_Enter_ OCEAN. "This sea god enters," says Brunoy, quoted by POT., on "I know not what winged animal--_bizarrerie inexplicable._" Very inexplicable certainly; and yet, as the tragedian expressly calls the animal a _bird_, I do not see why so many translators, both English and German, should insist on making it a _steed_. The bird certainly was a little anomalous, having, as we learn below, four feet (τετρασκελὴς ὀιωνός, v. 395--a _four-footed bira_); but it was a bird for all that, and the air was its element. If the creature must have a name, we must even call it a griffin, or a hippogriff, notwithstanding Welcker's remarks (_Tril._ p. 26). Those who wish to see its physiognomy more minutely described may consult Aeliean. hist, animal. IV. 27, in an apt passage quoted from JACOBS by BOTH. There is an ambiguity in the passage which I have translated-- "Thought instinctive reined the creature," some applying γνώμῃ not to the animal, but to the will of the rider. So PROW.-- "Following still Each impulse of my guiding will." But for the poetical propriety of my translation I can plead the authority of SOUTHEY-- {393} "The ship of Heaven instinct with thought displayed Its living sail, and glides along the sky." Curse of Kehama, VII. 1. and of MILTON-- "The chariot of paternal Deity Instinct with spirit."--VI. 750. and what is much more conclusive in the present instance, that of Homer, whose τιτυσκόμεναι φρεσὶ νῆες (Odyssey VIII. 556), or self-piloted ships of the Phœnicians, belong clearly to the same mythical family as the self-reined griffin of old Ocean. Note 24 (p. 191). "From my distant caves cerulean." _i.e._, in the far West, extreme Atlantic, or "ends of the earth," according to the Homeric phrase. "To the ends I make my journey of the many-nurturing Earth, There where Ocean, sire of gods, and ancient mother Tethys dwells, They who nursed me in their palace, and my infant strength sustained," says _Hera_ in the Iliad (XIV. 200). Note 25 (p. 192). "Enough my brother Atlas' miseries grieve me." The reader will see by referring to the old editions and to POT. that the following description of the miseries of Atlas and Typhon is, in the MS., given to Ocean; and, it must be confessed, there seems a peculiar dramatic propriety in making the old sea god hold up the fate of the Cilician Blaster as a warning to the son of Iapetus, whom he saw embarked in a similar career of hopeless rebellion against the Thunderer. But philological considerations, well stated by SCHOE., have weighed with that editor, as with his predecessors BLOM. and WELL., whose authority and arguments I am for the present willing to follow, though not without some lingering doubts. The alteration of the text originally proceeded from Elmsley, and the original order of the dialogue is stoutly defended by TOEPEL. in his notes.