Constantinus Manasses Compend. Chron. p. 20 (edit. Venet). Madame Dacier was well pleased with this portrait of Manasses, except for its tautology. “De Helenæ pulchritudine omnium optime Constantinus Manasses; nisi in eo tautologiam reprehendas.” (Ad Dictyn Cretensem, lib. i. cap. 3, p. 5.) She also quotes, according to Mezeriac (Comment. sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, T. i. p. 361), the descriptions given by Dares Phrygius, and Cedrenus, of the beauty of Helen. In the first there is one trait which sounds rather strange. Dares says that Helen had a mole between her eyebrows: “notam inter duo supercilia habentem.” But that could not have been a beauty. I wish the Frenchwoman had given her opinion. I, for my part, regard the word “nota” as a corruption, and think that Dares meant to speak of what the Greeks called μεσόφρυον, and the Latins, “glabella.” He means to say that Helen’s eyebrows did not meet, but that there was a little space between them. The taste of the ancients was divided on this point. Some considered this space between the eyebrows beauty, others not. (Junius de Pictura Vet. lib. iii. cap. 9, p. 245.) Anacreon took a middle course. The eyebrows of his beloved maiden were neither perceptibly separated, nor were they fully grown together: they tapered off delicately at a certain point. He says to the artist who is to paint her (Od. 28):— τὸ μεσόφρυον δὲ μή μοι διάκοπτε, μήτε μίσγε, ἐχέτω δ’ ὅπως ἐκείνη τὸ λεληθότως σύνοφρυν βλεφάρων ἴτυν κελαινήν. This is Pauer’s reading, but the meaning is the same in other versions, and has been rightly given by Henr. Stephano:— Supercilii nigrantes Discrimina nec arcus, Confundito nec illos: Sed junge sic ut anceps Divortium relinquas, Quale esse cernis ipsi. But if my interpretation of Dares’ meaning be the true one, what should we read instead of “notam?” Perhaps “moram.” For certainly “mora” may mean not only the interval of time before something happens, but also the impediment, the space between one thing and another. Ego inquieta montium jaceam mora, is the wish of the raving Hercules in Seneca, which Gronovius very well explains thus: “Optat se medium jacere inter duas Symplegades, illarum velut moram, impedimentum, obicem; qui eas moretur, vetet aut satis arcte conjungi, aut rursus distrahi.” The same poet uses “laceratorum moræ” in the sense of “juncturæ.” (Schrœderus ad. v. 762. Thyest.) NOTE 44, p. 131.