869. ~earth-shaking Neptune's mace~, _i.e._ the trident of Poseidon (Neptune). Homer calls him ἐννοσίγαιος = earth-shaking: comp. _Iliad_, xii. 27, "And the Shaker of the Earth with his trident in his hands," etc. In _Par. Lost_, x. 294, Milton provides Death with a "mace petrifick." 870. ~Tethys' ... pace~. Tethys, wife of Oceanus, their children being the Oceanides and river-gods. In Hesiod she is 'the venerable' (πότνια Τηθύς), and in Ovid 'the hoary.' 871. ~hoary Nereus~: see note, l. 835. 872. ~Carpathian wizard's hook~. See Virgil's _Georg._ iv. 387, "In the sea-god's Carpathian gulf there lives a seer, Proteus, of the sea's own hue ... all things are known to him, those which are, those which have been, and those which drag their length through the advancing future." _Wizard_ = diviner, without the depreciatory sense of line 571; see note there. _Hook_: Proteus had a shepherd's hook, because he tended "the monstrous herds of loathly sea-calves": _Odyssey_, iv. 385-463. 873. ~scaly Triton's ... shell~. In _Lycidas_, 89, he is "the Herald of the Sea." He bore a 'wreathed horn' or shell which he blew at the command of Neptune in order to still the restless waves of the sea. He was 'scaly,' the lower part of his body being like that of a fish. 874. ~soothsaying Glaucus~. He was a Boeotian fisherman who had been changed into a marine deity, and was regarded by fishermen and sailors as a soothsayer or oracle: see note, l. 823. 875. ~Leucothea~: lit. "the white goddess" (Gk. λευκή , θεά), the name by which Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, was worshipped after she had thrown herself into the sea to avoid her enraged husband Athamas. 876. ~her son~, _i.e._ Melisertes, drowned and deified along with his mother: as a sea-deity he was called Palaemon, identified by the Romans with their god of harbours, Portumnus. 877. ~tinsel-slippered~. The 'permanent epithet' of Thetis, a daughter of Nereus and mother of Achilles, is "silver-footed" (Gk. ἀργυρόπεζα). Comp. _Neptune's Triumph_ (Jonson): "And all the silver-footed nymphs were drest To wait upon him, to the Ocean's feast." 'Tinsel-slippered' is a paraphrase of this, for 'tinsel' is a cloth worked with silver (or gold): the notion of cheap finery is not radical. Etymologically, _tinsel_ is that which glitters or _scintillates_. On the beauty of this epithet, and of Milton's compound epithets generally, see Trench, _English Past and Present_, p. 296. 878-80. ~Sirens ... Parthenopè's ... Ligea's~. The three Sirens (see note, l. 253) were Parthenopè, Ligēa, and Lucosia. The tomb of the first was at Naples (see Milton's _Ad Leonaram_, iii., "Credula quid liquidam Sirena, Neapoli, jactas, Claraque Parthenopes fana Achelöiados," etc.). Ligea, described by Virgil (_Georg._ iv. 336) as a sea-nymph, is here represented as seated, like a mermaid, in the act of smoothing her hair with a golden comb.