The quotation preceding this poem is from _Acts_ xvii, 28, and is, in full, "As certain also of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'" The poet thus referred to by Paul was Aratus, a Greek poet from Tarsus, Paul's own city. The Cleon and Protus of Browning's poem are not historical characters, but they are representative of the tone of thought and inquiry on the part of the Greek philosophers at the time of Paul. Lines 1-158 give an account of the achievements of Cleon, a man who has attained eminence in the various realms of poetry, philosophy, painting, and sculpture. He is not in any one accomplishment equal to the great poets, musicians, or artists of the past, and yet he represents progress because he is able to enter into sympathy with the great achievements in all these realms. 1. _Sprinkled isles._ Presumably the Sporades, the "scattered isles." 4. _Profits in his Tyranny._ Free government [in Greece] having superseded the old hereditary sovereignties, all who obtained absolute power in a state were called tyrants, or rather despots; for the term indicates the irregular way in which the power was given rather than the way in which it was exercised. Tyrants might be mild in exercise of authority, and, like Protus, liberal in their patronage of the arts. 8. _Gift after gift._ Protus, a patron of the arts, shows his appreciation of the work of Cleon by many royal gifts. Chief among the slaves, black and white, sent by Protus, is one white woman in a bright yellow wool robe, who is especially commissioned to present a beautiful cup. Lines 136-8 are also descriptive of this girl. 41. _Zeus._ The chief of the Grecian gods. 47. _That epos._ An epic poem by Cleon engraved on golden plates. 51. _The image of the sun-god on the phare._ Cleon has made a statue of Apollo for a lighthouse. _Phare_ is from the island of Pharos where there was a famous lighthouse. 53. _The Poecile._ The Portico of Athens painted with battle pictures by Polygnotus. 69. _For music._ "In Greek music the scales were called moods or modes and were subject to great variation in the arrangement of tones and semitones." (Porter-Clarke, note in Camberwell edition.) 82. _The checkered pavement._ This pavement of black and white marble in an elaborate pattern of various sorts of four-sided figures was a gift to Cleon from his own nation. 100-112. The similitude is involved but fairly clear. The water that touches the sphere here and there, one point at a time, as the sphere is revolved, represents the power of great geniuses who, each at one point, have reached great heights. The air that fills the sphere represents the composite modern mind that synthesizes the parts into a great whole. 132. _Drupe._ Any stone-fruit. The contrast is between the wild plum and the cultivated plum.