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Chapter 23
Mr. Arabin Reads Himself in at St. Ewold's

Incipient masticator
Johnny Bold is cutting teeth.  Using such elevated, Latinate language to describe this event allows Trollope simultaneously to suggest the grandness of the event from the perspective of Johnny's mother and Miss Thorne and to poke gentle fun at it.  [TH & RR]

Naiads and dryads  
Mr. Arabin explains to Mrs. Bold the difference between naiads and dryads and talks of other classical subjects.  Considering the education of Mr. Arabin it is appropriate to his character to talk of such things but in addition the inclusion of various types of nymphs somewhat foreshadows the blooming relationship developing between the two.  [TH]

Chapter 24
Mr. Slope Manages Matters Very Cleverly at Puddingdale

Clouded brow
"Could she have seen his brow once clouded, she might have learnt to love him."  This is said of Eleanor Bold regarding Mr. Arabin after they have spent three weeks in each other's company, but neither is in love with the other.  The image of a clouded brow may turn on a line from Book One of Horace's Epistles where Horace writes, "take the cloud from your brow."  Eleanor needs to see a cloud on Mr. Arabin's brow to ensure that he can feel passion in some form or other.  [RR &JC]

Factotum
The word "factotum" comes from a combination of the Latin words fac (which is the imperative form of facere, which means "to do" or "to make") and totum (meaning "the whole").  Therefore it is literally a person who is a "do-everything."  In Mr. Slope's case he is in a position where he must "do everything" that Mrs. Proudie commands him to do.  He is dissatisfied with this position and begins his escape from it by acting against her on the nomination of the warden of Hiram's Hospital (he supports Mr. Harding while Mrs. Proudie supports Mr. Quiverful).  [JC]

Slip between cup and lip
This saying is recorded in Latin by Erasmus as:  multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra ("many things fall between the cup and the last lips," Adagia 1.5.1).  The saying may refer to the death of the mythological figure Ancaeos.  It had been prophesied that Ancaeos would not live to drink wine made from a vineyard which he planted.  After returning safely from the voyage with Jason and the Argonauts, he was on the verge of drinking wine made from his own grapes.  However, he was interrupted by a wild boar terrorizing the vineyard, and in trying to kill the boar, Ancaeos himself was killed.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology  [JC & RR]

Chapter 25
Fourteen Arguments in Favour of Mr. Quiverful's Claims

Medea and her children
An odd reference; Medea ended up killing her two children by the Argonaut Jason, whom she married after helping him win the Golden Fleece and flee from Colchis.  Euripides presents Medea as wildly despairing of Jason's infidelity and all the things she gave up to follow him (such as a place in her country and her father's household), and then, after having been offered sanctuary by a king, she decides to kill her children rather than allow her deserting husband to have the benefit of them.  Mrs. Quiverful would not stoop to killing her children, but she is as scheming as Medea was, and has the same habit of appealing to authorities for mercy, as Medea appealed to King Kreon and King Aegeus.  However, it should be pointed out that the two women's motivation is very different:  Medea is concerned most with her own dishonour at the hands of her husband, while Mrs. Quiverful's main worry is honestly the welfare of her large family.  [JM]

Under the rose
Translated directly from Latin sub rosa, an idiomatic way of saying "secretly, clandestinely," stemming from the Roman practice of hanging a rose as a symbol of secrecy.  Cupid, the child of Venus, the goddess of love, used a rose to bribe the god of silence so that he would keep silent on the matter of Venus' love affairs.  Hence it became a symbol of secrecy, and was sculpted into the ceilings of banquet halls, and much later placed above confessionals.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.  2000;
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.  [JM]

Sesquipedalian
From Latin sesqui- "one and a half times" + ped "foot", so "a foot and a half long".  In his Ars Poetica (line 97) Horace sets out to describe the proper ways to go about writing poetry, beginning and continuing at length with the idea that a good poem is consistent and uniform.  So he adjures authors to avoid switching between comic and tragic tones, and between high speech and low, unless necessary; it is at this point that the word "sesquipedalian" comes up, referring to the higher mode of speaking as in a tragic performance.  Trollope describes one of Mrs. Proudie's house-servants this way, but as he never speaks that we hear of, it seems less than apt.  Trollope could be using "sesquipedalian" to refer to the man's greater than average height.  In Chapter 3 of Barchester Towers, one of Mrs. Proudie's attendants is described as "a six-foot hero."
OED  [JM & RR]

Triumph sat throned upon her brow
Trollope here treats Triumph as almost a divine entity, in a very Roman manner; Mrs. Proudie's expression shows triumph, perhaps almost as though she herself is Triumph.  As often, Trollope is aggrandizing something trivial (in this case, a marital squabble between the bishop and his wife, in which she emerges the victor) by means of classical references.  [JM]

Patroness
See earlier notes regarding patron/client relationships in The Warden Chapter 3; it is implied here that Mrs. Quiverful has as her patroness Mrs. Proudie.  [JM]

Theseus and an Amazon
Theseus was a hero-king in Greek myth, well-known for many adventures.  One of these was the capture of an Amazon bride, Hippolyta, while he was fighting the Amazons with Heracles.  He sired a child with her, and she died soon after.  Trollope compares an ideally meek woman to the more aggressive, Amazonian woman Mrs. Quiverful is about to become. 
OCD  [JM]

Priam's curtain
Trollope quotes from Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 2, Act 1, Scene 1.  Priam was the king of Troy and the father of Hector, who fought Achilles during the Trojan War. He also had numerous children by several wives, making him apt for comparison with Mr. Quiverful. [JM]

[20-22]   [26-28]

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