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tstretch’d wings, the long-beak’d bird Winnow’d the gale, as if instinct with life. Around the shield the waves of ocean flow’d, The realms of Tethys, which unnumber’d streams, In azure mazes rolling o’er the earth, Seem’d to augment.”

[254] _On seats of stone_. “Several of the old northern Sagas represent the old men assembled for the purpose of judging as sitting on great stones, in a circle called the Urtheilsring or gerichtsring”— Grote, ii. p. 100, note. On the independence of the judicial office in The heroic times, see Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i. p. 166.

[255] _Another part_, &c.

“And here Were horrid wars depicted; grimly pale Were heroes lying with their slaughter’d steeds Upon the ground incarnadin’d with blood. Stern stalked Bellona, smear’d with reeking gore, Through charging ranks; beside her Rout was seen, And Terror, Discord to the fatal strife Inciting men, and Furies breathing flames: Nor absent were the Fates, and the tall shape Of ghastly Death, round whom did Battles throng, Their limbs distilling plenteous blood and sweat; And Gorgons, whose long locks were twisting snakes. That shot their forky tongues incessant forth. Such were the horrors of dire war.”

—Dyce’s Calaber.

[256] _A field deep furrowed_.

“Here was a corn field; reapers in a row, Each with a sharp-tooth’d sickle in his hand, Work’d busily, and, as the harvest fell, Others were ready still to bind the sheaves: Yoked to a wain that bore the corn away The steers were moving; sturdy bullocks here The plough were drawing, and the furrow’d glebe Was black behind them, while with goading wand The active youths impell’d them. Here a feast Was graved: to the shrill pipe and ringing lyre A band of blooming virgins led the dance. As if endued with life.” —Dyce’s Calaber.

[257] Coleridge (Greek Classic Poets, p. 182, seq.) has diligently compared this with the description of the shield of Hercules by Hesiod. He remarks that, “with two or three exceptions, the imagery differs in little more than the names and arrangements; and the difference of arrangement in the Shield of Hercules is altogether for the worse. The natural consecution of the Homeric images needs no exposition: it constitutes in itself one of the beauties of the work. The Hesiodic images are huddled together without connection or congruity: Mars and Pallas are awkwardly introduced among the Centaurs and Lapithae;— but the gap is wide indeed between them and Apollo with the Muses, waking the echoes of Olympus to celestial harmonies; whence however, we are hurried back to Perseus, the Gorgons, and other images of war, over an arm of the sea, in which the sporting dolphins, the fugitive fishes, and the fisherman on the shore with his casting net, are minutely represented. As to the Hesiodic images themselves, the leading remark is, that they catch at beauty by ornament, and at sublimity by exaggeration; and upon the untenable supposition of the genuineness of this poem, there is this curious peculiarity, that, in the description of scenes of rustic peace, the superiority of Homer is decisive—while in those of war and tumult it may be thought, perhaps, that the Hesiodic poet has more than once the advantage.”

[258] “This legend is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in the Grecian Mythology; it explains, according to the religious ideas familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes and the endless toil and endurances of Heracles, the most renowned subjugator of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the Hellenes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead, and receives in marriage Hebe.”—Grote, vol. i. p. 128.

[259] _Ambrosia_.

“The blue-eyed maid, In ev’ry breast new vigour to infuse. Brings nectar temper’d with ambrosial dews.”

Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, vi. 249.

[260] “Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them.” Job xxvi. 6-8.

[261] “Swift from his throne the infernal monarch ran, All pale and trembling, lest the race of man,v Slain by Jove’s wrath, and led by Hermes’ rod, Should fill (a countless throng!) his dark abode.”

Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, vi. 769, sqq.

[262] These words seem to imply the old belief, that the Fates might be delayed, but never wholly set aside.

[263] It was anciently believed that it was dangerous, if not fatal, to behold a deity. See Exod. xxxiii. 20; Judg. xiii. 22.

[264] “Ere Ilium and the Trojan tow’rs arose, In humble vales they built their soft abodes.”

Dryden’s Virgil, iii. 150.

[265] _Along the level seas_. Compare Virgil’s description of Camilla, who

“Outstripp’d the winds in speed upon the plain, Flew o’er the field, nor hurt the bearded grain: She swept the seas, and, as she skimm’d along, Her flying feet unbathed on billows hung.”

Dryden, vii. 1100.

[266] _The future father_. “Æneas and Antenor stand distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam, and a sympathy with the Greeks, which is by Sophocles and others construed as treacherous collusion,—a suspicion indirectly glanced at, though emphatically repelled, in the Æneas of Virgil.”—Grote, i. p. 427.

[267] Neptune thus recounts his services to Æneas:

“When your Æneas fought, but fought with odds Of force unequal, and unequal gods: I spread a cloud before the victor’s sight, Sustain’d the vanquish’d, and secured his flight— Even then secured him, when I sought with joy The vow’d destruction of ungrateful Troy.”

Dryden’s Virgil, v. 1058.

[268] _On Polydore_. Euripides, Virgil, and others, relate that Polydore was sent into Thrace, to the house of Polymestor, for protection, being the youngest of Priam’s sons, and that he was treacherously murdered by his host for the sake of the treasure sent with him.

[269] “Perhaps the boldest excursion of Homer into this region of poetical fancy is the collision into which, in the twenty-first of the Iliad, he has brought the river god Scamander, first with Achilles, and afterwards with Vulcan, when summoned by Juno to the hero’s aid. The overwhelming fury of the stream finds the natural interpretation in the character of the mountain torrents of Greece and Asia Minor. Their wide, shingly beds are in summer comparatively dry, so as to be easily forded by the foot passenger. But a thunder-shower in the mountains, unobserved perhaps by the traveller on the plain, may suddenly immerse him in the flood of a mighty river. The rescue of Achilles by the fiery arms of Vulcan scarcely admits of the same ready explanat