139. _Homer._ The poet to whom very ancient tradition assigns the authorship of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. _Terpander_, the father of Greek music, flourished about 700-650 B.C. Phidias, a famous Athenian sculptor, lived 500-432 B.C. His friend was Pericles, the ruler of Athens. 304. _Sappho._ A Greek poetess. She wrote about 600 B.C. 305. _AEschylus_, a Greek tragic poet, 525-456 B.C. 340. _Paulus._ Paul died about 64 A.D. The date of this poem is therefore about the last quarter of the first century A.D. Cleon had heard so vaguely about the Christian religion that he did not know the difference between Christ and Paul. The "doctrine" spoken of in the last line was the Christian teaching concerning immortality. The Greek, Cleon, had felt a longing to believe in another existence in which man would have unlimited capability for joy, but Zeus had revealed no such doctrine, and the cultivated Greek was not ready to receive it at the hands of a man like Paul. ONE WORD MORE A poem directly addressed to Mrs. Browning. It was originally appended to the collection of Poems called _Men and Women_. For other tributes by great poets to their wives see Wordsworth's "She was a phantom of delight," and "O dearer far than life and light are dear;" and Tennyson's "Dear, near and true." Mrs. Browning's love for her husband had found passionate expression in _Sonnets from the Portuguese_. 2. _Naming me._ Giving a name to the volume for me. 5-31. Raphael's "lady of the sonnets" was Margharita (La Fornarina), the baker's daughter, whose likeness appears in several of his most celebrated pictures. The Madonnas enumerated in ll. 22-25 are the Sistine Madonna, now in the Dresden Gallery; the Madonna di Foligno, so called because it had been painted as a votive offering for Sigismund Corti of Foligno; the Madonna del Granduca (Petti Palace, Florence) in which the Madonna is represented as appearing to a votary in a vision; and probably the Madonna called La Belle Jardiniere in the Louvre. There is no evidence that Raphael wrote more than one sonnet, or three at most. The "century of sonnets" attributed to him by Browning "is probably an example of poetical license." The volume Guido Reni treasured and left to his heir was a volume with a hundred designs by Raphael. (Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, p. 297) 32-57. Dante's chief work was his great poem, the _Inferno_, in which were caustic sketches of evil men of various sorts. The sketch in the lines 35-41 is made up from two descriptions (_Inferno_, Cantos 32, 33) of traitors, the one to his country, the other to a familiar friend. The second of these was still alive when Dante wrote (W. M. Rossetti, _Academy_, Jan. 10, 1891). Beatrice, or Bice, was the woman Dante loved. It was on the first anniversary of her death that he began to draw the angel. Dante tells of this in the _Vita Nuovo_, xxxv, and there describes the interruption of the "people of importance."