838. In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel. The _nectar_ of the gods,
which we usually think of as their drink, was also applied to other
purposes, as when Thetis anoints with it the body of Patroclus, to
prevent decay. _Asphodel_ is a flower in our actual flora; but in the
poets Asphodel is an immortal flower growing abundantly in the meadows of
Elysium.

840. ambrosial here means, _conferring immortality_.

845. Helping all urchin blasts; _i.e._ helping the victims of the blasts
against their baleful influence. See note on line 640. See Merry Wives of
Windsor IV 4 49.

851. The word daffodil is directly derived from asphodel, with a _d_
unaccountably prefixed. The English daffodil is the narcissus.

858. adjuring: charging or entreating solemnly and earnestly, as if under
oath.

868. Oceanus is the personified Ocean, a broad, flowing stream encircling
the earth.

869. Earth-shaking is a Homeric epithet of Neptune. The mace of Neptune
must be his trident.

870. Tethys is wife of Oceanus and mother of the Oceanids. She reared the
great goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter. Her pace is suitable to her dignity.

871. hoary Nereus. See note on line 835.

872. the Carpathian wizard's hook. Proteus, son of Oceanus and Tethys,
herded the sea-calves of Neptune on the island of Carpathus. As a
herdsman he bore a crook, or _hook_. He had the gift of prophecy, and so
is called a _wizard_.

873. Scaly Triton's winding shell. _Triton_ was herald of Neptune and so
carried a shell, which he was wont to _wind_ as a horn. His body was in
part covered with scales like those of a fish.

874. The soothsaying Glaucus was a prophet, and gave oracles at Delos. He
is represented as a man whose hair and beard are dripping with water,
with bristly eyebrows, his breast covered with sea-weeds, and the lower
part of his body ending in the tail of a fish.

875. By Leucothea's lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands.

Ino, after she had slain herself and her son Melicertes, by leaping with
him into the sea, became a protecting deity of mariners under the name
Leucothea, or the white goddess. So she came to the aid of Ulysses when
he was passing on his raft from Calypso's isle to Phaeacia. She there
appears "with fair ankles," and when she receives back from him her veil,
which she had lent him, she does it with "_lovely hands_."

Melicertes becomes a protecting deity of shores, under the name Palaemon.
The Romans