Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/671

 NOTES TO THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER talents and beauty, and became the mistress of Pericles, one of whose orations she is said by Plato to have composed. Her house was the centre of intel- lectual society, and was even frequented by Athenian matrons and their husbands. Note 362, page 197. DiOTIMA was a probably fictitious priestess of Mantinea in the Peloponnesus, reputed to have been the instructress of Socrates. Her supposed opinions as to the origin, nature and objects of life, form the subject of Plato's " Symposium." Note 363, page 197. NICOSTRATE or Carmenta was a prophetic and healing divinity, supposed to be of Greek origin. Having tried to persuade her son Evander to kill his father Hermes, she fled with the boy to Italy, where she was said to have given the Roman form to the fifteen characters of the Greek alphabet that Evander introduced into Latium. Note 364, page 197. This 'preceptress ... to Pindar' was Myrtis, a lyric poetess of the 6th century B.C. She is mentioned in a fragment by Corinna as having competed with Pindar. Statues were erected to her in various parts of Greece, and she was counted among the nine lyric muses. Note 365, page 197. Of PINDAR'S life little more is known than that he re- sided chiefly at Thebes, and that the dates of his birth and death were about 522 and 443 B.C. respectively. Practically all his extant poems are odes in commemoration of victories in the public games. Note 366, page 197. The Greek poetess Corinna (5th century B.C.) was a native of Tanagra in Boeotia. She is said to have won prizes five times in competition with Pindar. Only a few fragments of her verse remain. Note 367, page 197. Sappho flourished about 600 B.C., and seems to have been born and to have lived chiefly at Mitylene. She enjoyed unique renown among the ancients: on hearing one of her poems, Solon prayed that he might not see death before he had learned it; Plato called her the Tenth Muse; and Aristotle placed her on a par with Homer. For a recently discovered and in- teresting fragment of her verse, see the Egypt Exploration Fund's "Oxyrhyn- chus Papyri," Part I, p. 11. Note 368, page 198. Castiglione here follows Plutarch. Pliny, on the other hand, affirms that Roman women were obliged to kiss their male relatives, in order that it might be known whether they had transgressed the law forbidding them to drink wine. Note 369, page 199. This paragraph is taken almost literally from Livy, ex- cepting the incident of the babies borne in arms, which Castiglione seems to have invented.