[Footnote 108: The gorgon, Medusa, changed every one who saw her to stone. Perseus avoided the penalty by only looking at her reflection in a mirror as he cut off her head while she slept. Being the grandson of a king of Argos he was an Argive hero, whence his triumph was engraved upon the royal goblet. The artist had selected the moment when Perseus is darting into the air with the head of the gorgon, which, newly separated from the body, still retained the traces of expiring life.] [Footnote 109: On account of the beauty of Ganymede, Jove sent an eagle to convey him from the earth to the habitations of the gods. There he was appointed cup-bearer, which rendered the incident appropriate to a drinking-vessel.] [Footnote 110: He has omitted some forcible expressions of the original: Septem--atris--terentem--nigro--centum per jugera,--all of them picturesque epithets.--WARTON. Statius says, that the huge serpent while alive encircled Delphi seven times with its dark coils, and that when dead and barely unrolled, its body spread over a hundred acres.] [Footnote 111: The water was not itself poisonous, but it turned to venom in the serpent.] [Footnote 112: Stephens is more literal, and at the same time more poetical: earth prepares thy room Garnished with flow'ry beds, and thatched above With oaken leaves close woven; whilst the grove Lends bark to make thy garments.] [Footnote 113: Much superior to the original.--WARTON.] [Footnote 114: Sandy's translation of Ovid's Met. bk. vi. And calls the furies from the depth of hell.] [Footnote 115: Pope copied Stephens: devouring some With rav'nous jaws before their parents' eyes, And fats herself with public miseries.] [Footnote 116: Inachus, according to one tradition, built the city of Argos. After his descendants had reigned for some generations, the throne was seized by Danaus.] [Footnote 117: Death cutting off the fatal thread with a scythe, is not a very sublime or congruous image. Pope has blended modern ideas with classical: in the original it is "ense metit;"--"_mows_ with his _sword_." Pope has introduced a "_scythe_," to preserve more accurately the metaphor, but it has a bad effect.--BOWLES.] [Footnote 118: Choroebus.] [Footnote 119: Statius states that Choroebus withdrew, having obtained his end, and says nothing of his being "unwilling," by which Pope seems to mean that he was unwilling to accept his life. This deviation from the original destroys the generous heroism of Choroebus, for if he was weary of his existence there was no merit in his braving death. Statius, indeed, had previously said that Apollo granted Choroebus the "sad boon of life" out of admiration for his magnanimity; but this phrase only signifies that life is sorrowful, and not that Choroebus would have preferred to die.] [Footnote 120: Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854.--WARTON.]