The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside Part 25

[Footnote B: '_Love, the sire of Fate_.'--L. 25. Fate is the universal system of natural causes; the work of the Omnipotent Mind, or of Love: so Minucius Felix:--'Quid enim aliud est fatum, quam quod de unoquoque nostrum deus fatus est.' So also Cicero, in the First Book on Divination:--'Fatum autem id appello, quod Graeci EIMAPMENIIN: id est, ordinem seriemque causarum, c.u.m causa causae nexa rem ex se gignat--ex quo intelligitur, ut fatum sit non id quod superst.i.tiose, sed id quod physice dicitur causa asterna rerum.' To the same purpose is the doctrine of Hierocles, in that excellent fragment concerning Providence and Destiny. As to the three Fates, or Destinies of the poets, they represented that part of the general system of natural causes which relates to man, and to other mortal beings: for so we are told in the hymn addressed to them among the Orphic Indigitamenta, where they are called the daughters of Night (or Love), and, contrary to the vulgar notion, are distinguished by the epithets of gentle and tender-hearted. According to Hesiod, Theog.

ver. 904, they were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis: but in the Orphic hymn to Venus, or Love, that G.o.ddess is directly styled the mother of Necessity, and is represented, immediately after, as governing the three Destinies, and conducting the whole system of natural causes.]

[Footnote C: '_Chaos_.'--L. 26. The unformed, undigested ma.s.s of Moses and Plato; which Milton calls 'The womb of nature.']

[Footnote D: '_Born of Fate was Time_.'--L. 26. Chronos, Saturn, or Time, was, according to Apollodorus, the son of Caelum and Tellus.

But the author of the hymns gives it quite undisguised by mythological language, and calls him plainly the offspring of the earth and the starry heaven; that is, of Fate, as explained in the preceding note.]

[Footnote E: '_Who many sons ... devour'd_.'--L. 27. The known fable of Saturn devouring his children was certainly meant to imply the dissolution of natural bodies, which are produced and destroyed by Time.]

[Footnote F: '_The Child of Rhea_.'-L. 29. Jupiter, so called by Pindar.]

[Footnote G: '_Drove him from the upper sky_.'--L. 29. That Jupiter dethroned his father Saturn is recorded by all the mythologists.

Phurnutus, or Cornutus, the author of a little Greek treatise on the nature of the G.o.ds, informs us that by Jupiter was meant the vegetable soul of the world, which restrained and prevented those uncertain alterations which Saturn, or Time, used formerly to cause in the mundane system.]

[Footnote H: '_Then social reign'd The kindred powers_.'--L. 31.

Our mythology here supposeth, that before the establishment of the vital, vegetative, plastic nature (represented by Jupiter), the four elements were in a variable and unsettled condition, but afterwards well-disposed, and at peace among themselves. Tethys was the wife of the Ocean; Ops, or Rhea, the Earth; Vesta, the eldest daughter of Saturn, Fire; and the Cloud-Compeller, or [Greek: Zeus nephelaegeretaes], the Air, though he also represented the plastic principle of nature, as may be seen in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him.]

NOTE I.

'_The sedgy-crowned race_.'--L. 34.

The river-G.o.ds, who, according to Hesiod's Theogony, were the sons of Ocea.n.u.s and Tethys.

NOTE J.

'_From them are ye, O Naiads_.'--L. 37.

The descent of the Naiads is less certain than most points of the Greek mythology. Homer, Odyss. xiii. [Greek: kourai Dios]. Virgil, in the eighth book of the aeneid, speaks as if the Nymphs, or Naiads, were the parents of the rivers: but in this he contradicts the testimony of Hesiod, and evidently departs from the orthodox system, which represented several nymphs as retaining to every single river.

On the other hand, Callimachus, who was very learned in all the school-divinity of those times, in his hymn to Delos, maketh Peneus, the great Thessalian river-G.o.d, the father of his nymphs: and Ovid, in the fourteenth book of his Metamorphoses, mentions the Naiads of Latium as the immediate daughters of the neighbouring river-G.o.ds.

Accordingly, the Naiads of particular rivers are occasionally, both by Ovid and Statius, called by patronymic, from the name of the river to which they belong.

NOTE K.

'_Syrian Daphne_.'--L. 40.

The grove of Daphne in Syria, near Antioch, was famous for its delightful fountains.

NOTE L.

'_The tribes beloved by Paeon_.'--L. 40.

Mineral and medicinal springs. Paeon was the physician of the G.o.ds.

NOTE M.

'_The winged offspring_.'--L. 43.

The winds; who, according to Hesiod and Apollodorus, were the sons of Astraeus and Aurora.

NOTE N.

'_Hyperion_.'--L. 46.

A son of Caelum and Tellus, and father of the Sun, who is thence called, by Pindar, Hyperionides. But Hyperion is put by Homer in the same manner as here, for the Sun himself.

NOTE O.

'_Your sallying streams_.'--L. 49.

The state of the atmosphere with respect to rest and motion is, in several ways, affected by rivers and running streams; and that more especially in hot seasons: first, they destroy its equilibrium, by cooling those parts of it with which they are in contact; and secondly, they communicate their own motion: and the air which is thus moved by them, being left heated, is of consequence more elastic than other parts of the atmosphere, and therefore fitter to preserve and to propagate that motion.

NOTE P.

'_Delian king_.'--L. 70.

One of the epithets of Apollo, or the Sun, in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him.

NOTE Q.

'_Chloris_.'--L. 79.

The ancient Greek name for Flora.

NOTE R.

'_Amalthea_.'--L. 83.

The mother of the first Bacchus, whose birth and education was written, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, in the old Pelasgic character, by Thymoetes, grandson to Laomedon, and contemporary with Orpheus. Thymoetes had travelled over Libya to the country which borders on the western ocean; there he saw the island of Nysa, and learned from the inhabitants, that 'Ammon, King of Libya, was married in former ages to Rhea, sister of Saturn and the t.i.tans: that he afterwards fell in love with a beautiful virgin whose name was Amalthea; had by her a son, and gave her possession of a neighbouring tract of land, wonderfully fertile; which in shape nearly resembling the horn of an ox, was thence called the Hesperian horn, and afterwards the horn of Amalthea: that fearing the jealousy of Rhea, he concealed the young Bacchus in the island of Nysa;' the beauty of which, Diodorus describes with great dignity and pomp of style. This fable is one of the n.o.blest in all the ancient mythology, and seems to have made a particular impression on the imagination of Milton; the only modern poet (unless perhaps it be necessary to except Spenser) who, in these mysterious traditions of the poetic story, had a heart to feel, and words to express, the simple and solitary genius of antiquity. To raise the idea of his Paradise, he prefers it even to--

'That Nysean isle Girt by the river Triton, where old Cham (Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove) Hid Amalthea and her florid son, Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye.'

NOTE S.

'_Edonian band_.'--L. 94.

The priestesses and other ministers of Bacchus: so called from Edonus, a mountain of Thrace, where his rites were celebrated.

NOTE T.

'_When Hermes_.'--L. 105.