The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

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876 EXPLANATORY NOTES. BOOK I., ODE X.
Btood. The poet alludes to some youthful sport, hy the rules of which <
forfeit was exacted from the person whose place of concealment was dis-
covered, whether by the ingenuity of another, or the voluntary act of the
party concealed.—24. Male perHnact. "Faintly resisting." Pretending
only to oppose.
Ode X. In praise of Mercury. Imitated, according to the Scholiast
Porphyrion, from the Greek po.et Alcseus.
1-6. 1. Facunde. Mercury was regarded a^ the inventor of laugaaga
and the god of eloquence. Nepos AUantiz. Mercury was the fabled sou
of Mala, one of the daughters of Atlas.—The word Atlantis must be pronounced
here A-tlanti^j in order to keep the penultimate foot a trochee.
This peculiar division of syllables is imitated from the Greek.—2. Feros
eultus hominum recentum. "The savage manners of the eai-ly race of
men." The ancients believed that the early state of mankind was but
little removed from that of the brutes.—3. Voce. " By the gift of language."
— Catus. " Wisely." Mercury wisely thought liiat nothing
would sooner improve and soften down the savage manners of the pnmitive
race of men than mutual intercourse, and the interchange of ideas by
means of language. Cuius, according to Varro, was a word qf Sabine origin.
Its primitive meaning was " acute" or " shrill," and hence it came
to signify " shrewd," " sagacious," &c. Decorce more palastrtB. " B f the
institution of the grace-bestowing palaestra." The epithet decor^s is here
used to denote the effect produced on the human frame hy gymnastic exercises.—6.
Curves lyrm parentem. "Parent of the bending lyre." Mercury
[Hymn, in Merc.^ 20, seqq.) is fiaid, while still an infant, to have ibnned
the lyre from a tortoise which he found in his pathj stretching seven
strings over the hollow shell (inrci 6^ cvfi^6vovg btutv kravvaaaro xop-