theog. 97.
[L. 102.] la main hospitalière, with the definite article, not 'ta main...,' as has sometimes been printed, nor, as the more current phrase runs, 'une main.' The beggar is then made to use, as it were, a technical phrase, to name a well-known rite. In the same way we say 'the kiss of peace,' 'the stirrup-cup.'
[L. 104.] Od. xvii 347: 'Bashful behaviour fits no needy man.'—CHAPMAN.
[L. 110.] Theognis, 649.
[Ll. 111, 112.] This seems to owe something to an extract from Menander in the Florilegium of Stobaeus, xcvi, which, together with a line of Theognis, quoted under the same heading, has partly inspired the following lines of Chénier, ll. 113, 114.
[L. 115.] plus que l'enfer, more than the gates of hell, is the phrase, Il. ix. 312; Od. xiv. 156.
[L. 116.] Le public ennemi, i.e. l'ennemi public. The inversion is awkward, as the collocation of the words is precisely that which would express 'the hostile public.'
[Ll. 122-4.] Od. xvii. 485.