Note 104 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

A strong-dying ox.] This expression is borrowed from Chapman. Thus we find in Homer, “a thong from a slaughtered ox.” This is illustrated by Plutarch in his Symposiacs, 2. by the fact that the skins of slaughtered beasts are tougher, less flaccid, and less liable to be broken than those of animals which have died of age or distemper. The ancients, says Grævius, made their shoes of the raw hide.

Πιλοι, in Latin udones, were woollen socks; worn, when abroad, inside the shoes; or as substitutes for shoes, in the manner of slippers, when within doors and in the bed-chamber. Le Clerc.