' Persia and Arabia have been
celebrated by the poets, ancient and modern, for their great
fertility in frankincense and other aromatic plants.]

[Footnote 42: _Like a violet._--Ver. 268. This cannot mean the
large yellow plant which is called the sunflower. The small
aromatic flower which we call heliotrope, with its violet hue and
delightful perfume, more nearly answers the description. The
larger flower probably derived its name from the resemblance which
it bears to the sun, surrounded with rays, as depicted by the
ancient painters.]

EXPLANATION.

No ascertained historical fact can be found as the basis of the story
of Leucothoe being buried alive by her father Orchamus, or of her
rival Clytie being metamorphosed into a sunflower. The story seems to
have been most probably simply founded on principles of natural
philosophy. Leucothoe, it is not unreasonable to suppose, may have
been styled the daughter of Orchamus, king of Persia, for no other
reason but because that Prince was the first to introduce the
frankincense tree, which was called Leucothoe, into his kingdom; and
it was added that she fell in love with Apollo, because the tree
produces an aromatic drug much used in physic, of which that God was
fabled to have been the inventor. The jealousy of Clytie was, perhaps,
founded upon a fact, stated by some naturalists, that the sunflower is
a plant which kills the frankincense tree, when growing near it.
Pliny, however, who ascribes several properties to the sunflower, does
not mention this among them.

Orchamus is nowhere mentioned by the ancient writers, except in the
present instance.

FABLE IV. [IV.271-284]

Daphnis is turned into a stone. Scython is changed from a man into a
woman. Celmus is changed into adamant. Crocus and Smilax are made into
flowers. The Curetes are produced from a shower.

{Thus} she spoke; and the wondrous deed charms their ears. Some deny
that it was possible to be done, some say that real Gods can do all
things; but Bacchus is not one of them. When her sisters have become
silent, Alcithoe is called upon; who running with her shuttle through
the warp of the hanging web, says, "I keep silence upon the well-known
amours of Daphnis, the shepherd of Ida,[43] whom the resentment of the
Nymph, his paramour, turned into a stone. Such mighty grief inflames
those who are in love. Nor do I relate how once Sc