Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

messenger of the gods; Jove’s weapon is the
thunderbolt; Neptune is god of the sea and causes
earthquakes; the pale ghosts inhabit Hades which is
under the earth.
53 sconce a pendent candlestick.
60 metaphor, and...song in mockery of the exaggerated
language of love songs. Dapperwit is a character in
Wycherly’s Love in a Wood and Sir Fopling a
character in Etherege’s The Man of Mode.
64 ‘Those eyes are made so killing’ from an opera called
Camilla performed in 1706.
65 Maeander a winding river in Asia Minor.
71 golden scales in parody of epic; see, for example, the
reference in the Sarpedon episode (line 263, p. 116)
and Dryden’s Aeneis, XII, 1054:
Jove sets the beam; in either scale he lays
The champions’ fate, and each exactly weighs.
On their side, life and lucky chance ascends;
Loaded with death, that other scale descends.
78 on his foe to die The verb die can refer to sexual
orgasm. See IV, 54 and 175–6 for further bawdy
innuendo.
88 bodkin a hairpin or clasp. Its history recalls in parody
that of Agamemnon’s sceptre. See Pope’s Iliad, II,
129–36.
105 Othello The handkerchief is a crucial element in the
plot; a serious example of dire effects springing from
amorous causes.
122 tomes of casuistry minutely reasoned philosophy.
125 Rome’s great founder Romulus who ascended to
heaven during an eclipse. He then appeared to
Proculus in a vision ordering the Romans to sacrifice
to him as to a god.
129 Berenice’s locks the wife of Ptolemy III who pledged
to make a votive offering of her hair if her husband
returned victorious from war. The offering was
subsequently stolen and thought to have been made
into a constellation by Zeus.