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Refutation of All Heresies
St Hippolytus of Rome, ANF 5
d2
[On p. 43 supra I omitted to direct attention to the desirable enlargement of1 by a reference to Homer’s Hymn of Mercury and its minute description of the invention of the Lyre. The passage is given in Henry Nelson Coleridge’s Introduction, etc., p.202. The versified translation of Shelley is inimitable; in ottava rima, but instinct with the ethos of the original.]
Notes
- “Pierced it through,” i.e., bored the holes for the strings, or, in other words, constructed the instrument. The Latin version in Buhle’s edition of Aratus is ad cunam (cunabulam) compegit, i.e., he fastened the strings into the shell of the tortoise near his bed. The tortoise is mentioned by Aratus in the first part of the line, which fact removes the obscurity of the passage as quoted by Hippolytus. The general tradition corresponds with this, in representing Mercury on the shores of the Nile forming a lyre out of a dried tortoise. The word translated bed might be also rendered fan, which was used as a cradle, its size and construction being suitable. [See note, p. 46, infra.]