attention to the ethereal beauty of this
passage. Probably the finest parallel is to be found in Horace's ode to
Calliope. After the invocation to the muse he thinks he hears her
playing:

"Hark! Or is this but frenzy's pleasing dream?
Through groves I seem to stray
Of consecrated bay,
Where voices mingle with the babbling stream,
And whispering breezes play."

Sir Theodore Martin's version.

Another exquisite and illuminating passage occurs in Catullus, 51, given
in Marchena's fourth note.

CHAPTER 131. "Then she kneaded dust and spittle and, dipping her middle
finger into the mixture, she crossed my forehead with it."

Since the Fairy Tale Era of the human race, sputum has been employed to
give potency to charms and to curses. It was anciently used as anathema
and that use is still in force to this day. Let the incredulous critic
spit in some one's face if he doubts my word.

But sputum had also a place in the Greek and Roman rituals. Trimalchio
spits and throws wine under the table when he hears a cock crowing
unseasonably. This, in the first century. Any Jew in Jerusalem hearing
the name of Titus mentioned, spits: this in 1903. In the ceremony of
naming Roman children spittle had its part to play: it was customary for
the nurse to touch the lips and forehead of the child with spittle. The
Catholic priest's ritual, which prescribes that the ears and nostrils of
the infant or neophyte, as the case may be, shall be touched with
spittle, comes, in all probability from Mark, vii, 33, 34, viii, 23, and
John, ix, 6, which, in turn are probably derived from a classical
original. It should be added that fishermen spit upon their bait before
casting in their hooks.

CHAPTER 131. Medio sustulit digito:

There is more than a suggestion in the choice of the middle finger, in
this instance. Among the Romans, the middle finger was known as the
"infamous finger."

Infami digito et lustralibus ante salivis
Expiat, urentes oculos inhibere perita.
Persius, Sat. ii

See also Dio Chrysostom, xxxiii. "Neither," says Lampridius, Life of
Heliogabalus, "was he given to demand infamies in words when he could
indicate shamelessness with his fingers," Chapter 10. "With tears in his
eyes, Cestos often complains to me, Mamurianus