[Footnote 68: _The Phæacians._--Ver. 719. The Phæacians were the people of the Island of Corcyra (now Corfu), who were so called from Phæax, the son of Neptune. This island was famous for the gardens of Alcinoüs, which are mentioned in the Odyssey. The Corcyrans were the originators of the disastrous Peloponnesian war.]
[Footnote 69: _Buthrotos._--Ver. 721. This was a city of Epirus, not far from Corcyra. It received its name from its founder.]
[Footnote 70: _Galatea._--Ver. 738. She was a sea Nymph, the daughter of Nereus and Doris.]
[Footnote 71: _Daughter of Cratæis._--Ver. 749. Cratæis was a river of Calabria, in Italy. Symæthis was a stream of Sicily, opposite to Calabria.]
[Footnote 72: _The pine tree._--Ver. 782. By way of corroborating this assertion, Boccaccio tells us, that the body of Polyphemus was found in Sicily, his left hand grasping a walking-stick longer than the mast of a ship.]
[Footnote 73: _Fairer than._--Ver. 789. This song of Polyphemus is, in some measure, imitated from that of the Cyclop, in the Eleventh Idyll of Theocritus.]
[Footnote 74: _Snow-white privet._--Ver. 789. Hesiod says, that Galatea had her name from her extreme fairness; +gala+ being the Greek word for milk. To this the Poet here alludes.]
[Footnote 75: _Arbute tree._--Ver. 820. The fruit of the arbutus, or strawberry tree, were so extremely sour, that they were called, as Pliny the Elder tells us, 'unedones;' because people could not eat more than one. The tree itself was valued for the beauty and pleasing shade of its foliage.]
[Footnote 76: _My figure._--Ver. 841. Virgil and Theocritus also represent Polyphemus as boasting of his good looks.]
Homer, who, in the ninth Book of the Odyssey, has entered fully into the subject of Polyphemus and the other Cyclops, does not recount this adventure, which Ovid has borrowed from Theocritus, the Sicilian poet. Some writers have suggested that Acis was a Sicilian youth, who, having met with a repulse from Galatea, threw himself into the river, which was afterwards called by his name. It is, however, more probable that this river was so called from the rapidity of its course. Indeed, the scholiast on Theocritus and Eustathius distinctly say that the stream was called Acis, because the swiftness of its course resembled that of an arrow, which was called +akis+, in the Greek language.