[165] _Eldest of all his race._] The history of the patriarch was recorded by the ancients through their whole theology. All the principal deities of the sea, however diversified, have a manifest relation to him. Noah was figured under the history of Nereus: and his character of an unerring prophet, as well as of a just, righteous, and benevolent man, is plainly described by Hesiod. BRYANT. [166] _Then rose Thaumas vast._] That beautiful phenomenon in the heavens, which we call the rainbow, was by the Ægyptians styled Thamuz, and signified “the wonder.” The Greeks expressed it Thaumas: and hence was derived θαυμαζω, to wonder. This Thaumas they did not immediately appropriate to the bow: but supposed them to be two personages, and Thaumas the parent. BRYANT. [167] _Phorcys the mighty._] Homer calls him “the old man of the sea:” and gives precisely the same appellation to Proteus. The character of the latter varies only from that of Nereus in the quality of transforming himself into sundry shapes. This may have a reference to the great diluvian changes, varying the face of nature. The connexion of Phorcys and Ceto favours the supposition that these three deities are one and the same personage. “The ark in which mankind were preserved was figured under the semblance of a large fish. It was called Cetos.” BRYANT. _Cetos_ is the Greek term for a whale. [168] _Rose-arm’d Eunice._] ροδοπῃχυς, _rosy-elbow’d_: this epithet, together with that of ροδοδακτυλος, _rosy-fingered_, was derived from the artificial custom of staining the elbow and tops of the fingers with rose-colour. In Dallaway’s Constantinople it is remarked of the modern Greek girls “that the nails both of the fingers and the feet are always stained of a rose-colour:” a curious vestige of Grecian antiquity. [169] _Nereid nymphs._] Spenser, in his “Spousals of the Thames and Medway,” b. 4. cant. ii. of the “Faery Queen,” has imposed on himself a task, from which a translator would fain escape: and has transposed into his stanzas the whole fifty Nereids of Hesiod, together with his catalogue of Rivers. [170] _The sister-harpies._] The harpies were priests of the sun: they were denominated from their seat of residence, which was an oracular temple called Harpi. The representation of them as winged animals was only the insigne of the people, as the eagle and vulture were of the Ægyptians. They seem to have been a set of rapacious persons, who for their repeated acts of violence and cruelty were driven out of Bithynia, their country. BRYANT. [171] _The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray._] The circumstance of their being gray seems to be explained by a passage of Æschylus, who describes them as half-women, half-swans: The Gorgonian plains Of Cisthine, where dwell the Phorcydes Swan-form’d, three ancient nymphs, one common eye Their portion. _Prometheus Chained._