[340] _Croceæ._ Because parchment is always yellow on the side where the hair grew. Others think the parchment itself was dyed yellow. Cf. Pers., iii., 10. [341] _Veneris marito_, a burlesque phrase for "the fire." [342] _Tinea._ Cf. Hor., Ep., I., xx., 12, "Tineas pasces taciturnus inertes." [343] _Cellâ._ So Ben Jonson: "I that spend half my nights and half my days Here in a cell, to get a dark pale face, To come forth worth the ivy or the bays, And in this age can hope no other grace." [344] _Junonis avem._ "To praise and _only_ praise the high-wrought strain. As boys the bird of Juno's glittering train." Gifford. [345] _Facunda et unda._ "Till gray-haired, helpless, humbled genius see Its fault too late, and curse Terpsichore." Badham. [346] _Comitum voces._ Cf. xiii., 32, "Vocalis sportula." [347] _Anabathra_, the seats rising one above another in the form of a theatre. _Subsellia_, those in the body of the room. _Orchestra_, the hired chairs in front of all, for his knightly guests. Holyday quaintly says no patron cared "What the orchestra cost raised for chief friends, And chairs recarried when the reading ends." [348] _Laqueo._ "And would we quit at length th' ambitious ill, The noose of habit implicates us still." Badham. [349] _Vatem egregium._ Cf. Hor., i., Sat. iv., 43, "Ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinior, atque os magna sonaturum, des nominis hujus honorem." How immeasurably finer of the two is Juvenal's description of a poet! "But he, the bard of every age and clime, Of genius fruitful, and of soul sublime, Who from the glowing mint of fancy pours No spurious metal, fused from common ores, But gold to matchless purity refined, And stamp'd with all the godhead in his mind: He whom I feel, but want the power to paint, Must boast a soul impatient of restraint, And free from every care--a soul that loves The Muses' haunts, clear springs and shady groves." Gifford. Of this passage, Hodgson says, Gifford has drawn the prize in the lottery of translation, all others must be blanks after it. [350] _Evoe!_ Vid. Hor., ii., Od. xix., 5. Cf. Milman's Life. [351] _Feruntur._ "Be hurried with resistless force along By the two kindred powers of wine and song." Gifford. [352] _Duas._ "Nor wrestlings with the world will Genius own, Destined to strive with song, and song alone." Badham. [353] _Erinnys._ The splendid passage in the seventh Æneid, 445, _seq._, "Talibus Alecto dictis exarsit in iras. At juveni oranti subitus tremor occupat artus: Deriguere oculi: tot Erinnys sibilat hydris, Tantaque se facies aperit." Cf. Æn., ii., 602, _seq._; xii., 326. [354] _Atreus._ Some take Atreus to be the person who lends the money. Grangæus interprets it, "Qui dum componit tragædiam de Atreo, ut vitam sustentare possit pignori opponit alveolos."