and then he helps them to what he has before him, treating them in the most friendly manner-- Ceasing, benevolent he straight assigns The royal portion of the choicest chines To each accepted friend; with grateful haste They share the honours of the rich repast. And they, eating in silence, as it becomes young men to do, converse with one another, leaning forwards gently, not about the food, as Homer tells us, nor about the maid-servants of him who had invited them, and by whom, they had been washed, but about the riches of their entertainer-- Soft whispering thus to Nestor's son, His head reclined, young Ithacus begun: View'st thou unmoved, O ever honour'd most, These prodigies of art, and wondrous cost? Such, and not nobler, in the realms above Are the rich treasures in the dome of Jove.[301:1] For that, according to Seleucus, is the best reading; and Aristarchus is wrong when he writes-- Such is the palace of Olympian Jove. For they are not admiring the beauty of building alone; for how could there be amber, and silver, and ivory in the walls? But they spoke partly about the house, as when they used the expression "the sounding house," for that is the character of large and lofty rooms; and they spoke also of the furniture-- Above, beneath, around the palace shines The sumless treasure of exhausted mines; The spoils of elephants the roofs inlay, And studded amber darts a golden ray. So that it is a natural addition to say-- Such are the treasures in the dome of Jove, Wondrous they are, and awe my heart doth move. But the statement, Such is the palace of Olympian Jove, has no connexion with-- Wondrous they are . . . . and it would be a pure solecism and a very unusual reading. 15. Besides, the word αὐλὴ is not adapted to a house; for a place which the wind blows through is what is called αὐλὴ. And we say that a place which receives the wind on both sides διαυλωνίζει. And so again, αὐλὸς is an instrument through which the wind passes, (namely, a flute,) and every figure which is stretched out straight we call αὐλὸς, as a stadium, or a flow of blood-- Straightway a thick stream (αὐλὸς) through the nostrils rush'd. And we call a helmet also, when it rises up in a ridge out of the centre, αὐλῶπις. And at Athens there are some sacred places called αὐλῶνες, which are mentioned by Philochorus in his ninth book. And they use the word in the masculine gender, ὁι αὐλῶνες, as Thucydides does in his fourth book; and as, in fact, all prose writers do. But the poets use it in the feminine gender. Carcines says in his Achilles-- Βαθεῖαν εἰς αὐλῶνα--Into a deep ravine which surrounded the army. And Sophocles, in his Scythians, writes-- The crags and caverns, and the deep ravines Along the shore (ἐπακτίας αὐλῶνας). And therefore we ought to understand that it is used as a feminine noun by Eratosthenes in his Mercury--