VI. LA JEUNE TARENTINE.
This touching elegy, Becq de Fouquières observes, was suggested to Chénier by the following funereal epigram of Xenocritus of Rhodes in the Greek Anthology: 'Thy locks are still dripping, unfortunate maid, O Lysidice, poor shipwrecked creature, dead in the salt flood. As the waves leapt wild, thou, dismayed by the violence of the sea, fellst out of the ship; and now on a tombstone are read thy name and that of Cyme, the place of thy birth, but thy remains have been washed to some chill shore; a bitter grief to thy father Aristomachus, who, accompanying thee to the house of thy husband, brought him neither a bride nor a corpse.'
[L. 2.] Oiseaux chers à Thétis. 'Dilectae Thetidi alcyones,' Virgil, Georg. i. 399.
[L. 3.] Elle a vécu. A euphemism, adopted from the Latin, for elle est morte, used in elevated style. Thus Corneille: 'Non, non; avant ce coup Sabine aura vécu.'—Horace, II. vi.
[L. 4.] Camarine, a town in Sicily.
[L. 5.] l'hymen, the hymeneal song.
[L. 8.] Dans le cèdre: an accurate detail. Cf. Euripides, Alc. 160.
[L. 11.] invoquant les étoiles. A reminiscence, happily adapted, of Virgil, Aen. vi. 338: 'Palinurus... who, while he steering viewed the stars,... Fell headlong down.'—DRYDEN.
[L. 13.] étonnée. Étonner, whence E. astun, stun, astony, astonish, astound, from L. extonare class. L. attonare, to strike with a thunderbolt, originally 'to strike senseless, powerless.' It is here nearer this sense than weakened sense of 'to surprise'.
[L. 21.] dans ce monument. We here find that we are reading a 'funerary epigram' or epitaph.