Bulfinch’s Mythology Thomas Bulfinch (intellectual books to read TXT) 📖

of Achilles is not found in Homer, and is inconsistent with his account. For how could Achilles require the aid of celestial armor if he were invulnerable. ↩

Tennyson has chosen Oenone as the subject of a short poem; but he has omitted the most poetical part of the story, the return of Paris wounded, her cruelty and subsequent repentance. ↩

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. —⁠Virgil

I fear the Greeks even when they offer gifts. ↩

Pyrrhus’s exclamation, “Not such aid nor such defenders does the time require,” has become proverbial.

Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis
Tempus eget.

—⁠Virgil

Not such aid nor such defenders does the time require. ↩

Tennyson in the “Lotus-eaters” has charmingly expressed the dreamy, languid feeling which the lotus food is said to have produced.

“How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each others’ whispered speech;
Eating the Lotus, day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray:
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heaped over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass.”

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Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim.

He runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis. ↩

Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. —⁠Virgil

A horrible monster, misshapen, vast, whose only eye has been put out. ↩

Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? —⁠Virgil

In heavenly minds can such resentments dwell? ↩

Haud ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco. —⁠Virgil

Not unacquainted with distress, I have learned to succor the unfortunate. ↩

Tros, Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur. —⁠Virgil

Whether Trojan or Tyrian shall make no difference to me. ↩

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito. —⁠Virgil

Yield thou not to adversity, but press on the more bravely. ↩

Facilis descensus Averni;
Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.

—⁠Virgil

The descent of Avernus is easy; the gate of Pluto stands open night and day; but to retrace one’s steps and return to the upper air⁠—that is the toil, that the difficulty. ↩

The poet here inserts a famous line which is thought to imitate in its sound the galloping of horses.⁠—

Quadrupendante putrum sonitu quatit ungula campum. —⁠Virgil

Then struck the hoofs of the steeds on the ground with a four-footed trampling. ↩

Sternitur infelix alieno vulnere, coelumque
Adspicit et moriens dulces reminiscitur Argos.

—⁠Virgil

He falls, unhappy, by a wound intended for another; looks up to the skies, and dying remembers sweet Argos. ↩

There being no rain in Egypt, the grass is “unshowered,” and the country depends for its fertility upon the overflowings of the Nile. The ark alluded to in the last line is shown by pictures still remaining on the walls of the Egyptian temples to have been borne by the priests in their religious processions. It probably represented the chest in which Osiris was placed. ↩

Cowper’s version is less elegant, but truer to the original:

“He ceased, and under his dark brows the nod
Vouchsafed of confirmation. All around
The sovereign’s everlasting head his curls
Ambrosial shook, and the huge mountain reeled.”

It may interest our readers to see how this passage appears in another famous version, that which was issued under the name of Tickell, contemporaneously with Pope’s, and which, being by many attributed to Addison, led to the quarrel which ensued between Addison and Pope:

“This said, his kingly brow the sire inclined;
The large black curls fell awful from behind,
Thick shadowing the stern forehead of the god;
Olympus trembled at the almighty nod.”

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Gray’s ode, “The Fatal Sisters,” is founded on this superstition. ↩

In Longfellow’s Poems will be found a poem entitled “Tegner’s Drapa,” upon the subject of Baldur’s death. ↩

Mountains. ↩

“For noble Britons sprong from Trojans bold,
And Troynovant was built of old Troy’s ashes cold.”

—⁠Spenser, Book III, Canto IX, 38

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“Buried under beare.” Buried under something which enclosed him like a coffin or bier. ↩

Glastonbury Abbey, said to be founded by Joseph of Arimathea, in a spot anciently called the island or valley of Avalonia.

Tennyson, in his “Palace of Art,” alludes to the legend of Arthur’s rescue by the Faery queen, thus:

“Or mythic Uther’s deeply wounded son,
In some fair space of sloping greens,
Lay dozing in the vale of Avalon,
And watched by weeping queens.”

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Guenever, the name of Arthur’s queen, also written Genievre and Geneura, is familiar to all who are conversant with chivalric lore. It is to her adventures, and those of her true knight, Sir Launcelot, that Dante alludes in the beautiful episode of Francesca da Rimini. ↩

This name, in the French romances, is spelled Queux, which means “head cook.” This would seem to imply that it was a title, and not a name; yet the personage who bore it is never mentioned by any other. He is the chief, if not the only, comic character among the heroes of Arthur’s court. He is the Seneschal or Steward, his duties also embracing those of chief of the cooks. In the romances, his general character is a compound of valor and buffoonery, always ready to fight, and generally getting the worst of the battle. He is also sarcastic and abusive in his remarks, by which he