for great public offences. It may have been originally connected with the same feeling--the desire of avoiding the pollution of bloodshed--which seems to have suggested the practice of burying prisoners alive, with a scantling of food by their side. Though Homer makes no mention of this horrible usage, the example of the Roman Vestals affords reasons for believing that, in ascribing it to the heroic ages, Sophocles followed an authentic tradition."--Thirlwall's Greece, vol. i. p. 171, sq. 175 --_Paris' lofty dome._ "With respect to the private dwellings, which are oftenest described, the poet's language barely enables us to form a general notion of their ordinary plan, and affords no conception of the style which prevailed in them or of their effect on the eye. It seems indeed probable, from the manner in which he dwells on their metallic ornaments that the higher beauty of proportion was but little required or understood, and it is, perhaps, strength and convenience, rather than elegance, that he means to commend, in speaking of the fair house which Paris had built for himself with the aid of the most skilful masons of Troy."--Thirlwall's Greece, vol. i. p. 231. 176 --_The wanton courser._ "Come destrier, che da le regie stalle Ove a l'usa de l'arme si riserba, Fugge, e libero al fiu per largo calle Va tragl' armenti, o al fiume usato, o a l'herba." Gier, Lib. ix. 75. 177 --_Casque._ The original word is stephanae, about the meaning of which there is some little doubt. Some take it for a different kind of cap or helmet, others for the rim, others for the cone, of the helmet. 178 --_Athenian maid:_ Minerva. 179 --_Celadon,_ a river of Elis. 180 --_Oileus, i.e._ Ajax, the son of Oileus, in contradistinction to Ajax, son of Telamon.