m Belus; Abas, Acrisius, Danae, Perseus, Bachaemon,
Achaemenes, and Orchamus.]

[Footnote 38: _Ambrosia._--Ver. 215. Ambrosia was said to be the
food of the Deities, and nectar their drink.]

[Footnote 39: _Beauty of the God._--Ver. 233. Clarke translates,
'Virgo victa nitore Dei.' 'The young lady--charmed with the
spruceness of the God.']

EXPLANATION.

Plutarch, in his Treatise 'How to read the Poets,' suggests a curious
explanation of the discovery by the Sun of the intrigue of Mars and
Venus. He says that such persons as are born under the conjunction of
the planets Mars and Venus, are naturally of an amorous temperament;
but that if the Sun does not happen then to be at a distance, their
indiscretions will be very soon discovered.

Palaephatus gives a historical solution to the story. He says that
Helius, the son of Vulcan, king of Egypt, resolving to cause his
father's laws against adultery to be strictly observed, and having
been informed that a lady of the court had an intrigue with one of the
courtiers, entered her apartment in the night, and obtaining ocular
proof of the courtier's guilt, caused him to be severely punished. He
also tells us that the similarity of the name gave birth to the Fable
which Homer was the first to relate, with a small variation, and which
is here copied by Ovid. Libanius, deploring the burning of the Temple
of Apollo near Antioch, complains of the ingratitude of Vulcan to that
God, who had formerly discovered to him the infidelity of his wife;
a subject upon which St. Chrysostom seems to think that the
rhetorician would have done better to have been silent.

FABLE III. [IV.234-270]

Clytie, in a fit of revenge, discovers the adventure of Leucothoe to
her father, who orders her to be buried alive. The Sun, grieved at her
misfortune, changed her into the frankincense tree; he also despises
the informer, who pines away for love of him, and is at last changed
into the sunflower.

Clytie envied her, (for the love of the Sun[40] for her had not been
moderate), and, urged on by resentment at a rival, she published the
intrigue, and, when spread abroad, brought it to the notice of her
father. He, fierce and unrelenting, cruelly buried her alive deep in the
ground, as she entreated and stretched out her hands towards the light
of the Sun, and cried, "'Twas he that offered violence to me against my
will;" and