289. The word _at_ is inserted from the Cambridge MS.; all the other six MSS. omit it, which makes the passage one of extreme difficulty. Tyrwhitt reads 'Or Ylion brent, or Thebes the citee.' Of course he means _brende_, past tense, not _brent_, the past participle; and his conjecture amounts to inserting _or_ before Thebes. It is better to insert _at_, as in MS. Cm.; see Gilman's edition. The sense is--'When Pyrrhus broke the wall, before Ilium burnt, (nor) at the city of Thebes, nor at Rome,' &c. _Nat_ (l. 290) = _Ne at_, as in Hl. _Ylion_, in medieval romance, meant 'the citadel' of Troy; see my note to l. 936 of the Legend of Good Women. Tyrwhitt well observes that 'Thebes the citee' is a French phrase. He quotes 'dedans Renes _la cite_,' Froissart, v. i. c. 225.
295-315. Not in the original, and clearly a later addition. They include an allusion to Boethius (see next note).
295. In the margin of the Ellesmere MS. is written--'Vnde Ptholomeus, libro i. cap. 8. Primi motus celi duo sunt, quorum vnus est qui mouet totum semper ab Oriente in Occidentem vno modo super orbes, &c. Item aliter vero motus est qui mouet orbem stellarum currencium [149] contra motum primum, videlicet, ab Occidente in Orientem super alios duos polos.' The old astronomy imagined nine spheres revolving round the central stationary earth; of the seven innermost, each carried with it one of the seven planets, viz. the Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the eighth sphere, that of the fixed stars, had a slow motion from west to east, round the axis of the zodiac (_super alios duos polos_), to account for the precession of the equinoxes; whilst the ninth or outermost sphere, called the _primum mobile_, or the sphere of first motion, had a diurnal revolution from east to west, carrying everything with it. This exactly corresponds with Chaucer's language. He addresses the outermost sphere or _primum mobile_ (which is the _ninth_ if reckoning from within, but the _first_ from without), and accuses it of carrying with it everything in its irresistible westward motion; a motion contrary to that of the 'natural' motion, viz. that in which the sun advances along the signs of the zodiac. The result was that the evil influence of the planet Mars prevented the marriage. It is clear that Chaucer was thinking of certain passages in Boethius, as will appear from consulting his own translation of Boethius, ed. Morris, pp. 21, 22, 106, and 110. I quote a few lines to shew this:--