: _My lyre._--Ver. 559. The players of the cithara,
the instrument of Apollo, were crowned with laurel, in the scenic
representations of the stage.]

[Footnote 86: _The song of triumph._--Ver. 560. The Poet here pays
a compliment to Augustus and the Roman people. The laurel was the
emblem of victory among the Romans. On such occasions the 'fasces'
of the general and the spears and javelins of the soldiers were
wreathed with laurel; and after the time of Julius Caesar, the
Roman general, when triumphing, wore a laurel wreath on his head,
and held a branch of laurel in his hand.]

[Footnote 87: _Before his doors._--Ver. 562. He here alludes to
the civic crown of oak leaves which, by order of the Senate, was
placed before the gate of the Palatium, where Augustus Caesar
resided, with branches of laurel on either side of it.]

EXPLANATION.

To explain this Fable, it must be laid down as a principle that there
were originally many Jupiters, and Apollos, and Mercuries, whose
intrigues being, in lapse of time, attributed to but one individual,
that fact accounts for the great number of children which claimed
those respective Gods for their fathers.

Some prince probably, for whom his love of learning had acquired the
name of Apollo, falling in love with Daphne, pursued her to the brink
of the river Peneus, into which, being accidentally precipitated, she
perished in her lover's sight. Some laurels growing near the spot,
perhaps gave rise to the story of her transformation; or possibly the
etymology of the word 'Daphne,' which in Greek signifies a laurel, was
the foundation of the Fable. Pausanias, however, in his Arcadia, gives
another version of this story. He says that Leucippus, son of Oenomaus,
king of Pisa, falling in love with Daphne, disguised himself in female
apparel, and devoted himself to her service. He soon procured her
friendship and confidence; but Apollo, who was his rival, having
discovered his fraud, one day redoubled the heat of the sun. Daphne
and her companions going to bathe, obliged Leucippus to follow their
example, on which, having discovered his stratagem, they killed him
with the arrows which they carried for the purposes of hunting.

Diodorus Siculus tells us that Daphne was the same with Manto, the
daughter of Tiresias, who was banished to Delphi, where she delivered
oracles, of the language of