[96] _To gripe thy tumid foot._] Aristotle remarks that, in famished persons, the upper parts of the body are dried up, and the lower extremities become tumid. SCALIGER. [97] _Make now your nests._] Grævius finds out that καλιαι may mean _huts_ and _barns_, as well as _nests_: and in the true spirit of a verbal commentator, explodes the old interpretation of “_facite nidos_” and substitutes “_exstruite casas_:” in which he is followed, like the leader of the flock, by all the modern editors. These _viri doctissimi_ are for ever stumbling on school-boy absurdities in their labour to be critical and sagacious: “they strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” Are the labourers to set about building huts and barns in the middle of harvest? Who does not see that “make nests,” as old Chapman properly renders it, is a mere proverbial figure? “Make hay while the sun shines.” [98] _Those frosts._] Hesiod is said, in this description, to have imitated Orpheus: as if two poets could not describe the appearances and effects of winter, without copying from each other. Many and frequent from the clouds of heaven The frosts rush down, on beeches and all trees, Mountains and rocks and men: and every face Is touch’d with sadness. They sore-nipping smite The beasts among the hills: nor any man Can leave his dwelling: quell’d in every limb By galling cold: in all his limbs congeal’d. [99] _Yet from bland Venus’ mystic rites aloof._] Hesiod introduces the privacy and retiredness of a virgin’s apartment in the house of her mother, as conveying the idea of more complete shelter. [100] _With shining ointment._] Ointment always accompanied the bath. Thus Homer describes the bathing of Nausicaa and her maids in the sixth book of the Odyssey: And laving next and smoothing o’er with oil Their limbs, all seated on the river bank They took repast. And afterwards of Ulysses: At his side they spread Mantle and vest; and next the limpid oil Presenting to him in a golden cruse, Exhorted him to bathe. COWPER. [101] _Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet._] Athenæus, book vii. explodes the notion of the polypus gnawing its own feet, and states that its feet are so injured by the congers or sea-eels. Pliny accounts for the mutilation in rather a marvellous manner. “They are ravenously fond of oysters: these, at the touch, close their shell, and cutting off the claws of the polypus take their food from their plunderer. The polypi, therefore, lie in wait for them when they are open; and placing a little stone, so as not to touch the body of the oyster, and so as not to be ejected by the muscular motion of the shell, assail them in security and extract the flesh. The oyster contracts itself, but to no purpose, having been thus wedged open.” Lib. ix. c. 30.