[Footnote 7: _My cousin._--Ver. 31. 'Frater' here means, not 'brother,' but 'cousin,' as Peleus and Telamon, the fathers of Achilles and Ajax, were brothers.]
[Footnote 8: _No informer._--Ver. 34. He alludes to the means which Ulysses adopted to avoid going to the Trojan war. Pretending to be seized with madness, he ploughed the sea-shore, and sowed it with salt. To ascertain the truth, Palamedes placed his infant son, Telemachus, before the plough; on which Ulysses turned on one side, to avoid hurting the child, which was considered a proof that his madness was not real.]
[Footnote 9: _Son of Nauplius._--Ver. 39. Palamedes was the son of Nauplius, the king of Euboea, and a son of Neptune.]
[Footnote 10: _The contrivance._--Ver. 38. Ulysses forged a letter from Priam, in which the king thanked Palamedes for his intended assistance to the Trojan cause, and begged to present him a sum of money. By bribing the servants of Palamedes, he caused a large quantity of gold to be buried in the ground, under his tent. He then caused the letter to be intercepted, and to be carried to Agamemnon. On the appearance of Palamedes to answer the charge, Ulysses appeared seemingly as his friend, and suggested, that if no gold should be found in his possession, he must be innocent. The gold, however, being found, Palamedes was stoned to death.]
[Footnote 11: _Son of Poeas._--Ver. 45. Philoctetes was the possessor of the arrows of Hercules, without the presence of which Troy could not be taken. Accompanying the Greeks to the Trojan war, he was wounded in the foot by one of the arrows; and the smell arising from the wound was so offensive, that, by the advice of Ulysses, he was left behind, in the island of Lemnos, one of the Cyclades.]
[Footnote 12: _Is being clothed._--Ver. 53. The Poet Attius, as quoted by Cicero, says that Philoctetes, while in Lemnos, made himself clothing out of the feathers of birds.]
[Footnote 13: _Or by death._--Ver. 61. Exile in the case of Philoctetes; death, in that of Palamedes.]
[Footnote 14: _Forsaking of Nestor._--Ver. 64. Nestor having been wounded by Paris, and being overtaken by Hector, was on the point of perishing, when Diomedes came to his rescue, Ulysses having taken to flight. See the Iliad, Book iii.]