llene; others again,
in Thessaly, or Thrace.]

[Footnote 25: _Carry his bolts._--Ver. 158. The eagle was feigned
to be the attendant bird of Jove, among other reasons, because it
was supposed to fly higher than any other bird, to be able to fix
its gaze on the sun without being dazzled, and never to receive
injury from lightning. It was also said to have been the
armour-bearer of Jupiter in his wars against the Titans, and to
have carried his thunderbolts.]

EXPLANATION.

The rape of Ganymede is probably based upon an actual occurrence,
which may be thus explained. Tros, the king of Troy, having
conquered several of his neighbours, as Eusebius, Cedrenus, and
Suidas relate, sent his son Ganymede into Lydia, accompanied by
several of the nobles of his court, to offer sacrifice in the temple
dedicated to Jupiter; Tantalus, the king of that country, who was
ignorant of the designs of the Trojan king, took his people for
spies, and put Ganymede in prison. He having been arrested in a
temple of Jupiter, by order of a prince, whose ensign was an eagle,
it gave occasion for the report that he had been carried off by
Jupiter in the shape of an eagle.

The reason why Jupiter is said to have made Ganymede his cup-bearer
is difficult to conjecture, unless we suppose that he had served his
father, in that employment at the Trojan court. The poets say that
he was placed by the Gods among the Constellations, where he shines
as Aquarius, or the Water-bearer.

The capture of Ganymede occasioned a protracted and bloody war
between Tros and Tantalus; and after their death, Ilus, the son of
Tros, continued it against Pelops, the son of Tantalus, and obliged
him to quit his kingdom and retire to the court of Oenomaues, king of
Pisa, whose daughter he married, and by her had a son named Atreus,
who was the father of Agamemnon and Menelaues. Thus we see that
probably Paris, the great grandson of Tros, carried off Helen, as a
reprisal on Menelaues, the great grandson of Tantalus, the persecutor
of Ganymede. Agamemnon did not fail to turn this fact to his own
advantage, by putting the Greeks in mind of the evils which his
family had suffered from the kings of Troy.

FABLE V. [X.162-219]

As Apollo is playing at quoits with the youth Hyacinthus, one of
them, thrown by the Divinity, rebounds from the earth, and striking
Hyacinthus on the head