[Footnote 39: _Cyllarus._--Ver. 393. This was also the name of the
horse which Castor tamed, to which Ovid alludes in the 401st
line.]

[Footnote 40: _Then ought I._--Ver. 445. Nestor here shows a
little of the propensity for boasting, which distinguishes him in
the Iliad.]

[Footnote 41: _Pelethronian._--Ver. 452. Pelethronia was a region
of Thessaly, which contained a town and a mountain of that name.]

[Footnote 42: _Erigdupus._--Ver. 453. The signification of this
name is 'The noise of strife.']

[Footnote 43: _Mopsus._--Ver. 456. He was a prophet, and one of
the Lapithae. There are two other persons mentioned in ancient
history of the same name.]

[Footnote 44: _Emathian._--Ver. 462. Properly, Emathia was a name
of Macedonia; but it is here applied to Thessaly, which adjoined
to that country.]

[Footnote 45: _Macedonian pike._--Ver. 466. The 'sarissa' is
supposed to have been a kind of pike with which the soldiers of
the Macedonia phalanx were armed. Its ordinary length was
twenty-one feet; but those used by the phalanx were twenty-four
feet long.]

[Footnote 46: _Twist the threads._--Ver. 475. The woof was called
'subtegmen,' 'subtemen,' or 'trama,' while the warp was called
'stamen,' from 'stare,' 'to stand,' on account of its erect
position in the loom.]

[Footnote 47: _Phylleian._--Ver. 479. Phyllus was a city of
Phthiotis, in Thessaly.]

EXPLANATION.

We learn from Diodorus Siculus, and other ancient authors, that the
people of Thessaly, and those especially who lived near Mount
Pelion, were the first who trained horses for riding, and used them
as a substitute for chariots. Pliny the Elder says that they
excelled all the other people of Greece in horsemanship, and that
they carried it to such perfection, that the name of +hippeus+,
'a horseman,' and that of 'Thessalian,' became synonymous. Again,
the Thessalians, from their dexterity in killing the wild bulls that
infested the neighbouring mountains, sometimes with darts or spears,
and at other times in close engagement, acquired the name of
Hippocentaurs, that is, 'horsemen that hunted bulls,' or simply
+kentauroi+, 'Centaurs.'

It is not improbable that, because the Thessalians began to practise
riding in the reign of Ixion, the poets made the Centaurs his sons;
and they were said to have a cloud for th