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The Romans were used to mark their fortunate days, or anything that luckily befell them, with a white stone, which they had from the island Creta, and their unfortunate with a coal.

Hercules was thought to have the key and power of bestowing all hidden treasure.

The ancients thought themselves tainted and polluted by night itself, as well as bad dreams in the night; and therefore purified themselves by washing their heads and hands every morning, which custom the Turks observe to this day.

When any one was thunderstruck, the soothsayer (who is here called Ergenna) immediately repaired to the place, to expiate the displeasure of the gods, by sacrificing two sheep.

The poet laughs at the superstitious ceremonies which the old women made use of in their lustration, or purification days, when they named their children, which was done on the eighth day to females, and on the ninth to males.

It was the opinion both of Grecians and Romans, that the gods, in visions and dreams, often revealed to their favourites a cure for their diseases, and sometimes those of others. Thus Alexander dreamed of an herb which cured Ptolemy. These gods were principally Apollo and Esculapius; but, in aftertimes, the same virtue and goodwill was attributed to Isis and Osiris. Which brings to my remembrance an odd passage in Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, or in his Vulgar Errors; the sense whereof is, that we are beholden, for many of our discoveries in physic, to the courteous revelation of spirits. By the expression of “visions purged from phlegm,” our author means such dreams or visions as proceed not from natural causes, or humours of the body, but such as are sent from heaven; and are, therefore, certain remedies.

Brazen vessels, in which the public treasures of the Romans were kept: it may be the poet means only old vessels, which were called Κρονια, from the Greek name of Saturn. Note also, that the Roman treasury was in the temple of Saturn.

Under Numa, the second king of Rome, and for a long time after him, the holy vessels for sacrifice were of earthenware; according to the superstitious rites which were introduced by the same Numa: though afterwards, when Memmius had taken Corinth, and Paulus Emilius had conquered Macedonia, luxury began amongst the Romans, and then their utensils of devotion were of gold and silver, etc.

The wool of Calabria was of the finest sort in Italy, as Juvenal also tells us. The Tyrian stain is the purple colour dyed at Tyrus; and I suppose, but dare not positively affirm, that the richest of that dye was nearest our crimson, and not scarlet, or that other colour more approaching to the blue. I have not room to justify my conjecture.

Those baby-toys were little babies, or poppets, as we call them; in Latin, pupæ: which the girls, when they came to the age of puberty, or child-bearing, offered to Venus; as the boys, at fifteen, offered their bullæ, or bosses.

A cake of barley, or coarse wheat-meal, with the bran in it: the meaning is, that God is pleased with the pure and spotless heart of the offerer, and not with the riches of the offering. Laberius, in the fragments of his Mimes, has a verse like this, “Puras Deus non plenas aspicit manus.”—What I had forgotten before, in its due place, I must here tell the reader, that the first half of this satire was translated by one of my sons, now in Italy; but I thought so well of it, that I let it pass without any alteration.