NOTE 1, page 13. A Cretan ship.

Ægeus hired a Cretan ship because the Athenians had nothing of any account in the way of ships at this time. Homer says they sent fifty ships to Troy; these were only transports; but even this was some years later than the period of which we now write, which is about B. C. 1260, and Troy was taken B.C. 1184. The Athenians, according to Thucydides, did not make any figure at sea till ten or twelve years after the battle of Marathon, fought B.C. 490, more than 700 years after the Ægean period.

Note 2, page 15. Canopus and Taphosiris.

Romantic places near the sea, full of rocks, where the young people went to amuse themselves.-Strabo, Lib. xvii.

Note 3, page 16. The Lydian.

The registered kingdom of Lydia was begun by the Heraclidæ about the time of the Trojan war; the unregistered existed many years before that date, Omphale, one of its queens, being contemporary with Ægeus and Heracles. More anciently Lydia was called Mæonia.

Note 4, page 25. Chaldaic.

Chaldean diviners were famous for their skill, and were employed by both Greeks and Romans, down even to the Christian era. See Plutarch. Note 5, page 28. Celestial Aphrodité.

"Celestial Venus was first worshipped by the Assyrians, and after these by the Paphians at Cyprus, and the Phoenicians who inhabited the city of Ascalon (Askelon), in Palestine. The Cytherians venerated this goddess in consequence of learning her sacred rites from the Phoenicians.

Egeus introduced the worship of this goddess to the Athenians, from believing that his want of children, and the misfortunes of his sisters, were occasioned through the anger of celestial Venus."-Pausanias vi. 14.

The religion of the Greeks seems to have been at this time in a transition state. "Formerly the Pelasgians (the earliest inhabitants) sacrificed all sorts of victims to the gods with prayer, but they gave no name or surname to any of them, for they had not yet heard of them; but they called them gods because they had set in order and ruled over all things. Then in course of time they learnt the names of the other gods that were brought from Egypt, and after some time that of Bacchus. Concerning the names they consulted the oracle of Dodona, for this oracle is accounted the most ancient of those that are in Greece, and was then the only one. When therefore the Pelasgians inquired at Dodona "whether they should receive the names that came from the barbarians," the oracle answered "that they should." From that fime, therefore, they adopted the names of the gods in their sacrifices, and the Grecians afterwards received them from the Pelasgians. Whence each of the gods sprung, whether they existed always, and of what form they were, was, so to speak, unknown till yesterday. For I am of opinion that Homer and Hesiod lived four hundred years before my time and not more, and these were they who framed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to them honours and arts, and declared their several forms."-Herodotus ii. 52, 53. Numa, King of Rome, who lived B. C. 700,"forbade the Romans to represent the Deity in the form either of man or beast-persuaded that it is impious to represent things divine by what is perishable, and that we can have no conception of God but by the understanding." See Plutarch's Lives." The Greeks from time of the Pelasgians, or earliest inhabitants, seem, however, to have had statues, and the worship of the nameless gods existed in Samothrace to at least the time of the Cæsars.

Metal was greatly used in buildings in the heroic and later ages of Greece. The treasury of Athens at Mycena was lined inside with brazen plates, some of the nails of which still remain; Danäe was confined in a brazen tower. Plutarch relates that the Spartans had a temple built entirely of brass; (as the Spartans were warriors by profession, smiths or brass workers were their chief artificers ;) Phocion's house was adorned with copper plates; and according to Homer, in the palace of Alcinoüs, the walls were massy brass, the pillars silver on a brazen base, and other metals were extensively used. In Athens the art of making roof tiles was practised early, but in less advanced places the roof was of straw, as may be gathered from the chorus in the Electra of Euripides, which begins,

"Unhappy daughter of the great Atrides,
Thy straw-crowned palace I approach."

Note 8, p. 46. Nigh to Athens.

As the crow flies Delphi was only a little more than seventy miles distant from Athens, whereas by water it was not less than 380 miles, as it was necessary, in order to reach it by sea, to sail all round the Peloponnèsus, which contained six different provinces. The distance of Trozen from Athens was about forty miles by sea, and double that distance by land.

Note 9, page 50. The letters Cadmus brought into the Argive land. Argivi was properly the name of the inhabitants of the city of Argos and the neighbouring country of Argolis, but the poets applied it indiscriminately to all the dwellers in Hellas or Greece. Cadmus only brought sixteen letters of the alphabet; four were added by Palamedes, a contemporary of Ulysses, the other four by Simonides, who flourished B.C. 538. Some say, however, that ✪ and X were added by Epicharmus.

Note 10, p. 54. Cruel robbers.

"Those times, indeed, produced men of strong and indefatigable powers of body, of extraordinary swiftness and agility; but they applied their powers to nothing just or useful. On the contrary, their genius, their disposition, and their pleasures, tended only to insolence, to violence, and rapine. As for modesty, justice, equity, and humanity, they looked upon them as qualities in which those who had it in their power to add to their possessions, had no manner of concern-virtues praised only by such as were afraid of being injured, and who abstained from injuring others out of the same principle of fear."-Plutarch.

Note II, page 61. Samothracian gods.

"The gods of Samothrace were dreaded by all nations of all the oaths that were in use among the ancients, that by these gods was deemed the most sacred and inviolable. Diodorus says that these gods were always present, and never failed to assist those that were initiated and called upon them in any sudden and unexpected danger.”—Langhorne's notes to Plutarch." From what follows it would appear that Periphetes had either neglected their ceremonies or had not been properly initiated, or that they highly honoured him by giving him his death from the hand of Theseus.

Note 12, page 71. Iron hatchet.

66

The weapons in use among the early Greeks were chiefly of brass or bronze, but in the year B.C. 1406, when the first Minos was king of Crete, iron was discovered in that island by the accidental burning of the woods of Ida. It is supposed that Phæa obtained the iron hatchet from one of her victims among the Cretans who traded to Athens.

Note 13, p. 74. The hearth.

It was the custom to claim hospitality and kind treatment by sitting on the hearth, as a place sacred to Vesta. See Odyssey, vii. 206 :

:

"Then to the genial hearth he bowed his face,

And humbled in the ashes took his place."

Plutarch says,

"When Coriolanus went to the house of his enemy, Tullus Aufidius, he got in undiscovered, and having directly made up to the fire