with a hatchet, and, according
to Apollodorus, mistaking his own son Dryas for a vine, destroyed
him with the same weapon.]

[Footnote 14: _Unseasonable labor._--Ver. 32. 'Minerva;' the name
of the Goddess Minerva is here used for the exercise of the art of
spinning, of which she was the patroness. The term 'intempestiva'
is appropriately applied, as the arts of industry and frugality,
which were first invented by Minerva, but ill accorded with the
idle and vicious mode of celebrating the festival of Bacchus.]

[Footnote 15: _Dercetis._--Ver. 45. Lucian, speaking of Dercetis,
or Derceto, says, 'I have seen in Phoenicia a statue of this
goddess, of a very singular kind. From the middle upwards, it
represents a woman, but below it terminates in a fish. The statue
of her, which is shown at Hieropolis, represents her wholly as a
woman.' He further says, that the temple of this last city was
thought by some to have been built by Semiramis, who consecrated
it not to Juno, as is generally believed, but to her own mother,
Derceto. Atergatis was another name of this Goddess. She was said,
by an illicit amour, to have been the mother of Semiramis, and in
despair, to have thrown herself into a lake near Ascalon, on which
she was changed into a fish.]

[Footnote 16: _Palestine._--Ver. 46. Palaestina, or Philistia,
in which Ascalon was situate, was a part of Syria, lying in its
south-western extremity.]

[Footnote 17: _How a Naiad._--Ver. 49. The Naiad here mentioned is
supposed to have been a Nymph of the Island of the Sun, called
also Nosola, between Taprobana (the modern Ceylon) and the coast
of Carmania (perhaps Coromandel), who was in the habit of changing
such youths as fell into her hands into fishes. As a reward for
her cruelty, she herself was changed into a fish by the Sun.]

[Footnote 18: _Most beauteous of youths._--Ver. 55. Clarke
translates 'juvenum pulcherrimus alter,' 'one of the most handsome
of all the young fellows.']

[Footnote 19: _Her lofty city._--Ver. 57. The magnificence of
ancient Babylon has been remarked by many ancient writers, from
Herodotus downwards. Its walls are said to have been 60 miles in
compass, 87 feet in thickness, and 350 feet in height.]

[Footnote 20: _Walls of brick._--Ver. 58. The walls were built by
Semiramis of bricks dried in