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hese 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 mentioned. To this day, modern nations are not wholly free from this superstition.

[137] _Sevenfold city_, Bœotian Thebes, which had seven gates.

[138] _As when the winds_.

“Thus, when a black-brow’d gust begins to rise, White foam at first on the curl’d ocean fries; Then roars the main, the billows mount the skies, Till, by the fury of the storm full blown, The muddy billow o’er the clouds is thrown.”

Dryden’s Virgil, vii. 736.

[139] “Stood Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved; His stature reach’d the sky.”

—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 986.

[140] The Abantes seem to have been of Thracian origin.

[141] I may, once for all, remark that Homer is most anatomically correct as to the parts of the body in which a wound would be immediately mortal.

[142] _Ænus_, a fountain almost proverbial for its coldness.

[143] Compare Tasso, Gier. Lib., xx. 7:

“Nuovo favor del cielo in lui niluce E ’l fa grande, et angusto oltre il costume. Gl’ empie d’ honor la faccia, e vi riduce Di giovinezza il bel purpureo lume.”

[144] “Or deluges, descending on the plains, Sweep o’er the yellow year, destroy the pains Of lab’ring oxen, and the peasant’s gains; Up