Note 313 — CANTO THE THIRD.
Reading edition
[The souls of the suitors when Hermes "roused and shepherded them followed gibbering" (τρίζουσαι).—Od., xxiv. 5. Once, too, when the observance of the dies Parentales was neglected, Roman ghosts took to wandering and shrieking.
"Perque vias Urbis, Latiosque ululasse per agros Deformes animas, vulgus inane ferunt."
Ovid, Fasti, ii. lines 553, 554.
The Homeric ghosts gibbered because they were ghosts; the Burgundian ghosts because they were confined to the Stygian coast, and could not cross the stream. For once the "classical allusions" are forced and inappropriate.]