Poems (Piatt)/Volume 2/Notes
NOTES.
(1) Polycrates, the too-fortunate King, whose story is told by Herodotus.
(2) The pathetic little episode to which this piece refers is related in the third book of Virgil's Æneid, lines 482-492, where the poet describes Æneas meeting Andromache during his wanderings, after the fall of Troy, with his son Ascanius (also called Iülus). To the latter Andromache gives some garments wrought by herself, and in presenting them she recalls her own boy Astyanax, who, in obedience to an oracle, had been thrown headlong from the walls of Troy and killed. This was after the death of Hector, his father, whose parting with Andromache—in which the child "headed like a star," together with "the horse-hair plume," is mentioned—forms one of the most famous passages in the Iliad of Homer. The passage in Virgil is literally as follows:—"Andromache, sad with the last parting, brings garments figured over with golden embroidery and a Phrygian cloak for Ascanius, and loads him with woven gifts, and thus speaks,—"Take these, too, my boy, and may they be to thee mementoes of my handiwork, and bear witness to the lasting love of Andromache, Hector's wife; take these last gifts of thy friend, O only image remaining to me of my Astyanax. Just such eyes, just such hands, just such features he had, and he would now be growing up in equal age with thee."
(3) Written after reading certain newspaper discussions as to the treatment of the "tramp."
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