This were such a day He'd spend an age to see 't.] [Footnote 78: To Argos, of which Danaus had been king, whence the Argives were also called Danai.] [Footnote 79: Atreus, king of Mycenæ, murdered the two sons of his brother Thyestes, and feasted their father with dishes made of their flesh.] [Footnote 80: Bacchus forced the Theban women to assemble, and give loose to the wild rites by which he was celebrated. It was on this occasion that Pentheus was massacred by his mother.] [Footnote 81: Nisus was king of Megara when it was besieged by Minos. The king's daughter, Scylla, conceived a passion for Minos, and to ensure him the victory she plucked from her father's head a purple hair upon which depended the preservation of himself and the city.] [Footnote 82: Statius says that when Polynices was in the middle of the isthmus of Corinth he could hear the waves beat against both its shores. "This," remarked Pope, "could hardly be; for the isthmus of Corinth is full five miles over," and he calls the introduction of the circumstance "a geographical error." It was his own geography that was at fault. The width of the isthmus is only three miles and a half. Pope spoilt the incident when he transferred it to the Scironian rock. Sciron was a robber and murderer, who compelled his victims to wash his feet upon the cliff, and while they were engaged in the operation he kicked them over into the sea.] [Footnote 83: "We have scarcely in our language eight more beautiful lines than these, down to human care," ver. 481.--WARTON.] [Footnote 84: Pope owed some happy expressions to the translation of Stephens: The silent world does view Her airy chariot pearled with drops of dew.] [Footnote 85: He again borrowed from Stephens: And nodding through the air brings down in haste A sweet forgetfulness of labour passed.] [Footnote 86: A very faulty expression; as also below, verse 501,--"rolls a deluge on."--WARTON. He copied Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 638: As when the winds their airy quarrel try. He was indebted to a second couplet in the same translation, Æn. ii. 565: Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try, Contending for the kingdom of the sky.] [Footnote 87: "Showers" is an inappropriate word to denote the deluge of rain which flooded the earth, and "swept herds, and hinds, and houses to the main."] [Footnote 88: The Inachus, and the Erasinus were rivers in the plain of Argos.] [Footnote 89: The waters of the Lerna were infected by the venom from the serpent Hydra, which Hercules slew.] [Footnote 90: The storm, by blowing down trees or branches, made an opening in the dense foliage through which the sun had never penetrated.] [Footnote 91: In the first edition: The prince with wonder did the waste behold, While from torn rocks the massy fragments rolled.] [Footnote 92: Dryden's Virg. Æn. ii. 413: