the more difficult for their antagonist to grasp. Juvenal
gives the epithet 'ceromaticum' to the neck of the athlete, or
wrestler, which word means 'rubbed with wrestler's oil.']

[Footnote 41: _Now had they brought._--Ver. 243-4. Clarke thus
translates 'Et jam contulerant arcto luctantia nexu Pectora
pectoribus;' 'And now they had clapped breast to breast,
struggling in a close hug.']

[Footnote 42: _I have received my death-blow._--Ver. 283.
'Efferor' literally means, 'I am carried out.' 'Effero' was the
term used to signify the carrying of the body out of the city
walls, for the purposes of burial.]

[Footnote 43: _Before the biers._--Ver. 289. The body of the
deceased person was in ancient times laid out on a bed of the
ordinary kind, with a pillow for supporting the head and back;
among the Romans, it was placed in the vestibule of the house,
with its feet towards the door, and was dressed in the best robe
which the deceased had worn when alive. Among the better classes,
the body was borne to the place of burial, or the funeral pile, on
a couch, which was called 'feretrum,' or 'capulus.' This was
sometimes made of ivory, and covered with gold and purple.]

[Footnote 44: _Top of a mountain._--Ver. 311. This was Mount
Sipylus, in Boeotia, which, as we learn from Pausanias, had on its
summit a rock, which, at a distance, strongly resembled a female
in an attitude of sorrow. This resemblance is said to exist even
at the present day.]

EXPLANATION.

All the ancient historians agree with Diodorus Siculus and
Apollodorus, that Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus, and the sister
of Pelops; but she must not be confounded with a second Niobe, who was
the daughter of Phoroneus, and the first mortal (Homer tells us) with
whom Jupiter fell in love. Homer says that she was the mother of
twelve children, six sons and six daughters. Herodotus says, that she
had but two sons and three daughters. Diodorus Siculus makes her the
mother of fourteen children, seven of each sex. Apollodorus, on the
authority of Hesiod, says, that she had ten sons and as many
daughters; but gives the names of fourteen only. The story of the
destruction of her children is most likely based upon truth, and bears
reference to a historical fact. The plague, which ravaged the city of
Thebes, destroyed all the children of Niobe; and