down stairs, and broke his neck.]

[Footnote 24: _Twice nine._--Ver. 253. Homer mentions Eurylochus
and twenty-two others as the number, being one more than the
number here given by Ovid.]

[Footnote 25: _As weighed._--Ver. 270. Of course drugs and simples
would require to be weighed before being mixed in their due
proportions.]

[Footnote 26: _Call it 'Moly.'_--Ver. 292. Homer, in the tenth
Book of the Odyssey, says that this plant had a black root, and a
flower like milk.]

[Footnote 27: _Become attached._--Ver. 304-5. 'Subjecta lacertis
Brachia sunt,' Clarke has not a very lucid translation of these
words. His version is, 'Brachia are put under our lacerti.' The
'brachium' was the forearm, or part, from the wrist to the elbow;
while the 'lacertus' was the muscular part, between the elbow and
the shoulder.]

EXPLANATION.

Ulysses having stayed some time at the court of Circe, where all
were immersed in luxury and indolence, begins to reflect on the
degraded state to which he is reduced, and resolutely abandons so
unworthy a mode of life. This resolution is here typified by the
herb moly, the symbol of wisdom. His companions, changed into swine,
are emblems of the condition to which a life of sensuality reduces
its votaries; while the wolves, lions, and horses show that man in
such a condition fails not to exhibit the various bad propensities
of the brute creation. Thus was the prodigal son, mentioned in the
New Testament, reduced to a level with the brutes, 'and fain would
have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.'

It is not improbable that Circe was the original from which the
Eastern romancer depicted the enchantress queen Labe in the story of
Beder and Giauhare in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. They were
both ladies of light reputation, both fond of exercising their
magical power on strangers, and in exactly the same manner: and as
Ulysses successfully resisted the charms of Circe, so Beder thwarted
the designs of Labe; but here the parallel ends.

FABLE VI. [XIV.320-440]

Circe, being enamoured of Picus, and being unable to shake his
constancy to his wife Canens, transforms him into a woodpecker, and
his retinue into various kinds of animals. Canens pines away with
grief at the loss of her husband, and the place where she disappears
afterwards bears her name.

"'