Whether writing was known in the Homeric times is utterly uncertain. See Grote, vol ii. p. 192, sqq. 169 --_Solymaean crew,_ a people of Lycia. 170 From this "melancholy madness" of Bellerophon, hypochondria received the name of "Morbus Bellerophonteus." See my notes in my prose translation, p. 112. The "Aleian field," _i.e._ "the plain of wandering," was situated between the rivers Pyramus and Pinarus, in Cilicia. 171 --_His own, of gold._ This bad bargain has passed into a common proverb. See Aulus Gellius, ii, 23. 172 --_Scaean, i e._ left hand. 173 --_In fifty chambers._ "The fifty nuptial beds, (such hopes had he, So large a promise of a progeny,) The ports of plated gold, and hung with spoils." Dryden's Virgil, ii.658 174 --_O would kind earth,_ &c. "It is apparently a sudden, irregular burst of popular indignation to which Hector alludes, when he regrets that the Trojans had not spirit enough to cover Paris with a mantle of stones. This, however, was also one of the ordinary formal modes of punishment 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 effe