[117] Aurora, goddess of the dawn. Enamored of Tithonus, she persuaded Jupiter to grant him immortality, but forgot to ask for him immortal youth. Read Tennyson's poem on Tithonus. [118] Achilles, the hero of Homer's Iliad. His mother Thetis, to render him invulnerable, plunged him into the waters of the Styx. The heel by which she held him was not washed by the waters and remained vulnerable. Here he received a mortal wound. [119] Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied, the old German epic poem. Having slain a dragon, he bathed in its blood and became covered with an invulnerable horny hide, only one small spot between his shoulders which was covered by a leaf remaining vulnerable. Into this spot the treacherous Hagen plunged his lance. [120] Nemesis, a Greek female deity, goddess of retribution, who visited the righteous anger of the gods upon mortals. [121] The Furies or Eumenides, stern and inexorable ministers of the vengeance of the gods. [122] Ajax and Hector, Greek and Trojan heroes in the Trojan War. See Homer's Iliad. Achilles slew Hector and, lashing him to his chariot with the belt which Ajax had given Hector, dragged him round the walls of Troy. Ajax committed suicide with the sword which Hector had presented to him. [123] Thasians, inhabitants of the island of Thasus. The story here told of the rival of the athlete Theagenes is found in Pausanias' Description of Greece, Book VI. chap. xi. [124] Shakespeare, the greatest of English writers, seems to have succeeded entirely or almost entirely in removing the personal element from his writings. [125] Hellenic, Greek. [126] Tit for tat, etc. This paragraph is composed of a series of proverbs. [127] Edmund Burke (1729?-1797), illustrious Irish statesman, orator, and author. [128] Pawns, the pieces of lowest rank in chess. [129] What is the meaning of obscene here? Compare the Latin. [130] Polycrates, a tyrant of Samos, who was visited with such remarkable prosperity that he was advised by a friend to break the course of it by depriving himself of some valued possession. In accordance with this advice he cast into the sea an emerald ring which he considered his rarest treasure. A few days later a fisherman presented the monarch with a large fish inside of which the ring was found. Soon after this Polycrates fell into the power of an enemy and was nailed to a cross. [131] Scot and lot, "formerly, a parish assessment laid on subjects according to their ability. Now, a phrase for obligations of every kind regarded collectively." (Webster.) [132] Read Emerson's essay on Gifts. [133] Worm worms, breed worms. [134] Compare the old proverb "Murder will out." See Chaucer, N.P.T., 232 and 237, and Pr. T., 124. [135] "Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum." Horace, Epist., I. XVIII. 65. [136] Stag in the fable. See Æsop, lxvi. 184, Cerva et Leo; Phædrus I. 12. Cervus ad fontem; La Fontaine, vi. 9, Le Cerf se Voyant dans l'eau.