P. 28. _the tearful exile in the Pontic territory_: Ovid, who was relegated (rather than exiled) to Tomi, a town on the Euxine.
P. 28. _Maro_: the Latin poet, Publius Virgilius Maro.
P. 29. _or the unhappy boy . . . or the fierce avenger_: as Masson suggests, the allusions here may be to Shakespeare's Romeo and the Ghost in _Hamlet_.
P. 29. _the house of Pelops_, etc.: subjects of the principal Greek tragedies.
P. 29. _the arms of living Pelops_: an allusion to the ivory shoulder of Pelops, by which, when he was restored to life after having been served up at a feast of the gods, given by his father Tantalus, the shoulder consumed by Ceres was replaced.
P. 30. _thy own flower_: the anemone into which Adonis was turned by Venus, after his dying of a wound received from a wild boar during the chase.
P. 30. _alternate measures_: the alternate hexameters and pentameters of the Elegy.
_To Alexander Gill, Jr._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. III.)
P. 30. _Alexander Gill, Jr._: Gill was Milton's tutor in St. Paul's School, of which his father, Alexander Gill, was head-master. Milton was sent to this school in his twelfth year (1620), and remained there till his seventeenth year (1625). He was entered very soon after at Christ's College, Cambridge, beginning residence in the Easter term of 1625.
_To Thomas Young._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. IV.)
P. 31. _Thomas Young_: Young had been Milton's tutor before he entered St. Paul's School, and later; he was one of the authors of the Smectymnuan pamphlet; was appointed Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1644.
P. 31. _Stoa of the Iceni_ (Lat. _Stoam Icenorum_): a pun for Stowmarket in Suffolk, the Iceni having been the inhabitants of the parts of Roman Britain corresponding to Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, etc.—_Masson._ Their queen was Boadicea, who led their revolt against the Romans.
P. 31. _Zeno_: Greek philosopher (about 358-260 B.C.), father of the Stoic philosophy, so called from his teaching in the _Stoa Pœcile_, in Athens, in which were the frescoes of Polygnotus (about 480-430 B.C.).
P. 31. _Serranus_: an agnomen, or fourth name, given to L. Quinctius Cincinnatus; Roman consul 460 B.C.; in 458 called from the plough to the dictatorship, whence called by Florus, _Dictator ad aratro_; the agnomen is said to have been derived from _serere_, to sow; 'Quis te, magne Cato, tacitum, aut te, Cosse, relinquat? . . . vel te sulco, Serrane, serentem' (Who can leave thee unmentioned, great Cato, or thee, Cossus? . . . or thee, Serranus, sowing in the furrow).—_Æneid_, vi. 844.