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Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,
Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts

calls it a well built city, sxTuvov Tоλgov. Iliad. ii. 546. pure the air, and light the soil, Attica being a mountainous country, the soil was light and barren, and the air sharp and pure, and therefore said to be productive of sharp wits. την ευπρασίαν των ερων εν αυτῷ κατιδουσα, ότι φρονιμωτατους άνδρας οισει. Plato in Timæo, p. 24. vol. iii. edit. Serr. Athenis tenue cœlum, ex quo acutiores etiam putantur Attici. Cicero de Fato. iv. Athens the eye of Greece, and so Demosthenes somewhere calls it opens Exλados, but I cannot at present recollect the place; and in Justin it is called one of the two eyes of Greece, Sparta being the other, lib. v. cap. 8; and Catullus calls Sirmio the eye of islands, xxxii.

1.

Peninsularum Sirmio, insularumque
Ocelle:

but the metaphor is more pro-
perly applied to Athens than any
other place, as it was the great
seat of learning.

238. I cannot discover the passage in Demosthenes referred Aristotle to by Bp. Newton. (Rhetoric. lib. iii. c. x. s. 3.) cites a passage from a speech of Leptines, in which he conjures the

Athenians not to suffer Greece to become srgoplanuos, deprived of one of her eyes, by the extinction of Sparta. The Greek poets frequently used opeλμos in a metaphorical sense, for the lustre of superior excellence. As Aristophanes, Nub. 284. calls the sun σέθερος όμμα. Sappho describes the rose as οφθαλμος ανθέων, (see

240

Achilles Tatius De Leucip. and Clitoph. 1. ii.) and Pindar, Ol. 2. calls the ancestors of Theron Σικελιας οφθαλμος. The Latins have the same metaphor; as Cicero, Pro Leg. Manil. c. v. and in Catilin. iii. c. 10. and Velleius Paterculus, speaking of Pompey's defeat at Pharsalia. And so Ben Jonson terms Edinburgh,

The heart of Scotland, Britain's other eye.

Dunster.

239. pure the air, and light the soil,] This is from Dio Chrysostom. See Spanheim on Callimachus, p. 444. De Attica cæteroquin dicit Dio Chrysost. Orat. vii. p. 87. var gae may wear agatav, xa тov aɛga novpov, esse enim regionem tenui solo, ac levem aerem, prout una voce λπтуsws eadem Attica, post Thucydidem nempe, pag. 2. a Galeno dicitur,

gorg. cap. 7. Aeris autem λɛπτοτητα eidem tribuit Aristides, Serm. Sacr. vi. p. 642. Athens was built between two small rivers, Cephisus and Ilissus; and hence it is called, in the Medea of Euripides, ἱέρων ποταμων πολις. See the chorus at the end of the third act. The effect of these waters upon the air is very poetically represented in the same

beautiful chorus.

Καλλιναου τ' επι Κηφισου όραις.
Των Κυπριν κληΐζουσιν αφυ
σαμεναν χώραν καταπνεύσαι
Μέτριας ανέμων

'Houxroovs avgas.

Pulchrifluique ad Cephisi fluenta
Venerem ferunt [ex Cephiso] ex-

hauri

entem, regionem perflasse,

And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City' or suburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the olive grove of Academe,

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-mother of arts

And eloquence] Justin (1. v. c. 9.) terms Athens Patria communis Eloquentiæ. And (1. ii. c. 6.) he says, Literæ certe et facundia veluti templum Athenas habent. Cicero abounds in panegyrics upon this celebrated seat of learning and eloquence. See Cic. De Orator. 1. i. 13. ed. Proust. Brutus, s. 39, 26, 49. Orat. L. Flacc. 26. See also Roger Ascham, (English Works, Lond. 1771. p. 235.) Dunster.

pro

242.-hospitable] So Diodorus describes the Athenians, Ty πατρίδα κοινον παιδευτήριον παρέχου μένους πασιν ανθρωποις. 1. xiii. c. 27. The Athenians indeed were remarkable for their general hospitality towards strangers, for whose reception and accommodation they had particular officers called govor. Whilst the Lacedæmonians were noted for their ξενηλασίαις, οι driving all strangers from their city. Thus Pericles according to Thucydides, Hist. ii. c. 39. την τε πολιν κοινήν παρεχο μεν, και ουκ εστιν ότε ξενηλασίαις απειργομεν τινα η μαθηματος, η θεαμα τος. Dunster.

244. See there the olive grove

of Academe,

Plato's retirement, &c.] Επανελθών δε εις Αθήνας, διέτριβεν εν Ακαδημία. το δ' εστι γυμνασιον, προαστείον αλσώδες, απο τινος ήρωος ονο

ματθεν Ακαδήμου, καθα και Ευπολις εν Αστράτευτοις φησιν,

Εν ευσκιοις δρομοισιν Ακαδήμου θεου. – και ετάφη εν τη Ακαδημία, ενθα τον πλείστον χρονον διετέλεσε φιλοσοgeven ʼn an' autou aiges. Being φων. όθεν και Ακαδημαϊκη προσηγο returned to Athens from his journey to Egypt, he settled himself in the Academy, a gymnasium or place of exercise in the suburbs of that city, beset with woods, taking name from Academus, one of the heroes, as Eupolis,

In sacred Academus' shady walks.'

and he was buried in the Academy, where he continued most of his time teaching philosophy, whence the sect which sprung from him was called Academic. See Diogenes Laertius, and Stanley in the life of Plato. The Academy is always described as a woody shady place, as here in Laertius, and in Horace, ep. ii. ii. 45.

Atque inter sylvas Academi quærere

verum:

but Milton distinguishes it by the particular name of the olive grove of Academe, for the olive was particularly cultivated about Athens, being sacred to Minerva the goddess of the city, and he has besides the express authority of Aristophanes, Napλ, act iii. scene 3.

Αλλ' εις Ακαδημίαν κατίων, ύπο ταις μορίαις αποθρέξεις.

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;

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Improba Cecropias offendit pica querelas.

Ludovicus de la Cerda in his notes upon Virgil observes, how often the ancient poets have made use of the comparison of the nightingale; Sophocles has it no less than seven times, Homer twice, and Euripides and several others: and we observed upon the Paradise Lost, how much Milton was delighted with the nightingale; no poet has introduced it so often, or spoken of it with such rapture as he; and perhaps there never was a verse more expressive of the harmony of this sweet bird than the following,

Trills her thick-warbled notes the

summer long.

So that upon the whole I believe it may be asserted, that Plato's Academy was never more beautifully described than here in a few lines by Milton. Cicero, who has laid the scene of one of his dialogues there, De Fin. lib. v. and had been himself upon the spot, has not painted it in more lively colours.

245

244. Akenside has well sketched this Athenian scene in his Pleasures of Imagination, i. 715. The reader will find a good account of the Academy and of the other public gardens which were the resort of the learned at Athens, in Falconer's Historical view of the Taste for Gardening and laying-out Grounds among the nations of Antiquity, p. 30. The nightingale is with peculiar propriety introduced in the description of the Academe; in the neighbourhood of which (see Pausanias, 1. i. c. 30.) lay the scene of the Edipus Coloneus of Sophocles, and which he celebrates as particularly abounding in nightingales. Ed. Col. 17. and 703. Homer has a description of the song of this bird not unlike Milton's trills her thickwarbled notes;

-Πανδαρίου κουρη χλωρηίς αηδων

Ητε θαμα τρωπωσα χει πολυηχία
Own. Odyss. xix. 521.

It is remarkable that Milton describes the nightingale singing the summer long, when it is commonly supposed to sing only in the spring. Sappho calls it, (see the Scholiast on Soph. Electr. 148.)

Ηρος δ' αγγελος ιμερόφωνος αηδων. And Pliny says that its song continues in its greatest perfection only fifteen days," afterwards, as summer advances, it loses all its variety and modulation." (1.x. 29.) So Shakespeare describes it as ceasing to sing as

There flow'ry hill Hymettus with the sound
Of bees industrious murmur oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whisp'ring stream: within the walls then view 250
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:

the summer advances, in his fifty-first sonnet; and Milton himself describes it singing

While the jolly hours lead on pro

pitious May,

in his Sonnet to the Nightingale: but in various other places the song of the nightingale is one of

his favourite circumstances of description, when he is painting a summer's night. Dunster.

247. There flow'ry hill Hymettus &c.] And so Valerius Flaccus

calls it Florea juga Hymetti, Argonaut. v. 344. and the honey

was so much esteemed and celebrated by the ancients, that it was reckoned the best of the Attic honey, as the Attic honey was said to be the best in the world. The poets often speak of the murmur of the bees as inviting to sleep, Virg. Ecl. i. 56.

Sæpe levi somnum suadebit inire su

surro:

but Milton gives a more elegant turn to it, and says that it invites to studious musing, which was more proper indeed for his purpose, as he is here describing the Attic learning.

249. -there Ilissus rolls His whisp'ring stream:] Mr. Calton and Mr. Thyer have observed with me, that Plato hath laid the scene of his Phæ

drus on the banks and at the spring of this pleasant river.χαριεντα γουν και καθαρα και διαφανη aquulæ puræ ac pellucidæ juτα ύδατια φαινεται, Nonne hinc

cundo murmure confluunt? Ed. Serr. vol. iii. p. 229. The philosophical retreat at the springhead is beautifully described by Plato in the next page, where Socrates and Phædrus are represented sitting on a green bank shaded with a spreading plantain,

of

which Cicero hath said very prettily, that it seemeth to have grown not so much by the water which is described, as by Plato's eloquence; quæ mihi videtur non tam ipsa aquula, quæ describitur, quam Platonis oratione crevisse, De Orat. 1. 7.

253. Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:] Lyceum was another gymnasium of the Athenians, and was the school of Aristotle, who had been tutor to Alexander the Great, and was the founder of the sect of the Peripatetics, so called απο του περιπατων from his walking and teaching philosophy. Stoa was the school of Zeno, whose disciples from the place had the name of Stoics; and this Stoa or portico, being adorned with variety of paintings, was called in Greek Пoxin or various, and here by Milton very

There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measur'd verse,
Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,

properly the painted Stoa. See Diogenes Laertius in the lives of Aristotle and Zeno. But there is some reason to question, whether the Lyceum was within the walls, as Milton asserts. For Suidas says expressly, that it was a place in the suburbs, built by Pericles for the exercising of soldiers and I find the scholiast upon Aristophanes in the Irene speaks of going into the Lyceum, and going out of it again, and returning back into the city:εἰς το Λύκειον εισίοντες-και παλιν εξίοντες εκ του Λυκείου, και απίοντες εις την πολιν.

253. That the Lyceum stood without the walls clearly appears from the beginning of Plato's Lysis; see also Strabo, 1. ix. p. 397. Its establishment has been attributed both to Pisistratus and Pericles. (See Meursius, Athenæ Atticæ, l. ii. c. 3. and Plutarch's Life of Pericles.) The same writer (Sympos. viii. q. 4.) says, that it was dedicated to Apollo, as the god of healing, because health alone can furnish the requisite strength for the corporeal exercises of the place. From the epithets of Apollo, Auxios, Avenysing, Auxor Tovos, (not the wolfslaying God, but the extender of light, from Avxos or λunn, lux, and Exte, as also Auxays signifies not born in Lyciu, but producer of light,) the Lyceum probably derived its name. The Stoa was

255

painted, principally by Polygnotus, with representations of the most renowned of the Athenian victories, such as those of Marathon and Salamis; hence Persius, sat. iii. 53.

Quæque docet sapiens, braccatis illita
Medis,

Porticus

The porch, with trowser'd Persians pictur'd o'er. [Howes.] On the origin of the name of the Peripatetics see the note below on v. 278. Dunster.

257. Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,] Æolian charms, Eolia carmina, verses such as those of Alcæus and Sappho, who were both of Mitylene in Lesbos, an island belonging to the Æolians. Hor. Od. iii. xxx. 13.

Princeps Eolium carmen ad Italos
Deduxisse modos.

Od. iv. iii. 12.

Fingent olio camine nobilem. Dorian lyric odes, such as those of Pindar, who calls his Angian

guyya the Dorian harp, Olymp. 1. 26. Δωριῳ πεδιλῳ Dorian buskin, Olymp. iii. 9. Ang zou Dorian hymn, Pyth. viii. 29.

257. charms] Our English word charm is derived from carmen; as are inchant and incantation from canto. Dunster.

258. And his who gave them breath, &c.] Our author agrees with those writers, who speak of Homer as the father of all kinds

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