ere, the
father of astronomy, he has been feigned by the poets to have been
the father of the Sun and the Moon.]

[Footnote 6: _The Moon._--Ver. 11. Phoebe. The Moon is so called
from the Greek +phoibos+, 'shining,' and as being the sister of
Phoebus, Apollo, or the Sun.]

[Footnote 7: _Amphitrite._--Ver. 14. She was the daughter of
Oceanus and Doris, and the wife of Neptune, God of the Sea. Being
the Goddess of the Ocean, her name is here used to signify the
ocean itself.]

[Footnote 8: _Nature._--Ver. 21. 'Natura' is a word often used by
the Poet without any determinate signification, and to its
operations are ascribed all those phenomena which it is found
difficult or impossible to explain upon known and established
principles. In the present instance it may be considered to mean
the invisible agency of the Deity in reducing Chaos into a form of
order and consistency. 'Et' is therefore here, as grammarians term
it, an expositive particle; as if the Poet had said, 'Deus sive
natura,' 'God, or in other words, nature.']

[Footnote 9: _The element of the vaulted heaven._--Ver. 26. This
is a periphrasis, signifying the regions of the firmament or upper
air, in which the sun and stars move; which was supposed to be of
the purest fire and the source of all flame. The heavens are
called 'convex,' from being supposed to assume the same shape as
the terrestrial globe which they surround.]

[Footnote 10: _The lowermost place._--Ver. 31. 'Ultima' must not
be here understood in the presence of 'infima,' or as signifying
'last,' or 'lowest,' in a strict philosophical sense, for that
would contradict the account of the formation of the world given
by Hesiod, and which is here closely followed by Ovid; indeed, it
would contradict his own words,--'Circumfluus humor coercuit
solidum orbem.' The meaning seems to be, that the waters possess
the lowest place only in respect to the earth whereon we tread,
and not relatively to the terrestrial globe, the supposed centre
of the system, inasmuch as the external surface of the earth in
some places rises considerably, and leaves the water to subside in
channels.]

EXPLANATION.

The ancient philosophers, unable to comprehend how something could be
produced out of nothing, supposed a matter pre-existent to the Earth
in its present shape