3. =Thais.= "Her name is best known from the story of her having stimulated the Conqueror, during a great festival at Persepolis, to set fire to the palace of the Persian kings; but this anecdote, immortalized as it has been by Dryden's famous ode, appears to rest on the sole authority of Cleitarchus, one of the least trustworthy of the historians of Alexander, and is in all probability a mere fable." After the death of Alexander, Thais became the wife of Ptolemy Lagus. 4. =Timotheus.= A famous flute-player from Thebes. Another and more celebrated Timotheus, "the poet of the later Athenian dithyramb," was a native of Miletus and died about the time of Alexander's birth. 5. Alexander claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon; and when he visited the temple of that god, in the Libyan Desert, he was received by the priests and honored as such. See Plutarch's _Life of Alexander_. 6. =present deity.= See Psalm xlvi. 1. 7. =affects to nod.= See Homer's "Iliad." I, 528-530: "Jove spake, and nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from his immortal head; and he made great Olympus quake." 8. =hautboys.= Oboes. French _hautbois_. Wind instruments resembling the clarionet. =Bacchus.= Compare Shakespeare: "Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne." --_Antony and Cleopatra_, Act ii, sc. 7. 9. =thrice he slew the slain.= How could he slay the slain? 10. =Darius.= At the time of this feast at Persepolis, Darius, the vanquished king of Persia, was still living, although a fugitive. In the following year Alexander pursued him into the Parthian Desert, where he was murdered by the satrap of Bactria. By order of Alexander, the body of the unfortunate king was sent to Persepolis, to be buried in the tombs of the kings. 11. =expos'd he lies.= Dryden seems to have written this under the impression that Darius had been killed before the time of the great feast at Persepolis. 12. =close his eyes.= Compare this with the lines from Pope ("Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady"): "By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed; By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed." 13. =a sigh he stole.= Sighed silently. His sighs when the result of pity were not very distinctly uttered. Compare Shakespeare: "And then the lover, Sighing like a furnace." --_As You Like It_, Act ii, sc. 7. And then read, in the next stanza, how Alexander sighed when moved by love. 14. =pity melts the mind to love.= Compare: "Pity swells the tide of love." --_Young's Night Thoughts_, III, 106. "Pity's akin to love." --_Southern's Oroonoko_, II, 1. 15. =Lydian measures.= The people of Lydia were noted for the effeminacy of their manners. And Lydian music was peculiarly soft and voluptuous.