Note 8 — Early Poems (continued 2)
Reading edition
Tennyson has here noticed what is so often emphasised by Greek writers, that tallness was a great beauty in women. See Aristotle, Ethics, iv., 3, and Homer, passim, Odyssey, viii., 416; xviii., 190 and 248; xxi., 6. So Xenophon in describing Panthea emphasises her tallness, Cyroped., v.