3519. _cruelly._ The Harl. MS. has the poor reading _trewely_, miswritten for _crewely_. 3525. Claudius II., emperor of Rome, A.D. 268-270. He succeeded Gallienus, as Chaucer says, and was succeeded by Aurelian. 3535. Boccaccio calls them _Heremianus_ and _Timolaus_, so that _Hermanno_ (as in the MSS.) should probably be _Heremanno_. Professor Robertson Smith tells me that the right names are _Herennianus_ and _Timoleon_. The line cannot well be scanned as it stands. 3550. _char_, chariot. Boccaccio describes this 'currum, quem sibi ex auro gemmisque praeciocissimum Zenobia fabricari fecerat.' [237] 3556. _charged_, heavily laden. She was so laden with chains of massive gold, and covered with pearls and gems, that she could scarcely support the weight; so says Boccaccio. Gibbon says the same. 3562. _vitremyte._ I have no doubt this reading (as in Tyrwhitt) is correct. All the six MSS. in the Six-text agree in it. The old printed editions have _were autremyte_, a mere corruption of _were a u[i]tremyte_; and the Harl. MS. has _wyntermyte_, which I take to be an attempt to make sense of a part of the word, just as we have turned _écrevisse_ into _cray-fish_. What the word means, is another question; it is perhaps the greatest 'crux' in Chaucer. As the word occurs nowhere else, the solution I offer is a mere guess. I suppose it to be a coined word, formed on the Latin _vitream mitram_, expressing, literally, a glass head-dress, in complete contrast to a strong helmet. My reasons for supposing this are as follows. (1) With regard to _mitra_. In Low-Latin, its commonest meaning is a woman's head-dress. But it was especially and widely used as a term of mockery, both in Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. The _mitra_ was the cap which criminals were made to wear as a sign of degradation; see Carpenter's Supp. to Ducange, s. v. _Mitra_; Vocabulario degli Accad. della Crusca, s. v. _Mitera_; and any large Spanish Dict. s. v. _Mitra_. Even Cotgrave has--'_Mitré_, mitred; hooded with a _miter_, wearing a _miter_; set on a pillory or scaffold, with a _miter_ of paper on his head.' The chief difficulty in this derivation is the loss of the _r_, but Godefroy has a quotation (s. v. _mite_, 2), which would suit the sense--'_mites_ de toile costonnees, et par dessus ung grand chappel de fer ou de cuir bouilli.'