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--"Paradise Lost."
"E quanto e da le stelle al basso inferno,
Tanto e piu in su de la stellata spera"
--Gier. Lib. i. 7.
"
Some of the epithets which Homer applies to the heavens seem to
imply that he considered it as a solid vault of metal. But it is not
necessary to construe these epithets so literally, nor to draw any
such inference from his description of Atlas, who holds the lofty
pillars which keep earth and heaven asunder. Yet it would seem, from
the manner in which the height of heaven is compared with the depth
of Tartarus, that the region of light was thought to have certain
bounds. The summit of the Thessalian Olympus was regarded as the
highest point on the earth, and it is not always carefully
distinguished from the aerian regions above The idea of a seat of
the gods--perhaps derived from a more ancient tradition, in which it
was not attached to any geographical site--seems to be indistinctly
blended in the poet's mind with that of the real
mountain."--Thirlwall's Greece, vol. i. p. 217, sq.
191 "Now lately heav'n, earth, another world
Hung e'er my realm, link'd in a golden chain
To that side heav'n."
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