Hail, honour'd Nymphs;
Thrice hail! For you the Cyrenaic shell, [II]
Behold, I touch, revering. To my songs
Be present ye with favourable feet,
And all profaner audience far remove. 330
NOTES.
* * * * *
[Footnote A: '_Love,.... Elder than Chaos_.'--L. 25.
Hesiod in his Theogony gives a different account, and makes Chaos the
eldest of beings, though he assigns to Love neither father nor
superior; which circumstance is particularly mentioned by Phaedrus,
in Plato's Banquet, as being observable not only in Hesiod, but in
all other writers both of verse and prose; and on the same occasion
he cites a line from Parmenides, in which Love is expressly styled
the eldest of all the gods. Yet Aristophanes, in 'The Birds,' affirms,
that 'Chaos, and Night, and Erebus, and Tartarus were first; and
that Love was produced from an egg, which the sable-winged Night
deposited in the immense bosom of Erebus.' But it must be observed,
that the Love designed by this comic poet was always distinguished
from the other, from that original and self-existent being the TO ON
[Greek] or AGAThON [Greek] of Plato, and meant only the
DAeMIOURGOS [Greek] or second person of the old Grecian Trinity; to
whom is inscribed a hymn among those which pass under the name of
Orpheus, where he is called Protogonos, or the first-begotten, is
said to have been born of an egg, and is represented as the
principal or origin of all these external appearances of nature.
Pages:
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326