Book 2 — NOTES.

Titornus was a rival of Milo’s, and, according to Ælian, who is not always to be credited, rolled a large stone with ease, which Milo with all his force could not stir. Conon was some slim Macaroni of that age, remarkable only for his debility, as was Leotrophides also, of crazy memory, recorded by Aristophanes, in his comedy called The Birds.

Tam vacui capitis populum Phæaca putavit.

Some modern critics, however, have endeavoured to defend them.

The present inhabitants of that island make a small quantity of excellent wine for their own use and are liberal of it to strangers who travel that way, but dare not, being under Turkish government, cultivate the vines well, or export the product of them.

“Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday.” See Shakespeare’s “Othello.”

—“the bear and fiddle, Begins, but breaks off in the middle.”

D’Ablancourt, as I observed above, has carried it on a little farther. There is still room for any ingenious modern to take the plan from Lucian, and improve upon it.

The Greeks measured all their distances by stadia, which, after all we can discover concerning them, are different in different times and places.

“O praise the Lord of heaven, praise Him in the height. Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all ye stars; praise the Lord upon earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapours, wind and storm fulfilling His word.”—Psalm cxlviii.

“Sometimes by friendship, all are knit in one, Sometimes by discord, severed and undone.” See Stanley’s “Lives of the Philosophers.”

This was called the ορκος Ραδαμανθιος, or oath of Rhadamanthus, who, as Porphyry informs us, made a law that men should swear, if they needs must swear, by geese, dogs, etc. υπερ που μη τους θεους επι πασιν ονομαζω, that they might not, on every trifling occasion, call in the name of the gods. This is a kind of religious reason, the custom was therefore, Porphyry tells us, adopted by the wise and pious Socrates. Lucian, however, who laughs at everything here (as well as the place above quoted), ridicules him for it.

“Wisdom held my hand.”

Homer says nothing but—my mind changed.