The Iliad - 38

liberty to travel whither they would without fear of molestation.
Pollux, Onom. viii. p. 159. The office was generally given to old men,
and they were believed to be under the especial protection of Jove and
Mercury.
[61] His mother, Thetis, the daughter of Nereus and Doris, who was
courted by Neptune and Jupiter. When, however, it was known that the
son to whom she would give birth must prove greater than his father,
it was determined to wed her to a mortal, and Peleus, with great
difficulty, succeeded in obtaining her hand, as she eluded him by
assuming various forms. Her children were all destroyed by fire
through her attempts to see whether they were immortal, and Achilles
would have shared the same fate had not his father rescued him. She
afterwards rendered him invulnerable by plunging him into the waters
of the Styx, with the exception of that part of the heel by which she
held him. Hygin. Fab. 54
[62] Thebé was a city of Mysia, north of Adramyttium.
[63] That is, defrauds me of the prize allotted me by their votes.
[64] Quintus Calaber goes still further in his account of the service
rendered to Jove by Thetis:
“Nay more, the fetters of Almighty Jove
She loosed”—Dyce’s “Calaber,” s. 58.
[65] _To Fates averse_. Of the gloomy destiny reigning throughout the
Homeric poems, and from which even the gods are not exempt, Schlegel
well observes, “This power extends also to the world of gods— for the
Grecian gods are mere powers of nature—and although immeasurably
higher than mortal man, yet, compared with infinitude, they are on an
equal footing with himself.”—‘Lectures on the Drama’ v. p. 67.
[66] It has been observed that the annual procession of the sacred
ship so often represented on Egyptian monuments, and the return of the
deity from Ethiopia after some days’ absence, serves to show the
Ethiopian origin of Thebes, and of the worship of Jupiter Ammon. “I
think,” says Heeren, after quoting a passage from Diodorus about the
holy ship, “that this procession is represented in one of the great
sculptured reliefs on the temple of Karnak. The sacred ship of Ammon
is on the shore with its whole equipment, and is towed along by
another boat. It is therefore on its voyage. This must have been one
of the most celebrated festivals, since, even according to the
interpretation of antiquity, Homer alludes to it when he speaks of
Jupiter’s visit to the Ethiopians, and his twelve days’
absence.”—Long, “Egyptian Antiquities” vol. 1 p. 96. Eustathius, vol.
1 p. 98, sq. (ed. Basil) gives this interpretation, and likewise an
allegorical one, which we will spare the reader.
[67] _Atoned_, i.e. reconciled. This is the proper and most natural
meaning of the word, as may be seen from Taylor’s remarks in Calmet’s
Dictionary, p.110, of my edition.
[68] That is, drawing back their necks while they cut their throats.
“If the sacrifice was in honour of the celestial gods, the throat was
bent upwards towards heaven; but if made to the heroes, or infernal
deities, it was killed with its throat toward the ground.”— “Elgin
Marbles,” vol i. p.81.
“The jolly crew, unmindful of the past,
The quarry share, their plenteous dinner haste,
Some strip the skin; some portion out the spoil;
The limbs yet trembling, in the caldrons boil;
Some on the fire the reeking entrails broil.
Stretch’d on the grassy turf, at ease they dine,
Restore their strength with meat, and cheer their souls with wine.”
Dryden’s “Virgil,” i. 293.
[69] _Crown’d, i.e._ filled to the brim. The custom of adorning
goblets with flowers was of later date.
[70] _He spoke_, &c. “When a friend inquired of Phidias what pattern
he had formed his Olympian Jupiter, he is said to have answered by
repeating the lines of the first Iliad in which the poet represents
the majesty of the god in the most sublime terms; thereby signifying
that the genius of Homer had inspired him with it. Those who beheld
this statue are said to have been so struck with it as to have asked
whether Jupiter had descended from heaven to show himself to Phidias,
or whether Phidias had been carried thither to contemplate the god.”—
“Elgin Marbles,” vol. xii p.124.
[71] “So was his will
Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath,
That shook heav’n’s whole circumference, confirm’d.”
“Paradise Lost” ii. 351.
[72] _A double bowl, i.e._ a vessel with a cup at both ends, something
like the measures by which a halfpenny or pennyworth of nuts is sold.
See Buttmann, Lexic. p. 93 sq.
[73] “Paradise Lost,” i. 44.
“Him th’ Almighty power
Hurl’d headlong flaming from th ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion”
[74] The occasion on which Vulcan incurred Jove’s displeasure was
this—After Hercules, had taken and pillaged Troy, Juno raised a storm,
which drove him to the island of Cos, having previously cast Jove into
a sleep, to prevent him aiding his son. Jove, in revenge, fastened
iron anvils to her feet, and hung her from the sky, and Vulcan,
attempting to relieve her, was kicked down from Olympus in the manner
described. The allegorists have gone mad in finding deep explanations
for this amusing fiction. See Heraclides, “Ponticus,” p. 463 sq., ed
Gale. The story is told by Homer himself in Book xv. The Sinthians
were a race of robbers, the ancient inhabitants of Lemnos which island
was ever after sacred to Vulcan.
“Nor was his name unheard or unadored
In ancient Greece, and in Ausonian land
Men call’d him Mulciber, and how he fell
From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’er the crystal battlements from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer’s day and with the setting sun
Dropp’d from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, th’ Aegean isle thus they relate.”
“Paradise Lost,” i. 738
[75] It is ingeniously observed by Grote, vol i p. 463, that “The gods
formed a sort of political community of their own which had its
hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for
power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of
Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals.”
[76] Plato, Rep. iii. p. 437, was so scandalized at this deception of
Jupiter’s, and at his other attacks on the character of the gods, that
he would fain sentence him to an honourable banishment. (See Minucius
Felix, Section 22.) Coleridge, Introd. p. 154, well observes, that the
supreme father of gods and men had a full right to employ a lying
spirit to work out his ultimate will. Compare “Paradise Lost,” v. 646:
“And roseate dews disposed
All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest.”
[77] —_Dream_ ought to be spelt with a capital letter, being, I think,
evidently personified as the god of dreams. See Anthon and others.
“When, by Minerva sent, a _fraudful_ Dream
Rush’d from the skies, the bane of her and Troy.”
Dyce’s “Select Translations from Quintus Calaber,” p.10.
[78] “Sleep’st thou, companion dear, what sleep can close
Thy eye-lids?”—“Paradise Lost,” v. 673.
[79] This truly military sentiment has been echoed by the approving
voice of many a general and statesman of antiquity. See Pliny’s
Panegyric on Trajan. Silius neatly translates it,
“Turpe duci totam somno consumere noctem.”
[80] _The same in habit_, &c.
“To whom once more the winged god appears;
His former youthful mien and shape he wears.”
Dryden’s Virgil, iv. 803.
[81] “As bees in spring-time, when
The sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of this straw-built citadel,
New-nibb’d with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs. So thick the very crowd
Swarm’d and were straiten’d.”—“Paradise Lost” i. 768.
[82] It was the herald’s duty to make the people sit down. “A
_standing_ agora is a symptom of manifest terror (II. Xviii. 246) an
evening agora, to which men came elevated by wine, is also the
forerunner of mischief (‘Odyssey,’ iii. 138).”—Grote, ii. p. 91,
_note_.
[83] This sceptre, like that of Judah (Genesis xlix. 10), is a type of
the supreme and far-spread dominion of the house of the Atrides. See
Thucydides i. 9. “It is traced through the hands of Hermes, he being
the wealth giving god, whose blessing is most efficacious in
furthering the process of acquisition.”—Grote, i. p. 212. Compare
Quintus Calaber (Dyce’s Selections, p. 43).
“Thus the monarch spoke,
Then pledged the chief in a capacious cup,
Golden, and framed by art divine (a gift
Which to Almighty Jove lame Vulcan brought
Upon his nuptial day, when he espoused
The Queen of Love), the sire of gods bestow’d
The cup on Dardanus, who gave it next
To Ericthonius Tros received it then,
And left it, with his wealth, to be possess’d
By Ilus he to great Laomedon
Gave it, and last to Priam’s lot it fell.”
[84] Grote, i, p. 393, states the number of the Grecian forces at
upwards of 100,000 men. Nichols makes a total of 135,000.
[85] “As thick as when a field
Of Ceres, ripe for harvest, waving bends
His bearded grove of ears, which way the wind
Sways them.”—Paradise Lost,” iv. 980, sqq.
[86] This sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest
tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of
power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and,
in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the
Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, “Ancient
Greece,” ch. vi. p. 105.
[87] It may be remarked, that the character of Thersites, revolting
and contemptible as it is, serves admirably to develop the disposition
of Ulysses in a new light, in which mere cunning is less prominent. Of
the gradual and individual development of Homer’s heroes, Schlegel
well observes, “In bas-relief the figures are usually in profile, and
in the epos all are characterized in the simplest manner in relief;
they are not grouped together, but follow one another; so Homer’s
heroes advance, one by one, in succession before us. It has been
remarked that the _Iliad_ is not definitively closed, but that we are
left to suppose something both to precede and to follow it. The
bas-relief is equally without limit, and may be continued _ad
infinitum_, either from before or behind, on which account the
ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an indefinite
extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of combatants,
and hence they also exhibit bas-reliefs on curved surfaces, such as
vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the two
ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where, while we advance, one
object appears as another disappears. Reading Homer is very much like
such a circuit; the present object alone arresting our attention, we
lose sight of what precedes, and do not concern ourselves about what
is to follow.”—“Dramatic Literature,” p. 75.
[88] “There cannot be a clearer indication than this description —so
graphic in the original poem—of the true character of the Homeric
agora. The multitude who compose it are listening and acquiescent, not
often hesitating, and never refractory to the chief. The fate which
awaits a presumptuous critic, even where his virulent reproaches are
substantially well-founded, is plainly set forth in the treatment of
Thersites; while the unpopularity of such a character is attested even
more by the excessive pains which Homer takes to heap upon him
repulsive personal deformities, than by the chastisement of Odysseus
he is lame, bald, crook-backed, of misshapen head, and squinting
vision.”—Grote, vol. i. p. 97.
[89] According to Pausanias, both the sprig and the remains of the
tree were exhibited in his time. The tragedians, Lucretius and others,
adopted a different fable to account for the stoppage at Aulis, and
seem to have found the sacrifice of Iphigena better suited to form the
subject of a tragedy. Compare Dryden’s “Æneid,” vol. iii. sqq.
[90] _Full of his god, i.e._, Apollo, filled with the prophetic
spirit. “_The_ god” would be more simple and emphatic.
[91] Those critics who have maintained that the “Catalogue of Ships”
is an interpolation, should have paid more attention to these lines,
which form a most natural introduction to their enumeration.
[92] The following observation will be useful to Homeric readers:
“Particular animals were, at a later time, consecrated to particular
deities. To Jupiter, Ceres, Juno, Apollo, and Bacchus victims of
advanced age might be offered. An ox of five years old was considered
especially acceptable to Jupiter. A black bull, a ram, or a boar pig,
were offerings for Neptune. A heifer, or a sheep, for Minerva. To
Ceres a sow was sacrificed, as an enemy to corn. The goat to Bacchus,
because he fed on vines. Diana was propitiated with a stag; and to
Venus the dove was consecrated. The infernal and evil deities were to
be appeased with black victims. The most acceptable of all sacrifices
was the heifer of a year old, which had never borne the yoke. It was
to be perfect in every limb, healthy, and without blemish.”—“Elgin
Marbles,” vol. i. p. 78.
[93] _Idomeneus_, son of Deucalion, was king of Crete. Having vowed,
during a tempest, on his return from Troy, to sacrifice to Neptune the
first creature that should present itself to his eye on the Cretan
shore, his son fell a victim to his rash vow.
[94] _Tydeus’ son, i.e._ Diomed.
[95] That is, Ajax, the son of Oïleus, a Locrian. He must be
distinguished from the other, who was king of Salamis.
[96] A great deal of nonsense has been written to account for the word
_unbid_, in this line. Even Plato, “Sympos.” p. 315, has found some
curious meaning in what, to us, appears to need no explanation. Was
there any _heroic_ rule of etiquette which prevented one brother-king
visiting another without a formal invitation?
[97] Fresh water fowl, especially swans, were found in great numbers
about the Asian Marsh, a fenny tract of country in Lydia, formed by
the river Cayster, near its mouth. See Virgil, “Georgics,” vol. i.
383, sq.
[98] _Scamander_, or Scamandros, was a river of Troas, rising,
according to Strabo, on the highest part of Mount Ida, in the same
hill with the Granicus and the OEdipus, and falling into the sea at
Sigaeum; everything tends to identify it with Mendere, as Wood,
Rennell, and others maintain; the Mendere is 40 miles long, 300 feet
broad, deep in the time of flood, nearly dry in the summer. Dr. Clarke
successfully combats the opinion of those who make the Scamander to
have arisen from the springs of Bounabarshy, and traces the source of
the river to the highest mountain in the chain of Ida, now Kusdaghy;
receives the Simois in its course; towards its mouth it is very muddy,
and flows through marshes. Between the Scamander and Simois, Homer’s
Troy is supposed to have stood: this river, according to Homer, was
called Xanthus by the gods, Scamander by men. The waters of the
Scamander had the singular property of giving a beautiful colour to
the hair or wool of such animals as bathed in them; hence the three
goddesses, Minerva, Juno, and Venus, bathed there before they appeared
before Paris to obtain the golden apple: the name Xanthus, “yellow,”
was given to the Scamander, from the peculiar colour of its waters,
still applicable to the Mendere, the yellow colour of whose waters
attracts the attention of travellers.
[99] It should be “his _chest_ like Neptune.” The torso of Neptune, in
the “Elgin Marbles,” No. 103, (vol. ii. p. 26,) is remarkable for its
breadth and massiveness of development.
[100] “Say first, for heav’n hides nothing from thy view.”—“Paradise
Lost,” i. 27.
“Ma di’ tu, Musa, come i primi danni
Mandassero à Cristiani, e di quai parti:
Tu ’l sai; ma di tant’ opra a noi si lunge
Debil aura di fama appena giunge.”—“Gier. Lib.” iv. 19.
[101] “The Catalogue is, perhaps, the portion of the poem in favour of
which a claim to separate authorship has been most plausibly urged.
Although the example of Homer has since rendered some such formal
enumeration of the forces engaged, a common practice in epic poems
descriptive of great warlike adventures, still so minute a statistical
detail can neither be considered as imperatively required, nor perhaps
such as would, in ordinary cases, suggest itself to the mind of a
poet. Yet there is scarcely any portion of the Iliad where both
historical and internal evidence are more clearly in favour of a
connection from the remotest period, with the remainder of the work.
The composition of the Catalogue, whensoever it may have taken place,
necessarily presumes its author’s acquaintance with a previously
existing Iliad. It were impossible otherwise to account for the
harmony observable in the recurrence of so vast a number of proper
names, most of them historically unimportant, and not a few altogether
fictitious: or of so many geographical and genealogical details as are
condensed in these few hundred lines, and incidentally scattered over
the thousands which follow: equally inexplicable were the pointed
allusions occurring in this episode to events narrated in the previous
and subsequent text, several of which could hardly be of traditional
notoriety, but through the medium of the Iliad.”—Mure, “Language and
Literature of Greece,” vol. i. p. 263.
[102] _Twice Sixty:_ “Thucydides observes that the Bœotian vessels,
which carried one hundred and twenty men each, were probably meant to
be the largest in the fleet, and those of Philoctetes, carrying fifty
each, the smallest. The average would be eighty-five, and Thucydides
supposes the troops to have rowed and navigated themselves; and that
very few, besides the chiefs, went as mere passengers or landsmen. In
short, we have in the Homeric descriptions the complete picture of an
Indian or African war canoe, many of which are considerably larger
than the largest scale assigned to those of the Greeks. If the total
number of the Greek ships be taken at twelve hundred, according to
Thucydides, although in point of fact there are only eleven hundred
and eighty-six in the Catalogue, the amount of the army, upon the
foregoing average, will be about a hundred and two thousand men. The
historian considers this a small force as representing all Greece.
Bryant, comparing it with the allied army at Platae, thinks it so
large as to prove the entire falsehood of the whole story; and his
reasonings and calculations are, for their curiosity, well worth a
careful perusal.”—Coleridge, p. 211, sq.
[103] The mention of Corinth is an anachronism, as that city was
called Ephyre before its capture by the Dorians. But Velleius, vol. i.
p. 3, well observes, that the poet would naturally speak of various
towns and cities by the names by which they were known in his own
time.
[104] “Adam, the goodliest man of men since born, His sons, the
fairest of her daughters Eve.’—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 323.
[105] _Æsetes’ tomb_. Monuments were often built on the sea-coast, and
of a considerable height, so as to serve as watch-towers or land
marks. See my notes to my prose translations of the “Odyssey,” ii. p.
21, or on Eur. “Alcest.” vol. i. p. 240.
[106] _Zeleia_, another name for Lycia. The inhabitants were greatly
devoted to the worship of Apollo. See Muller, “Dorians,” vol. i. p.
248.
[107] _Barbarous tongues_. “Various as were the dialects of the
Greeks—and these differences existed not only between the several
tribes, but even between neighbouring cities—they yet acknowledged in
their language that they formed but one nation were but branches of
the same family. Homer has ‘men of other tongues:’ and yet Homer had
no general name for the Greek nation.”—Heeren, “Ancient Greece,”
Section vii. p. 107, sq.
[108] _The cranes_.
“Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes
Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried:
And each with outstretch’d neck his rank maintains,
In marshall’d order through th’ ethereal void.”
Lorenzo de Medici, in Roscoe’s Life, Appendix.
See Cary’s Dante: “Hell,” canto v.
[109] _Silent, breathing rage._
“Thus they,
Breathing united force with fixed thought,
Moved on in silence.”
“Paradise Lost,” book i. 559.
[110] “As when some peasant in a bushy brake
Has with unwary footing press’d a snake;
He starts aside, astonish’d, when he spies
His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling eyes”
Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 510.
[111] Dysparis, _i.e._ unlucky, ill fated, Paris. This alludes to the
evils which resulted from his having been brought up, despite the
omens which attended his birth.
[112] The following scene, in which Homer has contrived to introduce
so brilliant a sketch of the Grecian warriors, has been imitated by
Euripides, who in his “Phoenissae” represents Antigone surveying the
opposing champions from a high tower, while the paedagogus describes
their insignia and details their histories.
[113] _No wonder_, &c. Zeuxis, the celebrated artist, is said to have
appended these lines to his picture of Helen, as a motto. Valer Max.
iii. 7.
[114] The early epic was largely occupied with the exploits and
sufferings of women, or heroines, the wives and daughters of the
Grecian heroes. A nation of courageous, hardy, indefatigable women,
dwelling apart from men, permitting only a short temporary
intercourse, for the purpose of renovating their numbers, burning out
their right breast with a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow
freely; this was at once a general type, stimulating to the fancy of
the poet, and a theme eminently popular with his hearers. We find
these warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and
universally accepted as past realities in the Iliad. When Priam wishes
to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he ever
found himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in Phrygia,
on the banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting the
formidable Amazons. When Bellerophon is to be employed in a deadly and
perilous undertaking, by those who prudently wished to procure his
death, he is despatched against the Amazons.—Grote, vol. i p. 289.
[115] _Antenor_, like Æneas, had always been favourable to the
restoration of Helen. Liv 1. 2.
[116]
“His lab’ring heart with sudden rapture seized
He paus’d, and on the ground in silence gazed.
Unskill’d and uninspired he seems to stand,
Nor lifts the eye, nor graceful moves the hand:
Then, while the chiefs in still attention hung,
Pours the full tide of eloquence along;
While from his lips the melting torrent flows,
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.
Now stronger notes engage the listening crowd,
Louder the accents rise, and yet more loud,
Like thunders rolling from a distant cloud.”
Merrick’s “Tryphiodorus,” 148, 99.
[117] Duport, “Gnomol. Homer,” p. 20, well observes that this
comparison may also be sarcastically applied to the _frigid_ style of
oratory. It, of course, here merely denotes the ready fluency of
Ulysses.
[118] _Her brothers’ doom_. They perished in combat with Lynceus and
Idas, whilst besieging Sparta. See Hygin. Poet Astr. 32, 22. Virgil
and others, however, make them share immortality by turns.
[119] Idreus was the arm-bearer and charioteer of king Priam, slain
during this war. Cf. Æn, vi. 487.
[120] _Scæa’s gates_, rather _Scæan gates_, _i.e._ the left-hand
gates.
[121] This was customary in all sacrifices. Hence we find Iras
descending to cut off the hair of Dido, before which she could not
expire.
[122] _Nor pierced_.
“This said, his feeble hand a jav’lin threw,
Which, flutt’ring, seemed to loiter as it flew,
Just, and but barely, to the mark it held,
And faintly tinkled on the brazen shield.”
Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 742.
[123] _Reveal’d the queen_.
“Thus having said, she turn’d and made appear
Her neck refulgent and dishevell’d hair,
Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach’d the ground,
And widely spread ambrosial scents around.
In length of train descends her sweeping gown;
And, by her graceful walk, the queen of love is known.”
Dryden’s Virgil, i. 556.
[124] _Cranae’s isle, i.e._ Athens. See the “Schol.” and Alberti’s
“Hesychius,” vol. ii. p. 338. This name was derived from one of its
early kings, Cranaus.
[125] _The martial maid_. In the original, “Minerva Alalcomeneis,”
_i.e. the defender_, so called from her temple at Alalcomene in
Bœotia.
[126] “Anything for a quiet life!”
[127] —_Argos_. The worship of Juno at Argos was very celebrated in
ancient times, and she was regarded as the patron deity of that city.
Apul. Met., vi. p. 453; Servius on Virg. Æn., i. 28.
[128] —_A wife and sister_.
“But I, who walk in awful state above
The majesty of heav’n, the sister-wife of Jove.”
Dryden’s “Virgil,” i. 70.
So Apuleius, _l. c._ speaks of her as “Jovis germana et conjux, and so
Horace, Od. iii. 3, 64, “conjuge me Jovis et sorore.”
[129]
“Thither came Uriel, gleaming through the even
On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star
In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired
Impress the air, and shows the mariner
From what point of his compass to beware
Impetuous winds.”
—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 555.
[130] _Æsepus’ flood_. A river of Mysia, rising from Mount Cotyius, in
the southern part of the chain of Ida.
[131] _Zelia_, a town of Troas, at the foot of Ida.
[132] _Podaleirius_ and _Machäon_ are the leeches of the Grecian army,
highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs. Their medical
renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the
Iliou Persis, wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in
surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and
appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the
glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of
Ajax.
“Galen appears uncertain whether Asklepius (as well as Dionysus)
was originally a god, or whether he was first a man and then became
afterwards a god; but Apollodorus professed to fix the exact date
of his apotheosis. Throughout all the historical ages the
descendants of Asklepius were numerous and widely diffused. The
many families or gentes, called Asklepiads, who devoted themselves
to the study and practice of medicine, and who principally dwelt
near the temples of Asklepius, whither sick and suffering men came
to obtain relief—all recognized the god not merely as the object of
their common worship, but also as their actual progenitor.”—Grote
vol. i. p. 248.
[133]
“The plant she bruises with a stone, and stands
Tempering the juice between her ivory hands
This o’er her breast she sheds with sovereign art
And bathes with gentle touch the wounded part
The wound such virtue from the juice derives,
At once the blood is stanch’d, the youth revives.”
“Orlando Furioso,” book 1.
[134] _Well might I wish._
“Would heav’n (said he) my strength and youth recall,
Such as I was beneath Praeneste’s wall—
Then when I made the foremost foes retire,
And set whole heaps of conquer’d shields on fire;
When Herilus in single fight I slew,
Whom with three lives Feronia did endue.”
Dryden’s Virgil, viii. 742.
[135] _Sthenelus_, a son of Capaneus, one of the Epigoni. He was one
of the suitors of Helen, and is said to have been one of those who
entered Troy inside the wooden horse.
[136] _Forwarn’d the horrors_. The same portent has already been