crifice before entering on affairs of importance.
Thus, too, Jupiter, in the Amphitryon of Plautus, l. 938, speaks
of offering sacrifice on his safe return.]

[Footnote 75: _Our rings were given_)--Ver. 541. It was the custom
of parties who agreed to join in a "symbola," or "club" or
"picnic" entertainment, to give their rings as pledges to the "rex
convivii," or "getter up the feast." Stakes were also deposited on
making bets at races. See Ovid's Art of Love, B. i., l. 168.]

[Footnote 76: _To meet my death_)--Ver. 550. There is a passage in
the Othello of Shakspeare extremely similar to this:

--"If I were now to die,
I were now to be most happy; for, I fear,
My soul hath her content so absolute,
That not another comfort, like to this,
Succeeds in unknown fate."]

[Footnote 77: _In the inner apartments_)--Ver. 579. The "Gynecaea,"
or women's apartments, among the Greeks, always occupied the
interior part of the house, which was most distant from the
street, and there they were kept in great seclusion.]

[Footnote 78: _A few novices of girls_)--Ver. 582. These "noviciae"
were young slaves recently bought, and intended to be trained to
the calling of a Courtesan.]

[Footnote 79: _At a certain painting_)--Ver. 584. See the story of
Jupiter and Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, in the
Metamorphoses of Ovid, B. iv., l. 610. Pictures of Venus and
Adonis, and of Jupiter and Ganymede, are mentioned in the Menaechmi
of Plautus; l. 144, and paintings on the walls are also mentioned
in the Mostellaria of Plantus, l. 821, where Tranio tries to
impose upon Theuropides by pretending to point out a picture of a
crow between two vultures.]

[Footnote 80: _How Jove_)--Ver. 584. Donatus remarks here that
this was "a very proper piece of furniture for the house of a
Courtesan, giving an example of loose and mercenary love,
calculated to excite wanton thoughts, and at the same time hinting
to the young lover that he must make his way to the bosom of his
mistress, like Jupiter to Danae, in a shower of gold. Oh the
avarice of harlots!"]

[Footnote 81: _A poor creature of a mortal_)--Ver. 591.
"Homuncio." He uses this word the better to contrast his abject
nature as a poor mortal with the majesty of Jupiter. St. Augustin
refers to this passage. The preceding line is said by Donatus to
be a parody on a passage by Ennius.]