5. =the Thracian raised his strain.= Orpheus was a Thracian, the son of Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope. Apollo gave him a lyre, and the Muses instructed him in its use; and so sweet was the music which he drew from it that the wild beasts were enchanted and the trees and rocks moved from their places to follow the sound. When Jason and his followers, the Argonauts, were unable to launch their ship Argo, Orpheus played his lyre, and the vessel glided into the sea, while her "kindred trees descended" from the slopes of the mountain (Pelion) and followed her into "the main." 6. =demi-gods.= Half-gods; heroes. Among the Argonauts were Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Theseus, Peleus, Nestor, and others similarly renowned. 7. =infernal bounds.= Boundaries of hell. The wife of Orpheus was a nymph named Eurydice. She having died from the bite of a serpent, the sweet musician followed her into the infernal regions. He begged of Pluto that his wife might return with him to the earth, but his prayer was granted only upon condition that he should not look back upon her until both had safely passed the gates between Hades and the upper world. The poet tells the rest of the story. =Phlegethon.= A river of hell in which flowed fire instead of water. 8. See Song of Solomon viii. 6: "Love is strong as death." 9. =shady forms.= Departed spirits were called "shades," because they were supposed to be perceptible sometimes to the sight but never to the touch. See "heroes' armed shades," below. 10. =Sisyphus.= See note 18, page 147. =Ixion.= King of the Lapithæ. As a punishment for ingratitude to Zeus, his hands and feet were chained to a wheel which was always in motion. =Furies.= See note 20, page 167. 11. =hell.= The powers of hell--or, as he explains below, Proserpine, the queen of the infernal regions. =Styx.= The principal river of hell, around which it flows seven--not nine--times. 12. See Milton's "L'Allegro," 135: "Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, . . . That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto to have quite set free His half-regain'd Eurydice." 13. Orpheus's grief for the loss of Eurydice caused him to treat with contempt the Thracian women among whom he dwelt, and they in revenge tore him to pieces, under the excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies. His head was given by the Hebrus to the sea, and finally carried to the island of Lesbos, where it was buried. See Milton's "Lycidas," 58: "What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?" See, also, "Paradise Lost," VII, 32: