Note 230 — ACT I, SCENE 1.

The wanderers are the planets, called by the Greeks planetæ, from their moving or wandering, and by the Latins, from the same notion, stellæ errantes; as on the contrary the fixed stars are termed by them stellæ inerrantes. The character appropriated by astronomers and astrologers to the planet Mercury, is this ☿, which may be imagined to contain in it something of the characters of all the other planets ♄♃ ♂ ☉ ♀ ☽. The history of the heathen deities, whose names were assigned to the several planets, is full of tricks and robberies, to say no worse, as is remarked by the apologetical fathers, who are perpetually inveighing against them on that account; and to this mythological history the poet here alludes.—Pegge.