Cicero speaks of it as the great and only attraction of Thespia.
The time is an intermediate period between the age of the Greek tragedians, who are alluded to in the second canto, and that of Pausanias, in whose time the Thespian altar had been violated by Nero, and Praxiteles's statue of Love removed to Rome, for which outrageous impiety, says Pausanias, he was pursued by the just and manifest vengeance of the gods, who, it would seem, had already terrified Claudius into restoring it, when Caligula had previously taken it away.
The second song in the fifth canto is founded on the Homeric hymn, "Bacchus, or the Pirates."
Some other imitations of classical passages, but for the most part interwoven with unborrowed ideas, will occur to the classical reader.
The few notes subjoined are such as seemed
