Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/450

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��APPENDIX

��Ambergris was formerly used as a flavoring in sumptuous cookery.

Page 263, line 347. Lucrine bay.

Lake Lucrinus, near Bai;e in Italy, famous for its shell-fish.

Page 263, line 353. Hylas.

A youthful follower of Herakles.

Page 263, line 356. Amalthea's horn.

Endowed by Jupiter, whom Amalthea had nursed in infancy, with the power to pour out fruits and flowers in inexhaustible abundance.

Page 263, lines 360, 361. Knights of the Eound Table.

Familiar to Milton from the Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory. Logres, a vague name for Britain ; Lyones, Cornwall.

Page 264, line 423. Antipater the Edomite.

Father of Herod, appointed governor of the Jews by Pompey.

Page 264, line 458. Yet not for that a crown, etc.

"For that " = because. The meaning is: I do not reject your offer because of the cares of kingship, since they constitute the duty and the glory of such an office ; but he who rules him- self is more a king than he who rules others.

Page 265. BOOK III.

Page 265, line 14. Urim and Thummim.

Gems worn in the breast-plate of the High Priest, and consulted on important occasions as oracles, somewhat as the beryl-stone of mediae- val superstition.

Page 267, lines 165-170. So did not Macha- beus, etc.

Judas Maccabaeus, who with his father and brothers led the revolt of the Jews against the king of Syria, and made himself ruler of Ju- daea.

Page 267, line 213. Whatever, for itself con- demned.

I. e. Whatever my crime may have been, it was condemned, etc.

Page 268, line 234. And once a year Jerusa- lem.

"Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover."

Page 268, lines 270-309. _

To arouse Christ's ambition Satan points out to him the cities and lands held by successive dynasties, Assyrian, Persian, and Macedonian, and now included in the great Parthian empire, founded by Arsaces. The power of this em- pire, made more tangible by the spectacle of the army issuing to battle, he offers to put in Christ's hand ; or, as an alternative, the power of the Roman Empire, sovereign in the West as the Parthian in the East. The reader should not allow the erudition of the passage to inter- fere with his enjoyment of the gorgeousness and pomp of the marshalled names. Salmanassar, who carried the Ten Tribes to captivity in As- syria. Him who twice led captive, etc., Nebu- chadnezzar.

Page 269, lines 316-321.

t The places named range from the northern limit of the empire, Iberia, between the Euxine

��and the Caspian, to the southern coast town of Balsara, on the Persian Gulf.

Page 269, line 329. Indorsed.

From Latin dorsus, back.

Page 2(59, line 330. Pioners.

Pioneers, soldiers who preceded the army, to prepare the way ; hence the modern application of the term.

Page 269, lines 336-344.

The reference is to a famous Italian romance, the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo, which Ari- osto carried on in his Orlando Furioso. Agri- cane, king of Tartary, in order to win Angelica, besieged her father Gallaphrone, king of Ca- thay, with an army of more than two million men.

Page 269, lines 366, 367.

Hyrcanus II., of the dynasty of the Macca- bees, was deposed and taken captive by the Par- thians while Palestine was under Roman pro- tection. Antigonus, his nephew, was not taken captive, as Milton supposes, but succeeded to his uncle's throne with the aid of the Parthians.

Page 270, lines 409-12.

Satan having " provoked David " to take the census of Israel, the Lord gave David his choice of punishment, three years' famine, three months of defeat in battle, or three days' pesti- lence. 1 Chron. 1-14.

Page 270. BOOK IV.

Page 271, line 40. Parallax.

Not used in the strict astronomical sense, but as a synonym for refraction. Rome, being be- low the horizon, could be seen only by some deflection of the light rays from a straight line.

Page 271, line 66. Turms.

Lat. turma, a body of about thirty horse.

Page 271, lines 70-79. .

The survey is first southward, to Eyene, in southern Egypt, marking the limit of Roman rule ; and to Meroe, still further south, below the tropic of Cancer ; thence westward to the states of northern Africa ruled over by Boc- chus, father of Jugurtha, to Mauritania and the Moorish Sea, southeast across Asia to Malacca (Golden Chersoness) and Ceylon (Taprobane) ; then westward to Spain (Gades = Cadiz), and thence in a wide circle north and east to the Sea of Azof in Russia (Tauric pool).

Page 272, line 115. Atlantic stone.

Numidian marble, according to Keightley.

Page 272, line 119. Myrrhine.

Porcelain.

Page 272, line 142. Scene.

Theatrical presentation ; Latin scena, stage.

Page 274, lines 251-253. The schools of ancient sages, etc.

The Lyceum was a gymnasium at Athens where Aristotle taught his followers the Peri- patetics ; the Stoa was a public portico, adorned with pictures of the battle at Marathon ; it was frequented by Zeno, founder of the Stoic school of philosophers.

Page 274, line 270. Shook the arsenal.

A phrase still unexplained by commentators.

Page 276, line 411. Abortive.

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