On the first words there is this original MS. note:--[It is to be understood that near to Mount Parnassus, which is in the midst between east and west, are two hill tops, which contend with the snows. And in one of these was a cave, in which in the time of the Heathen, Apollo gave responses to certain priestly virgins who served in a temple which was there dedicated to the said Apollo. And those virgins dwelt by the fountains of the Castalian mount. And among these virgins was that virgin Themis, whom some held to be one of the Sibyls. And it is said that those virgins were so fearful of entering into that cave, that, save on great constraint they dared not do so--according as Lucan relateth in his fifth book and sixth chapter, where he speaketh of the response which the Consul Appius received, on the end of the war between Cæsar and Pompey.] On this Santarem remarks:-- [Both in this note and in those on pp. 10, 11, 12, and 21 ( = pp. 7-8, 13, of this version), which are met with in our MS., and are in the same script, there prevails such a confusion of thought that we hesitate in supposing them to have been written by Azurara. These notes, so far from illustrating the text, themselves call for elucidation. Here the writer follows the opinion of the ancients as to the position of Parnassus, viz., that it was situated in the middle of the world, though, according to Strabo, it was placed between Phocis and Locris. As to its "contending with the snows," the writer of this note, who quotes Lucan, seems to have taken this passage from Ovid rather than from the _Pharsalia_. See Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, I, v, 316-7; Lucan, _Pharsalia_, V, v, 72-3. The cave is the Antrum Corysium of the Poets. See the _Journey to Greece_ of the famous archæologist Spon. The passages referred to as from Bk. V of the Pharsalia are those beginning with the lines--_Hisperio tantum_ ... and v, 114, _Nec voce negata_ ... together with line 120, _Sic tempore longo_, and the following lines.] On the "honourable return" of these caravels, with "booty of the Infidels," from the Levant Seas, we may compare the text on p. 18, and note (31) to the same. Here Santarem remarks:--