[122] _Decline a slender bark._] Αινειν, _commend_. This passage is quoted by Plutarch in illustration of words used in a different sense from what they seem to import. _Praise_ means _refuse_. The same idiom occurs in Virgil’s second Georgic: Commend the large excess Of spacious vineyards: cultivate the less. DRYDEN. [123] _O’er the sea’s broad way._] From the following extracts it will not appear extraordinary that this prodigious voyage of Hesiod should have afforded him but little opportunity of acquiring a practical knowledge of navigation. On an inspection of the map we must, however, concede that the passage from Aulis direct to Chalcis is somewhat wider than the part of the strait crossed by a draw-bridge. “Elle (Chalcis) est située dans un endroit où à la faveur de deux promontoires qui s’avançent de part et d’autre, les côtes de l’île touchent presque à celles de Bèotie. “Ce leger intervalle, qu’on appelle Euripe, est en partie comblé par une digue. A chacune de ses extrémités est une tour pour le défendre, et un pont-lever pour laisser passer un vaisseau.” BARTHELEMY, VOYAGES D’ANACHARSIS, tom. ii. p. 82. [124] _Where first their tuneful inspiration flow’d._] That is, on mount Helicon. Both Le Clerc and Robinson unaccountably refer the term ενθα, where, to Chalcis: and regard this passage as contradictory to that in the proem to the Theogony: whereas the one confirms the other. [125] _When from the summer-tropic fifty days_ _Have roll’d._] If no verses be wanting here, Hesiod truly needs not boast of his skill in nautical affairs. For what can be more absurd than to confine all navigation within fifty days, and those beginning from the summer-solstice; especially as the summer solstice fell on the 3d of July? I should suppose that there was a deficiency of two verses to this effect: Before the summer-tropic fifty days Thy keel may safely plough the azure ways. The similarity of the lines may have caused the copyist’s omission of the two former. I am aware that the art of navigation was in that age imperfect: but if sea-faring men had learnt from experience that navigation was safe fifty days _after_ the summer solstice, they could have learnt from the same teacher that it was equally safe fifty days _before_ it: namely, in the months of May and June. LE CLERC. [126] _Men, too, may sail in spring._] What the poet says here of a spring voyage, I understand of that which may be made in the month of April: which is not much less liable to gales and storms than even the winter months. Certainly it was in April that the fig-tree began to be in leaf. LE CLERC. [127] _And wed the fifth of her expanded bloom._] She begins to bloom in her twelfth year. Let her wed in the fifth year of her puberty; that is, in her sixteenth. GUIETUS.