69. _For music._ "In Greek music the scales were called moods or modes and were subject to great variation in the arrangement of tones and semitones." (Porter-Clarke, note in Camberwell edition.)
82. _The checkered pavement._ This pavement of black and white marble in an elaborate pattern of various sorts of four-sided figures was a gift to Cleon from his own nation.
100-112. The similitude is involved but fairly clear. The water that touches the sphere here and there, one point at a time, as the sphere is revolved, represents the power of great geniuses who, each at one point, have reached great heights. The air that fills the sphere represents the composite modern mind that synthesizes the parts into a great whole.
132. _Drupe._ Any stone-fruit. The contrast is between the wild plum and the cultivated plum.
139. _Homer._ The poet to whom very ancient tradition assigns the authorship of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. _Terpander_, the father of Greek music, flourished about 700-650 B.C. Phidias, a famous Athenian sculptor, lived 500-432 B.C. His friend was Pericles, the ruler of Athens.
304. _Sappho._ A Greek poetess. She wrote about 600 B.C.
305. _Æschylus_, a Greek tragic poet, 525-456 B.C.
340. _Paulus._ Paul died about 64 A.D. The date of this poem is therefore about the last quarter of the first century A.D. Cleon had heard so vaguely about the Christian religion that he did not know the difference between Christ and Paul. The "doctrine" spoken of in the last line was the Christian teaching concerning immortality. The Greek, Cleon, had felt a longing to believe in another existence in which man would have unlimited capability for joy, but Zeus had revealed no such doctrine, and the cultivated Greek was not ready to receive it at the hands of a man like Paul.
A poem directly addressed to Mrs. Browning. It was originally appended to the collection of Poems called _Men and Women_. For other tributes by great poets to their wives see Wordsworth's "She was a phantom of delight," and "O dearer far than life and light are dear;" and Tennyson's "Dear, near and true." Mrs. Browning's love for her husband had found passionate expression in _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.
2. _Naming me._ Giving a name to the volume for me.