Page:Alexander and Dindimus (Skeat 1878).djvu/96

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sentence "Tu vero dixisti te ad Oceanum venturum et postea ad alium orbem;" Palladius, p. 27.

535. In the Latin text, for supra (so printed in the old edition) read sopiri. "Vos tartareum custodem sopiri posse pretio suggessistis;" De Bragmanis, ed. Bisse, p. 91.

540. 'Ye shew yourselves (to be) unnatural by killing your children.'

549. But yyif, unless, except. Alse, also, as well.

550. Gilte, ye sin; see gulten in Stratmann. Instead of Per dies tuos, the translator has evidently had a text with the reading Per deos tuos, which is probably right; see deos tuos four lines lower down. Gence the sense is--'You greatly sin, O man, by example of (or by means of) your false gods, just as they were wont, when in this world, to act during their lives.' Bi here answers to the Latin per, instead of taking its commoner M.E. sense of 'with respect to,' as in l. 552.

555. As a lie, like a flame. See Piers Plowman, B. xvii. 207.

562. 'To her was lechery pleasing.'

570. 'Ye boast of more than ye can perform.'

575. Gol, gold; the same spelling occurs in Havelok; see remarks in the Preface to my edition of that poem, p. xxxvii.

577. You-silue to abowe, to bow down to yourselves; cf. l. 675.

579. The first liue, meaning 'believe', is better spelt leue; cf. leuen in l. 597.

591. Parenthetical. 'And, except each grave be fair and fine, ye think it a folly.'

592. Lodlich = lothlich, loathsome; the MS. reading bodilech is clearly miswritten for this word.

596. 'People who know who (are they that) love them.' This is here supposed to be a Greek opinion.

601. 'On account of which the great God of heaven would be expected to hear us, (so as) to grant a man's petition when any one prayed to him.'

605. For, with the expectation that. You help kiþe, and vouchsafe help to you.

618. 'And all that men in this world should use,' lit. go with. 635, 636. The correction of we to ye is obvious; see the Latin text.

637. A litil wordle, a little world; in allusion to the Gk, term μικρόκοσμος, a microcosm or 'little world,' a term by which the old astrologers denoted man, under the impression that the parts of his body corresponded to the parts of the universe or macrocosm. Hence it followed, according to the present argument, that each part of the human body was especially under the protection of its appropriate deity. For a particular application of the same principle, compare the influence of the zodiacal signs on upon parts of the human body, as