[4] called

[5] were not

[6] besieged

[7] See Mr. R.B. McKerrow's note on Nashe's reference to the name in _Have
with You to Saffron-Walden_ (_Works,_ iii. 111).

[8] See Statius, _Thebais_, I, 13-14, etc. (Chaucer refers to "Stace of
Thebes," _Knightes Tale_, 1436.) Athamas, having incurred the wrath of
Hera, was seized with madness, and slew his son Learchus. His wife Ino
threw herself, with his other son Melicertes, into the sea, and both were
changed into sea-deities, Ino becoming Leucothea, and Melicertes Palaemon,
whom the Greeks held to be friendly to the shipwrecked. The Romans
identified him with Portunus, the protector of harbours.

[9] See Skeat's _The Knight's Tale_, xi-xv.

[10] little.

[11] In this passage, Statius describes the meeting between Theseus,
returning in triumph with Hippolyta, and the widows of those slain at the
siege of Thebes, who complain that the tyrant Creon will not permit their
husbands' bodies to be either burned or buried. This episode, as we shall
see, is the opening of the _Knightes Tale,_ and reappears in a modified
form in _The Two Noble Kinsmen._

[12] J. M. Rigg's introduction to his translation of the _Decameron_ (1903)