[L. 184.] See Od. viii. 136.
[L. 185.] n'ai point passé l'âge 'où l'on est robuste' is understood.
[L. 186.] La force et le travail, que je n'ai point perdus, a hendyadis for 'la force de travailler.'
[Ll. 188 ff.] In the same way Ulysses (Od. xv. 317) declares to Eumaeus that he is ready to do all kind of menial work to earn a livelihood.
[L. 194.] diriger, train.
[L. 195.] Et le cep et la treille. The low vine-plant, such as is seen in the vine-growing parts of France, and the espalier or trellis vine.
[L. 196.] la faux recourbée. One of those descriptive epithets so frequent in primitive poetry.
[Ll. 199-201.] Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 307, 303-5.
[L. 201.] à rien faire. Some purists censure the use of rien without ne on the ground that rien of itself means quelque chose (Lat. rem), as in: 'Pourquoi consentez-vous à rien prendre de lui?'—Molière, Tartufe, V. vii; but the abuse, if it is really to be considered as one, is authorized by the best writers, Molière, Racine, &c. In answers rien is used by itself with the sense of 'nothing.' Add to this the phrases pour rien, réduire à rien, venir à rien, un homme de rien, rien que cela, si peu que rien, moins que rien, where rien actually means 'nothing'. Also the substantive: un rien, des riens. Also un vaurien (='un homme qui ne vaut rien'). The objection to rien in the present sentence would be just if the omission of the negation ne entailed the least ambiguity, but such is not the case.
[L. 202.] Od. xix. 253 and 322.