The Lantern

Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature5

CCEL

52. The golden sands of the Pactolus, a small river in Lydia, were proverbial, for this river was one of the sources of Lydia's wealth.

53. Cf. Herod, iii. 102 ; Jacobs on Aelian, Nat. Animal, iv. 27.

54. See p. 107.

55. Bergk 327.

56. See p. 54.

57. Bergk ii. 218; compare Proverbs xxx. 8 : 'Give me neither poverty nor riches ; feed me with food convenient for me.'

58. A Lydian of great wealth, which he derived from his gold mines in the neighborhood of Celaenae, in Phrygia. When Xerxes arrived at Celaenae, Pythius banqueted him and his whole army (Herod, vii. 27-29).

59. A statuary of the fifth century, and a pupil of Phidias. His statue of the Spear-bearer was studied by other artists as containing the canon with respect to the proportions of the human body.

60. Poet, ranked by ancients as second only to Homer, flourished 650 B.C. He was a master in odes, in elegies, and in fables, but his great and formidable gift lay in satire. See Rep. ii. 365 : 'Around and about me I will draw the simple garb of virtue, but behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, first of sages, counsels.'

61. Proteus; see Odys. iv. 455, and Vergil, Georg. iv. 386.

62. Hesiod, W. and D. 359 : ' If you are ever adding little to little, soon your store will be great.'

63. See p. 93.

64. See Diogenes Laertius i. 82-88, for this and other of the sayings and doings of Bias.

65. Tithonus obtained immortality from the gods, but not eternal youth, and so became a shrunken old man.

66. King of Tartessus in Spain. According to Herodotus (vii. 21) he ascended the throne at the age of forty, and reigned eighty years.

67. Gen. v. 27.

68. Cf. Eur. Heracl. 1002, and Bartlett, Fam. Quot. (9th ed.), p. 809.

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